We've been busy with shop related things, but an update!Originally Posted by sharkythesharkdogg
Paint isn't really a huge concern. If the car is too shiny you're too worried about messing up how it looks to get in there and race hard.
Last week I spent part of the afternoon using old gas to get melted tire rubber off the sides of the car that was left there after other cars "leaned" on me in corners.
EDIT: Totally forgot. Took dad's car down for testing on Friday, and it broke during the fourth practice session. This was a driver error, so at least the car seems to finally getting be getting reliable on it's own. It also showed good speed potential.
We'll get the motor torn down and see what all is bent up.
We figured out what went wrong with dad's car, and it appears it wasn't driver error after all. There's a weak point in the car's throttle that doesn't show up under normal driving conditions. The part had failed a few times in the past, and we created a modified part. It lasted much longer than the factory design, but also eventually failed. So now we've come up with redesign 2.0.
When you start to push the car past the original limits of its design things like this come up.
We didn't quite get dad's car running again before the most recent event, so we only took my car. It handled terribly.
I couldn't get the car to stop sliding around all weekend. If you're sliding, you're not able to get back on the gas transiting through and exiting out of corners. Less time spent accelerating per lap means going that much slower. I qualified third for my first race on Saturday, but I was annoyed because I was around 2-3 seconds a lap slower than I felt I should have been. During the race the car continued to handle worse and worse. I finished fifth in my class and a disappointing 6 seconds a lap off of my typical pace.
No amount of adjustments seemed to get the issue under control, so for the Sunday race I convinced dad to use the car. His was broken, I was tired of fighting with mine, and that way he could have some fun. He had fun, but I could see that the car wasn't doing much better for him. He likes a more nuetral slip angle in a car than I do, so if I didn't like it I knew he wouldn't.
He agrees my car is handling terribly, so it's time to tear into it and see what the hell is wrong. It's very frustrating to work up to a certain pace at tracks only to have unknown variables work against that. We'll get my car sorted out again, it'll just take some work. I don't have to win every time, but I do like to see my personal best get faster. I don't like seeing get much, much slower.
At least his car is running again, and it should be pretty quick. We're dialing his car in.
Reply With Quote