Hallett Recap - 2019

[drecords]

#34's story was the best weekend it's had racing since sometime mid last season. Between MSRC and Hallett I have been through the whole harness looking for the issue that causes it to turn off in left turns. Everything else stayed on, fuel pump, gauges, cool suit, etc...but the car would lose ignition. I found the +12V wire to the TFI had a loose terminal inside the connector which was probably the issue. Spent Thursday finishing prep on the car after finding a bad front brake line Sunday (was out of town M-Wed night for work) and got it aligned and loaded up about 5pm after a day of thrashing. Drove up Friday, 4-legged crew chief and OIF BBQ enthusiast and wife in tow and got to Hallett in time to get nice and wet in the storm.

Saturday morning went out for warmup on MSRC RR's, car turned off completely coming into the bitch. I managed to roll to the end of pit lane and reset the ignition circuit breaker and got it refired and went back out. Lap 2 saw the same thing, this time got it refired sooner but decided to come in. That was basically the low point of the weekend after all the work I'd done going through the harness in the shop. If I offered the car for sale to you at a very low price during that time I retract that offer now.:-P A bunch of folks came over during the driver's meeting and took a look and Larry Jander actually found one of the alternator wires arcing out on the alternator body. Fixed that and the car was mechanically trouble free for the rest of the weekend. Larry is also invited for beers/fireball in my pit anytime.

Bolted on stickers and Qualified 8th for R1 which I was happy with given that I'd turned 2 laps on track prior to qual. Race 1 I was able to go from 8th to 3rd with an assist from Kevin in the left lane starting in second gear and ended up finishing there. R2 I was midpack when I went off bigly in 5 and finished in the back. R3 I was sitting pretty comfortable in 4th with about a second over 5 and 6 when the car picked up a massive push at about the 20minute mark and I lost touch with Jander and got caught by Dustin and Martin. I had to drive it alot harder to achieve the same laptimes and finished 6th.

Overall I was really satisfied with the weekend. I have some setup work to do to get the laptimes down, but on initial data review I drove more consistently than I normally do (less spread in laptimes over each session) and I was extremely pleased with how starts went.

Also...team 'Merica won the slip and flip and I'm definitely only drinking out of that trophy cup for the foreseeable future. Craig yelling 'FULL POUR' from the bottom of the hill still haunts me today though...that was rough.

[Supercharged111]

Admittedly I had my best weekend there ever, but still left a little disappointed in myself. Car ran flawless on Friday so I put it away before I broke something, that something came in warmup Saturday when the alternator pulley nut backed off and I ejected the belt. Luckily the nut was still on there so I zinged it back on with an impact, installed the spare belt, popped the flip top on the radiator to check water, left it open and went out to qualify. Got 3 laps in and something wasn't right, so I did a cool down lap and came in. Car was 250 when I left the track and 270 (didn't know this was possible) when I killed it at tech. It took a good hour to get it cooled back down and I was really worried (still am) about the head gaskets. Car held temp so I raced it all weekend but the newly shrouded stock radiator really wasn't cutting it. Car ran about 249 degrees the whole time with oil in the blow your motor up territory. I had 2nd place all to myself until the yellow flag in R1. Mosty got around the 2 GTS cars and caught up to the rest of the field while I rotted behind them driving Miss Daisy watching Jander and Records now occupy my rear mirror. No biggie, just do your thing and they won't get by. . . until you miss a 2-3 shift leaving the bitch on the white flag lap. I got 4th that race. Good job Jander and Records, bad job Dustin. R2 was going about how an invert goes, I was as comfortably in 4th as one can be with Mosty grinding the paint off my rear bumper. . . until I missed 3rd leaving T3. Almost gave up 2 there but was able to hold off John Martin and kept 5th. R3 being cancelled ended up being a blessing in disguise, plus I was able to sleep off more of Saturday night. I qualified 5th for the final which is a pretty good place to be. Al kinda parked it on lap 1 around T2 and Dan got around me on the outside there. A lap or 2 later Dan got around Al and about 100 laps later I finally got around Al. If you think Randy's car is wide, you don't know Al's car. I got him once going into T1, but he over undered me and took it back in T2. There were one or 2 other aborted efforts that came up short. I really only managed to get around him when his car went down on power. A lap or 2 later Dan made a mistake in T1 and I got around him. Next it was my turn so I decided to understeer terribly in T10 giving John the opportunity to pass me in T1 which he did. Lucky for me he went too deep into T2 and I got back next to him, we went side by side through T3, T4, T5, and into T6 I had the inside and got my spot back. Shortly thereafter, the car started sounding weird in 4th gear and I figured it was going to be over soon. As I listened more, I came to realize the motor wasn't flat, the clutch was slipping! Holy crap, please don't grenade please don't grenade please don't grenade. Once I realized this, I realized that the clutch had been done all weekend, it was slipping a lot at both standing starts but then it was good after that. I have to wonder if the heat made it fade? Next up was getting lapped by all the faster cars, I really wish they'd done a better job of presenting themselves. They weren't breathing down my ass so it forced a much bigger lift than I wanted to give since John was still back there. In the end, I kept 4th and all cars passed tech, I came in 7# over my minimum. I remember jokingly saying someone in the top 3 please weigh under, then immediately started doing math in my head and realized it could be me and got real quiet. I didn't take into account the effect of the yellow in R1 on fuel consumption. You'd think it ends there, but it doesn't. Starting at the trip to my last race at LaJunta, the truck started semi-randomly rolling coal. Mind you, the truck has a 454 so it chugs enough gas on its own. Between then and Hallett, I'd found a mushed pin on the PCM connector which recessed a pin in the PCM. Fixing that fixed my wonky idle and 5V reference signal code and on the test drive it didn't roll coal. Fast forward to my Hallett drive and as soon as I dipped in elevation (again), it started its crap. It seemed to only do it at lower elevations, after the truck had a good 30 miles on it (heat), and was TP dependent. It seemed like it cleared up in PE mode, i.e. open loop. I was in a hurry to get there so I ate the gas and kept going. When I fired the truck up for the return trip, I was reminded of this issue. Dan to the rescue with some electronics cleaner for the MAF, or so I thought. Down the road I unplugged an O2 when it was pulling its crap and it ran clean in open loop for 100 miles and economy was up. I went to Oreilly's, bought their only O2 sensor, pulled both and replaced the sooty one. Now I was good to go (hack troubleshooting without a scanner FTW) and 1 more thing crossed off the 3500's list. Barring any major life incidents I'll be back next year with better cooling, hopefully less flawed driving, and a blower back on the dually. Not looking like I'll be able to do the LS swap this winter at this point so going to have to continue to optimize the LT1. It definitely smokes more now than it used to, Just ask John.

[Fbody383]

The 88 had a "meh" weekend, but considering we literally only done a couple dyno pulls after changing everything in the fuel system but the lines and the tank what could we expect?

As underpowered as it was it drove nice. I'm guessing part of that it it's probably a lot straighter than the last car (RIP OG #39). In fact, it wouldn't spin the tires coming up the bitch when I tried...

That and some clanking/grinding noise from the new rear end was interesting. And I think the thing ran out of brakes...

Good job racing all.

Good news is, we were pretty sure we were under on track width.

[Supercharged111]

I drove an underpowered CMC (cheater?) Mustang last November. It too drove nice, but really made me wonder what it would do at the ragged edge? Gonna have to revisit that as we suspect its problems have been solved. I just realized something important though: the highest placing Chevy in the final was rocking an LT1.

[Fbody383]

the lowest placed running Chevy in the final was rocking an LT1.

Fixed it.