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Captdistraction's ST2/GTR build thread Build Thread

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captdistraction

GrumpyRacer
1,954
1,698
Phoenix, Az
Race Report: NASA ST2 at Bankrupt, er, Bondurant School Track Nov 17/18

With 4 races to go and up to 600 points to grab, it was imperative that I kept things together and didn't bleed off my 75ish points lead. At least stop the bleeding better than the Bondurant School which declared bankruptcy days before NASA AZ had a track rental.

The car had continued signs of issues with the transmission's 4th gear synchronizer wearing (the source being a clogged vent/breather) and fluid being pushed out of every seal. Additionally the car had continually shown signs of not keeping up the pace with other ST2 cars in class particularly in the straightaway sections of tracks. The good news is that the car's handling had really developed in a positive and transformative way.

Doing well at AMP the previous month meant that despite the above, I just had to hold on and stay on the podium as much as possible regardless of position. Survival was the name of the game. This track configuration was the shortest we'd run with sub-1 minute laps being the norm.



Saturday:

In short, things went in typical fashion: I had not procured enough fuel and the local fuel station was out of race gas unexpectedly. This meant I had to travel 60 miles round trip to find fuel for the car. I skipped practice and didn't get a chance to fuel the car before qualifying. Low on fuel, I had severe cutout entering the main straight every lap as Bondurant has a wild sweeper that exits on to the straight right at the flag station (try not to look at it or the long wall that you let the car track out to).

Yet, somehow despite my frustrations, the car was on pole. My peers all were having similar issues getting sorted. I was surprised and thought I was being joked with; yet I took advantage of that pole position.

Before the race started, another competitor forced his way into my pole position on the inside of the first turn, confusing me. I was on the front row but the wrong side! I had discussed the pole side with the competitor before the race, so I am not sure what happened, but the stage was set. On the green the other car was ahead slightly, but I managed to make a ill advised but completely successful pass to regain the front position which I maintained for what felt like a billion short laps. There's some exciting footage as I managed to lap the entire field short of the other podium cars, and as I caught lap traffic, there were some aggressive battles going on that required patience to navigate.

What's most exciting about that win is that it sealed the championship a full 3 races early! I had finally achieved my goal, which I'll go on more about shortly.

Video of the race:
about halfway in for some of the more exciting traffic

Sunday:

With some renewed confidence, I set out to qualify and in two short laps I put the car on pole, besting the previous day's time by more than a second! More exciting was that my Mom who had only seen me race once before (10 years prior, but that first race she saw ended poorly for me after having to park the car well before the checker due to a penalty).

Sunday Qual video:

During the race meeting, a surprise inverted field was called, so I had done myself no favors by qualifying on pole. However with nothing on the line, it was time to have some fun. I worked through traffic slowly to second place, with the first place car far ahead of me. He (in a classic Porsche that's one of my favorite cars) encountered some traffic and was held up just enough for me to get in striking distance. Making a late move on the one car between us, I ended up spinning (again!?), luckily not hitting anything in the process. I came around to see a white flag and went through slowly to give a thumbs up in case my mother was able to see (or needed medical attention!), and wrapped up the race first in class (due to attrition), but not overall. Almost ironic to wad up the car after executing so cleanly to lock that championship down.


The Race:
(go to 22 minutes for the spin cycle)

edit: removed late-night typical overuse of commas.
 

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captdistraction

GrumpyRacer
1,954
1,698
Phoenix, Az
Between this race and the finale, a number of changes were made on the car:

  1. A transmission cooler system was added (much to the internets' chagrin, its located inside the rear spare well but worked great, temps from 300 now down to a comfortable 225)
  2. A UHF/VHF radio system was installed with IMSA connectors and PTT, an NMO antenna was installed on the roof for pit-to-car communications
  3. A transmission temperature sender was installed, and a second oil temperature sensor was wired into the telemetry system
  4. heat shielding was placed at various points
  5. a Specfab racing floorboard was installed.... These things are great!
  6. New rear adjusters/eyelet housings for the rear shocks were installed from Olsen motorsports. Huge difference in ease of setup, now can make trackside rebound adjustments in addition to the compression adjustments on the canisters. \
  7. slider system installed to make room for a guest driver
  8. New RHR Aero wing endplates were installed
  9. Multimatic 4" brake duct system replaced the FRPP 3" system with carbon backing plates (custom fit to my OPM brakes)
  10. splitter spaced down .5"
  11. Lots of hoosier R7's procured, economy saved.
I'll come back soon and add more pictures to this post of those items
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captdistraction

GrumpyRacer
1,954
1,698
Phoenix, Az
Some more build pictures:


Replaced the forward undertray (need to replace the rear oil service tray next) while lowering the splitter and using new longer/stronger hardware to retain it.
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The car in it’s true natural state
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Altering the bumper cover for the massive 4" ducts
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the backing plates needed a "trim ring" to completely seal against the rear rotor faces. This fit is so close I had to file it a bit at the track.
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Spark plug change, the left is the old plug part (519), the new on the right (548)
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The new thumbwheel adjusters on the rear JRZ shocks (note the massive piston shaft). The old adjusters used a small window and a 1mm allen to make half-clicks (which was practically impossible to adjust trackside)
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initial location for the cooler setup
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Exhaust safety strap (and ghetto driveshaft loop). Initial run test of trans cooling lines. Trying to take advantage of as much of the oem line areas as possible.
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captdistraction

GrumpyRacer
1,954
1,698
Phoenix, Az
the final routing, going under a heat shield to cross over the exhaust and hose clamps installed

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making a mess in the back of the car. The idea here is that the fan is exhausting upward (this is by far not the final configuration, at some point the rear well is going away altogether and the fan will be flipped)

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Final plumbing with air supplies coming from the rear quarter naca ducts. This worked great, didn't noticeably raise the cabin air temperatures (though in summer it may be a different story).

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Picked up some of the hunsaker fuel jugs, and made a larger ID (12.75 to 16mm) insert for the stock fuel system.
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Minor detail, but replumbed the transmission vent line into a chinesium catch can with all AN lines. The can has its baffles removed, so its just protection against overflow with as little resistance to venting pressure as possible. before I've sent lots of fluid out the side of the car with transmission overheat (clogging a filter and hurting the transmission along the way).
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new endplates installed and looking at antenna placements.
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showing the final configuration on grid (note the antenna placement center rear 3/4 of the roof)
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captdistraction

GrumpyRacer
1,954
1,698
Phoenix, Az
Chris is that 442 number an actual Dyno recorded or an estimate. Also plug looked good did the rest of them look that clean?

442 is an average, the actual dyno peak was 458rwhp. Nasa makes us take 8 points at 250 rpm increments below and above peak and average them out. For cars over 7k rpm average out the top 8 points.

It discourages using throttle blade tunes to build flat power curves.


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steveespo

Lord knows I'm a Voodoo Child
Moderator
4,008
1,924
Exp. Type
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Exp. Level
10-20 Years
Cookeville TN
442 is an average, the actual dyno peak was 458rwhp. Nasa makes us take 8 points at 250 rpm increments below and above peak and average them out. For cars over 7k rpm average out the top 8 points.

It discourages using throttle blade tunes to build flat power curves.


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458 peak for a 2011 GT longblock with over 15000 track miles. Not too shabby.


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captdistraction

GrumpyRacer
1,954
1,698
Phoenix, Az
Final 2018 Race Report: Meet Team Economic $timulu$
(you're welcome, economy)


Having secured enough points for the Super Touring 2 Championship, it was time to have some fun and close out the season at the NASA AZ Finale at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park Main Track (WHPMPMT for short). Saturday had a sprint race, and Sunday would have a 90-minute sprint race. The latter can be driven by one driver, but I thought it would be fun to invite @ArizonaBOSS to codrive the car with me. His season was cut short with the accident at COTA, and had been a huge help over the years in getting my program rolling. That said we worked on a team name and settled on the fitting "make it rain" Team Economic $timulu$ , then quickly registered for the event.

Saturday

With all the changes on the car, I took it out for a shakedown on scrubs to validate everything was good on the car before handing it over to @ArizonaBOSS who would run the car in TT. Everything worked great. With the car seemingly settled, handed over the proverbial keys to AZB who ran it in a TT session then started a race that started in the very next session (no need for points, but a good opportunity to familiarize the car in both open and competition environments). The car ran well enough and some decent battling occurred, the car being behind the other ST2 entrants down the straight, but AZB was able to reign in the gap on the backside of the course every lap and kept cadence with the rest. Halfway into the race he radioed in trouble: a dash was showing no oil pressure, so he shut it down and put the car in a safe place. We had live telemetry in the system, and showed that the oil pressure was indeed there, so we had him drive it in to the paddock to look closer.

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We couldn't find an exact cause, but a loose harness seemed to be the problem. rerouted and zip-tied, the car was ready for Sunday after a thorough check. In other good news, coming off the track early might have been the best result for us, as there was a 5-car pileup shortly later in the race that sent two drivers to the hospital to be checked out, and demolished 3 of the 5, and heavily damaging bodywork on the remaining two. We finished 4th for the day, but that was no consequence to us.

Sunday

With good preparation, a huge contingent of helping hands (@mattlqx , @steeda5 and others) we were set for the enduro. We had a simple strategy for the race:

Being the slowest ST2/ES/ESR car, we had to win this in the paddock. Our paddock space was just as close to the track entrance as the pit lane, but allowed us to have our full team present and wide selection of tools and equipment (and guaranteed we would not get stuck behind another car in the narrow pit lane they set up for us).

Additionally, with a stock fuel tank, AZB would take the green and run the tank to practically empty, at which point 11 gallons would go back in the car and I would take over, hopefully completing the remaining laps on that 11 gallons.

As it worked out: executing that plan was exactly what we needed to do. We qualified 3rd overall, and immediately had a gap behind the faster cars. More worrisome, our fuel consumption rate was initially higher than we had expected (a burn rate of roughly 1gallon/3minutes was the estimate). However AZB stayed out for over half the race before bringing it in (a outbound radio failure also created some trouble, but thankfully hand signals from the car on the course allowed us to be prepared).

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The team went to work when the car came in and kept our driver swap and refuel to 2 minutes (and another 30 seconds to get off and then back on track). I lost a couple seconds getting into the car as I didn't get a belt secured, but it didn't hurt us in the end. I also had lost use of our Autoblip system (it failed, not sure what went wrong this time, but thankfully ManualBlip 1.0 was available to me), and both GoPro cameras ( I was running two to be SURE that they would work for once). One failed inexplicably while streaming to Facebook, and the other locked up/froze. The tablet dash also failed, which meant I had no idea where we were with fuel consumption, nor could I ask since the outbound radio stopped working.

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Despite all those system failures, the car ran mostly great (its definitely down on power in the mid range compared to the older setups and wasn't getting any better). Once fuel started cutting out, I was hearing 5 minute alerts from the crew chief who doubled as the race engineer. Our friend Will Patterson did a fantastic job of getting the right communications and calls in to help us stay on track and make it to the end. I was able to conserve some and finish the 90 minutes.

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The checker was a great feeling as the last 2 years with this car as a full time racer has been a very mixed bag, seemingly the one constant had been unreliability (as many are happy to remind me of on a constant basis!). However this year the car took EVERY green flag at EVERY NASA AZ (and NASA Championship) race, and ony failed to take two checker flags: once at Chuckwalla in February where the crank on the aluminator ejected itself at the end of the main straight, and again when AZB brought in the car early on Saturday - to which we weren't competing in anyways.

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That said, we took home first in class (I didn't realize the lead ST2 car had been stuck in the pits with an extended fuel stop)! What a great way to end the season, and was extra sweet to get to share that with @ArizonaBOSS as his own season had been filled with ups and downs.

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While I didn't get to do a victory burnout (I asked the NASA officials a dozen times, and unfortunately its just not something they can sanction), we did get to have our first podium champagne! I had also brought champagne that I had obtained when the car was first being converted to a race car, saving for just the right moment, and was absolutely the right time to crack it open with our crew who busted serious tail to get the job done. I'm extremely fortunate to have their support and I hope they all had a blast and felt their share of the victory.

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