redtopz

After much consideration, I decided to run scca this year in addition to nasa. The fact that the national scca runoffs are coming to Laguna Seca this year combined with all my fellow corvette racers running scca made this hard to pass up. It would have been much easier and cheaper to just run nasa this year as they also are having a national championship in CA (Sonoma), but I'm going to try to do both.

The first step to getting back into scca was to renew my license. Check. Then try to decipher hundreds of pages of rules for T1 and GT2 which my car fits into. Unfortunately these rules change month to month and are very very confusing and seemingly arbitrary. It took weeks of work to get my car scca legal including such things as:

1. Lowering the rear wing below roof level (luckily my existing wing was legal size and shape)
2. Changing my front undertray/splitter from 4" to 2"
3. Adding a windshield wiper (don't ask why)
4. Adding a passenger side interior door handle (don't ask why)
5. Adding metallic tape to the engine side of the firewall (don't ask why)
6. Install a full dash (don't ask why)
7. Getting 60mm restrictor for T1 and 70 mm restrictor for GT2
8. Figure out how to add 250 lbs ballast for T1 compared to GT2
9. Remove as much weight from the car as possible to get close to the GT2 limit of 2950 lbs. My car was running 3200 lbs.

In addition to this work, Synergy Motorsports is working on building an engine for SCCA specifications. It will be a built LS6 with custom cam and custom Synergy headers/exhaust. Rick is welcome to post pics and any info from the build that he feels like sharing.

I am also continuing to work with TC Design. As you know they built my new cage last year and rebuilt and installed some Moton shock coilovers. This year, I am working with TC Design to learn more about how to modify my car setup to get the performance I need at various tracks. For example, last year I found a shock setting I was comfortable with at the beginning of the year and I never made a single change to the shocks, sways, or springs all year long. The car was working so why change it? This is actually a pretty good strategy for the casual weekend warrior racer or track day guy. However, I wanted to further develop my skill set in car setup and handling. TC Design is also available for coaching on the track and I did a test day with Tony to get his input on my car setup and my driving. Nobody has ever driven my car before and I haven't had a coach since my 2nd hpde day so this was a new experience. There's not enough time in a few track sessions to cover much, but Tony was good at cutting to the chase and getting the most bang for the buck at making me and the car faster. More about this later.

Lowered the wing mounts for scca


Wasp Composite carbon fiber undertray




Firewall Tape

redtopz

So Tony and I went to Thunderhill to test the new aero setup. It was pretty obvious right away that the car had some push (understeer) with the smaller front splitter. We were also running scrub tires from my national races at Miller so it wasn't as good as testing on new tires. One thing that separates a real pro from a decent racer is their ability to jump in any car and get up to speed right now. It took me a session to get the feel of the new aero and I still take some time to get warmed up. Tony jumped in and immediately was faster than me by about 1/2 second. The places he was faster were surprising and I was faster than him in other sections so it's a win/win even if you are faster you can learn something. Most importantly, we talked about some things to change to eliminate the understeer. For example, tighten the rear bar, go with stiffer rear springs, soften front bar, and try different shock settings. This takes time and testing, but I decided I would sacrifice the beginning of the season to try to learn some things. Here's a video from that test day where I ran a low 1:52 over the cyclone using the T1 60 mm restrictor so probably pretty close to ST2 power to weight.

redtopz

To qualify for Runoffs we have a few different options. But the easiest is to compete in 3 Majors race weekends which are large multi-region races that bring lots of competition and contingencies. The first Western Major was at Cal Speedway (ACS) in January. We only need to complete 3 races in a particular class to qualify for runoffs so I decided to race T1 on Saturday and GT2 on Sunday. I can't decide which one I would rather do or possibly both so this leaves my options open. For T1 we had a solid field of about 12 cars including corvettes, boss mustangs, turbo miata, supercharged s2000, and others. I managed to put my car on pole position Saturday morning running a 1:44.0 lap. Jim Tway was right next to me on the front row. For some reason I decided to try Hoosier R6's instead of running A6's, which was pretty dumb considering this was January and not June. But I wanted to try new things right? The R6's were not bad, but they didn't have the grip of A6's and it was a fight to stay ahead of Jim. After around 7 laps of holding him off, I bobbled a brake zone triggering "ice mode" and he made his pass. I tried to chase him the rest of the race, but I could barely keep up much less pass him. So Jim ended up first and I took 2nd. Not a bad start! Here's that race vid with the first 5 laps missing. I wasn't on my A game as far as driving that weekend...


The next day I pulled out about 120 lbs of ballast and changed restrictors from 60 to 70 mm. Also put on some scrub A6's from Miller (I didn't want to waste these tires since they still had good life in them). I think I qualified around 5th in GT2 the day before so I was starting back 3 or 4 rows from the front. GT2 consists mostly of porsche cup cars on slicks with sequential trannys, viper ACR's, vettes, and stock cars. It's a fast and fun class. Here's the vid from that race. I ended up on the podium with a 3rd place finish, but "ice mode" bit me again in a brake zone hurting my results. More about ice mode later.

Parked next to Oli before the GT2 race:


Race vid:

Here are a few laps of the GT2 race with data overlay if you want to see what kind of speeds we were doing:

Boat Racer

Wow! Impressive videos. I think that I saw you hit near 160 a few times. The only time that I have driven that fast was when I wasn't worried about making any turns. Great job of driving. Good luck this year.

Robert R1

Good stuff Bill! Looking forward to following your 2014 racing adventures.

How different is the car to your 1:50 at Thill spec?

folsomlarry

Those are some great videos and a great write up on what you are doing with the car. Hopefully I can get out and watch you at both championship races this year.

redtopz

Thanks. Now that you mention it, I must be getting used to the speed. I remember the first time I hit 140 at a drag strip I was shaking afterwards.

OK, had to look back. That was 2 years ago, but feels longer than that. My car was running the stock ls6 with a 60 mm restrictor for ST2 making 366 whp and 3250 lbs. It had LG G2 coilovers and T1 bars, but I was running brand new hoosier A6's on the bypass. The bypass is about 2.5 seconds faster than the cyclone more or less.

This time at T-hill the car was probably making about 30 more hp and weighed 50 lbs less so it was faster down the straights. However, the wing was lowered below the roof level and the splitter was shrunk from 4" to 2" and we were running scrub tires and the cyclone. I'm more comfortable with the reduced aero now, but I still haven't taken it out on new A6's. That will come at the next race (can't wait)!

Sounds good .

redtopz

I came away from the ACS weekend learning a lot. I tend to learn more from losses than wins and I had a nice 6 hour tow home to think about what happened and what I needed to get done before the next race. Several things topped the list, including removing weight from the car for GT2, moving the dry sump tank out of passenger area and into the engine bay, and trying to solve my ice mode abs issues.

Since T1 and GT2 are separated by over 300 lbs, I need a quick, safe, and easy way to add and remove ballast from the car. The best location for this is using the factory passenger seat mount bolts and a frame with weights. Unfortunately, my car had a dry sump tank and containment box in that area which has always been a major pita. So I decided to move it to the stock battery location. This also had a side benefit of eliminating over 30 lbs of excess weight.

I needed to get this 3 gallon tank


Into this small area


This involved relocating some of the oil fittings on the tank and grinding down the battery mounting bracket. I also moved the PCM and TAC into the cockpit so it wouldn't be sitting below the oil tank. Now I can drain the tank by just removing a plastic shroud and draining the tank into a bucket.




One of my concerns with this relocation project was the fact that my catch can had a problem of sloshing oil out of the breather and all over the containment box inside the car. I really didn't want this to be an issue with oil getting all over my headers, serpentine belt, and electrical wiring. So I tried out a simple yet effective solution of stuffing some steel wool inside the breather and about 1/4 of the way down the can. This 100% eliminated oil from escaping the breather which was surprising to me, but great news. This photo was after 5 sessions at T-hill and emptying about 3 cups of oil from the can. No mess!

redtopz

Project #2 was weight removal. This car has always been relatively heavy and I really should have done this last year before nasa nationals where I was about 150 lbs over weight. Long story short, I dug into the wiring to some degree, installed a lexan windshield, and a lighter fire system from TC Design along with a bunch of misc. crap and netted about 130 lbs weight reduction .





I was scared at first, because literally the first 2 wires I tried to remove resulted in a) the fuel pump not working and then b) the engine not running at all . At this point I realized I had to have shop manuals with wiring diagrams to get this done. Once those arrived, it went forward without a hitch. I didn't go crazy with removing wires, but I did clean up a bunch of unnecessary mess. You can see the PCM and TAC modules mounted on the right and the new fire system on the floor. I still need to clean up the wiring some more and put the dash back on.

Oh yeah, big thank you to Randy at DRM who spent a bunch of time on the phone with me helping me with the wiring removal. Thanks Randy!

redtopz

I've gone back and forth between glass and lexan and haven't really been happy with either one. I tend to crack the glass multiple times a year. I tried to do a better job on the 5 Star lexan windshield this time. I countersunk holes on 4" spacing all the way around the lexan. Then painted the inner 2" strip all the way around and laid down a strip of weatherstripping from Home Depot. This resulted in a clean and professional appearing installation. There is one aluminum support down the middle of the windshield for support.

flink

It would be interesting to try some tearoffs on that windshield while it's still nice.

http://www.protint.com/kannapolis-nc...d-tearoffs.htm indicates that they are designed precisely to protect lexan. They're $170 but I can't work out how many layers you get for that.

redtopz

Thanks Andrew, it sounds like they come with a bunch of tear-offs but I'll have to ask exactly how many. That's about half the price of a new lexan shield so if they still provide good visibility that would be an awesome solution.

redtopz

Now that I had removed weight, cut out wiring, and moved the oil tank I needed to get back to the track and make sure the car still worked. Flink (Andrew) and I went up to T-hill last Friday for a test day. I also needed to work on a couple corners that I had somehow regressed in speed since last year. The only problem was I only had tires that had been raced at Miller, then at T-hill test day, then raced at ACS. So they were pretty much done as far as grip. However, sometimes it's good to push hard on crappy tires and work on being smooth.

I was extremely happy that the car ran without a single issue all day and it felt well balanced with some of the changes I made with Tony's help. I also got my mojo back in the turns I wanted to work on, carrying more speed in those sections than the last time I was there. The other positive out of the test day is I think I may have improved the ice mode issue I was having at ACS. It seemed as though rather than triggering ABS, my car would immediately go to ice mode instead which results in a hard pedal and about 15% braking force. This was really hurting me in races and is frankly dangerous. I used a brake proportion valve to cut pressure to the rear calipers and also softened my rear shocks a notch to try to keep the rear tires from locking. In the morning at T-hill on a cold track with some oil spills, I managed to trigger abs about 8 times and never went into ice mode all day. Later in the day with better grip I rarely if ever triggered abs either so things are improving.

So the next events coming up for me will probably be:

1. NASA at Sonoma in March
2. SCCA Major at T-hill in April
3. SCCA Major at Buttonwillow.

Those scca events should hopefully qualify the car for the Runoffs so we can just run nasa the rest of the year until runoffs in October. After April we will also be installing the new Synergy engine and exhaust.

redtopz

Getting ready for my first NASA weekend this year at Sonoma . I'll be breaking out a set of sticker tires on Friday for some testing with TC Design. I have some new ideas I want to try out.

I've been working on my ballast system for the past week. Jim Tway shared some design info and I welded up a frame to hold 4 plates at 45 lbs each. It's taking a while to drill all the holes in the plates to anchor them down but it's almost done.

Wolf Vinyl came out to my shop yesterday and wrapped some new white vinyl on the front bumper and fenders. This time I decided to put clear bra over the front decals which should keep them looking fresh all season .

flink

Did John install the windshield tearoff? If so, how's the view?

redtopz

Follow up on my ice mode issues. There was a good thread in the racing forum that talked about brake bias in corvettes. Stock C5's have a 63% front brake bias, which makes sense since the front brakes do most of the work and most of the weight is transferred to the front tires under braking. Since the rear tires get light you don't want too much braking force on the rear rotors which might cause a rear wheel lockup.

After reading through that thread, I decided to measure the pistons on my front and rear calipers to calculate my current brake bias. My car was built with stoptech ST60's in front and had the stock front calipers moved to the back. I always assumed this was a good budget big brake system and never thought twice about it. I also assumed the big stoptech calipers would have much more piston area (and clamping force) than the stock 2 piston calipers. However, I was wrong on both accounts. The ST60 calipers although they appear huge, have nearly 40 percent less clamping force than the stock calipers . This was somewhat shocking to me at first, but then it became pretty clear why I've been having ice mode issues. Even though the stoptechs are on 14" rotors vs. 13" in back, my overall brake bias is backwards with more bias in back than front. This is no bueno.

There is a wilwood prop valve on my rear brake line coming out of the master cylinder. After looking up the specs on this valve, it can adjust brake pressure on that line from 100% down to 57%. It's probably been set around 75% and I barely moved it for my last test day so that probably did nothing. I'm going to have to back it all the way out to get my bias back to the front. I can also go with a less aggressive pad in back.

redtopz

No, he was there until 7 pm and we ran out of time. I installed some more racing decals today along with clear bra but mine don't look as good as his... I will try to install the protective film on the windshield tomorrow.

redtopz

I spent way too much time getting my car setup to race this year. The decision to race scca and nasa probably added 80 hours of work for me. All the little things just add up. I finished making the ballast frame for the passenger seat area which can add about 200 lbs when I need it.



Those are 45 lb plates with 4 5/8ths bolts holding them down. Finally finished prepping the car and drove up to Sonoma Thursday night so I could do the practice day on Friday with my coach Tony from TC Design. Spent Thurs night in the trailer at the track and my buddy Flink was parked right next door.



Thursday morning we could not get my car started very easily. I figured it was the small braille battery causing the problem but we finally got it to fire and I was off for the first session. The car stalled when I pushed in the clutch which isn't unusual when it's cold and hasn't run in a while with this cam and small clutch. However, after that we couldn't get the car to start at all. Tried jumping it from my truck and then swapping batteries and no luck . This was frustrating because Tony was there to help and the car was just sitting. Finally Andrew suggested we drag the car around the paddock and pop the clutch because pushing by hand wasn't working. This finally got the engine running and then it ran all day.

The track was very crowded with other cars so it was basically impossible to get a clean lap. We just ran on the scrub R6's to save the new A6's for the weekend. Tony gave me some things to work on with my driving, teched my car, and then headed out to work on his new shop in Campbell near San Jose. I did the next session for probably 40 minutes and had a great time. I was going to call it a day, but decided to go out for the last session to keep practicing because I was having a good time just driving the car. Then it happened...

Came out of T11 in 2nd gear and right before my shift to 3rd the engine blew. Smoke instantly filled the cabin and made it hard to see where I was going. I pulled off right to the drag strip area, stopped the car, and was out before I knew it. I was ready to pull the fire handle, but didn't see any flames. The tow truck guys brought me some pieces from the track:



The whole bottom of the engine and oil pan grenaded out. Must have thrown a rod. Luckily nothing made it to the top of the engine and no fire. I also am fortunate that this happened in a straight line at low speed. If this happened in T9 or 10 and oil hit my rear wheels I probably would have totaled the car.

redtopz

After talking with Tony and Rick from Synergy, they think the engine builder probably had a crank bearing or rod bearing too tight or some other tolerance issue with the build. It was built at Fresno Performance which is no longer in business. I had a feeling something like this would happen which is why I waited until after nationals last year to swap engines. Rick is in the process of rebuilding my original ls6 that we removed last year. When I told him about this engine failing he said he would try to get the new one done asap so we can still make the scca major races in April to qualify for Runoffs. Rick is very busy with engine builds and other projects if you see his posts on facebook. I appreciate the extra effort to help me out.

Here are some pics of what I saw this morning when I removed my drivetrain:






The heads look as good as new. Everything blew straight out the bottom. The radiator and water pump were still full of clean water. I don't think the dry sump scavenge pump ever had a chance to suck anything up due to the sudden loss of oil. All the dry sump lines and pump look fine. So all I will need is a new ARE oil pan and the engine from Rick and I should be back in business. I will also get a new oil cooler as a precaution and thoroughly clean all parts regardless. Overall not as bad as I feared at first. But still very frustrating to have this engine only last 5 months when I was only asking for 6 months! I literally only needed this engine to get through the next 2 race weekends before I was going to install the Synergy engine.

To make things even weirder, Andrew lost his bmw engine on Saturday and then Glen lost his PTE miata engine today at Sonoma. Good weekend to stay home I guess.

flink

I wonder if the cooler needs replacing? I figure everything downstream of the filter should be OK. I plan to trace out the oil flow once it's all apart, see which bits might be full of bits.