Entries by Billy Newport

Just got back for the cars first outing at Brainerd. BIR Performance School had an open track day and it was awesome. The car just 'worked'. I set the tire pressures to 30psi cold in the morning and forgot about them the rest of the day. I was running 2:07 to 2:10s on open laps. The car is very fast through the infield and technical sections. I managed 1.3G lateral through turn 4 which is pretty impressive. A friend was there also with another 944 spec and he managed a 2:04.7. Both cars were continually logging and the cause of the problem was quickly identified. Turn 10 is the last turn at the track before the main straight which is almost 1.5 miles long with two turns on it, the first is flat out (120mph) and the second is around 110mph. Clearly, screwing up that corner before such a long high speed run can product bad lap times and that was it.

Rob was killing me out of 10 and carrying maybe 5mph more than me and 5mph over a mile and a half adds up to around 2.7 seconds. The data was interesting comparing both of us. Rob is more aggessive on braking. Hitting the brakes as soon as he's off the throttle and then getting back on the gas very quickly when he stops braking. I was more gingerly so I was slower to hit the brakes and slower on the gas, waiting for the apex sometimes before giving it all the gas. This helped him a lot I think on T10 and T8 but everywhere else, sometimes I was faster then he was, we're talking tenths of seconds here on the infield. T10 dominated though. Of the 2.7 seconds, I lost about 1 second from T1 through T2 basically because I had a very low line through T1 and was scrubbing a lot of speed. I should have gone higher up the banking and swooped down to the apex instead of following the inside of the track which is what I was doing.

The car performed perfectly. Brakes, tires, engine temps, everything. Car was turn key in operation. It burned almost no oil during the 6 sessions, some of which were double stints. I got around 3 hours of track time altogether so that was cool. I was pretty tired after it, it takes a lot of concentration, it's like driving in snow for a long time, it wears you down. Driving through T1 and T2 flat out takes some concentration to avoid any 'issues' and T9 under the bridge is similar. I was pretty soppy headed this morning when I woke up but it's nothing to what Bondurant will be like in two weeks. I'm in Japan next week, flying back on Saturday. Then on Monday I'm flying to Phoenix to do the 4 day Bondurant racing school which is 4-5 hours of track time in Corvette C6s for 4 days which should be a test of will but I'm looking forward to it. Brainerd was a good warmup, I know what I was doing wrong so I can work on them and talk with the instructors about it at Bondurant and hopefully, I'll be faster and smoother afterwards with my competition license in hand.

My belts were expired (2 years is the maximum age), I need steel bars for the bottom of my net rather than aluminium and I need a real battery cut off on the main positive line rather than a relay/switch system which is what the car has right now.

The front rubber bumper protectors weigh 0.8kgs each. I just took both off the front of my car to save 1.6kg or 3.5lbs ish. My car is front heavy so I'm staring at what I can pull out of the front.

2800 dollars later, the car is back with NASCAR door bars, the driver seat attached to a steel frame rather than the floor, a starter button, no steering lock, new window nets on each side. The car now weighs 2529 without me in it with 5/8 tank of 91 gas in it. My tank is 21 gallons so thats 82 lbs (6.25lbs/gallon) so the car weighs 2447lbs no gas. I'm weighing 185lbs right now which puts the car empty with me at 2632lbs. Finish the race with 2 gallons means 2650lbs ish. I'm hoping to lose 30lbs between now and June so that drops me down to 2620 with 2 gallons which is fine. The minimum weight is 2600 with the driver.



The weight balance with me in it right now is:



LEFT 1390 (51.2%) RIGHT 1324 (48.8%)

FRONT 1344 (49.5) REAR 1370 (50.5)

LL/RR 1288 (47.5%)



The total weight is 2714lbs with I think 5/8s gas.



My garage floor slopes down slightly towards the rear of the car so the numbers may be off slightly.

The car is at carraige customs getting nascar bars, a stronger seat mount and a better net mounting system for the windows. The killer cost on this car is the cage is chromoly. It's SO FRIGGING expensive to have work done on it, it's just silly. I reckon the first thing you should do on seeing a car with a chr mo cage is rip it out and replace with a DOM or mild steel cage. It's just not worth the hassle. Adding door bars may end up costing 1400 bucks

I just gutted my doors. This involved removing the black fascia on the door. Next, unbolt the electric motors. The motor and scissors should be loose in the door. The glass just pulls out. This weighs 3.8kg/8.36lbs per side. Once the glass is out the remove the motor by pulling the scissors through the upper hole in the door. This is the whole between the door lock and the door pull. The scissors can be pulled up through this and then the motor will follow. Don't forget to unplug the motor cable. I found this to be very difficult. The motor and scissors assembly weights 2.6kg/5.72lbs per side. The door liner weights 1.6kg/3.52lbs per side.

The total weight reduction so far is 8kg/17.6lbs per side or a total of 16kg/35.2lbs for the glass, liner and motor.

I talked with my brother who is a master mechanic in Ireland and he was saying the serpentine belts need to be a lot tighter than we had thought. Internet myth states that you can turn the belt through 90 degrees with your hand and it's tight enough which he says is bull shit. They need to be tighter than that. So, it's time to buy a tool. I bought this one:



http://www.otctools.com/products/detail.php?id=1762



from http://www.etoolcart.com. Hopefully, this buying experience will be a good one. I ordered it today and I'm waiting for a shipment notice. Once the tool arrives then we can start checking tension etc and see where we get.

Happened again today at Road America, 3 track days after replacing it. Second session out, aarghhh, one day I'll get to drive this car. No wiring damage today fortunately. I think I've figured this out now so hopefully this is the last time.

The problem is that cars pre 85.5 use a 5 rib alternator belt, 85.5 and later use a 6 rib belt. My car has a crank with 5 ribs and an alternator with 6. The 5 rib belt skips on the alternator during cornering and blows apart shortly there after.

So, I need a 5 rib alternator pulley and then I reckon I'm going to be fine.

Learned more about serpentine belts today. There are two naming schemes, one that looks metric and another one. The metric one is like 5PK0700 and the other is 280K5. Both are the same thing.

I just did a DE weekend at Brained and the car worked very well. We did 3 25 minute sessions on Saturday and an hour long one on sunday and everything worked. Fuel guage works and fans/cooling system worked fine.



The high speed fan issue turned out to be the red/white wire in the front wire harness was grounded somewhere. This wire connects to the radiator fan switch and the AC dry switch. It seems to be shorted behind the repairs I did up towards the fuse box. It's some kind of wire touching the chassis issue but we couldn't find it. In the end I bend over the spade on the fan relay to disable the high speed fans and this worked. The car now just has a working low speed fan but this is working well enough for now.



The high speed fan is still necessary though as it helps a lower pressure area behind the radiator and lets more air flow in as a result. Thats next.

So,

Now that I figured I was over all this, but the fans never turn off now. Just turning the key without starting it turns on the fans. I checked the fan relay again and that aint it and I can't find any shorts so it looks like the fan switch is busted. I'm not sure how to test the fan switch but I ordered one today for 11 bucks so worst case, I have a spare. I'm compare it electrically with the current one to see if it's ok.

I replaced the fuel sender with the replacement one today and the whole job took around 20 minutes. I took photographs which can be seen here. The gauge works fine now and finally I can tell how much fuel I have in the tank. The replacement fuel sender cost 44 bucks for a used one. A new one seems to be around 170 bucks. I like this 944 as the parts are cheap and I can work on it myself which saves on labor. Next up today is an oil change with new filter too.

Tim delivered the car with the fuel guage not working. He's tried to debug it but got no where. I figured it out this morning. It's the fuel tank sensor. It was pretty easy to figure out. There is a black square cube connector on top of the fuel tank and you unplug that. Two of the wires connect to a potentiometer in the tank which reads between 65 ohms and 3ohms. 3 is full. I did a quick check and the gas guage went to full when I put a 2.5ohm resistor across wires 1 and 3 in the connector. Now, I gotta replace the fuel tank parts.

The problem looks to have been air in the coolant system. I double checked all the wiring today from the relay box to the wires and everything checked out. Still overheated. The fans would come on at around 3/4 on the temp and would lower it briefly before it started rising again towards red.

Next, I tried bleeding the coolant system and there must have been a minute and a half of steam come out. I then turned it off and put in 3/4 of a gallon of distilled and then repeated this 3 or 4 times until just water was coming out. The car now runs in the garage perfectly at 1/4 on the temp guage.

So, overall, the car took another 1.5 gallons of water which means there was a massive air bubble in it. I bought more 15W50 to change the oil tomorrow and put a new filter on it, figure the engine has had enough heat in it now to warrant a change. I made a new addition to what I keep handy at the track and it's a 5 gallon tank of distilled water.

John Engle was killed at Mid Ohio in his BMW M3 when it spun on oil into another stationery car that had spun two laps earlier. He hit the other car in the rear with his driver side door at high speed, some say 100mph. The cage apparently failed and it took an hour to cut him out. The other car driver has bruising and a torn muscle. It makes me revisit the safety side yet again. I'm going to improve my cage over the winter as a result.

I put the belts on and they are tensioned and working well. The car overheated after 20 minutes of running in the garage and pushed out .5 gallons of water through the overflow. I waited for it to cool down.

I added distilled water to top up the coolant tank. The fans didn't come on so it's something to do with the cooling relays or fans. I tried my relay (the big one) in another car and its fans all worked fine. I then went back to my car and checked the fuses for the fans, #10 and #15. Both were blown. This must have happened when the wires were pulled in to the alternator and shorted out so I replaced them with another pair of 25A fuses. I turned the car on and same thing. No fans, car heats up.

Next is to check the fans actually work and the wiring and thermistor. More later.