RTA Vegas recap
Apr 27, 2010, 06:27 PM
#1
Former Sponsor
Thread Starter
iTrader: (24)
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: socal
Posts: 1,614
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
RTA Vegas recap
Last weekend was the third round of Redline Time Attack, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Here is our car waiting to go on the trailer with it's new headlights:
Towards the end of the last event, our car was making less boost than we expected. Even on the 25psi map, it wouldn't go over 18 or so. It went to Road Race Engineering so they could put it on the dyno to see what was wrong, and on the first pull it made 14psi and about 340whp, which incredibly was enough for 3rd place at buttonwillow. Turns out we blew the welds on the intake manifold. After some welding and reinforcement, the car was making a nice 530whp at 23psi on E85 (all the injectors would do). We loaded up the car and hit the road for Vegas Friday morning, with the expectation of getting in some laps.
We arrived before noon and set up with the Factor X guys:
The other white and orange evo there belongs to Nils, the driver of our car (notice how our number is 00?).
Unfortunately the car wouldn't run right at all Friday. The logs showed injector duty going all over the place and the car would sputter and jerk under throttle. Mike from RRE and I traced it down to an electrical problem and I started tearing into the wiring harness. By the end of the day I had the dash out and it was getting dark, so we loaded up the car and headed over to FXMD:
Yeah, that's all there is to it- three guys splitting a unit to work on their own cars, including the unlimited class NSX.
By 4am I had replaced the alternator, fixed some shorts in the wiring harness, and seemingly had the car running properly. We loaded the car and I grabbed two hours of sleep. Without Factor X we would have had a pretty terrible weekend and I can't thank them enough for the hospitality. Great guys, great shop, and great food! I hope we pit next to them at every event.
Saturday morning I put the dash back together and we had the car ready for the first session. Or so we thought. The wideband was cutting out and causing sputtering, even though according to Mike it should not have made a difference since the o2 feedback was turned off in the ECU. We unplugged the thing, and the car ran great. We went out for a couple of short sessions Saturday to fine tune the suspension and tire pressures, and I wandered around and took a couple of pictures.
NSX all put together:
Some evos:
Some Subarus:
Mazda:
Part of the pits:
At the end of the day we were a bit off the pace of the top Mod AWD cars, but we had a plan: Q16. The car is also tuned for it, and makes just over 600whp at 30psi on the stuff. We had 15 gallons with, which was enough for at least a practice and timed session Sunday. We were also all glad to get a full night of sleep that night.
Sunday is race day. There are two practice sessions in the morning, and two timed sessions in the afternoon. On the timed seesions cars go out in groups of 5-8 in order of speed. In the first practice we were over a second off the pace, so it was time to switch to Q16. Our boost control system has two manual controllers and a solenoid hooked to a switch on the dash. While I'm a fan of controlling boost with the ECU, those evo guys like manual controllers. I suppose it does simplify things a bit. To ensure we were making the proper boost, Mike and I went on a drive to log the car down Las Vegas blvd. In case anyone was wondering, 4th gear at 8500rpm works out to 136mph, and it doesn't take long to get there.
the extra 100hp or so put us 2nd on the grid right behind JC Meynet in the AQ motorsports STi. This was looking to be a little more interesting than that forum wars crap.
In the first timed run we pulled to within 0.4s of JC, and were over a second ahead of everyone else. With the old R888s, that was all the car had in it. Ryan Gates had suffered an engine failure Saturday, and so was willing to sell us a set of brand new Nitto NT01s. We were all set for the last session when the drama started. Due to a large amount of gravel strewn all over the track, we were unable to get in a clean fast lap. The unlimited cars were so upset they refused to run until the track was cleaned, and marched up to the timing booth with a growing mob and camera crew. The organizers decided they weren't going to bother cleaning the track, so the crews themselves went out on the track with brooms to clean it up. A few hours later it was swept, and we were allowed to run with the unlimited cars to try to get in a clean lap. Then, with a shot to win Mod AWD, something in our transmission broke. Time for a built Shep tranny I think.
Well, here are some other assorted pictures:
Mike Kojima:
Cars ready to go out:
Some hellafunctional stickers:
Full gallery here:
http://jamalb.net/gallery/v/rta2010r3/
Here is our car waiting to go on the trailer with it's new headlights:
Towards the end of the last event, our car was making less boost than we expected. Even on the 25psi map, it wouldn't go over 18 or so. It went to Road Race Engineering so they could put it on the dyno to see what was wrong, and on the first pull it made 14psi and about 340whp, which incredibly was enough for 3rd place at buttonwillow. Turns out we blew the welds on the intake manifold. After some welding and reinforcement, the car was making a nice 530whp at 23psi on E85 (all the injectors would do). We loaded up the car and hit the road for Vegas Friday morning, with the expectation of getting in some laps.
We arrived before noon and set up with the Factor X guys:
The other white and orange evo there belongs to Nils, the driver of our car (notice how our number is 00?).
Unfortunately the car wouldn't run right at all Friday. The logs showed injector duty going all over the place and the car would sputter and jerk under throttle. Mike from RRE and I traced it down to an electrical problem and I started tearing into the wiring harness. By the end of the day I had the dash out and it was getting dark, so we loaded up the car and headed over to FXMD:
Yeah, that's all there is to it- three guys splitting a unit to work on their own cars, including the unlimited class NSX.
By 4am I had replaced the alternator, fixed some shorts in the wiring harness, and seemingly had the car running properly. We loaded the car and I grabbed two hours of sleep. Without Factor X we would have had a pretty terrible weekend and I can't thank them enough for the hospitality. Great guys, great shop, and great food! I hope we pit next to them at every event.
Saturday morning I put the dash back together and we had the car ready for the first session. Or so we thought. The wideband was cutting out and causing sputtering, even though according to Mike it should not have made a difference since the o2 feedback was turned off in the ECU. We unplugged the thing, and the car ran great. We went out for a couple of short sessions Saturday to fine tune the suspension and tire pressures, and I wandered around and took a couple of pictures.
NSX all put together:
Some evos:
Some Subarus:
Mazda:
Part of the pits:
At the end of the day we were a bit off the pace of the top Mod AWD cars, but we had a plan: Q16. The car is also tuned for it, and makes just over 600whp at 30psi on the stuff. We had 15 gallons with, which was enough for at least a practice and timed session Sunday. We were also all glad to get a full night of sleep that night.
Sunday is race day. There are two practice sessions in the morning, and two timed sessions in the afternoon. On the timed seesions cars go out in groups of 5-8 in order of speed. In the first practice we were over a second off the pace, so it was time to switch to Q16. Our boost control system has two manual controllers and a solenoid hooked to a switch on the dash. While I'm a fan of controlling boost with the ECU, those evo guys like manual controllers. I suppose it does simplify things a bit. To ensure we were making the proper boost, Mike and I went on a drive to log the car down Las Vegas blvd. In case anyone was wondering, 4th gear at 8500rpm works out to 136mph, and it doesn't take long to get there.
the extra 100hp or so put us 2nd on the grid right behind JC Meynet in the AQ motorsports STi. This was looking to be a little more interesting than that forum wars crap.
In the first timed run we pulled to within 0.4s of JC, and were over a second ahead of everyone else. With the old R888s, that was all the car had in it. Ryan Gates had suffered an engine failure Saturday, and so was willing to sell us a set of brand new Nitto NT01s. We were all set for the last session when the drama started. Due to a large amount of gravel strewn all over the track, we were unable to get in a clean fast lap. The unlimited cars were so upset they refused to run until the track was cleaned, and marched up to the timing booth with a growing mob and camera crew. The organizers decided they weren't going to bother cleaning the track, so the crews themselves went out on the track with brooms to clean it up. A few hours later it was swept, and we were allowed to run with the unlimited cars to try to get in a clean lap. Then, with a shot to win Mod AWD, something in our transmission broke. Time for a built Shep tranny I think.
Well, here are some other assorted pictures:
Mike Kojima:
Cars ready to go out:
Some hellafunctional stickers:
Full gallery here:
http://jamalb.net/gallery/v/rta2010r3/
Last edited by robi; Apr 28, 2010 at 10:17 PM.
If only that Nilly guy knew how to drive on gravel....:P
Apr 27, 2010, 09:28 PM
#3
Newbie
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: San Francisco, CA
Posts: 31
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
That sucks to hear about the bad luck! It was nice to see the car running at Buttonwillow some weeks ago. Are you going to be attending the Infineon event later this year?
Trending Topics
excellent
May 5, 2010, 04:45 AM
#10
Evolved Member
iTrader: (11)
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 500
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
btw, that video kicks butt!!! one day buddy hopefully i can do it to.
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
trinydex
Evo How To Requests / Questions / Tips
9
Jun 30, 2014 02:26 AM
