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S197 BOSS 302 Race Car Build Thread Build Thread

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ArizonaBOSS

Because racecar.
Moderator
8,730
2,734
Arizona, USA
This is by far the best thread on these forums.

You have inspired me to get into HPDE, and get out on the track with my car. After my wedding in sept, ill be at more wild horse pass HPDE track days.

Keep up the great work!
Thanks!

BTW I accept no responsibility for the future destruction of your bank account :eek:
 

ArizonaBOSS

Because racecar.
Moderator
8,730
2,734
Arizona, USA
NASA TX @ Circuit of the Americas (COTA) - Cinco De COTA - May 2018

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I have missed out on a few opportunities to go to COTA in the past couple years. This year, I am going twice.
This trip was the "reconnaissance mission" for NASA Nationals in September. This was my first time to COTA, and I went in good company with some of my best racing friends from here in Arizona. One was even nice enough to let me stow my car away in his stacker trailer rig for the trip.
We drove over 16 hours total from the Phoenix, AZ area out to Austin, TX. We stopped after about 10 hours in Fort Stockton TX to get some rest for the evening on the first leg of the trip, where we were treated with views of some stunning electrical storms from our RV slip picnic table while we all enjoyed a few drinks.

Going into the weekend, I knew rain was in the forecast but didn't shell out the cash for rain tires. I would hope for a little luck that I would get some dry sessions in before the rain hit during our Friday practice day. Unfortunately, that wasn't to be the case.
My buddy Ron w/ the GT350 clone, on the other hand, was significantly more prepared. Or at least, we thought so. He had two Pirelli wets, and had a second pair shipped to the track. When we went to pick them up at shipping/receiving, we instead found a full set of Pirelli SLICKS! Not good! We got on the phone with our tire guy, who let us know that Pirelli was shipping two actual wet tires to the track overnight, to arrive Friday morning by 8am. While we crossed our fingers and waited, we had a nice little at-the-track banquet and a few more drinks. But when day broke on Friday, there were no wet tires to be found. Those two additional tires didn't show up until around NOON on SUNDAY. Great.

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Ron and I lined up for the first run on Friday in an attempt to beat the rain even on our regular race tires. My plan was to follow him around the track and get my bearings, as he had run here the year prior with NASA as well as in 2014 with PWC. With dark skies closing in, we arrived on-grid 20 minutes prior to the first run and got the first two grid spots. It looked like we were going to get at least one run in after all!
JUST KIDDING--Track Control spotted lightning nearby with only 2 minutes to go before our release--we were stuck on the grid as the storms continued to move in. Ultimately, after being on hold for 20 minutes past our designated start time, and water droplets falling on our windshields, we decided to return to the garages. Just after we pulled in, the skies opened up and unleashed a deluge upon the facility. With the storms and lightning, no cars were allowed on-track until after 1pm that day.

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Despite the weather pains, I was able to get a couple great rides from some very fast AZ drivers that made the trip and rented Camaros (!) from the Austin airport, which at least meant I could see the track in-person at some sort of speed. My first impression was that the track seems "smaller" than it looks in videos, but still has tons of room to race. The next thing I noticed were the treacherous apex "Turtle" penalty curbs. These looked to be ready to ruin your day if you dared to run over them, be it from a bent wheel or broken suspension or worse--one HPDE driver took a Focus RS over one of them on Saturday morning's first session and either ripped off his oil pan or an oil line, because the car burned to the ground on the side of the track after that. I'd hate to see the facility damage bill for that one. The other thing I noticed is that while the track was generally smooth, it did feature a number of undulations that probably weren't there when the facility opened to host Formula 1 in 2012--some of the storms and flooding that came through the area with the hurricanes of the past few years had altered the underlying surface of the area and created some noticeable bumps. A little different from what I expected (glass smooth) but overall very nice.

On the plus side, I met a bunch of folks from the internet I have talked to online for many years: @BudgetBoss , Anthony Imperato, Terry and Amy @Fair, @Mad302, and many more!

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Saturday was my first chance to drive the track, and do it in my own car. My first practice session on Saturday was a 2:35 and the ST2 pace was around 2:25--I needed to make up quite a bit of time.

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I ended up in the low 2:28s by end of first day, managed to finish 4th of 10 in ST2 after letting a couple Porsches by me (I wasn't very aggressive due to volume of racers, most of whom I had never been on track with before).

Race 1 Video--Ended up 4th of 10 in ST2

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After a few more drinks and BBQ-at-the-track that evening, and extensive review of race footage from Saturday, I was ready to attack on Sunday.
I found another three seconds in qualifying, resulting in my best time of the weekend of 2:25.6 and starting me 4th in class of 7.
Sunday Qualifying, and my best lap of the weekend:

For the first race on Sunday, some of the previous 10 cars had dropped out--but the fastest guys were still here directly ahead of me.
I was pleased to be able to hang with the top 3 cars for the duration of the second race and converted this into a second place finish when two of the top 3 cars retired about halfway through the race. I was able to hold the same pace as the leader and keep him in my sights but burned my tires off and made too many mistakes trying to catch him. Overall a good race and promising results on R7 tires.

Race 2 Video--Finished 2nd of 7 in ST2:

For the final race of the weekend, I was starting second in-class behind the Lotus I was chasing in the prior race. I was looking forward to a good battle with our paces being equivalent, but he never showed up to grid and I started from the pole in-class! One fast car was starting from the back of our class but the others in ST2 that were near me were a few seconds off my pace. I ran a quick first lap then dialed back to about 80% to keep from ruining my own race. The downside to this is the fast car that started at the back was catching up to me! I could see him coming in the mirror as I entered the long back straight and had to kick it up to 100% again to keep the gap. His pace was slightly faster than mine, but I was confident that I could hold him off by driving defensive lines. Unfortunately, I didn't have to resort to that--a Corvette caught fire and the race quickly went to full-course caution and then quickly to red flag. At the time I crossed the timing loop (and after slowing down significantly for full-course caution) the chasing car was about 4 seconds behind me. So I won that one, but there will not be any opportunity to relax at Nationals. Due to that win, I also took home a pair of free Hoosier tires courtesy of Hoosier's contingency program--so that will help ease a bit of my tire budget for Nationals :)

Race 3 Video--Finished 1st of 5 in ST2:

Since this was my first trip to COTA, I didn't have any prior data to compare my runs with, but there were some gems to see from the data I did gather:
The setup was generating roughly 1.6G lateral on in the tight hairpin entering the long back straight, and 1.5G sustained in the Tower Carousel!! on R7s!!
Oil and water temperatures stayed in acceptable ranges the entire weekend despite 85-90* heat with high humidity.

My best two laps from the weekend, overlaid.
This is actually a very useful graph--the laptimes were only a few hundredths apart, but how the laptime was achieved was different in each lap (shown by the "delta time" graph at bottom. This means I can analyze what section of each lap was faster and focus improvement efforts in those areas!
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The same graph, with the cursor moved to get the data boxes to the other side of the graph:
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Again, this is where the "Delta Time" output becomes very useful. You read the slope of the line--in areas of rapid change (upward or downward), you look above at the inputs that generated the increase or decrease in lap time. Where the "Delta Time" graph is flat, there is little contribution to laptime change.
In this case, I am looking at the two large "downslopes" in the red line--these indicate areas where the red trace was noticeably faster than the reference trace--in this case, adding up to roughly 3/4 second, which would have put me well into the 2:24s--and this was with a bunch of mistakes! The areas in question here are related to carrying/holding more speed at the top end of the mid-track straightaways. I will have to focus on going deeper, without overslowing.
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Ultimately, I think this car has 2:23 pace or better in it, on R7s, with a little more setup optimization, sacking up a little more on the long straights, and focusing improvements on a couple other areas of the track that I noticed will generate some additional laptime drop. I think it could even go into the 22s or less, once the A7s go on!

Even with those improvements in both car and driver, winning my class (ST2) at NASA Nationals in September will not be any simple feat. There are currently 20 drivers registered from all over the country, and a number of them are very good drivers and very good racers. The benefit here is that COTA is an "equalizer" track, in that not many people at this level of competition have any substantial seat time on it--so I won't be racing fast guys on their home tracks where they have a billion laps, and I'm there for my second day. This will be a great chance to race heads-up--and I will have a legitimate shot at taking home the win.

Stay tuned for more...

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What is the Black wheel/tire setup Vs. the Silver wheel tire setup?

for a second I thought you had black on one side, and silver on the other.

BTW, Thanks for the new Desk top backgrounds for my work PC!
 

ArizonaBOSS

Because racecar.
Moderator
8,730
2,734
Arizona, USA
What is the Black wheel/tire setup Vs. the Silver wheel tire setup?

for a second I thought you had black on one side, and silver on the other.

BTW, Thanks for the new Desk top backgrounds for my work PC!

The black wheels are my old Enkei 18x10.5 setup that I had practice tires mounted on. I am switching out all of my Enkeis for APEX EC-7s in 18x11 currently (the silver wheels).
 
I'm liking you write with regards to your roll center change and your testing in general, I had an eye opening weekend at Pacific Raceways last weekend. I was fortuneate enough to drive one of Dig Motorsports Spec Mustangs. Wow, the way the back end of the car rotated was beautiful. That night I made a small roll center change which helped dramatically. I dropped 2 seconds in PB time. Then a quick shock adjustment later I dropped 2 more. More changes and testing are in the plans for August Timetrials. Keep up your great work! The information you share is quite helpful. Now to read about COTA.....
 

ArizonaBOSS

Because racecar.
Moderator
8,730
2,734
Arizona, USA
Future Outlook - June 2018

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Most of my summer efforts will be spent ensuring the car is ready for NASA Nationals at COTA.

There are 21 cars registered in-class (ST2) as of today. I think I have a real shot at bringing home the win but it won't be easy. On top of a number of very good drivers from all around the country, we will also have to contend with weaving through a number of not-so great drivers in other classes (typically more money than skill) on the track at the same time, while not ruining races of some very fast prototype cars that make up the "Super Unlimited" class. Traffic will be a challenge.
Based on my experiences in May and data collected at that event, I have identified a few focus areas for optimizing the setup for a couple important sections of the track. These are easy changes to make and I will be able to verify what works best during the Thursday test day before the championship weekend begins. I am also working on my tire strategy for the weekend and how and where to apply A7 tires vs. R7 tires, and how to ensure I will have the right tires for the final race--because the Texas heat may be a factor in how to play this. To assist with my prep, I am building an Oculus-Rift VR simulator rig which is nearing completion now; I will focus on iRacing and ProjectCars2 to help practice before returning to COTA.

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The next portion of the equation is fuel consumption. At most tracks, I typically burn about 0.3 gallons per minute of green track time. At COTA that figure was more like 0.4 gallons per minute of green. With the only race that counts for the weekend being a 45-minute Championship Race on Sunday, I will need at least 18 gallons of fuel to complete that race; more than the 16 gallons I can hold in the stock fuel tank.
To deal with that, I am having a local race car fabrication shop install a 26-gallon ATL fuel cell in the rear trunk well area, and removing the stock tank. Along with this comes a mandatory bulkhead separating that area of the car from the driver's compartment. I was thinking to do a large capacity surge tank, but the NASA rules were updated recently to limit tank volume to 1.5L (about 0.38 gallon), and even still require the bulkhead, etc. So I figure if I need to increase capacity, I'll do it right, which will also help if I plan to take the car to any endurance racing events. This will also free up the area where the stock tank was to install pumps and coolers for transmission and differential at some point in the future (mimicking what came on the BOSS 302Rs).

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To offset some of the weight from the fuel cell and bulkhead, I am removing the rear glass and replacing with thin Optic Armor lexan (minus 15lbs), and I will also be able to remove the 22lbs of ballast weight (old rear brake rotors) that I am currently carrying in the rear of the car. I should come out to pretty close to even on weight, not counting the weight of any extra fuel that I'll be able to carry. I'm thinking to carry 20 gallons of fuel for the Champ race. It's likely that we will have a caution period with so many cars on-track at once, but I can't risk a year's worth of prep on running out of fuel if we stay green the entire time.

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Regardless of what happens at COTA, I won't have enough regional points to challenge @captdistraction for the regional title in ST2 this year--so a three-peat is out. I might be able to get on the podium depending on how the rest of the year works out locally, but "Nationals or nothing" is a real possibility.

Wish me luck! :)

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"I am building an Oculus-Rift VR simulator rig which is nearing completion now; I will focus on iRacing and ProjectCars2"

Drew, please do not go by the minimum recommended video card specifications for the Rift. You won't be happy with the performance. I would suggest the highest end GPU (not video card) that you can afford. A single Rift headset demands more from the video GPU than a multi-monitor 4K setup.

If you can afford it, I would suggest the NVIDIA GeForce 1080 TI or possibly on of the AMD Radeon Vega offerings. Without a high end GPU, you won't get a decent frame rate and you will probably have video tearing. You will also have to turn down the resolution of pretty much everything.
 

ArizonaBOSS

Because racecar.
Moderator
8,730
2,734
Arizona, USA
"I am building an Oculus-Rift VR simulator rig which is nearing completion now; I will focus on iRacing and ProjectCars2"

Drew, please do not go by the minimum recommended video card specifications for the Rift. You won't be happy with the performance. I would suggest the highest end GPU (not video card) that you can afford. A single Rift headset demands more from the video GPU than a multi-monitor 4K setup.

If you can afford it, I would suggest the NVIDIA GeForce 1080 TI or possibly on of the AMD Radeon Vega offerings. Without a high end GPU, you won't get a decent frame rate and you will probably have video tearing. You will also have to turn down the resolution of pretty much everything.

Yes sir, I did my homework on that one. Already upgraded my computer with 16gb of RAM and an EVGA GeForce 1080SC :) I tested it on Project Cars 2 at full resolution (on my monitor, not Oculus) and it ran great no hiccups whatsoever.
 

ArizonaBOSS

Because racecar.
Moderator
8,730
2,734
Arizona, USA
Here are a couple photos of the simulator rig. Now I need to clean up my "office" at home and make a little more room.

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I am waiting on a couple of spare parts from Fanatec as there was an issue with the packaging on my Load Cell Brake pedal, but those should be here soon and then let the Sim Racing begin...

Also, for my real race car, all of my fuel system components (save for the adjustable pressure regulator) have shown up at the house. I decided to insert a fuel pressure sender into the system as well so I can AIM log that data and/or trigger an idiot light on the AIM dash.
Since my brake duct hoses were a little worn through, combined with the possibility for 45 minutes worth of 130-150mph brake applications at COTA, I decided to upgrade my brake cooling setup to the Multimatic / KohR BOSS R 4" ducting setup. Very nice components formed from carbon fiber. Looks like the backing plates will fit nicely into the cooling vanes of the 380mm rotors, as well.

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The race car is getting the fuel cell installed this week at my local fabricator's shop, along with the rear bulkhead to separate the trunk compartment from the driver's space, and rear lexan. Once that is back in the garage I will run all of the relays/switches/wiring for the fuel pump, and also run new fuel line from the fuel cell up to the stock fuel rail in the engine bay. I am thinking to use an old Setrab 925 I have laying around to make a transmission cooler setup as well.

Lots of work ahead :)
 
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That kohr 4" inlet is excellent. O looked everywhere for those. There was a carbon company that used to make them but quit due to low demand. I WANT those! Nice find!
On my list!

Also love your SIM station! And thats now on my list too! I do have the Oculus setup and I built a fast computer....39c85e2612507c7aaab1ba9923e42303.jpge99956a7df28279ce6f2a42b1d918821.jpg59f9bdfd3b167cd834ee71877b372004.jpg

Sent from my LG-H932 using Tapatalk
 
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How do you like the Fanatec pieces? Im looking at a direct drive unit from " Feel VR". Unfortunately is not available til February 2019, but looks bad ass! Trying to decide if I wait on it or go with the traditional belt drive. For the $$$, I'm thinking wait as i really Don't want to shell out double $$$$$$$ and buy a unit now and this other in February. Actually, Feel VR has a kickstarter and id buy it now. The more realistic feed back seems worth the extra money. What are your thoughts?
Thanks

Sent from my LG-H932 using Tapatalk
 

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