Lots of Interesting Updates

[23racer]

First some very good news items;

1) My transmission is not totally screwed. I backed the car off the trailer on Friday and to get it into the garage I had to use first and reverse a number of times. Everything was as normal and the box selected all the gears. It does seem to lug down a number of times like it is trying to select a few gears at once and it does have the catching noise, but no grinding or rattling. I think I have a bad shift fork. I will see when I pull it out, but I don't think its catastrophic at all.

2) My low oil pressure issues. I have done a bunch of research into this over the weekend. First when I fired up the car, the oil pressure was at 110 plus. After it got warm (170 degrees) it dropped to about 50 - 55 lbs at idle and blipped up to 70+ at 5,000. So everything seemed to be stable. I went at looked at the Mumm Bros. dyno sheet to see what the car had when it was new. It seems that the max pressure when new was 73 lbs. I am not far off.

So then I researched oils a bit as I am running Mobil 1 20-50. Based on a comment on the Improved Touring site about Mobil 1 not working great at higher oil temps, I googled a bunch of threads and did some research. It seems that as oil temps exceed 220 degrees, Mobil 1 looses its viscosity pretty quickly based on the synthetic base they use for the oil. It recovers as the oil cools down. It still protects well, it just gets a bit thin. This explains why I had 50 lbs during the race and the oil pressure recovered as I slowed down.

It seems that Redline uses the best base synthetic for higher temperatures and will easily withstand 250 degree oil temps without pressures dropping down due to lost viscosity. What is really interesting is that I was running Redline in the past and only switched to Mobil 1 because I couldn't get Redline locally when i needed it. JRP was always out of stock on the 40w Race Oil I used to use. I can hardly wait to change the oil and see what happens. I will flush out all the Mobil 1 first. I expect I have no issues at all.

3) Finally, this year was surprisingly good in the final race points in the GT3 Class of the GT Challenge Cup. It seems as though I finished 10th in class out of 26 registered runners. Its amazing what you can accomplish just by finishing races. We finished 6th in class at the 3 Hour and 4th in the final event. Even though in both cases the cars were running poorly, we slugged it through to the finish and collected enough points to finish in a top 10 position. Kinda back door I know, but it makes me happy about our efforts and ready to upgrade for next year.

All in all a very interesting weekend.

Eric

[23racer]

One other point. I was pulling 6200 in 5th going into Turn 8 at Mosport in the last race. I checked the Mumm Bros speed chart and that translates into 142 mph or 232 kmh. That is pretty fast NO?

If I could have gotten the car to pull in the lower gears, who knows what the terminal speed would have been. It just makes me even more frustrated. grrrrrrrr.

Eric

[mmc757]

Thanks for the updates. Congrats on the good news. Next year will be awesome!

[MaverickFlyer]

Well that's that's good to hear about the oil issue. Are you still going to rebuild the other motor and put it in? It would be nice to have both motors rebuilt for next year just in case but I know that could get pricey. Whenever you are ready to pull the motor let me know.

I'm pretty excited about next year. Between helping you and me possible running in Solo Sprints it should be a good year at the track.

[BlackBetty]

When I read in your last thread "Going into turn 8 @ 6200rpm in 5th gear" I was thinking damn! He's flying!!

Congrats on the top 10! To think that it wasn't running 100% and you still managed a top 10 overall sounds pretty damn good! Just think of the result you'll get if she was dialed in!

[23racer]

Well that's that's good to hear about the oil issue. Are you still going to rebuild the other motor and put it in? It would be nice to have both motors rebuilt for next year just in case but I know that could get pricey. Whenever you are ready to pull the motor let me know.

I'm pretty excited about next year. Between helping you and me possible running in Solo Sprints it should be a good year at the track.

I am still going to rebuild, well actually just check and reassemble the spare motor with new headgaskets and headbolts this winter. I need the space and having the motor ready and complete sitting on the stand will be great. The race motor, I just want to perform a complete analysis of what we have. I would like to perform a hot leakdown test, compression check and send the oil out for analysis. I really don't want to pull that motor apart until we need to or we have a good spare up and running.

I would like to take the present spare and use that one with the rebuilt clutch and Quaife box. I will then take the race motor and go through it to see what it needs, but that will more than likely be during the race season next year. Money and time.....

The big issue is that I only have 1 flywheel and clutch assembly. The clutch is about $750 bucks and the custom flywheel is about $1200. At this time, I am limited in what I can do.

Regarding the running of Solo Sprints, call me and lets see what we can do. I would be glad to help out where I can.

Eric

[MaverickFlyer]

Can't you use the same clutch and flywheel on either motor.

When is the best time to call you? I'll be in NY Thursday and Friday, is the weekend better for you?

[23racer]

What I am thinking about is I would like to have complete race ready assemblies sitting there ready to go. As it stands now, I would have to swap the clutch and flywheel from motor to motor before putting it back in the car. Not a huge issue, but an issue.

As well, I was talking to my friend out in B.C. last night. It seems like he developed the same issue with Mobil 1 and oil pressure about 2 years ago. It seems that after Mobil 1 sued a competitor over their definition of synthetic (they were using a part of the blend based on modified dino oil) and lost, they converted their formula as well to a blend of modified dino oil and a true synthetic. This was less costly and would work for 99% of their customers and still allow them to call the product a synthetic.

He was suffering from loss of oil pressure and viscosity when very hot as well. He converted to Motul 300V and everything was fine and as a side benefit the oil smelled like maple flavoured bacon. He says that whenever he is driving his car now, he gets a bit hungry and he doesn't know why, LOL. I guess I need to convert back to Redline Race or Motul 300V. Can we say KA-CHIIING $$$$$$$$.

Call me this weekend or any day next week.

Eric