Every engine we have had so far has burned oil. Enough oil that we are checking the oil at every pit stop, adding a bit, and heading out again. We are jealous of other cars that roll into the pits and don't even pop the hood. Since this engine burns oil after a fresh head, we know that it's bottom end, so we yank it out and keep it as a spare.
Another thing I want to work on is getting more real-time feedback from our data in the car. It is very useful to look at the data later and see why one driver is faster than another, but sometimes I want to know if it's faster to take an earlier apex, but I won't know until I get on a laptop later. I have a Race Technology DL1 with the small display, but trying to read numbers on that in a corner is nearly impossible. I decide to see if I can make something that will be easier to see.
This is my first proof of concept, just learning to drive some LEDs and an LCD display. Initially this is just based off of a potentiometer for input.
The next evolution is to get it talking to the Race Technology through serial. For this first test I was using horizontal acceleration as the output since it's easy to see it change just by tipping the DL1.
The further I tilt the DL1, the more the LEDs show.
Next I got some multi-colored LEDs, a dimmable LED driver, a smaller Arduino, and fit it into an old stereo faceplate carrying case.
The LEDs are Red/Orange/Yellow/Green/Blue as they go across. I also added water temp, water pressure, and oil pressure warning lights.
With that project out of the way, we also wired up the car with wireless video. We chose to go with the setups used for RC airplanes mainly due to how expensive it was to use cell phone data for race car video. Being able to see what the car was doing live on the track seemed like it would be really handy with a monitor in the pits. This led to an interesting looking little blue antenna on the car.
This transmitted back to our pit station exactly what the GoPro was seeing.
We got our freshly rebuilt engine into the race car:
So we then moved to making our transport setup for our spare engine. With a little hacking, chopping, and welding, we had a car that would roll into our race trailer.
We added the shelves to help make use of space:
At home in the trailer:
Good use of space and neatly packed with our spares for Laguna Seca:
