Houston..We've got camber!

Yes it's true. The beast finally has significant negative camber at it's disposal. I installed the camber bolt kit last night. Without an impact wrench, all I can say about the experience; PAINFUL. It really sucks not having a decent compliment of proper tools. Two hour jobs turn into 4 hour jobs. But, in the end, it worked out. With basic arithematic, I calculate I have over -2 degrees of camber available which should help significantly for my autocross racing. I only plan I seting it up to -1.8 degrees as I still use the beast for cruises, etc. I have a booking with Scott at Can-Alignment on Tuesday Feb 5th to redo the alignement.

Now, I'm still dealing with my fuel starvation issue, including something new. The "shooter/plunger" on my carb has decided to take a break. Thanks to Shawn at Wildgoose, he will have a look at it this evening so I can get it back by Friday before the Show & Shine on Saturday.

That's all for now.

Autocross PITL Event 2

Another PITL Event 2 went off without hitch. This time around we had 94 competitors which is still pretty big. After the drivers meeting, the action got under way around 10 AM. I was in the first Marshalling group which was fine by me. Do it now and get it over with.

About the car; Event after installing the high volume gas pump, I'm still experiencing fuel starvation after a few gears in the high RPM range. Installing a clear fuel filter revealed that the pump cannot get the fuel to the carb...either there is something blocking the main line, there's vacuum in the tank, tank pickup assembly has a problem, or the cam/fuel pump pushrod has worn and not getting full effeciency from the pump. Even with the problem, the course was too open that I was on the gas long enough to be affected....except a little on my last run.

Weather started off sunny, but around 11 AM, clouds moved in and remained for the rest of the day. There was even a few sprinkels of rain throughout the afternoon, but not serious enough to hamper traction.

My first 2 runs, the car was simply WAY too tail happy...I couldn't keep it from going sideways on most turns including the big left hander on the top end. I ended up drifting through that turn in full countersteer. I wish someone would have video taped that as I'm sure it must have looked pretty good. Before I started my 3rd run, I dropped the rear tire pressures by 1 psi, for a total of 30.5 psi. I also decided I would slow down more for that big left hander and try and hug the inside cone, and power out drifting to the outside cone of the next gate. Well, everything worked accoring to plan. I had way more traction, and cutting that big turn gave me my best time to date of 43.6xx.

For the 4th run, I had Stephen O. come for a ride. He informed me that a soccer mom ripped the front of the Sunfire off 2 weeks ago while she was turning into a parking lot, so he was there for ride-alongs all day. I hope everything works out for him with his new car purchase. For the 4th run, I was plain out of control trying to better my time I simply overdrove the car all over the place. I did a power slide through the bus stop and clipped the last 2 cones. Oh well...it was still fun.

On the last run of the day, while sitting in the start box, I kept saying to myself "DON'T OVERDRIVE IT...DON'T OVERDRIVE IT". I take off always keeping that in mind. Midway through everything feels great. Although I was pushing it quite a bit, I made sure to slow down quick in the right zones, and power out feathering the throttle to get good traction. The car did miss/stutter on the stretch before the big left hander and that REALLY PISSED ME OFF! I didn't lose focus though. As I'm headed for the stop box, I knew the last gate entering the box was tight as 80% of people hit it more than once during their runs. But I was trying hard for my best time. And of course, I clipped it for a 2 second lost. Again, I WAS REALLY PISSED OFF because I knew the rest of the run was nearly perfect. Sure enough, I hear my time "44.45 with 2 second penalty". This would have meant a 42.45 run without the penalty. I new it was a good run, but not over a second faster than my best of the day. That time would have probably put me in the top 25 (of 94)...arrrgghhh

Oh well, like the saying goes, "I bad day of racing is still better than a good day at work".

Now this week I'll be busy working on the beast again. I have to figure out that fuel problem, install my new camber bolts and tie rod sleeves, and fix my tail pipe. I'm even considering pulling the intake again to try and figure out where that damn oil leak is coming from. If I'm feeling REALLY couragest I might cut my coil springs to lower the car an inch and stiff up the suspension more.

Lapping at Dunnville..

Well today was the long anticipated lapping day at the Dunnville Autodrome road course. Weather was great and it's a very nice, scenic drive down Hwy #3 to Dunnville. This was my first time on an "official" road course track with my car. Unfortunately, the anticipation was short lived.
I got there around 7:45 AM and there was already 4-5 cars there waiting. I met some guys from Newmarket, Mat & Andrew. They were driving an '92 Mustang 5.0 with some suspension work, and minor engine upgrades. Car looked in really good shape.

Derek (the organizer) basically gave a quick rundown of the rules, and let us go for some laps. So I stuffed my helmet & belt on, and proceeded to do a "recon" lap just to get a feel for the track since I had never been on it. I did 2 laps at a "cruising" speed, then on the 3rd one, I let 'er rip...well, until I got to 4th gear on the front straight and my dreaded bog/stutter made an appearance again. That basically put a damper on my whole morning since I couldn't get any top end speed. The car felt great in the turns, but ultimately, I could not get all I wanted out of it. I'm pretty sure I have the problem figured out, now I just have to fix it.

I will definitely be signing up for another one of these lapping days once my car is running like it's suppose to. Even though I was limited on what I could do, it was a complete blast.

You can have a look at some of the pictures HERE from the day.

Where do I start...

It's been so long since I posted something, I don't even know where to start. Because of that, I'll try and make this as much of a "Cole's Notes" version as possible.

The Long Cold Winter

I didn't get much done on the car until about March. I was tired of looking at the bad paint spots on the roof and rear bumper so I decided to try and fix that up. You can see all the picture details HERE of how that went. Overall, for me anyhow, it's better than looking at the bad spots. Hopefully come winter 2007/08 I can put a fresh paint on the beast.

Next, I had to fix the leaky differential cover. Again, I removed & cleaned the cover and made sure to drain ALL the oil out of the differential. I reinstalled and used conventional 75w90 gear oil WITHOUT the limited slip additive which will hopefully give my aging LSD unit little more slippage torque. As a side note, I checked the slip torque on the LSD before I changed the oil and only got 33 ft/lbs, and that's with a cold unit. I would imagine it being in the 20s when hot. I will check it again after a few miles with the new oil and no additive.

Next on the list of attention was brakes. I did a thorough check of the brake system and flushed the brake fluid with the Ford DOT3 (550F) brake fluid. The brake pads where still good but the front rotors were pretty much on their last leg being a few thou below minimum spec. I knew I would be signing up for the PITL Autocross series for this season and the sponsor Williams Performance Friction was providing some street/AX type compound pads so I didn't change anything until I got the pads. All the brake lines checked out perfectly.

Next...oil change & lube. Since the engine is getting a little tired (increased oil consumption), I added a can of "Restore" to the crankcase. I need to get at least another season out of this thing.

Final task; MAJOR CLEAN JOB. With all the sanding & painting I did to do the touch ups, and having the car sit all winter, there was quite a build up of crap all over the car. Several hours later with the help of Mr. Meguiar, she was all nice and shiny...well as good as a 20 year old paint can be anyhow. I also did some cleaning under the hood.


Let The Games Begin

March 31st was the Open House for the MOSC Push It To the Limit autocross series (PITL) which I had plan to run this season because they use the Oakville Bronte GO Station lot which a like, series registered drivers get some free brake pads, they give a 2% Street Tire bonus, and I really like how this group runs their events from my experience last fall.

May 5th - PITL Season Opener - The weather couldn't have been better, and what an amazing turnout...114 competitors showed up for some AutoX action, including a couple of Lotus Elise's, a Ferrari 348, a bunch of Miatas, Subarurus, etc. and 6 F-Bodys (including me) which were all from Toronto FBody Motorsports (TFBM). After everything was said and done, I ended up 43rd out of 114 drivers, and 18th out of 40 or 50 in my "C Mod" Class (official results are still not posted as of this writing). I was really happy with how the car handled and with my performance. You can see pictures HERE in the gallery.

May 13th - Well I had to replace the fuel pump. It didn't leave me stranded but I barely got home. I checked the pressure and it was only running at 2-3 lbs at idle, and 4 lbs at 2000 RPM. Although that fixed that problem, I'm still getting a high RPM cutoff/bog. At wide open throttle, once it reaches the 4000-6000 RPM range, it feels like the car just shuts off until I got off the gas and let the RPMs go down. It doesn't affect the regular cruisng/driving around though. I suspect it might be something with the ignition module. I have a spare one that I will swap out and see if that fixes things.

May 18th - Seaway Mall Cruise - Since the car is somewhat presentable, I decided I would do more cruises this year and this was the first Official one of the season here in Welland at the Seaway Mall. There was good weather, and a nice turnout of various cars. I ran into a few guys I knew including Trevor (AKA Screech screech.ws) who decided to take the 76 Olds out for a spin. I'll probably be doing a cruise/drive Sunday afternoon from Grimsby to Port Dalhousie, and then again Sunday night there is a cruise in Niagara Falls. Click HERE for pictures of last nights cruise.

On a final note for today, I bought all new brake rotors and also Hawk HPS brake pads (from Wildgoose Performance) and will be installing those either today or tomorrow, as on Monday, I have a 4 hour meeting with the Dunnville Autodrome. :) Should be fun. Lets hope I don't end up in the weeds. ;(