Rebirth - 83' 244Ti - aka Gallop Racing #411 Hornet Hi-Class race car

Thunderhill this weekend went great!

So I originally had four drivers lined up but two bailed, so it was just me and my friend Terry. Not even a spare hand to help wrench, so I was the lone mechanic. My dad showed up on Sunday to do a short stint [his first time in a race car] and I let Kyle [klr142] go for a few laps after the MBZ he was supposed to pilot blew up before his chance at the wheel.

Mechanically, the car held up very well, did 117 laps [roughly 600 miles]. Saturday, a hoodpin broke and the rf corner of the hood lifted up. I discovered Sunday morning the E30 poly engine mounts I had installed had cracked and began to fall apart, but I was fortunate because I had a set of the baller new Yoshifab enigne mounts in the box for my 760 to throw on. I started 40 minutes before we took the green swapping them out and we hit the track a little late on Sunday by 20 miutes.

After an hour, the car started cutting out. I knew it was either a MAF or fuel pump. Luckily it was just a MAF.

Performance wise the car hauled butt pretty well, I never got a full clean lap in without any traffic [which is hard in a lemons race] but the quickest time I could muster was a 3:51. We were running a stock T cam, as well as a stock 13C CHRA/compressor shoved into a 16T exhaust side. It worked well and made a lot of torque, we were only running 7 psi which was okay because it was about 90 degrees out most of the weekend. The oil temps never went above 110 c, water temp was rock solid at 180 f and the oil pressure was consistently at 4 bar under race conditions.

The car was leaking quite a bit over the race, I installed an Elring RMS the week prior and it started leaking after the first 20 minutes of racing the car. Luckily, it was not bad enough to damage the clutch. The prior race, we snapped a clutch cable and semi-abused the transmission with clutchless shifting. It was seeping from the case and I did not have it sealed up in time but I did put a new cable in. I had to top the transmission off every few hours, it was having a tough time going into 4th gear.

The suspension and brakes worked exactly as they should. Overall I think in terms of laptimes we were in to top 10% of the field

The best part was we ran a clean race, no offs, spins or contact at all. No penalties either.

I ran the final 15 minutes of the day on Sunday and it was by far the most intense battling I have ever done behind the wheel of a car. Did battle with a 3rd gen Supra Turbo, a Mustang GT, Camaro Z28 and a Nissan 240SX that was well sorted. Great fun

So if 3 degrees neg camber is supposed to be good then 6-9 degrees like that ^ must be 2 to 3 times good-er-er?

Doesn't running on the inner 1/3 of the wheel kinda obviate the usefulness of wide tires..

and #blackwheelsmatter

I think the pictures/wheel size make it look exaggerated. The top picture is coming through a sweeping right hander

It's at -3.5'', seemed to like it, tire wear was not excessive on the inside but I still rotated them around after the first day

Need to get that booty down.

Yeah it needs another half coil. But it was a lot better under braking now.

You guys not allowed windows?

John V said:

You guys not allowed windows?

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We are allowed, most just remove all glass aside from the windshield though. We arrived on Friday and it was 102 degrees, I decided to remove the windows from the rear doors to give it a little more circulation, but for the next race I am probably going to put a lexan screen on the passenger side rear door to prevent exhaust from entering.

The nearby fires near Clear Lake and Amador county produced a large amount of smoke coverage on Saturday and Sunday. Temps were projected to be much closer to 100 but it ended up being around or less than 90.

We ran -2.6 deg negative camber on the front and still had excessive outside edge wear. Temps were higher, from inside to outside across the tread. I don't have the data on me right now.

We're now up around -3.5 now and the wear is pretty even and there has been no loss of braking performance (non-ABS). We haven't run practice lately so I have not taken temps in a while...probably not since the camber plates went on and the negative camber was increased. The car still pushes slightly thanks to the welded diff, so I have no intentions of reducing negative camber on the front of our car.

towerymt said:

We're now up around -3.5 now and the wear is pretty even and there has been no loss of braking performance (non-ABS). We haven't run practice lately so I have not taken temps in a while...probably not since the camber plates went on and the negative camber was increased. The car still pushes slightly thanks to the welded diff, so I have no intentions of reducing negative camber on the front of our car.

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Sounds like the 244. Did not check temps though, but I took a closer look the other day at the wear as far as how far down the wear bars are in the inside/outside and it's about dead even.

Most of the braking problems with our car has been the rear being too high which is an easy fix. Still works great, just makes it push worse than it should [in addition to the welded diff] going into corners with the additional dive. Another 1/3-1/2 coil will go off before Sonoma

So this car needs an engine. The B230FT in it is getting tired.

I could put another B230FT in it easy peasy, dial in a few other things and have a reliable car we can try and compete with at the next race.

Or should I do a junkyard whiteblock swap and spend a few races blowing **** up once I have the rally car all dialed?

pat244ti said:

So this car needs an engine. The B230FT in it is getting tired.

I could put another B230FT in it easy peasy, dial in a few other things and have a reliable car we can try and compete with at the next race.

Or should I do a junkyard whiteblock swap and spend a few races blowing **** up once I have the rally car all dialed?

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Option b.

Junkyard 3.8 swap

Orrrrr
http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=334470

cosbySweater said:

Orrrrr
http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=334470

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Hmmmmm could paddle shift that combo too!!!

I'm thinking of keeping the 262c shell to build a C class car, 3.8 swap would be good for that

3.8s are great engines and easy as hell to bolt on a manual trans and rock out! Here's the trans formula for you, 95-96 Sonoma 4cyl t5 grab the bellhousing and bolt it to a fox t5 and it will bolt to the engine, 4cylinder Jeep bellhousing from the late 80s early 90s and bolt that to a w58 and it will bolt on, a bell housing from a stick shift Dakota 4cylinder from the mid 90s will allow you to bolt a r154 to the engine so that means solstice transmissions and chevy Colorado transmissions will work as well. DO ITTTTTT

I pretty much built this car with running Laguna Seca [my home track] in mind. This weekend I got my first opportunity to drive the car there with the Lucky Dog racing league [my first event at the track with one of my cars, although technically for this event I was renting my car to another team that regularly runs Lucky Dog that has mechanical issues with their two cars.]

To meet their safety standards, we had to install a fire suppression system and a window net. Lemons is also requiring a fire suppression setup now as well so it is ready to race this year. Before this event, I also installed new brakes [same Porterfield R4 pads as before] as well as a new exhaust system. 92 db is the limit at Laguna, and they measure on the passenger side - right where the old exhaust exits. It still exits on that side, but with a turndown behind the rear tire and another muffler before the axle. It is removable and is pretty much going to be used just for sound restricted events. The organizers probably love it. I miss it's old noise

Like usual we were not really out to compete - since I was renting the car out my main goal was to make sure it was reliable enough so that everyone could complete their stints. We had 5 drivers total lined up which was kind of a lot, so we all got about an hour to an hour and a half in. We also had some folks who had cars which blew up on Saturday so we stuck them in the car for a little on Sunday. Everyone had a pretty uneventful stint in terms of incidents, but everyone had great feedback on how the car drove. We never had any emergency pit stops besides the the front hood pins fall

One thing we knew ahead of time was that Randy Pobst was going to be there. He's a big Volvo guy and we knew he would want to drive the car so we figured we would save him for last. I split my stint on Sunday with him [final stint of the day] so I started off the stint and turned up my driving a little bit compared to Saturday. Saturday I only managed a 1:58.5 lap time because of yellow flags and traffic.

I set fast time of the weekend my first part of the stint. I was really going for it since everyone else had their stints out of the way and I brought my best time down to a 1.53.5. Randy hopped in and turned a 1:58 on his out lap and it kept dropping from there until he was consistently between 1:52 and 1:53, he eventually got it down to a a 1:52.3.

Randy pulled in after 20 minutes and with 30 minutes to go I got to finish off. I had a good amount of open track so I knew I wanted to try and throw down consistent but not insanely blazing laps. I had no radio com but that was the plan. I broke Randy's fast time on my third lap and by the second to last lap I shaved 1.8 seconds off Randy's time to bring us to a 1:50.5

Right now I am 99% sure the car has a 3.73, and the next time I bring the car here I will change it to a 3.91. It will make the powerband way more usable. The car still has a 13C running 6 psi and I want to stick with a better turbo that still spools quick [probably a 19T] and run it around 13. I feel like with 30-50 more horsepower and the gear change it won't affect reliability much. With more power and the gear ratio change I think it can do a low 1:40 lap which is very respectable.

So awesome Pieper

That is awesome Pat! Pobst is the man, sounds like the car is pretty sorted. I want to drive next time

pat244ti said:

Right now I am 99% sure the car has a 3.73, and the next time I bring the car here I will change it to a 3.91. It will make the powerband way more usable.

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I should probably look at a lap of the track, but are you using 2nd gear much (or at all?), or is it all 3rd/4th gear?

We had a 3.73 blow up at a race once and swapped in a neighbor's 3.31. It made the car ~2sec faster a lap and it was so much easier to drive....because it was a narrow tight course with a lot of 2nd gear exiting corners then quickly shift into 3rd gear. With the taller gearing, I could jump on the throttle in 2nd whereas with the 3.73, I had to be gentle on the throttle and 2nd gear ran out much sooner. The gear change totally changed the car for the better.

But then on bigger tracks, I felt like the 3.31 was a detriment. 3rd gear was good for probably 100+ so it felt kinda sluggish coming onto the straight sometimes at the bottom of 3rd at a speed where 2nd has already run out.

I wonder if the turbo swap and/or more boost would help? I'd try that first. Corner exit in 2nd might hook a little better with the taller gearing once you're making more power. I think I liked the 3.73 rear on the bigger tracks we raced. 6psi and you're probably flat to the floor everywhere now (like driving obamaexpress with the diff and 255s)

Awesome that the car made it through the weekend and drove well enough to hammer on late Sunday. Regardless of finish, that's always a great result.

I’m using second gear very shortly in the Andretti hairpin, through the corkscrew and in turn 11. Most drivers of the car were only using 2nd in t11, but most of the drivers were also turning 2:00 laps. The rest of the track is 3rd and 4th.

The most nagging issue is running up the hill (Rahal straight) between turn 6 and the corkscrew. Either you are coming up it at the top of 3rd almost at redline the whole way or shifting into 4th and losing momentum. If the change to 4th would happen right before or in the middle of turn 6 as opposed to 1/3 of the way on the climb that would be nice.

Might just try upping the boost/swapping turbos the the next go round and see where that puts it. I’d also like to maybe retard the cam a bit and possibly build a better quiet exhaust (this one reduces to 2.5 and adds a few bends I don’t think are necessary which also could be affecting top end)