New Setup Debugging – 1st Race of 2016
After lots of late lights thrashing to get the car done, we did make the first race of the 2016 season at Ozark Raceway Park May 6 & 7th. After knocking the tires off immediately (.25) at the hit on our 1st pass, it became quickly apparent we’d missed the setup a bit, which later became a bit of an understatement. 2nd round of qualifying we turned it way down, adjusted shocks.. normal changes in that situation but yet again knocked the tires off at .25.
Overnight I studied the data more closely and realized the car was reacting a lot more violently at the hit than before, G-Force was up .25 from last year at the point it was losing the tire, problem was we had changed so many things it was hard to zone in on which change was causing the problem. Last winter I changed the stator, servo piston, transbrake, converter charge pressure setup not to mention 190 lbs of weight got pulled out of the car, changed headers, and ALL of the control wiring, oh and freshened the engine along with some nitrous changes so there were a lot of variables to work with.
Despite trying all kinds of different ideas, nothing seemed to make a difference, every round we continued to spin at .25ish into the run. We got a competition buy 1st round, and lost to Tony Phillips in the 2nd, again we spun which was no surprise. I don’t like to lose, but it’s always fun racing the T & S Team, they are great folks.
Once we got the car in the shop, I started testing the function of the charge pressure dump valve and discovered a blown fuse had rendered it dead. Never noticed that at the track, I sure wish I had! Data showed it activating, but we weren’t seeing the pressure change like it should… NOW I know why… There wasn’t a problem with the wiring, I had just underestimated the current requirements for the relay board inrush amps.
The moral to this story is don’t always believe what your data logger is telling you. Just because a function shows it’s activating doesn’t really mean it is – so spend a bit more time verifying, would have saved me a lot of hassle at this race if I had done that. I might have also noticed had a spent more time studying what data we did have. Very excited now to get back out and see if we’ve got things straightened out, hopefully we’ll be going to the Wichita Shootout on May 21st if we can get the Dually back from the shop in time.
