John, aside from the Accusump, have you made any special modifications to the oiling system to prevent starvation under Gs? Seems others have had oil pump starvation issues and such, so just wondering if you've done anything special to avoid these kind of problems.

GST with PSI said:

John, aside from the Accusump, have you made any special modifications to the oiling system to prevent starvation under Gs? Seems others have had oil pump starvation issues and such, so just wondering if you've done anything special to avoid these kind of problems.

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Hmm, nothing exotic. Kiggly's HLA pressure regulator up top to try to reduce oil up in the head. I guess that's really it. I run Motul 300V 15w50 (per Magnus Motorsports' recommendation), might have something to do with things.

The only other oil modifications I have are porting that teardrop area on the head for oil flow (just to make sure the head gets enough after being decked, right? I forget...) and the porting of the oil filter housing bypass hole to limit peak oil pressure. I don't think those would be relevant to the question though.

Still waiting on media so I can put stuff together and post a write-up for the event. Also need to get off my butt and assemble the video.

In the meantime I did solve my rearview camera issue (it was bugging me so much). I found a display that was even better than what I had that was higher resolution (1900x1200!), came with its own sun hood, took direct 12V power (rather than requiring a step-down converter to 5V like the other one) and had a built-in function to flip the image. Installed it late last week the day it arrived (thank you Amazon Prime!). It didn't come with the 12V plug as they assume you'll use camera batteries (it's targetted towards photographers that will attach to a camera), but I just cut one off a power adapter I wasn't using and wired it right the car. Hood's not installed in this pic but it just velcros in.



It's a little more expensive at $139 vs $69 for the other display.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077YL6W65/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

John what is that hammer looking thing by your accusump button (looks like a mic of some kind)

slowwhite said:

John what is that hammer looking thing by your accusump button (looks like a mic of some kind)

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Go Go Gadget Hammer!

Actually it's the microphone for my gopro inside the cabin. That gopro is in a sealed case (to house the cam-do stuff for the 12V power and auto-power on) and so using its mic sounds awful. Even when it wasn't in the sealed case it sounded awful, the gopro hero 3 black had awful mic performance if exposed to wind. So I use an external stereo mic mounted on the dash. Noticeably better.

Friends don't let friends buy Megan Racing suspension products:

Working with Paul Volk to get a better set out asap. http://volkmetalcraft.com/product/2g-tubular-rear-trailing-arms/

Damn! And was without an impact?

TSiAWD666 said:

Friends don't let friends by Megan Racing suspension products:View attachment 544011

Working with Paul Volk to get a better set out asap. http://volkmetalcraft.com/product/2g-tubular-rear-trailing-arms/

Click to expand...

You can delete this if you wish John,

John messaged me about this last night and i straight away started mulling it over and the progress of figuring out how this happened. I came to a conclusion that its shifted on its axis via the sphericals and because of this its now creating side loading on the bracket when its in motion because its essentually drooped over, my Boss also confirmed my theory.

So while the Megans are budget arms the material might not be super great but decent enough, i think they do the job but any arms placed on there will still do the same thing its just a matter of time,

The issue needing attention is the spherical bearing is needing a support ring made from nylon or poly to keep it in the upright position then that will take away any possible side loading on the bracket itself because it cannot take any side loading its Just to take the free movement out of the gap between bracket and knuckle mounting area.

If this has done it here then i suggest making supporting bushes on all the sphericals just as a precaution and widen the supporting face of the spherical.

Thats my advice i messaged John and thought i would share here aswel so we get correct info on this and make sure it dont happen to anyone else. Aka @greengoblin i know you done this mod too.

This was without any impact.

I am mulling over the possibility of the spherical contributing or causing this failure, and not necessarily the arms themselves. Keep in mind though Andrew raced on custom arms with sphericals and never had this issue (spoke with him last night about it) so I'm not inclined to say the arms can't deal with the problem if designed to be better, though what "better" will be is TBD. Andrew didn't recall specifics on the design Robispec used for his car, and has no pics to share.

Paul Volk's modifying a set of his arms to beef them up and will ship soon, and then I'll discuss further with RRT when we have everything in hand and take a guess as to how to make this problem disappear.

Has any reinforcement been done to the inboard pickup mounts of the trailing arms?

GSXbooster said:

Has any reinforcement been done to the inboard pickup mounts of the trailing arms?

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No. When I was doing the transition to all the sphericals RRT looked at that area and didn't think any reinforcement was necessary. When we pull these arms though we'll see if there is evidence of any issues and address.

I'd like to see more pics of the arm while it's still on the car and off. My clevises are more boxed. Also is this the same on both sides?

Ok so rewind a bit, back to writing up the event.

Friday, day of the Ultimate Track Car Challenge, was basically ruined by rain. Seriously crazy rain. Just nutso.





We had a couple spots of hope where the rain stopped, and the track dried up briefly. I actually went out on track and put myself at the very back because I was still very uncertain in the ABS, the rear suspension settings, and the new turbo setup. I literally kept myself last until I got bored and passed some terribly slow cars. I basically drove around the track doing maybe 50% throttle, kind of braking a bit, but most of the time I sat behind I think an RX-8, or maybe it was an S2000, who knows. We had like four dry laps before the rain came back and I came in immediately because as soon as I hit any wet pavement I started sliding around and it was scary. I didn't really care about setting a time

I ran a 2:22. This put me in... 9th place hahahahaha. Seriously. I was 9th for a while. The rest of the day however was ruined by rain so no one got a dry session, and no one had wet tires. Really sucked because a lot of cool cars came out, some from the other side of the country. Here are pics of some of the cars:



Oh this 458 Italia Challenge car... man was it nice. Vinyl wrapped, said it was actually black. Vinyl looked bad, but he's racing so I doubt he cared. The guy's trailer had a GAS PUMP built into it, as well as air compressor (which he used for his built-in air jacks on the car). He also had tire warmers. For Time Trials. Nuts.

This was brought out by Honda R&D. It ran a 1:58 later in the weekend. Somehow it was in the ST2 class, and guy claimed it's basically stock weight and everything except for the wing. Of course it's extremely gutted and based on the OEM specs I see no way it comes close to fitting in ST2 but whatever. It's pretty, but who the heck would pay that much money for a 1:58?

Camaro ZL1. Dear lord this thing was incredible to look at. Batmobile and then some. Such a badass car, and sounded amazing. Sadly don't know what kind of times he could do thanks to the rain.

LS-something powered Miata with some solid aero from the west coast. I think later in the weekend he ran a 1:57? I forget. With practice his car could do an easy low 1:50 I think. Pretty badass.

This is NASA's spec racing car, though this particular one is their upgraded version and so not actually spec. This one had a rear diffuser, Hoosier (vs Toyo Proxes) tires, about 50 more horsepower at something like 240hp, and I forget if there was anything else. He won the event with a 2:01.083 that he snuck in during the dry time, though he must have hit traffic because that car should be doing 1:55 or better. Second place was the green Superlite SLC car which you can see pictures of if you go back through my old threads as I know I posted a pic at some point.

Few more from the UTCC:

William Au-Yeung's I think 800+whp Civic. Was at World Time Attack last year. He had just blown away the Global Time Attack Unlimited record at Road Atlanta a few weeks prior with an insane 1:19. I had expected him to win the event or at least put up a good fight with the prototypes. Here's the video from his record setting run:




He did not unfortunately. His car unfortunately caught on fire I think due to an oil line breaking. I heard from other drivers he was an utter jackass when it happened, getting out of his car on the live track and running across the track to a worker's station, getting a fire extinguisher (seriously he doesn't have one?) and running BACK in front of traffic to his car. Should be banned for that kind of shit. Anyway, to his credit I believe he saved quite a bit of his car as he's announced he's going to WTAC in Australia again later this year.

Another nutty Miata. I don't know much about this one.


This is Sally... Mcnulty? I forget, never did meet her but she competes mainly on the west coast in time attack events there. Quite successfully from what I saw in Google, so she seemed she would be a threat. What was most interesting to me as I read through specs I could find on her car is that it's basically on par with mine, minus the aero, so I was very interested to see how we'd compete. Sadly the rain really screwed that up and she couldn't get a good lap in in the UTCC. She also was driving on street tires for some reason, which hurt her terribly when she ran in TT1 (I guess she's got a lower weight/hp ratio than me) and she only ran a 2:12.384. She was of course new to the track which is huge for VIR.


Here's some nice pics of the car from the UTCC day:


So they were going to try to change up the UTCC a bit and have a somewhat special event for some of the top drivers. Main event was to be on Friday, and on Saturday there would be one special session for the top drivers called a Knockout session. Everyone would be driving non-stop, and every lap or so the slowest driver would drop out and come off track, until there was only one standing. So a bit of a test of endurance along with driver stamina and tires. With all the rain however the GRM guys opted to forego that idea, and instead give us all one more session in hopes it stayed dry so people could get some real track times. Sadly... it started raining right before the session, and so it was miserable. I didn't bother going out.

So my 2:22... got me 16th place (guess some people did find some dry time in other sessions) and this:


The reason the picture is in my garage and not at an awards ceremony is because they kept changing crap around and I had no idea when the awards ceremony was, so I missed it! Anyway, it's not terribly meaningful that I won this one THIS year, but hey it's good for sponsors, right? Three years Fastest AWD in a row, baby! haha

Here are the full results from the event:

No video from the UTCC because seriously who wants to watch a slow ass video of me driving Ms. Daisy around VIR?

Oh, forgot to mention I was having problems with my rearview camera setup. It had worked perfectly fine the whole lead-up but right when I was going out for the UTCC session it just wouldn't show anything on the display. In the end I think I had a tiny bit of water in the connection, as the problem disappeared when I got home. So what I'm going to do is use some extensions and epoxy them to the GoPro (to seal them) and of course run them inside the car where there a bit more protected from the elements and do the actual connections there. We'll see if this works.

So moving on to Saturday with NASA Time Trials in the TT2 class. It started with rain by the day opened up and we got plenty of dry time. I think I skipped the warm-up session because of rain. I then tried to go out for the first timed session and was late, and they wouldn't let me grid (they were being ultra strict this weekend with how crowded we were). Don't think it was my fault, they were doing a crappy job announcing scheduling changes and had been behind up to this point, but what can you do. So I went out for the second timed session with the intention of testing changes to the rear suspension and more of the turbo. Changes were starting to feel good! I felt the camber in the rear was almost right, though still not quite enough, and my adjustments to softer shock settings were helping a lot as were dropping pressures a bit. I put myself behind lots of cars so no real place to set a time, but things were feeling better. I came in feeling alright and thought I would take 1 psi more out of the rears and we'd be in a good place.

Well after coming in I was chatting with folks around me and one was checking timing. He told me I was in second place... by less than four hundredths of a second! Hahaha WHAT? I ran a 2:05.something. I asked who was in first and to my surprise it was the Ferrari 360 Challenge car. No offense to Stanley if you're reading this, but I knew I can beat him and decided to go for the win. So we threw on my Hoosier A6 wheel set (I'd been on my slower R7 set), filled up with gas, and planned to make a go of winning in the final session.



Stanley was very kind enough to actually let me grid in front of him even though technically he did not need to do that as he had a faster time thus far in the day. He's a really nice guy and still learning, but did admit he knows I've always been faster and so graciously let me have my shot at the win. I tell you, it was very satisfying "knowing" I could get that win and to go out and actually do it. REALLY felt good, even though the lap time was still shite

For those that don't watch the video, I ran a 2:04.280. Stanley in the Ferrari ran a 2:05.074, improving on his time, but unfortunately a Corvette pulled ahead of him with a 2:04.690 and took second place. Here are pics from that day of the cars in the class:



This guy got second place:


This guy got DQ'd, not sure why.


Awards Ceremony (I was having some performance issues):


A little pose with the plaque (from Sunday afternoon, which is why the paddock is empty):


Thanks to contingencies I won two Hoosier tires (that's $800+!). I also won some other stuff but they're more like discounts on things like Hawk brake pads or stuff from Winding Racing.

So also in the video you can see coolant spraying on the windshield. After we found the coolant surge tank cracked where the front bracket is welded to the tank.


After seeing it I realized it's just because it's a bad design. The heavy tank is cantilevered on the mount with only a small surface area for the attachment point, and with it being engine mounted there's a lot of vibration that isn't being damped. We'll look at this and think about a larger mount surface, changing to a different orientation, adding rubber bushings for damping, and possibly chassis mounting (though this is unlikely because I got stuff in the way like that stupid fuse box I need to get rid of...).

So with that and the fact that I didn't think I could win any more contingency prizes I opted not to race on Sunday and enjoy my weekend. I accomplished way more than I had expected with verifying the ABS system, testing the new turbo system and tuning changes, and getting the suspension dialed in.

So here are the takeaways for now:
- something's wrong with the boost control. I was 5-6psi lower than we were when dyno'ing, and right now I don't know why. That's why I had no power and that was a huge contributor to the poor lap time.
- Need a bit more rear camber to take advantage of the tread. I used to run -1.7 deg camber, and this time we ran -1.9 after seeing how the tires were with the few laps I put down in 2017. I guess all the hard bushings really changed how the tires are hitting the road. So we'll probably go to -2, and then leave final tweaks on race days to shock and tire pressure settings.
- Looking back I think I can go back to my old rear wing setting. In 2017 with how the rear end was skating around I moved the wing to max AOA to try to help (it wasn't enough), and for 2018 left it that way. I remember how things felt driving and in higher speeds the rear end felt like it had too much downforce. So we'll try that next time out.
- I'm not yet impressed by this twinscroll EFR 7670. It really doesn't feel that much more responsive than the old Forced Performance DSM76. We'll see, jury's still out, I'm still thinking boost control contributed to this not-amazing performance.
- The new Ohlins really are great. I jump gators like they're nothing and the car is more stable. Of course until I get everything else sorted we can't show lap times improve with these, but I'm confident they will.
- Now that the rear end grip is close to what it used to be I'm able to really see what changed with going to sphericals and solid subframe bushings. The car is MUCH more responsive and turn-in is fantastic.
- The windshield brace worked as planned, keeping the Optic Armor windshield from deflecting perfectly. No more scary flutter at speed.
- The new GM alternator worked terrifically! The mount, not so much. Belt is slightly frayed and the nut holding the long bolt for the alternator/bracket is gone I'm told. Shouldn't be a big deal to fix. Fortunately tension kept and I had 15+ volts all weekend.
- One of my front wheel bearings is out of spec again. These damned ceramic bearings aren't supposed to be able to go bad in short time, but that seems like snake oil. Will get it off the car and call them up to see if they'll fix it for free like they did the last time this happened.
- My new Raspberry Pi system, calling it PiLink, worked flawlessly, recording every session and of course uploading to Google Drive when I got home without me ever touching it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be selling these, but I'm testing out a different more elegant power supply right now so it's not quite ready for release yet.

The car's at RRT now, and we're looking at re-vamping the air intake system and fixing some of the above issues. After I'll try to look at re-dyno'ing and shoot for racing in August again at VIR.

John,

I've been following your build since I was a kid! Love your work and what you're doing representing and keeping the DSM name alive.

-DSMnation

John congrats as always

Three things.

1) please sell a race capture setup. I'm shooting for July /Aug to buy/build this setup.

2)race VIR in Aug.. Hopefully there's an event on the 10th as I have vacation that weekend and will join you assuming my cars ready.

3rd) me and rival on here are looking to do CMP July 21st (again assuming my cars ready) come join us.

slowwhite said:

John congrats as always

Three things.

1) please sell a race capture setup. I'm shooting for July /Aug to buy/build this setup.

2)race VIR in Aug.. Hopefully there's an event on the 10th as I have vacation that weekend and will join you assuming my cars ready.

3rd) me and rival on here are looking to do CMP July 21st (again assuming my cars ready) come join us.

Click to expand...

Race Capture? Did you mean the PiLink?

It's Aug 25-26 with NASA.

CMP's just not on my radar until I get the class records at VIR and Summit Point. Also I only do NASA events right now since that's the org's whose records I want, they give me free tires when I win, and my car's spec'd for their TT2 class. Going outside NASA means a lot of headache for no gain for me.

In order to do a bit of advertising for the RaceCapture/Pro and Autosport Labs, I made a video with a lot more gauges showing data I capture.

Both really - hoping to copy as much of your setup as I can.

Well, even if I don't go officially selling the PiLink I can still make a few for people on the side, so don't worry about that.

As for a RaceCapture setup, I'm not going to build that out for you. I don't mind helping you here and there, even taking a phone call when needed. It's just too many hours of labor and I doubt you'd want to pay me at what my labor rate would be to make it worth my while for me to actually figure out all the sensors for your specific needs and wire it all up. I gave you all the info on what you need to get started on Facebook, and you have your brother as a more immediate resource. Seriously, if you saw how my wiring looks you'd run away (it works 99.9% of the time the first try, but man is it a mess and not pretty).

Dive in, it's not as hard as you might think, just daunting at first. Just make sure to plan everything out carefully and have as much of the components you need on hand when you start, otherwise you'll drive yourself insane with all the stop and go (and the forgetting of details in between). Doing the basics like hooking up a handful of analog sensors is pretty easy, as they're either voltage based (you connect them straight to the race capture then program the voltage map) or they are resistance based and you have to do some math then wire in between the sensor and RC a pullup circuit, and then again just program the voltage map. Sounds hard but isn't that bad once you've done it once and get the general idea. Oh, get yourself a label maker if you don't have one, and put labels on the damned wires

Scott did say if I haven't figured it out by the time he comes for thanksgiving that he'll help me then.

As always much appreciate your help.

Will does have fire equipment, not sure why he would run out of the car though unless it was not working or not refilled or certified again,

http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArtic...eed-PZ-Tunings-Amazing-Time-Attack-Civic.aspx

Super Street Online covered Hyperfest 2018 and had this shot of the car:


Online article is here: http://www.superstreetonline.com/event-coverage/motorsports/1806-hyperfest-2018/