I figured it's time to change the transmission fluid so I bought two gallons of Swepco 201 not realizing it only takes about 3 quarts. It's 50 bucks a gallon so oops. Anyway, I raised the left side of the car and removed the fill plug and drain plugs. The old fluid looked in good shape. Some dust particle sized shavings in it but thats ok. We then replaced the drain plug and then with the car raised, used a hand pump for gas to pump the fluid from the container to the tranny. Once it was 'full' then we slowly lowered the car and the excess fluid came out of the fill plug. Then raise it again and replace the fill plug. Pretty easy operation with the hand pump.
Sunday, September 27. 2009
Eric and I installed the Lindsey Fuel lines today. I switched for fire safety reasons.
Wednesday, September 9. 2009
A Porsche 944 driver was killed in a fire at Daytona a couple of weeks ago and there are some lessons to learn from that tragedy. First, apparently his safety pin was not removed from the fire system meaning it didn't even go off which might have helped. Second, apparently he underestimated the fire and kept going to the next corner station rather than stopping and get out. Lesson here is just get out of the car as fast as possible. It looks like he had a fuel fire but because he kept the car running, the fuel kept pumping in so I guess hit the kill switch when you notice a fire which stops the gas being pumped in to the engine and feeding the fire.
Next, the inside of a car is flammable. The rubber boot on the shifter covers a big hole to under the car where the fire is likely traveling so I'm replacing that with a Nomex Simpson shifter boot which would improve over that a lot in keeping fire outside. Next, I'm probably removing the dash as it can burn. The problem with that is the car isn't SCCA ITS legal anymore once I do that so it's just PCA and NASA only as a result.
Find and seal all holes in the engine firewall and floor. I'm going to try to reduce the wiring inside the car also, it's just more plastic to burn.
Wednesday, September 9. 2009
I just did two days with BIR Performance at Brainerd. They used the club configuration which adds in a new infield. This configuration is much better than the old one. It's slower at the top but much more exciting. The old one is boring, maybe two miles of it was just straight aways. The new infield in a blast. The keyhole or carosel where turn 8 used to be is a high G turn. Once through there then its flat the rest of the way to the bus stop or turn 12. After the keyhol then it's flat, get close the the right hand wall and then turn in to get the car on the left side pronto. Then flick right and you're blasting down towards turn 12. Very nice and flows well. My car had an extra seat in it and my wife riding with me so it was about 2850lbs but I was running my Hoosier tires that I use for SCCA ITS. My best time was a 1:55.6 which I think is respectable. Looking at the data I can see about another second off that next time I'm there. Mostly in T5 and trying to avoid scrubbing speed through T1 and T2 as well as braking later in to T3. I think I can carry a little more speed through the carosel also which I'd then get the benefit off all the way to T12.
Anyways, car was reliable, weather was good and the track fun. Could be a lot worse. Only issue with the car is I'm finding it hard sometimes to downshift especially in to the T12. I need to check the transmission fluid and maybe fix some synchros.
Video of a session running 57s and 58s
