I don't get to the track near as often as I used to, but I finally got a track day in with the Blue Flame.
I have been fighting gremlins with this car for what seems like forever and today was no different. Last time I had it out to an event it overheated as I was pulling in onto the trailer. (As it turned out, it didn't matter since that track day was rained out.) The task of replacing the thermostat was completed just a couple days before this event.
I was at the gate at 7am and ready to run at 8am but a heavy fog persisted and didn't start to lift until almost 10am.
During the downtime I began rigging up the laptop to datalog while the car idled with the defroster on to help clear the foggy windows. It had been all of maybe 10 minutes when someone called out to me telling me I was leaking antifreeze. Arghhh!
Turns out the reservoir cap had let loose a load of coolant. After shutting the car off I was trying to figure out what the H E double L was wrong now. After much head scratching and checking we decided to investigate the electric water pump. I discovered it was NOT working and soon found the reason why. The inline fuse had literally cooked itself and was burnt to a crisp. The fuse holder itself was salvageable so we looked for a fuse to put in its place. (The only fuses I had were too big as the inline fuse used a smaller mini-fuse than what the car uses.) So I rigged a temporary wire bridge and taped it up. Problem solved.
After filling the cooling system with bottled water I had brought for the day we were finally able to get a couple passes down the track. I had previously loaded the chip with different tunes and it didn't take long to find the best running tune. The car still wasn't launching right but at least we were able to muster some 1.9x sixty foot times running low 13's.
Then the next problem occurred. Upon exiting the track and starting down the return road, the car seemed as it had no throttle whatsoever. I was still rolling along at a high idle but I could not get any throttle response at all. As the car slowed I pulled to the side to allow the car coming up behind me to go by.
Sitting alongside the return road, I raised the hood and began to investigate. Meanwhile it sputtered and died. It would restart and barely idle a few seconds before dying again. Soon a track employee showed up and offered to pull the car back to the pits.
Back at the pits we checked for fuel at the rail and there was fuel but we had no way to check the pressure. There was voltage at the external fuel pump and it was running with the key on. Out of curiosity I loosened the suction end of the pump. Expecting a line full of fuel I was somewhat perplexed there was but very little. Then I reached under and thumped the fuel tank and much to my surprise it was empty. {insert expletives here} :mad-tilt:
Being a private track rental, the fueling station wasn't open just yet so we had to wait a bit for the fuel guy to get there and get ready for the afternoon event. Finally we secured some race gas (104 octane) and were soon back in business. The first pass after that showed improvement and I was about to hot lap a second run when someone had exploded something on the track and we were down for a lengthy clean up of the track.
I took advantage of the downtime and headed to the pits and fired up the SCT software and tweaked the tune a bit. Went back out and managed a couple more passes before the end of the rental.
Had I not had so much downtime, we would've seen twelves as the best of the day was a 13.021 at 104+ mph. There is still a lot of work to do but I feel I have begun to turn the corner and may be finally figuring out this OBD2 Gen 1. :rolleyes-green:
I have been fighting gremlins with this car for what seems like forever and today was no different. Last time I had it out to an event it overheated as I was pulling in onto the trailer. (As it turned out, it didn't matter since that track day was rained out.) The task of replacing the thermostat was completed just a couple days before this event.
I was at the gate at 7am and ready to run at 8am but a heavy fog persisted and didn't start to lift until almost 10am.
During the downtime I began rigging up the laptop to datalog while the car idled with the defroster on to help clear the foggy windows. It had been all of maybe 10 minutes when someone called out to me telling me I was leaking antifreeze. Arghhh!
Turns out the reservoir cap had let loose a load of coolant. After shutting the car off I was trying to figure out what the H E double L was wrong now. After much head scratching and checking we decided to investigate the electric water pump. I discovered it was NOT working and soon found the reason why. The inline fuse had literally cooked itself and was burnt to a crisp. The fuse holder itself was salvageable so we looked for a fuse to put in its place. (The only fuses I had were too big as the inline fuse used a smaller mini-fuse than what the car uses.) So I rigged a temporary wire bridge and taped it up. Problem solved.
After filling the cooling system with bottled water I had brought for the day we were finally able to get a couple passes down the track. I had previously loaded the chip with different tunes and it didn't take long to find the best running tune. The car still wasn't launching right but at least we were able to muster some 1.9x sixty foot times running low 13's.
Then the next problem occurred. Upon exiting the track and starting down the return road, the car seemed as it had no throttle whatsoever. I was still rolling along at a high idle but I could not get any throttle response at all. As the car slowed I pulled to the side to allow the car coming up behind me to go by.
Sitting alongside the return road, I raised the hood and began to investigate. Meanwhile it sputtered and died. It would restart and barely idle a few seconds before dying again. Soon a track employee showed up and offered to pull the car back to the pits.
Back at the pits we checked for fuel at the rail and there was fuel but we had no way to check the pressure. There was voltage at the external fuel pump and it was running with the key on. Out of curiosity I loosened the suction end of the pump. Expecting a line full of fuel I was somewhat perplexed there was but very little. Then I reached under and thumped the fuel tank and much to my surprise it was empty. {insert expletives here} :mad-tilt:
Being a private track rental, the fueling station wasn't open just yet so we had to wait a bit for the fuel guy to get there and get ready for the afternoon event. Finally we secured some race gas (104 octane) and were soon back in business. The first pass after that showed improvement and I was about to hot lap a second run when someone had exploded something on the track and we were down for a lengthy clean up of the track.
I took advantage of the downtime and headed to the pits and fired up the SCT software and tweaked the tune a bit. Went back out and managed a couple more passes before the end of the rental.
Had I not had so much downtime, we would've seen twelves as the best of the day was a 13.021 at 104+ mph. There is still a lot of work to do but I feel I have begun to turn the corner and may be finally figuring out this OBD2 Gen 1. :rolleyes-green: