Jump to content

Event #18, Oct 1


Beau

Recommended Posts

Great course today. I preferred it to yeterday's course, even though I had fun at both events.

 

Joe's fastest run (#3):

 

My fastest run (#3). I had some problems with data collection at the end of the day - kept getting errors on the Solostorm app about connections. I realized when I got home that my phone was almost full so that's probably what was causing the issue.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the ride Tim! I was surprised how much an adjustment it was back to a car with doors and all those creature comforts. Oh, and street tires. 

I prefer street tires on the St. Andrews surface. On concrete at Lincoln? Give me sweet sweet Hoosiers and 1.7G of cornering! 

Luckily, Josh wasn't around to get a video of you 'tightening my belt'. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What a way to end my season. Great course for the two runs I got to do. I didn't even have my camera on for my spin. Thanks to everyone who helped push me around. It's really appreciated. 

The Forester made it home alright. Parked in the garage. The best part is this morning it works perfectly fine after sitting all night. No battery charger on it or anything. I can turn the key on without starting it and I can put both seat heaters on full and roll down all four windows at the same time and dash lights won't even dim.  Cars are terrible things    

It was a great season. I had so much fun and learned a ton. Can't wait for next year!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2017-10-02 at 5:14 AM, Corey said:

Thanks for the ride Tim! I was surprised how much an adjustment it was back to a car with doors and all those creature comforts. Oh, and street tires. 

I prefer street tires on the St. Andrews surface. On concrete at Lincoln? Give me sweet sweet Hoosiers and 1.7G of cornering! 

Luckily, Josh wasn't around to get a video of you 'tightening my belt'. 

Congrats btw. That was a great run, especially with conditions starting to get a bit greasy. 

You actually got second in pax, I was third. 

Was a great course, challenging and good to shake some rust off. 

Thanks for the codrive beau! 

On a side note, I saw 1.38-1.4g on beaus data logger peak. Is that possible? I know the 1.18-1.2 I see in a few corners is high let alone a stock s pulling that on St. Andrews surface? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 02/10/2017 at 6:11 AM, DKemp said:

The Forester made it home alright. Parked in the garage. The best part is this morning it works perfectly fine after sitting all night. No battery charger on it or anything. I can turn the key on without starting it and I can put both seat heaters on full and roll down all four windows at the same time and dash lights won't even dim.  Cars are terrible things    

Sounds like you might have a loose ground. That would explain why your battery is still charged, yet you entirely lost power during the race. Check both ends of the grounding cable that runs between batt and chassis. I've seen first hand where rust/corrosion has formed on the chassis grounding point. In that case the bolted connection looked perfect from the outside and the bolt was mechanically tight, yet there was no electrical connection. Only way you can tell is voltage diff between batt neg terminal and a different spot on the chassis.

 

15 hours ago, MRS Joe said:

On a side note, I saw 1.38-1.4g on beaus data logger peak. Is that possible? I know the 1.18-1.2 I see in a few corners is high let alone a stock s pulling that on St. Andrews surface? 

I'm not sure if those numbers should be trusted as absolute. But who knows? It's peak transitional grip you are seeing for a fraction of a second. Sustained cornering G is more in the range of 1.0 to 1.2, which looks to be the same as Tim's vette.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, MRS Joe said:

 

15 hours ago, MRS Joe said:

 

 

 

15 hours ago, MRS Joe said:

Congrats btw. That was a great run, especially with conditions starting to get a bit greasy. 

You actually got second in pax, I was third. 

Was a great course, challenging and good to shake some rust off. 

Thanks for the codrive beau! 

On a side note, I saw 1.38-1.4g on beaus data logger peak. Is that possible? I know the 1.18-1.2 I see in a few corners is high let alone a stock s pulling that on St. Andrews surface? 

Thanks! It was nice to know I can still be competitive in PAX. I don't think I'll ever get there in the formula car at St. Andrews.  :/ 

Re: G levels: No way, that's R-compound tires on concrete levels of grip. 

Body roll artficially adds G-force, plus phone accelerometers aren't exactly calibrated instruments. Still useful to compare one run to another, but I ignore the numbers and just look at the graphs. 

Which reminds me; I need to figure out a way to install a datalogger in my car before next season. Space is at a premium. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Beau said:

Only way you can tell is voltage diff between batt neg terminal and a different spot on the chassis.

Dumb this down for mechanical folks: I think the way to do this is to set your multimeter to resistance checking, then put one end on the negative terminal of the battery and one end on a major chassis/engine bolt. That should be a very low resistance. 

Then, if high, compare that to various other points until you can figure out which connection has high resistance. Like battery post to clamp, clamp to chassis, etc. 

Did I get that right? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Corey said:

Which reminds me; I need to figure out a way to install a datalogger in my car before next season. Space is at a premium. ;)

Can’t you hide it in a chassis tube? All these devices are getting smaller and smaller. Run the wiring in the chassis tubes. :)

 

Corey is bang on for trouble shooting the ground issue with a meter. As for tracing the electrical, another great place to look is for the ecu sensor ground on the engine block. If that’s loose you can have sensors see no value intermittently. I’ve had that issue personally on two cars causing codes and weird running/stalling issues. Not sure if you have pulled or did any service on it lately, if you did just recall if wires were bolted on along side a bracket or similar. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 04/10/2017 at 12:48 PM, Corey said:

Dumb this down for mechanical folks: I think the way to do this is to set your multimeter to resistance checking, then put one end on the negative terminal of the battery and one end on a major chassis/engine bolt. That should be a very low resistance. 

Then, if high, compare that to various other points until you can figure out which connection has high resistance. Like battery post to clamp, clamp to chassis, etc. 

Did I get that right? 

Yes and no. Be very careful.

Do NOT do any resistance checks with a voltmeter while everything is connected and live. If you want to measure resistance, you have to do it on a dead circuit. In other words, remove the battery first. If you try to measure resistance on a live circuit, at best you'll get some misleading/erroneous readings and at worst you could blow up your meter or hurt yourself if something shorts out. Don't do that. But if you take out the battery then do what you said, you are correct.

If you want to measure with the battery still connected, then you have to measure Volts. This is what I was suggesting. Here's how. Take your voltmeter and set it to DC Volts. Check across the battery terminals first (reality check) and you should have something in the range of 12.0-12.8 give or take. Take note of this first reading, let's say it's 12.5 V. Keep the red probe attached to the positive terminal and move the black probe further and further away from the battery. First check the clamp that holds the negative battery cable to the battery terminal to make sure there is a good connection between cable and battery. Should still be 12.5 V. Okay now move to the other end of that cable. Now move to the bolted connection to the chassis. Now move somewhere further away on the chassis. Now the engine block. If at any point you see a significant difference from 12.5 (e.g. you get 0 or maybe something weird like 2.5 volts) then there is not a good connection between the test point and the negative terminal. So just try to trace it out.

If everything looks good on a voltmeter at first glance, another thing you can try is to do the same checks while the car is running, assuming you can get it running. If you have current flowing then the voltage differences should be more apparent.

Side note:  when touching a probe to a piece of metal, always try to scratch the probe into the metal a tiny bit so you get a good reading because there might be a tiny bit of surface corrosion or dust or grease on the outside surface of the metal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...