Finally! After 2 1/2 wks of laborious trouble shooting and cluster @#$%&^ng I got Hartman the Spec E30 on track at FSR PCA’s VIR Full event this weekend.
Got there late due to technical issues of course, but better late than never. I was able to drive 2/3 White Group sessions on Saturday and all of the White Group sessionns on Sunday.
Saturday didn’t accomplish much except to confirm my suspicions that I still had some type of electrial problem in the ignition present. I was also pretty sure that I didn’t have enough toe in on the rear, but it was difficult to really say because I was running on some clapped out 2+ year old R888s. The car was pretty loose and the LSD engaged rather easily and frequently.
At the end of the day I started poking around at the spark plug wires. They seemed loose, but after a some experimentation and inquiry, I found to be their fit on the plug normal.
Sunday a.m. Jeff Hall told me about the diagnostic connector cover removal (go figure?). As I walked on back to my trailer, I looked a little closer at some of their underhood conditions and noted how the relays were zip tied down into the sockets - Aha!
Went and checked mine and 2/3 made a little “thunk” as they inserted a little further. I followed through with the relay tie down and removal of the diagnostic cover.
First session out, no more weak feeling ignition! The motor felt smooth and strong. I realized I had not been using the full spectrum of the rpms available in the engine. I had an Eta motor tach in the cluster with no idea of what rpms I had been shifting. I decided to bounce the rev limiter in third one time coming out of Oak Tree. This would at least give me an audible of what the full rpm spectrum sounded like. The Eta tach needle would go all the way down and then bounce back up to about 3000 rpm about 1/2 second before zinging the limiter. There was my shift light, when the needle bounced back up! I also found I spent all my time Satuday short shifting.
Armed with this information I started finally hitting the max speeds I expected to see on the straights. Traqmate data from the second session indicated I was getting comfortable with the car by running three 2:27’s in a row - 2:27.6, 2:27.8 followed by a 2:27.2. No where near Skeen’s track record, but consistant for my first weekend. Traffic in Sunday’s last session only permitted me to get two 2:26’s back to back.
So despite all the drama and chaos, mission accomplished. I got the car to run decently, began to establish a comfort zone with it and identified some new issues to look into, rear brake noise, easy LSD break away and better alignment.