All or Nothing
What do you do when your car is in pieces and it’s the day your suppose to leave for a race? What do you do when your 6 seconds slower
than the competition? You can either say
f’ it or you can say I’m going for it ‘All or nothing!’
I received my fuel kit courtesy of Jeff from Induction
Motorsports. June 10th. I had a BMW event at gateway the 12/13 so I
didn’t want to risk missing the event due to not finishing the install so I
waited until the following week to begin.
There
was a Ferrari/Phil Wicks event happening on July 24 at gateway. There was a MCSCC event happening on July 24
at Blackhawk Farms. NOPI was coming to
town on July 24 and July 25. I had a huge question
mark on what to do. I was leaning on
attending the NOPI event due to the fact that they paid out 1st, 2nd
and 3rd places. Running
NOPI meant that I had to have a roll bar installed so I had contacted Michael
Wolf from performance Engineering. We
had a deal all set out and ready to go I just had to give him the car the week
of 12th due to his shop being closed the following week.
The car sat in the garage until July 2 when I
decided it better start working on it while I had time instead of the night
before the event like I typically do.
That night I had the intake manifold out. Emily’s family had a family reunion during
the 4th of july, so I couldn’t work on the
car that weekend. So I picked it back up
the following week. I had the pump out
of the car and took a couple days to assemble the new pumps to the bracket and
fit them back in the tank. I am now into the weekend and we had a house
warming party to attend and a hangover the next day to nurse. I had two weeks left to go before the event
and one week to get the car over to get the roll bar.
That week the weather decided to get into the high 90’s
with the heat index well into the 100’s.
To make it worse my garage has absolutely no ventilation in it so it was
always at least 4-5 degrees hotter than the outside air. So working in a sweat box is tough on an
aging fat guy. Needless to say I ran
little issues here and there with the kit putting me a couple days later than I
thought. I realized by the Monday I
wasn’t going to be able to finish it in time for the roll bar. No roll bar meant no
NOPI event and that meant that I’d take the car up to blackhawk and run with
MCSCC. So with that in mind and my
motivation down the drain I decided to work a tad bit slower. I had the car together by the weekend of the
17. The car actually started up and
idled but as soon as I hit the gas it stalled.
I was stumped. The gauge on the
FPR with the adjustment screw all the way in it was showing less than 20. However, my greddy gauge that I had in the
cabin showed 5.5 bar.
I had no clue which one to believe.
The greddy gauge proved accurate with the old fuel system so I trusted
it over the new gauge I got with the kit.
On Wednesday I finally resorted to having to take the intake manifold
off and check the return line since it felt a little snugger in location than I
liked. I thought maybe it was twisted or
crimped in a way to stop the flow creating more pressure? Having the intake off again and checking the
pressures I realized that even with the fuel supply OFF of the rail the greddy
gauge was still showing pressure. There
is no possible way for that to be true.
I unplugged the oil pressure and swapped connections with the fuel
pressure. I wanted to see if it was the
gauge or the pressure sender that was out of wack. With using the oil pressure gauge It showed identical to the fpr gauge. I switched them back and wtf it was now
showing less than 1 bar (same as fpr gauge).
Now that I knew the pressure was in fact to LOW the problem could only
be the pumps. So I went back to the tank
and take the pumps back out and inspect them.
Thursday I made my mind up that there was just no way I’d
get everything done by Friday so I decided I’d race the Honda. So Thursday night I hung out with the hockey
guys and drank my depression away. I had
a big project that was going into production that weekend that got pushed off
until the end of the month. With that, I
decided it would be a good day to take a day off and see what I could do with
the car and it became an ‘All or nothing’ day.
Once I got the cap off of the tank and had the pumps out I
realized in my hast to install the pumps I didn’t put
hose clamps on the hoses. Without the
clamps I am positive the pressure from the pumps was just spraying the inside
of the tank with gas. However I also
noticed the fuel hoses were heavily deteriorated. I have no clue how or why the hoses
themselves separated but I had to get new hose and buy clamps. With the pumps back in place and nice clamps
on the fuel lines I turned the key to check pressure. Voila I have the proper fuel pressure and its
only 2 oclock. I can still have time to
put the car together and make the race in the supra. By 5 I was ready to start the car and see
what happens. Vroom Vroom I took the car
out and took the opportunity to go to the gas station to fill up with gas. The
car seemed to be running in great shape.
After going back home and taking a shower I loaded the car up and packed
my stuff and we were on the road at 8pm.
The
drive up to blackhawk was fairly uneventful.
If you remember what happened to the 4runner coming back from
gingerman. Well it happened again. I wasn’t paying attention to the miles but
the gauge was reading ½ tank. Then as we were cresting the top of a small
hill the car coughed like it was going to die.
Great, we are on highway 35 and it seemed like nothing was around. With the help of the hill I decided to see
how far I could just coast. At the
bottom of the hill I saw an exit sign that showed a shell station open 24
hours. WHAT LUCK! The exit was an uphill
exit and the car stalled twice as it tried to make it. Once I made it up the hill I basically
coasted down to shell. Fresh tank of gas
in the tank we were back on the highway.
We pulled into Blackhawk’s paddock at 1 a.m. and had the tent up and
ready to go to bed by 1:30 a.m. I set my alarm for 6:45 a.m. and crashed hard!
Practice
session
Since
my best lap in the supra (two years ago) was a 1:34 I put myself into practice
session 3. I was behind a tubed out
looking truck. Three laps into the
session I passed him and he was no where close to being behind me. Overall it was GREAT to be back in the supra
and blackhawk turned into a blast with it.
My
second practice session Jeff and Dave had it planed that Dave would follow Jeff
and they thought about me following Dave with the camera. So they bumped me into the 2nd run
group. As we were sitting in grid
waiting to be released they notified us someone spilled oil between turn 4 and
5 on the right tire side of the line. I
didn’t get a quick green light out of the pits like Dave did so I was already
starting out a little behind. Then I
slowed down considerably through turn 4 because I didn’t know what to
expect. But I had glimpses of them
exiting turns as I was coming into them.
But as the session went on I kept getting closer and closer. By the 4th lap I was directly
behind Dave and had a good lap following close behind them.
Timed Runs
During
lunch I saw my competition for the unlimited street class. It was Ron Adee, aka Mr Won Lap. I am not sure what year he ran but I know
that he won the one lap of
My
first timed run I hit the throttle and hung on.
Overall I felt fairly smooth and I didn’t have a negative aspect of the
entire run. I was shocked when I finally
saw my lap time of 1:27.4. My previous
best time was 1:34 so I knocked a full 7 seconds off. I really do contribute that to driving my
Honda for a season. I could have packed
up then and there and been extremely happy. Ron, my competition, ran an extraordinary
1:21. So he had me beat by what I just
dropped from my previous best to new best.
So I still have a lot of learning to do.
As I
finished my first time run up I happen to be talking to Brian watching the cars
go by when Jeff went by on his timed run.
I noticed that in the approach to turn 5 he did not brake
nor lift (noticeably) and I knew that I was.
So for the 2nd timed run I was going to push that corner ‘all
or nothing’. Turns 1 through 4 were
identical (in my mind) to my first run.
As I came out of turn 4 I stayed on the throttle and went to my turn in
point. The car was FLYING. I made my turn in and tried to hit the apex
of turn 5. The tires were just
howling. But I made it through the turn
and I really didn’t use the entire track out so in retrospect I can go faster
through turn 5. Coming into turn 6 I was
carrying at least 10-15 more mph as I noticed I should of shifted into 4th
as I hit the redline the moment before my braking point. I made it around the rest of the track
without incident and to my astonishment I knocked more than a full second (1.3)
off of my time. Bringing my best down to a 1:26.1
My
third timed run I could feel the drain on my body starting to happen. I tried to repeat my 2nd run,
everything felt nice and smooth however coming into turn 7 I hit the gas a
little sooner and harder than I have before.
As the car was pushing around the apex with tires talking to me I felt
the rear tires begin to loose traction going forward. I am not sure how to describe it but the
tires (possibly just one I have no idea) were loosing forward traction but
still holding turning traction. At first
I thought it was a slipping clutch but it was holding everywhere else. Overall I was a tad bit slower but was still
being consistent with a 1:26.4
The
last run my mind and body were beat. I
could feel it. I decided to try and take
turn three wide instead of coming in close.
I couldn’t tell a difference in doing so. This time coming out of turn 6 the same wheel
spin that happened in the last timed run happened. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing to do
this and I couldn’t intentionally repeat it this time coming around turn
7. For this run almost being the same I
was slower with a 1:27.2
Overall
I was fairly consistent and I could begin to tell that changing things up on
corners worked or didn’t. I ended up in
2nd place (what I expected) in my class and out of 140 total people
that day I placed 15th.