Fixing the car!!

I must say that my tune has changed quite a bit since my last post.  I have to admit that I was quite depressed and dissappointed but I have received quite a bit of encouragement and support from friends and family and I'm now very motivated to get the car fixed before the F1600 pro race at Summit Point the weekend of August 24th.  The main thing that needs to be fixed is of course is the frame and here are some pics of the damage.

And here are some pics of the other damage.

That's the bad news but the good news is that I have been tearing down the car in the evenings and today and have gotten it down to the bare frame so that it can be welded.  I will be dropping it off with someone tomorrow to have it sand blasted on Monday and then it will be given to a welder that has a surface plate and the necessary tools to repair it.

I can re-glass the side panel and a fellow racer has offered to sell me some sidepods and radiator shrouds so I will be getting those in a next couple of weeks.  I have the A-Arms and I might have a steering link and I might have a lead on a used radiator but if that falls through then I can order a new one.  I have actually already repaired the fuel cell cover by pounding the aluminium back into shape. When stripping the car, I tried to do it by undoing the least amount of stuff as possible so that it will be faster to put it all together.  For example, since I used the weather pack connectors, I was able to remove all of the wiring with the engine and without disconnecting all of the sensors attached to the engine.

So, it is a good start and I have a month to get the car ready.  As long as the frame is repaired pretty quickly then I have a good shot of making it.  I love a challenge!!

Bad News

I know that there is a risk to being on the race track and that crashes are inevitable but I was really hoping not to experience one so soon with this car.  I entered the regional race at Summit Point this past weekend.  It was a small group of cars but there were a couple of cars that should have been much faster than my car but the drivers didn't drive them fast enough.  One of them was a Formula Atlantic (the fastest open wheel car that we race with).  At the beggining of the race, he was taking the corners way too slow and I was right behind him.  Him being slow in the corners was bunching up the cars behind me and going into Turn 1 a Club Ford launched over another Club Ford and into the right side of my car.  Here is the video and a couple of screen shots.

I haven't taken a real close look at the car but I can see that the frame rails on the right hand side are bent in about 4 inches and the welds are broken at the rear bulk head.  The right side pod is toast along with the radiator, an A-Arm, and a steering tie rod.  I think I can fix the side panel but I'm sure I will find more stuff once I strip it down.  The good news is that the car did its job and protected me.  I have a bruised arm and a couple of other bruises but I'm fine otherwise.  Just dissapointed.  I always said that racing teaches you perseverence and I will persevere after this and will get the car fixed.  Unfortunately I think this ruins my racing plans for this year and the pro races that I was planning to enter are probably out.

Before this happened, I was run off the road by a C Sports Racer on Friday during the test day.  The driver didn't think he did anything wrong.  You make the call.

The only good news from the weekend was that I made good progress with the car on the test day and got down to a 1:17.8.  I was at least heading in the right direction.

Making A Scoop Part 1

Note:  I actually wrote this blog yesterday in Word because I couldn't publish it due to not having an internet connection -- we were without power for two days as explained below.

For the last few weeks I have been working feverishly on a scoop that I wanted to have ready before the regional race at Summit Point on July 15th.  The scoop design has been bouncing around in my head for months so it felt good to be able to focus on making it.  However, the storms that blew through the Washington DC area Friday night have greatly hampered my planned weekend progress.  A tree fell on the garage roof and we have been without power since about 10:30 pm Friday night.  Luckily I had the generator that we use for racing in the shed so we have some power and I bought a portable Air Conditioner Saturday morning so the house isn't too hot.  On reason I bought that is so that I can use it in the garage after power is restored.  :)  I can't do much work on the scoop without power but I can get to the internet with a mobile broadband stick so I figured I would update the blog -- it has been a while anyway!

Before I get into the making of the scoop, the reason why it is important is because air intakes work much better if there is a low pressure area (created by having air go through a small hole into a larger chamber) and you also want the air to be as cool as possible.  The engine came with a K&N cone air filter and I can certainly run the car with just that filter.  But I think the engine should create a little more hp with a good scoop/cold air box and I’m going to use a rectangular panel air filter.  When the scoop is finished, it will be comprised of two pieces – a bottom piece that holds the air filter and attaches to the throttle body and a top piece that will be in the air stream.  The two will be joined in a manner that I haven’t decided on yet but most likely 10-32 screws.  There are a few ways to create pieces like this.  One way is to shape styrofoam (the type used for packing things) cover it with clear packing tape (this is necessary because fiberglass resin melts the styrofoam), fiberglass over it, and then use laquer thinner to desolve the styrofoam after the fiberglass has hardened.  It is a good, quick way to make something but the piece ends up being pretty rough and a lot of work needs done with bondo to make it look good. 

I'm mainly using the two part foam that I have used in other areas of this project.  This foam does not dissolve when coming in contact with fiberglass resin or lacquer thinner.  The scoop is going to sit in the engine bay behind my head and will be underneath the tail section in the engine bay.  First, I took some measurements and got a rough idea of how big of a piece of foam I needed to work with.  I created my own box, filled it with foam, and let it harden.

I then sanded it down to look more like a cube and marked grid lines on it to help me shape it symmetrically. 

I soon realized that I was going to need some more foam for the scoop opening.  I had some pink foam laying around so I decided to use that.  However, I wished I had used more of the two part foam because the pink foam has a much lower density and working with it was a little bit more of a challenge.  I joined the two pieces with some ¼” wooden dowel pins and some bondo.  I made sure that I only spread the bondo in the center where I wouldn’t be sanding.  Here are the pieces joined and sitting in the engine bay.

It was now time to start sculpting it.  I drew out some guide lines and cut big chunks out with a knife but sanded the rest.

The top part is narrower than the bottom because there is a ½ inch piece of rubber around the panel filter and the top piece will be on top of this rubber section so that it holds the filter in place.  Here it is in the car again.

Once I was satisfied with the basic shape, I needed to start cutting it in sections.  The reason for this is because I’m going to cover it with bondo and make them into molds which I can fiberglass over.  I will then join the fiberglass pieces together after they have hardened.  When making molds, you can not have any areas that curve in because you won’t be able to pull the fiberglass piece off of the mold.  For instance, the very front part of the scoop (the pink foam) has curves going in towards the center of the scoop to help guide the air so the mold needs to be such that I can pull the fiberglass piece straight off the front of it.  Here are the pieces that I cut apart but I also realized that I need to cut the bottom piece in half as well – which will make five separate pieces.

However, after I applied bondo and started sanding the top part of the scoop, I soon realized that I needed to join those pieces back together so that all the lines matched up and to insure that the fiberglass pieces matched up correctly.  For the front part of the scoop, I re-cut the separation line with a razor blade each time I bonded over it.  I did this before the bondo hardened all the way.  The pic below shows the challenges that I was facing with the pink foam.  Almost everytime I sanded it I ended up sanding too much and getting into the foam.  The only way to fix it is too remove some of the foam in that spot, fill it in with bondo, and re-sand.

The pieces are a little bit further along than this right now but not much.  I was really hoping to get started on fiberglassing them today this weekend but you can’t fight mother nature! 

Big Thanks!

I have been thinking about my statement in a previous post about their being too many people to thank and that is just not true.  So here are some of the notable people that I want to thank for helping me successfully complete this huge undertaking.

1) Rob for giving me a great deal on a great car.
2) Eric Langbein for modifying the car to accept he Honda Fit engine and for imparting some of his knowledge to me.  I look forward to working with him more and learning a lot more!!
3) Tim Minor for answering all my questions and sharing his wealth of experience and knowledge with these cars to me.  Btw, if anyone in the Fairfax, VA area needs a good mechanic -- take your car to Tim Minor's shop -- Automotive Specialist Center.
4) Jeremy Grenier of Ski Motorsports for sharing all the cool things that he has done with his FF.  I just hope I can be as fast as him!
5) My good friend Bruce for his continued support. 
6) Brad Baytos of Primus Racing for helping me figure out what I need and for giving me some great deals!
7) Dave and Warren at Everware-CBDI (the company I work for) for giving me the time off when I needed it to finish up the car and for always supporting me in this racing hobby.
8) And most importantly, my beautiful wife (and crew) Terry.  Without her support, absolutely none of this would have been possible -- and it definitely would not be any fun without her!!  THANKS TERRY!!!

Finally Got To Drive It!!

Well, I drove it last Friday and it was AWESOME!!  I took the car to Eric Langbein's shop the Tuesday before and we did a complete set-up (which went pretty smoothly) and he finished making my shift linkage.  It really felt comfortable right out of the box -- mostly due to the "safe" (more towards understeer than oversteer) setup that Eric put on the car.  The only time you need to use the clutch is to get going so I was left braking and I found out that I really need to work on my shifting.  I just need to perfect the timing of the throttle blipping with the engaging of the lower gear when I'm down shifting.  I pretty much have the upshifts down although they can use some improvement as well.  I did go faster every session and here is a video of my fastest lap.  But this by no means a fast lap -- I left lots of time on the table!  Btw, the gear numbers are not correct.  For some reason it jumps from 2nd to 4th instead of 2nd to 3rd.

Driving the car was great but we did have one issue that we expended a lot of time and effort on.  Unfortunately the data system was showing that I was losing fuel pressure in the corners.  Here is what we were looking at:

The blue line shows lateral gs (in other words, the peaks and valleys show left and right hand corners) and the red line shows the fuel pressure.  There is definitely a correlation between cornering and the fuel pressure dropping and we did lots of things to try to resolve the issue but to no avail.  As a result, I decided to withdraw from the race weekend.  However, I'm glad I did because I was tired!!  I hadn't driven a race car in over a year and driving this car took a lot out of me! 

We really thought that there was an issue with the fuel cell (which is brand new) so I planned to call the manufacture on Monday.  I did pull the fuel cell over the weekend after I pumped the fuel out of it using the fuel pump and there was virtually no fuel left in it -- which meant that the pickup seemed to be working the way it should.  I could also tell that the pickup was fastened to the bottom of the cell.  So these two facts pretty much ruled out the cell as being the issue.  The one fact that was sticking in my mind was that I never got real consistent fuel pressure readings.  I actually thought of this before I pulled the cell but my fuel pressure sensor was mounted in a 45 degree fitting in the fuel regulator.  I used the 45 degree fitting due to space limitations and I think that there might have been an air bubble in that fitting.  I moved the fuel pressure sensor to a different location and no more fluctuation of fuel pressure!  I'm cautiously optimistic that fixed the problem but I obviously need to run the car again to be sure.

Overall it was a great day.  I got a good feel for the car and I will practice the timing of my shifting using my online simulator.  If the worst problem is an air bubble in front of the fuel pressure sensor than that isn't so bad!

After Graphics!

Well, here she is!

It is about 95% complete and I will be taking it to Eric Langbein's shop this week to get a complete set-up and a modified shift linkage.  There is actually one graphic missing -- the WWP website.  It will go on the sidepods but the graphics company forgot to give it to me wo I will get it from them this week. 

I again spent an incredibly long time in the garage this weekend though.  The graphics took a while to apply but I also calibrated the shock sensors and I wanted to make sure that they were truly linear so I created a chart comparing the voltage produced by the sensor as the arm moves to the amount that the shock moves.  I was a little concerned that the curve wasn't going to be linear but it turns out that the curve was linear which was good news. 

That was good news but I also ran into an issue.  I was running the engine again and monitoring the sensors with my computer and noticed that the battery voltage really dropped when I reved the engine.  Since this car has an alternator, the voltage should be increasing.  Well, it turns out that I didn't hook up the positive pole on the alternator so that it could charge the battery!  It took a while for me to figure that out and changing the wiring was no small task.  However, I'm really glad that I found that issue before I got to the track because there is no way that the battery would last more than 2 sessions without an alternator charging it. 

I also finished the seat.  I had to trim it some more and I covered it with gaffers tape.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  Here it is with the seat belts installed.

Converting this car from an F2000 to a F1600 car has certainly been a lot of work but has been well worth it.  Frankly, I love the challenge of projects like this.  A lot of people have helped me along the way, really too many to mention.  But that is the good thing about this kind of racing, there is always someone willing to help you if you need it.  Racers are really great people.

The blog isn't done though.  I still need to make a scoop/cold air box and I will be documenting that process.  Plus, I plan on at least posting at least one in car video after next weekend.  I'm sure that I have a lot to get used to in regards to driving it I know that there are many more challenges to come in regards to learning about how to optimize the car's set-up and I look forward to those challenges just as much as the challenge of the build.

Before Graphics

I still have some work to do but here is a pic of her before the graphics are applied.