June 6, 2011 - Track test!
I took the car out to High Plains Raceway, which was coincidentally the last track it ran on before coming apart for the big personality change. At that time, it was very nicely sorted with just a bit of turn-in understeer from the new diff and a shock that was low on fluid. The engine was in fine form.
Well, the car looks the same. But the noises coming out are quite a bit different. After my first session, I had to fix a leaking brake caliper. The Wilwood front calipers have a fitting that screws into the caliper, and the bleed screw threads into that. The leak was where the fitting goes into the caliper, and it was a gusher. It took me a while to figure out what happened - I think when Adam was dismantling the car, he loosened the bleed screw to drain the brakes. But the fitting backed off instead. When I re-bled the system, I used a pressure bleeder that only puts 10 psi through the system so I didn't discover the loose fitting. No worries, it was easy enough to tighten up once I found the problem and I hadn't really lost that much fluid.
Unfortunately, the hesitation problem was still pretty bad and the engine was down on power. I'd estimate it at around 230-250 hp at the wheels. Not shabby, but about 150 hp low. I played around with a few things but wasn't able to identify anything with my meager resources at the track. So I worked on sorting the chassis.
In the second session, I decided the car was understeering too much. There was also a clunk from the front end under hard cornering. I softened the front sway bar and found an alignment bolt that was not loose but not tight enough. I also discovered that my throttle pedal was only allowing about 3/4 throttle, something I was sure I'd checked! Adjustment ensued.
The third session didn't show a real difference in power, disappointingly. Once in a while, the car would clear its throat and just leap forward - even at 100 mph, it was enough to bounce my head off the headrest when that happened. But not consistently. But the understeer was almost all gone and the car was mobile again. The clunk was also gone. So that's a success.
I decided to call it a day after that. I still had another three sessions or so to go, but with the engine misbehaving there was no point. The handling was in good shape and I'd confirmed the rest of the car was working as intended. There are still a number of small things to do, such as move the shift lever forward about 1" so it's easier to reach in 2nd and 4th gear. But as long as I get the engine happy, the car's in decent shape.
tags: testing, other cars, skills |
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