Finished up with Sick Week 2023 , other than the drive home (ughh) and the credit card bill haha. I will say that this event was not cheap as compared to the other events I've done for a couple of reasons - hotel pricing and of course 1200 miles each way.
I mentioned in the DnD 2023 thread that I managed a personal best ET, 60' and trap speed. What I didn't mention was that all 3 occurred on different runs, which I found to be an amazing head shaking moment. I know most of you are aware of this, but I'll say it anyway, there is more to going down the track than standing on the loud pedal when the light turns green and lifting at the stripe.
The new turbo and converter worked, but both created tuning issues. Regarding the converter, I believe I need to have it re-worked only because I'm seeing too much rpm drop on the shifts, but dang it couples - the slip is less than 5% most of the time. But the rpm drop of 1500 is really messing with the tune and slowing me down. Regarding the turbo, it requires some additional tuning to get it spool quicker - I can get it to 8psi on the TB in 2-2.2 seconds, but I need to get it to 8-10 psi quicker. And don't think I didn't work on this during the week, haha. For those of you that followed along, I had very inconsistent 60' times and it was 90% due to turbo spool on the line.
Things that went wrong :
1st, I recently replaced the pinion bearings, races, crush sleeve and pinion seal - I need to lose the crush sleeve and put in a pinion spacer. The crush sleeve crushed further during the 1st day and created quite a mess. On the 2nd day in Bradenton the pinion was loose - A LOT loose. So we pulled the rear apart and inspected everything and I found the crush sleeve had crushed another .050"+ causing the issue. I zipped it back together and torqued 'properly' haha. By properly I mean with my foot on a 2' 1/2 ratchet and me holding onto the frame and pushing the ratchet with everything I could physically muster. Considering we had a 4 hour drive that turned into 7 thanks to Florida traffic (WTF), I was a bit worried, but it made it through the remainder of the week with only very minor pinion seal seepage.
2nd, my fuel system needs a re-vamp. I mounted a 3rd pump over the winter about 4-5" higher than the 1st two and I plumbed it in a manner that I didn't foresee it being a problem, and I was wrong. I will be revamping the mount ad plumbing before I hit another track. It took me until Thursday to figure out a bandaid solution of running the primary and tertiary pump at the same time once I hit the burnout box. I did this by triggering the tertiary pump with the Mac valve power switch. This creates a couple of psi of excess fuel pressure until I hit 1-2 psi of boost which messed with my spool tuning on the line, but I managed to overcome. Until I did this I was getting a delay in the fuel pressure when this pump came on and it would also steal fuel supply from the other two for a split second that would drop fuel pressure about 10-15 psi and activate my fuel pressure safety which retards the timing 20 degrees (car falls on it's face). This was an issue until the end of the 4th day when I ran 1st and 3rd pump simultaneously once in at the line.
3rd, my O2 sensor crapped out in a strange manner wrecking a set of plugs in the process. Of course that took the better part of a day to figure out and correct. I brought new plugs and an O2 with me and I guess I should've changed the o2 sensor before the event, especially when it dawned on me that the O2 sensor has been in it for over two years and back when I was running leaded C16 in it.
4th, my primary fuel pump crapped out. By 'primary' I mean the one that the runs all the time when street driving. We had a spare and zipped that on Wednesday morning.
5th, I need to revamp my wastegate locations - my last fix helped, but didn't fix everything. It took me until Thursday to find a half baked solution to tune around this, and I still have an issue where the turbo makes peak boost in a hurry, but drops 6-8psi before the top of 1st gear. It's messing with my dome pressure reading due to exhaust back pressure is adding pressure to the dome pressure reading which in turn has the closed loop boost control chasing itself and over correcting the pressure being supplied to the top of the gates from the dual Mac Valve system. Again, this was late night and early morning closed loop tuning and checks and trying to cheat the dome pressure reading by putting numbers into the dome pressure target to compensate. My bandaid fix helped, but I never got it to lose less than 5psi in 1st gear.
Things that went right :
1st, the car went faster than it's ever gone despite these issues. If I can get these resolved I'm sure there is another .2 in ET left in it without any more boost. I was planning to run 34-38 psi, but because of the issues I never went much over 30psi. And I wanted to lean on the AFR by adding a couple points, but the rpm drop created a lean spot on every shift that I didn't dare to try leaning it out any more. So I ran 10.8-11.1 AFR rather than the 11.5-7 that I had originally planned. And it also kept me on a conservative timing number as well. When I get home I'll post some screen shots of logs that will explain fully my concern and need to stay conservative.
2nd, the rear suspension is working. Between the 8.8 truss bur setup from SSM (
Macguyver ) and the shock tuning help from
wingnutks, the car plants HARD and loads the tire like a ton of bricks got set on it. I'll post some pics and video to show later. It is truly amazing how well the suspension setup is working. I received a couple of compliments when asked about the rear suspension and I indicated a budget ARB, Rock Auto springs and a singe set of Viking double adjustable shocks is all I have.
