June 7, 2008 - Of course, while they were here we had to visit the track.
And Tom jumped into the passenger's seat to take a few laps with me. He speaks German and Portuguese, I speak English and French. But a big grin comes across pretty well regardless!
So, how did the car do? Well, it handled everything with aplomb except for the track sessions. I took the car out first and soon discovered that it could not hold any coolant and overheated badly. After it cooled off, I pulled the radiator cap off and discovered that it was in terrible shape. I wonder if it was a temporary one from a junk car that I put in place while building? Anyhow, it's going to have to be replaced.
We stole the cap off Janel's car and went out again. Still a problem, possibly due to air bubbles after a big coolant blow-off with the bad cap. But the radiator did come out of an older car, so I'll pull it and clean it.
This track is excellent for testing cooling systems. It's at high altitude, has low humidity and has low average speeds - it's a worst-case scenario for cooling. The high was also getting pretty close to 90F. So if the car's ever going to have cooling problems, this is where. We were also running longer sessions than usual here. I don't anticipate cooling to be a major problem in Newfoundland, but if I can keep the car happy here after 15 miles of full throttle in second gear, I'll never have to worry about it.
Otherwise, the car did pretty well. It was at the track along with The Seven, which does have the tendency to make anything feel a little fat and slow. The Targa car has a very different handling balance because it's built for a different purpose. It's less prone to oversteer (no, really!) and more forgiving - as it has to be. But I think some of the things I learned building the Miata will get transferred to the Seven, just as the knowledge from the Seven helped me build the Miata.
tags: testing, other cars, skills |
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