Fixing brakes and more prep for Nationals

During my last visit to SJF Performance we discovered that the front brakes were done for. I immediately placed an order for new brakes. This time, I switched to Wilwood rotors made from their proprietary Spec37 iron alloy (part numbers 160-11839 and 160-11840). I was told that the premature brake wear was likely due to us exceeding the temperature envelope of the brakes. These rotors are designed for much heavier use and should help manage heat better. They're also slotted which should help keep the pads clean and avoid a lot of the grooving that happened on the old rotors. I went with another set of Hawk HP+ pads (HB100 N.480) and ordered new brake hat bolts just in case the old ones needed replacement.

New rotors, pads and bolts - SJF Performamnce - 8/20/2016

Wilwood Spec37 performance rotors - 8/20/2016

SJF made quick work of replacing the rotors and pads. The old bolts were still in good shape so he just cleaned them and reused. We'll just keep the fresh bolts as spares. The bolts were torqued to 150in/lb (12.5ft/lb) and red loctite was applied to all bolts. The new rotors have more vanes and smaller gaps between them and is a pound or two heavier. I presume the added weight is needed for thermal capacity and more efficient braking. Even though the added weight does kill some performance in the form of more rotating mass, it should give us better stopping power and many races are won/lost in the braking zones.

New pad left, old pad right - 8/20/2016

New rotor left, old rotor right - 8/20/2016

New brakes installed - 8/20/2016

With the brakes out of the way, we took the current set of "practice" tires off the set of wheels on Bumblestook and mounted some fresh Hoosiers. These will be our tires for the championship and we'll scrub these in either next weekend or on the practice course in Lincoln. The four tires we'll be using were all won by Hez during the past two ProSolo wins so thankfully we didn't have to shell out cash for new tires this year.

Fresh tires getting mounted - 8/20/2016

Finally, since we don't leave anything to chance, the engine oil was replaced with some fresh Amsoil. This is probably a bit overkill considering it's been only about 100 miles since we replaced the oil earlier this year but with the car being run so hard and running on Ethanol, we do this before Nats just for peace of mind.

Oil Change - 8/20/2016

Last year we also made a silly mistake of not removing OPR from the tires between competition days so I picked a Dewalt brushless battery powered oscillating tool. I had SJF dull the edges and corners off the blade we'll be using for scraping so it doesn't cut into the good rubber but still be able to separate the OPR effectively from the tires.

DeWALT Oscillating Tool - 8/20/2016

Oscillating blades - 8/20/2016

Tomorrow we'll be running with the NNJR Porsche Club to bed in the brakes and test out the new alignment. The other set of wheels with the tires we'll be running at the ProSolo Finale are on the car. Those were our Nationals set from last year and tomorrow's event will be a good way to scrub them in nicely and clear out any left over OPR from last year. It is now only 11 days until we leave for Lincoln and we'll have just two more events to give her a final shake down.

Pre-Nationals Checkup

If there's one thing for sure, no matter how meticulous you are with alignments, you need check and adjust your alignment regularly if you're pushing your car hard enough. Bumblestook was last aligned before I tucked her away over the winter and after over half a season of hard driving, she was long overdue for another one.

Getting ready for alignment - SJF Performance - 8/7/2016

As expected, some of the settings had drifted over the past few months simply from the G forces generated by the car under extreme cornering. I had reduced front camber on the front right and toe settings were quite a bit off norm. Despite Bumblestook's good pace yesterday at NNJR SCCA, she wasn't running at optimal settings. SJF redid the alignment to incorporate a few changes I wanted to make to have the front end work a bit better. The new alignment settings are:

Front:
-3.6 camber
4.9 caster
0 toe

Rear
-2.5 camber
0.06 (1/16") total toe in

This is pretty much what we started with early in the season but added another 0.2 degrees of negative camber up front. Looks like we'll also have to replace the tie rod ends after Nats. There's a bit more play that we'd like. It's minor but this is definitely on the list of things to do when we get back.

Alignment in progress - SJF Performance - 8/7/2016

Next up, the diff fluid was flushed. I know we really don't need to replace diff fluid this frequently but it's a cheap and effective way to be able to check the health of the diff. The fluid looked very clean. No metal shavings or excessive carbon buildup at all were found on the drain bolt. The driveshaft bolts were double checked and confirmed that they have not slipped since we installed them and finally we checked the front brakes.

Front brakes done - SJF Performance - 8/7/2016

Hmm, besides the rotor being purple from all the heat generated from braking  yesterday, we did find that we had managed to go through an entire set of front pads in just 93.6 miles. How do I know it's exactly 93.6 miles? Because when we replaced the brakes at the beginning of the season, I reset the trip meter to find out how many miles we ran the car each year and it read 93.6 miles as of this afternoon. It's probably got about one event of brake pad left so I'm going to replacing the pads and the rotors again before nationals. I guess it's true that races are won in the braking zones because killing brakes in less than 100 miles was achieved with a fair amount of winning.

As a side note, the lights on the trailer were also replaced as the old ones were no longer functioning correctly. The brake and turn lights were working but not the running lights. I got some new replacement lights and they're working great so the trailer is now 100% sorted for the trip.

NNJR SCCA - FTD and Top PAX

The last event we did with Bumblestook was at the Toledo ProSolo about 6 weeks ago. In the meantime, I got her on the dyno to fix the burbling/power issue when holding certain RPMs and was mostly just taking a nice mental break from racing. Hez did a few events in Rad's STR car to stay fresh. With only 4 weeks left before we head out to Nationals, it was time to let Bumblestook get some exercise and finish up our testing. It's almost showtime.

NNJR SCCA - 8/6/2016

My main goals this weekend were:

• Mentally get my head back into autocross
• Verify if the tune indeed fixed the random burbles we'd feel at certain RPMs
• Make sure she continues to feel ready for battle
• As a driver, I wanted to focus on early aggression and making fast runs right out of the gate

In Grid - NNJR SCCA - 8/6/2016

With a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon, the NNJR SCCA opted to switch from the usual 3 heat layout to a 2 run group, 4 heat layout. This meant we'd get 4 runs in the morning and 4 runs in the afternoon. Our first runs were basically throw away since the tires had lots of little rocks on them from storage and the course was still very dirty. We then kicked up the speed and Bumblestook responded. I instantly felt comfortable driving her again and the early aggression paid off as I found myself outpacing Hez for the first time in quite a while after morning runs were done. 

Morning results - 8/6/2016

In the afternoon, Hez, after having his coffee and donuts turned into a driver possessed and started knocking out blazing times working his way up the ladder. In his last run he sealed the deal and took fastest time of the day (FTD) and top PAX out of all drivers despite a few bobbles. This is encouraging as it means she had even more pace left in her. We ended up 1st and 3rd in RAW and 1st and 11th in PAX and thankfully the rain stayed away until we had packed up and left the venue.

Final RAW time results - 8/6/2016

Final PAX results - 8/6/2016

Bumblestook once again proved she's battle ready and the tune did in fact work perfectly. We were able to lay down power without issue and her balance continues to be spot on.

NNJR SCCA - 8/6/2016

Overall I think we achieved the goals for today's test. Despite a slew of heavy hitters not holding back, Hez was able to continue to be fighting at the top. Bumblestook felt absolutely incredible. I was able to find pace early. As far as things to work on before nats:

• I have to continue to work on finding more pace and close the gap to Hez
• Hez has the pace but needs to work on getting to that pace in fewer runs

We'll continue our testing in 2 weeks but for now it's time to get her back to SJF Performance for her final alignment before Nats. 

Dyno Day

I scheduled an appointment with Evans Tuning a month or so ago to get Bumblestook back on the dyno just to make sure she was still running right. The earliest weekend appointment I could get was today which worked out great since we've got a few weeks of downtime to get her sorted before the final countdown to Nationals. She's been running rock solid (knock on wood) for the past 2 years without issue but it was worth having Jeff put her through her paces while carefully monitoring all engine parameters. The dyno is the best and correct way to do that. The battery quick connect SJF Performance installed fixed the ground issue but on occasion we'd still hear and feel a kind of burbling sound at part throttle and sometimes even at the full throttle and she would behave like she was momentarily fuel starving. This would mostly happen in the slaloms and we knew were losing power and when this happened.

Jeff Evans getting ready to dyno Bumblestook
Evans Tuning - 6/25/2016

On the dyno she seemed to pull ok with the same power as before so at least we don't have any power loss but he did notice something weird when holding part throttle at higher revs, the TPS voltage would jitter a little (about 0.5%) but this was actually enough to trigger the ECU to act like the engine was just starting up and then would momentarily run rich. We probably would have not easily seen this by just looking at a datalog after the fact so it was really good that Jeff was trying to zero in on this problem while looking at everything on the ECU in real time. Jeff tweaked some of the TPS voltage sensitivity parameters in the ECU and Bumblestook immediately responded positively. The momentary rich condition is now gone and she revs smoothly through the entire power band both at part and full throttle. Unfortunately our next local event to do some final testing won't happen until August but at least the mystery "burble" issue has been addressed so expect some more pace out of Bumblestook the next time you see her out there.

Radial trailer tires - SJF Performance - 6/25/2016

Radial trailer tires - SJF Performance - 6/25/2016

I just replaced my trailer wheels and tires before Nationals last year but after doing some more research I decided to change them yet again. I switched from bias-ply to radial trailer tires. The radials have slightly less load capacity but still well within my requirements but more importantly they are rated up to 81mph unlike the bias ply tires which are rated to 65mph. This will help greatly in Iowa when I-80 speed limits are 80mph and the last thing I want to worry about is blowing out a trailer tire. We generally try to stay below this limit but it's always good to have that extra cushion just in case. All four wheels/tires were replaced and I also got two new ones as spares. The trailer's going to be at SJF Performance for a while so he can make some nice little modifications to the trailer for me and put a fresh coat of paint and get rid of some of the rust that's started to form. The countdown to Nats has started.

BSP Win at Toledo ProSolo 2016

We finished the Toledo ProSolo with another team victory, taking the top two spots in BSP. Hez took the win over me by 0.2 seconds for another close finish between us and gapping the rest of the class by 1.8 seconds.

Team Bumblestook - Toledo ProSolo - 6/12/2016

We arrived on site early on Friday to secure our paddock spot and unload. The course that was set up for this event was designed by Alex Jones and was probably one of the best ProSolo courses I've ever driven. It was very technical and had the right balance of fast and slow sections. For our morning runs of day 1, Hez pulled off some fast runs early with me sitting a distant 2nd by a crushing 1.8 seconds. By noon, the ambient temperatures had already risen to 94F and we were baking in the sun but the good news was that the rain we had in the forecast wasn't going to happen. Unfortunately, timing problems and a few car breakages caused the morning session to drag on until 3pm. Being in the last run group there was a chance we wouldn't be able to get done with our runs that day. Miraculously, the afternoon session went on at a much more normal pace and we got our last runs in. The course was getting grippier and Hez redlit most of his afternoon runs and didn't improve on his clean run. I was able to find about half a second but was still 1.3 seconds behind Hez and only 0.1 seconds ahead of Lee in 3rd coming into day 2.

In Grid - Day 1 - Toledo ProSolo - 6/11/2016

On day 2 of competition, the temperature was much more comfortable. The sun was out and temps were in the mid-70s. These were ideal conditions to go faster. Hez found another half a second and extended his lead back up to 1.8 seconds. After reviewing my videos from the day before I realized what I was doing wrong. This course required patience and I was doing everything wrong. I was trying to go too deep into the tighter sections, increasing distance and pinching myself in key spots forcing me to back off in places where I should be hard on the throttle. I also wasn't moving my head enough to spot the corner exit out of the 180 turns. I focused on looking ahead and nailing car placement for my runs. I found a good chunk of time on the left side course and got within 0.160 of Hez's fastest left side run and trailed him now by only half a second. On my final right side run, I was able to string the corners together much better and got to within 0.043 of Hez's right side run.

Getting ready to run - Day 2 - Toledo ProSolo - 6/12/2016

In the end, Hez still got me but I was happy to get out of my slump and close the gap. We had a solid 1, 2 finish, got much needed practice on concrete and more importantly, won 2 more Hoosier tires to complete the set we need for Nationals. Bumblestook survived yet another battle intact and we'll take the next few weeks to get her looked over for some much needed TLC.

Hez taking win #2 - Toledo ProSolo - 6/12/2016

We'll skip Wilmington next month and instead use those days to run the ProSolo Finale in August. Hez will be coming into the finale with 40 points, equal to the current BSP ProSolo points leader Anthony Porta in his Mazdaspeed Miata and I'm now tied with Tony Rivera in his 350Z for 2nd with 32 points so it'll come down to the finale to determine the overall ProSolo winner. It was a great weekend overall and we're looking forward to going to Lincoln, Nebraska for the ProSolo Finale and National Championship in a little over 2 months to try follow in the line of S2000s that have taken the BSP top spot in the country.

Toledo ProSolo - 6/12/2016

Systems Check for Toledo

The Toledo ProSolo is only 2 weeks away and today was our last chance to do a shake down of the new battery wiring and verify that the weird sputtering/misfire behavior we observed towards the end of day 2 at the DC ProSolo had been fixed by this. There were 37 drivers running Pro index and the fast nationals style course made the event extra fun. Also, it doesn't get more "memorial day weekend" than seeing 94F temperatures during our heat. This is such stark contrast to the near 40F weather we had on day 2 of the DC ProSolo. Go figure that mother nature would go directly from Winter to Summer and skip Spring altogether.

NNJR SCCA - Meadowlands, NJ - 5/28/2016

The heat made for some interesting changes to the car's balance. We had to revisit our tire pressure differential front to rear in order to compensate for the increased rear grip right out of the gate. Thankfully, Bumblestook is so finely balanced now that a small 1 psi change is all that's needed to shift the balance enough to make a significant difference. We were also fighting heat soak on the ITBs and oil temps were running quite a bit hotter than I'd like due to the relatively fast driver change overs providing minimal cool down time between runs.

Even though we were going to get 6 runs each, Hez and I were both focused on thinking more like we would during big events with plenty of early aggression. We put in decent times but my desire to try and get closer to the cones to shave a tenth here and there resulted in most of my fast runs being in cone trouble. The video of our fastest times below shows my fastest dirty scratch time and you can see I'm nowhere near the cones on the left so I must be turning in too early on the right and hitting cones on that side. I'll have to work on adjusting my visual cues to shift where I think my car is by about 2 inches to the left and I should be both faster and cleaner.

NNJR SCCA - 5/28/2016

More importantly Bumblestook felt good today. With higher temps during the big events coming up, we're going to be switching from pump gas back to ethanol for Toledo so we were just trying to use up the left over gas in the tank. This meant running lower than ideal fuel levels and we both had occurrences of fuel starve with the high G sustained sweepers after fast slaloms giving us grief. You can hear a bit of it in my run as I try to power through the walloms after the right hand sweeper in the bowl. I'm ok with that because the rest of the time, we didn't encounter any misfires though my TPS is still frequently throwing a voltage range error but doesn't seem to result in any problem with power delivery. She's going back on the dyno at Evans Tuning when I come back from Toledo just to have her checked out properly before Nationals.

Hez was able to get Bumblestook into 3rd spot in Pro with his fast run. I think the car had the pace to vie for top spot as Hez's fastest clean run wasn't without several instances of him sliding around and counter steering so there was plenty of time left to be had. My fastest clean run was achieved by dialing back (a bit too much unfortunately) so I languished all the way down in 16th. Oddly, despite the heat exhaustion today, I had plenty of fun and was generally quite happy with my early run aggression. If I can make those moves stick and stay away from cone trouble then I think the necessary driving improvements can be achieved.

Fixing Electrical Gremlins

Although we had a successful result at the DC ProSolo last week, it wasn't without issue. The clamp going to the negative terminal of the battery had vibrated loose after all those launches causing all kinds of weird TPS and engine misfire problems. This wasn't the first time this happened so to fix this issue permanently it was back to SJF Performance to find a solution.

175A @ 600V Battery Quick Connect Kit

I picked up a Battery Quick Connector kit rated at 175A at 600V from Amazon.com  that's normally used for winches or fork lifts and wanted to see if SJF could figure out how we could wire this up on my car. Since I don't have power at Bumblestook's storage, I take the battery home after every event to charge and I wanted a way to easily disconnect the cable but also provide a stable and secure connection.

Old battery setup with inline kill switch

Battery terminals clipped off - 5/22/2016

The first order of business was to remove the terminal ends off the existing wiring. The ground going to the chassis was a 2-gauge wire but ended up being a 4-gauge wire after the kill switch and there are two 4-gauge wires connected to the positive terminal for the starter and the rest of the car electronics. The battery quick connector was designed for 2-gauge wire but you can't fit two 4-gauge wires into it so Steve had to figure out something else. Thankfully he had a spare junction box sitting around (in yellow too!) and the two existing 4-gauge positive terminal wires were hooked up to it along with one more new 4-gauge wiring going to the quick connect. It was also fortunate that Steve had this gigantic crimping tool that could be used to crimp connectors onto these thick wires.

Connector crimped on for the junction box

All positive side wires connected to junction box

For the ground wire, we didn't like the existing ground on there so Steve replaced it with a new 4-gauge wire with fresh terminals crimped on that didn't have oversized holes for a perfect fit. The other end of the ground wire went into one of the quick connect ends as well.

New ground wire installed

On the battery side, we unbolted the SAE automotive battery terminals from the Shorai battery and instead bolted on 4-gauge wires with new ends to the other quick connect box. The result was a clean and perfect connection that's super easy for me to disconnect whenever I need to pull the battery out or when I'm towing long distances and don't want any draw. I also got the dust caps for each side of the quick connect to avoid any accidental shorts when the two sides are disconnected. The car started up perfect with a clean reading on the voltage by the ECU.

Quick connect installed - 5/22/2016

Shorai with quick connect at home - 5/22/2016

We also flushed the diff fluid and inspected for any potential problems after the ProSolo and so far everything seems good. No differential pieces came out of the drain plug so we've got a green light to test the car this weekend before heading to Toledo next month.

SJF Performance - 5/22/2016