Part 1
Yesterday, I tried to get everyone a quick dump of how the meet went.
Now I will take a bit more time and try and give you a better feel. The
meet was iffy to begin with. When we arrived, we had to cross maybe 200
yards of very salty water just to get oof the end of the asphalt road
out onto something akin to dry salt. But it was very wet and stuck to
tires and just about anything it touched. Especially your shoes when you
walked on it. We arrived Thursday afternoon about 1 pm and It was
announced that on Saturday they would determine whether or nbot it was
safe enough to race on. But we went and obtained our drivers and pit
wrist bands and then took the car through tech. Tech was very quick,
only about 20 minutes. Covered the car and left the salt. Day 2 was
mostly spent just looking at the cars and remaking old friendships.
Looked at teh Ford and Ohio State Hydrogen/Electric cars (one of my
friends was driving the Ford Fusion). Nothing doing yet about racing.
Saturday we had the mandatory driver's meeting. They made the decision
to race! We went back to the car and checked oput everything, fueled it,
ran the laptop battery down, checked the tires, water, etc. and headed
to the staging lanes. not a long wait on the first day and we made our
first run at about 172 mph. Remember last year the max speed was 158.9
mph. Now we were up to 172! Enough for the "B" license if I wanted to go
and get it. However the 172 was an issue because when I back calculated
to the car's ECU speed limiter, it looked like I hit the limiter!
Bummer. So I unhooked the speed sensor from the ECU. Also go no data on
that first run. Wish I had, it migh have shown the beginnings of what
ever caused the motor to not run well later. Checked the plugs and found
the front and back 2 pairs (ie 1, 5, 4, 8) really fouled with the middle
ones really good. I figured that this was the way that the limiter
limited speed, maybe pulling spark from those cylinders. Up with the
chickens on Sunday, breakfast at the Mex food place and then onto the
salt. We must have used a 1000 pounds of ice and 5 cases of bottled
water...Really hot and muggy due to all the salt water. But the salt was
getting better! Made preparations for the next run: gas, water, air,
battery, laptop, etc. Towed down to the staging lanes and it took a bit
longer to get to run. More cars and bikes in line. When it was getting
close to my turn, I fired up the ECU in the car and the laptop. In this
mode, it just takes static data like temps and baro pressure. But it is
ready as soon as I fire the engine.
Well, I will go to part 2..
mayf
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