Road Race Build Super Lap Battle Cota bound

[rival]

Couple pics

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[rival]

Race Recap: So as some of you that watched the live stream saw, we were plagued with unforseen issues with the car...

Friday was practice.. I could not have asked for a better experience during practice. The Talon was performing flawlessly, so much so that we had too much aero for the stiffest spring rate I had available.. our first practice run down the front straight the car bottomed out from the aero and began scraping the bolts holding the side skirts on on the asphalt, so we had to remove the side skirts, barge boards, and strakes. we made a couple small suspension adjustments and the car was on absolute rails! I began my quest to learn the track as quickly as I could, breaking it into sections at a time. My quickest lap was still a partial as they stopped showing the times, my last lap was a 2:24. not where I wanted to be but was only a partial lap as I was trying to save the car for the actual event.

Saturday: I woke up super hyped to unleash the Talon and show the world what it could do! we went out for our first session feeling good. The out lap was just an easy cruise to get the tires and brakes up to temp, which we had by the time the green flag flew.. I left a gap with hopes to get a good clean lap without having other cars in the way.. well the front straight we were hitting close to 160mph, needless to say that gap went away very quickly.. I struggled to find a clean place to pass as everyone was running massive aero and I didn't want to risk any damage the first outing.. I made it by Andy Hollis just before the carousel, and quickly caught the mustang in front of him.. as I tailed him to the back straight, I came into it ready to roar past, only to have nothing.. no power.. Dead in the water right when I should have been pulling out of the corner, putting Ryan Dussex in a bad spot who was behind me in his WRX. I pulled off the track and received a tow back to the pits..

The Cause: we began tearing into the car to search for the issue which we quickly found.. the bolt holding the Intake cam gear to the camshaft had backed out allowing the cam gear to fail on the dowel pin and lock up on the exhaust cam gear, timing belt hanging loosely.. we began the search for local parts, starting with the cam gears. amazingly we found some from a local DSM guy Bryan, who proved to be insanely helpful. we began checking to determine if we had bent valves, and initially all signs pointed to we got insanely lucky. We put the factory cam gears on and re timed the engine. I nervously sat in the car and gave it a crank, and it started up.... however was definitely only running on 3 cylinders. Now that the motor was in time we could dig deeper and do a compression test. This proved cylinder 3 to have 0 compression. Houston we found our problem.

The decision was made by the team to go ahead and try to repair it and get it back out on the track for Sunday and try to get that perfect lap. What a long trying night. Bryan knew of another local guy that had some stock used valves, which he brought to the track and after a quick soak in fuel to get some of the carbon off, and a 5 min valve lap job we had them in the head and began reinstalling everything. It wasn't until about 3:30am that we had the motor together enough to do a compression test. 180 on 1,2,4 and 175 on 3. we were in business, not bad for a slapped together job, oh and we had to risk re-using the HKS MLS head gasket as no one local had a new MLS we could get.

Sunday morning: I left the crew at about 4am to go get a couple hours of sleep as I had to arrive early for the drivers meeting. at about 6am the car was back together and ignition timing set, we were almost ready to rock and roll. We decided to give up our first session to build some heat in the motor and re-torque the head to give the used head gasket the best chance of holding together. With that done I was ready for my second session and first flyer of the day. I went out on the out lap, everything looked good so I came around for the green flag and let it eat! I hit the brake zone at 160 and began to turn in only to find I had no power steering.. Oh Boy!!!! trying to turn a car with huge tires and lots of aero with no power steering pump to assist is not easy. I continued the lap hoping to best my 1 lap from Saturday but about halfway round the coolant temps were pinned so I had to pace myself, no fast lap this go round. Back to the pitts I go, to find the alternator belt had thrown and I had no power steering or water pump. We went to grab new belts. We got the belts replaced and were ready to go out for our 3rd and final session. As I go to roll out of the pitt garage the car would not go in to gear. This marked the end of our long weekend. It was a great experience overall full of ups and downs, but an amazing experience none the less, and I cant wait to go back next year!

 

[rival]

So Super Lap Battle 2022 has been officially announced and will take place February 18-20. Currently the car is literally a bare chassis, with the front end cut off in prep for a custom tube chassis to help support the new splitter being built at the end of the month. I have been busy cutting out all the weight I can from the car while still maintaining structural rigidity, and we are down close to 250lbs from where we were last year. I am converting to a aluminum driveshaft to aid in reliability, as well as adding a Meth kit to try and help with temps. My main goal for the car this go round is reliability and being able to run more than one hard lap per session. I will keep updating this as best I can while scrambling to get the car back on track by October to get some test time in.

 

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[EC17PSE]

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You going Eps with the FIBA/Quaife rack? I struggled on my 295 Trofeo R tires and even on 275 street tires so it might be something to consider as it might be stiff for you being so wide. With the eps is so much easier when moving. while still its a little stiff but when rolling a bit its mega easy.

Normal tires like 245 might be fine still as they dont have as much surface area to turn

 

[rival]

You going Eps with the FIBA/Quaife rack? I struggled on my 295 Trofeo R tires and even on 275 street tires so it might be something to consider as it might be stiff for you being so wide. With the eps is so much easier when moving. while still its a little stiff but when rolling a bit its mega easy.

Normal tires like 245 might be fine still as they dont have as much surface area to turn

Yes using the eps column from a Nissan versa. The install has been super easy so far, I was able to pull the telescoping part from the factory column and use it on the nissan part so splines matched. Then made some brackets to mount it to the roll bar as the factory dash bar has been cut out.

 

[EC17PSE]

Yes using the eps column from a Nissan versa. The install has been super easy so far, I was able to pull the telescoping part from the factory column and use it on the nissan part so splines matched. Then made some brackets to mount it to the roll bar as the factory dash bar has been cut out.

Thats nice to hear. So it was also a double D shaft? So how did you fit that inline without shortening it. So many ways now its all interesting the ways people made it all work. I feel like we kinda need a thread on EPS install alone now! Im going to do my write up soon then i think i will open an EPS dedicated thread for all to inout their own setups and what they did, then anyone in the future can go down that route

 

[gsxitement]

How I’m just seeing this now???

 

[RWD4G63]

Good stuff. Are you planning on running wider wheels so the tires aren't so pinched? I'd like to see the tubular front buildout!