Friday Practice (6/26/2020) Ridge Motorsports Park:
It's been a long break from racing due to Covid, but we are back! There's a few extra stipulations for the race, like having to wear a mask the whole event, no spectators, and spreading out the pits more. Being spread out means we can't all fit in the hot pits, so we have further to drive and mandatory 10 minute pit stops. But today we are just checking out the car on a practice day. Rolling up to the track we see we will be sharing the track with some fun hardware!
The biggest change to the car is the front lowering spindles by GK Tech, correcting the bump steer and roll center. I'm interested to see if I can feel a difference. As I'm getting ready to go out, I can't get the radio to transmit. Using the actual radio button it works, but not the normal button on the e-brake handle. Then as I start rolling towards the track entrance, the right front is making a faint squalling noise that is abnormal. Hmm.. hopefully that clears up with a little heat in it. The ST43 brake pads also squeal like a stuck pig. At least that's perfectly normal.
Even during the first warm up laps, I can feel a difference with the spindles. It is definitely subtle, and only something I would notice in more of a back-to-back type situation, but the car noticeably turns in better. As I get up to speed out on track the noise gets worse... it's another wheel bearing. This is getting disgusting, we never used to have any wheel bearing issues. Now with aero and bigger tires it seems like it is constant. At least this time we came prepared, and have a couple spares.
We get the wheel bearing swapped out and put my dad in the car. His session goes fine, the wheel bearings are good. Finally! Next up is to look into the radio button. It looks like the e-brake is adjusted a little loose, and when it is yanked up it pulls on the button cable. Time to adjust the e-brake and pull apart the button. I find the broken connection, then have to go to the registration building for power and solder it together again. We also raised the front of the car as we were scuffing the splitter pretty hard in turn 8a.
I now have a tire pyrometer, so after the next session out on track we take some readings to look professional and make people think we know what we are doing. I'm pretty sure we at least fooled the old man in the Corvette next to us.
The middle of the tire is a bit hot, so we dial down the pressure a few psi. The right front seems relatively happy with it's camber setting, but the left front we dial a bit of camber out.
We also discovered that the reason we were pushing fuel out of our vent was our exhaust was heating up the fuel tank. With the supplies we had on hand.. we did a bit of a MacGruber fix using safety wire, a truck hub cap, and some foil tape. Hey, as long as it works, right?
With the suspension dialed, we are now hoping tomorrow we can get Randy Pobst in our car to see if our changes get some better feedback this time around!
