I raced in the SCCA National at Lime Rock this past weekend. First
time that I have run a 30 lap race here, which is about 45 miles. I
got down to a 1:02.311 during the race, which is my fastest time at
LRP, but still 2 seconds off of the front running RX7s. The car
handled great on the 9" slicks - like it was on rails! I sure missed
the Weber carbs that I can run with the vintage SCCA group. I
finished 5th in class (EP) out of 8 cars and 10th overall out of 29
cars. I am happy with that for my first time at this level of
competition. My car needs to loose 300 pounds to be at the minimum
SCCA weight, but not sure that I can get that much off of it. Still
waiting for some fiberglass rear fenders from England.
Anyway, with 3 laps to go, I started loosing power right after the
downhill. This is the last turn before the main straight. It is a
flatout righthand turn at the bottom of a hill. I am doing about 6000
rpm in 4th gear here and wide-open-throttle (WOT). This is after 2
other righthand turns, connected by short straights, which were also
at WOT. My first thought is that I was running low on fuel, since
this was the longest that I ever went, but the car finished with 1/4
tank, which is 2 gallons - should be enough. I have an 8 gallon cell
with 2 pick-ups - one in each rear corner, and 2 fuel pumps. I lost
one overall position due to this problem and could not catch another
car that was in front - oh well.
I was using SU H6 carbs, which feed from a Holly pressure regulator
set to 3#s. I am using viton tipped float needle jets.
The loss of power was like I lost 2 cylinders. It did not missfire,
but just lost power. When this was happening, the fuel pressure was
going up to 4 #s. I was thinking that a float was hanging up, but
not sure why the pressure was going up like that - maybe the regulator
is on its was out? There was not sign of fuel in the overflow/vent
hoses, but they may have all dryed out by the time that I got back to
the paddock. I did have the tubes T into one hose that I ran out down
by the frame - not sure that was such a great idea and will run
separate lines for each. Any ideas of what is going on here from
the group? Joe(B)
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