"Shout Out" for Nationals Tech Staff

#1

I wanted to give a “shout out” to the guys in NASA Tech who worked so hard dealing with all the race classes at Nationals. Unlike other organizations, NASA likes to draw staff from the racer ranks reasoning if you’ve been behind the visor you can better understand the driver of the race car you’re inspecting. My view is I see NASA trying to acheive more “reasonableness” and less “chickenshitness” with respect to tech. Seasoned racers working tech know what’s important and what can wait until the next event in terms of safety and NASA gives them the discretion to make those decisions.

Below is a little bio I put together on the guys in the NASA shirts who working tech last week. I spent a lot of time with them that week and it was great getting to know all of them more closely.

They take on probably the most thankless task at these events…you either love them or hate them depending on the situation. These guys are seasoned racers, mechanics and fabricators and I feel sometimes don’t get the respect they deserve.

Bill Arnold, Chief of Tech Nationals: Bill owns a BMW repair shop in San Rafael, CA. He is a long time racer having done road course and rally racing. He has competed in the Targa Newfoundland seven times (seven long tows from California ~70,000 miles total!). He has raced the La Carrera Panamericaas as well. For a short bio on Bill check out: http://www.marinij.com/sanrafael/ci_10631117

Alan Blaine: Alan sports a thick grey beard and a quiet reserved demeanor. But don’t let that fool you! Allen is a long time motorcycle and sports car racer. He has campaigned his trusty Camaro in SCCA (ITS), NASA CMC and Open Road contests like the Silver State Classic and Pony Express 100 in Nevada. During dinner last week we were asking one another what’s the fastest each has ever driven…Alan related that he had driven his Camaro at 192 MPH on the open road in the Pony Express 100…this was its terminal velocity. The thing is he drove 192 MPH not only in the straights…but was able to hold a turn at this speed. He said it still gives him goose bumps when he tells his story. Alan had a part in the recent rule change dropping 50lbs out of our SE30s…he was seeing over 100 pounds of ballast in the passenger compartments in NorCal cars and saw it as a safety concern. Alan owns Blaine Fabrication in Santa Cruz, CA.

Jeff Mohler: Jeff looks like a 6’2’ Teddy Bear…he has been racing and associated with NASA for at least 15 years. I first met him when he raced Pro 7…but he took a departure from racing and became involved on the rescue/towing crew, tech and lately has been race director for SE30 and Spec Miata in NorCal. Jeff is an accomplished private pilot and just before heading to Nationals got to fly a historic 1930s Ford Tri-motor airplane.

Bob King: Bob is the elder statesman of the group. He grew up racing karts and midgets then graduated into formula cars. He has never raced a tin-top car. Laguna Seca is his home track and he has raced there in its original configuration and in its current transformation. His favorite to race car was a Formula Mazda. Bob is retired and can no longer race. He is a heart transplant recipient. Bob volunteers at SoCal and NorCal events working grid and tech. He loves racing and despite having to bring a small bag of pharmaceuticals he makes it to the track. He never sits down and is one of NASA’s hardest working volunteers.

Please join me in thanking these guys for a job well done.

Cheers,
Scott

#2

Nice job all and thanks for weighing me a million times!!!

#3

Thanks, Simon.
I’ve got a really trick go/no-go gauge comming to check for the correct flywheel profile. Hope to distribute to all directors.

The 19mm open end wrench and 22mm wrench make great swaybar check gauges.

Yes, one can machine the backside to remove as much as 8-plus pounds from the existing 18 pound flywheel.

RP

#4

What kind of dyno was used at Nationals?

#5

Almost positive it was a dynojet of some kind.

#6

My car dyno’d at something like 155/153.

Also, I want to publically thank NorCal Spec E30 Regional Series Director Scott Neville for his time and efforts at the event. My car required a lot of attention during the three days of racing (was finally able to stay with Brandon during the dry warm-up Saturday morning) and I could NOT have done what was needed.

Scott spent vacation time, and some personal money to be there for Spec E30.

I heard nothing but compliments about Scott’s work. He was friendly, thorough, reasonable, and committed to doing a good job. The weekend was MUCH better because he was there.

Carter

#7

That’s why Scoot deserves his jacket. He is one of the key reasons I joined NorCal spec E30. Scoot is ALWAYS like that.

#8

Thanks a bunch Carter and Kevin. I had a lot of fun and look forward to helping out next year!

Simon summed up the program pretty well. Going into this event I made the assumption that if a racer was going to attend the National Championships then the simple compliance items (spec springs, shocks, sway bars etc.) would all be correct and that Tech would not need to consume valuable time checking part numbers. As such I did not include that in my inspection program. As you know we made a rule change that SE30 race cars would be required to use the track spec fuel and made the recommendation that all SE30 attending Nationals should be fitted with a simple fuel sample port. Having a spec fuel eliminated one variable for us, again this allowed us to concentrate on other items.

My program would be measuring/testing the following items: Engine Horsepower/TQ , weight, camber, fuel samples, track width, ECU visual inspections (looking if the box had been opened), and a shock dyno. We also checked ballast (if the spares were the right weight). Jeff and Bill had figured out a way to use the dyno to check drive ratios…if you guys noticed we would record the speed when the car was in 3rd gear at 4000 rpm.

With the limit of 4 cars being sent to Tech per session, Dave Lang (the RD) and myself, made the obvious stategy to concentrate testing on the top qualifiers and finishers. I sat next to Dave during qual and race sessions and we would come to an agreement on which cars to send to tech and what to test. If there was a consistent front runner that pulled away from everyone…then that car would be subject to increased scrutiny. If the front pack looked pretty equal (which it did) then the choice of cars to test was a bit more random. What I mean by that is Dave would say “let’s dyno the #1 and #3 finishing cars”…we picked finishing positions to test rather than names.

OK…what to do with the dyno data when we don’t have any numbers in the rule book? What I did was spreadsheet out the dyno runs of 7 cars that I know have legal rebuilt motors (5 are from Valley Motorwerks, including mine) in NorCal that have the biggest HP/TQ numbers in our group based on the DynoJet runs we have been doing at Thunderhill. I then averaged all the runs to produce an average HP and average TQ curve which I would plot all the Nationals dyno runs against. My plan was to look for “outliers”. I didn’t see any nor did Bill Arnold. However Tech was prepared to have heads pulled, check cams with a Cam Doctor, weigh pistons…the whole nine yards. But I didn’t want it to go that far and thus came up with what I thought was a reasonable screening approach. Making the dyno runs public was a good thing too. And I was happy to see that all the racers agreed to allow that.

Speaking of public dyno runs…I scanned the plots at work yesterday and made a pdf file:
http://www.norcalspece30.com/pdf%20files/SE30_Nationals_Dyno_Runs_2011.pdf

My overall goal was to convince myself, NASA Brass and all the participating racers that this was a fair fight. I feel that it was B)

#9

Here are my plots I did during Nationals for HP an TQ. The thick blue line is the average of 7 known legal rebuilt engines, most 0.20 overbores. The strongest legal engines in NorCal are 0.20 overbore and balanced.

#10

very interesting and logical.
What did you do with the car with the pink trace?
cheers,
bruce

#11

[quote=“leggwork” post=59914]very interesting and logical.
What did you do with the car with the pink trace?
cheers,
bruce[/quote]

Thanks Bruce,
The pink trace fell within the range of the averaged data and wasn’t considered an “outlier”. What I really wanted to do with my spreadsheet plots (but couldn’t figure a way to do it with Excel in time for the Nationals) was to plot a shaded area representing the entire range of the representative NorCal seven motors. That way a potential HP or TQ curve “outlier” would plot out outside the shaded zone. I also tried to make a box & whisker plot out of the NorCal data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_plot but had trouble figuring out do that kind of plot in Excel in time to generate one.

Cheers,
Scott

#12

Scott -

Thanks for posting this data. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, as they say.

Since the scales change on the dyno printouts, your comparison plots are quite helpful in seeing the relative strength of different motors. I gotta give a shout out to my friend/nemesis/fierce competitor Eric Palacio. 2nd place with the little peashooter he had? The kid can wheel a Spec E30. :woohoo:

[soapbox]
For next year, I would support a policy that anyone with a chipped/cheated ECU be sent home immediately, not just lose previous results. I don’t think the non-compliance was intentional but that kind of violation should have stiff consequences.
[/soapbox]

#13

Admins - can we move the dyno results (and discussions) out of this thread and into another thread for better archiving/visibility?

#14

ah, ok, that makes sense
bruce

[quote=“sneville44” post=59915][quote=“leggwork” post=59914]very interesting and logical.
What did you do with the car with the pink trace?
cheers,
bruce[/quote]

Thanks Bruce,
The pink trace fell within the range of the averaged data and wasn’t considered an “outlier”. What I really wanted to do with my spreadsheet plots (but couldn’t figure a way to do it with Excel in time for the Nationals) was to plot a shaded area representing the entire range of the representative NorCal seven motors. That way a potential HP or TQ curve “outlier” would plot out outside the shaded zone. I also tried to make a box & whisker plot out of the NorCal data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_plot but had trouble figuring out do that kind of plot in Excel in time to generate one.

Cheers,
Scott[/quote]

#15

Eric, Jonny A., and myself were all dyno’ed AFTER the National Race (which was obviously wet). Grace and most others were dyno’ed earlier in the day, after Warm-Up (which was a dry session)

Here’s something that MUST be considered. Heavier Wheel/Tire setups (such as most everyone’s rain setups) make a very significant difference in power to the wheels. I was running Denny Barker’s #21 and dyno’ed before AND after the National race. The runs before the race were on the dry setup (D-Force Wheels with shaven and worn tires) and made 10hp and 10ft-lbs more than I did after the race (full-tread rains and TD Pro Race 2’s). The rain setup is roughly 4lbs (+/- 1 lb?) per wheel heavier than the dry, and it was a 10hp/10ft-lb difference. My post-Nationals dyno runs are on page 10 of the pdf.

My point is that we need to figure separate averages for cars on minimum-weight wheel/tire packages and another for a rain-spec setup.

[quote=“Steve D” post=59916][soapbox]
For next year, I would support a policy that anyone with a chipped/cheated ECU be sent home immediately, not just lose previous results. I don’t think the non-compliance was intentional but that kind of violation should have stiff consequences.
[/soapbox][/quote]

I disagree. Brandon was DQ’ed from both Qualifiers for something that he didn’t realize was illegal. Or, maybe he did (although I doubt it). Regardless, I think that the punishment fit the crime. I see no reason for sending someone home over that.

#16

[quote=“Steve D” post=59916]For next year, I would support a policy that anyone with a chipped/cheated ECU be sent home immediately, not just lose previous results. I don’t think the non-compliance was intentional but that kind of violation should have stiff consequences.
[/soapbox][/quote]

I disagree. Starting at the back, (and losing previous results) with a fixed/legal car, seems appropriate to me. Sometimes guys do have no idea. Recently we had some guys DQ’d for illegal steering racks, a couple guys had recently bought the cars thinking they were completely Spec Legal. They had no idea. They were Dq’d even if they finished dead last out of 32 cars. Fitting. Take away points from previous two races. Fine. But to send a guy home… If that happened to me, I would go home and never return, sure that is OK if you think I tried to cheat, but if it was completely unknown to me… I would be really pissed. Unreasonable in my opinion.

Scoot, great work. Looks like the fastest guys were just plain fast drivers! Congrats to them!

#17

That +10hp/torque wasn’t from rotating weight.

Somewhere stashed on my computers I have a spreadsheet that does the math for rotating drivetrain weight. If I stumble across it in the next couple of days, I’ll post it or the link I got it from. The #'s work out such that rotating weight will make a small but useful difference in 3rd gear acceleration, but the difference in 4th gear acceleration isn’t enough to give a crap about.

When I weighed my rain tires vs. shaved tires I got ~2 lbs diff. Certainly a set of heavy rims, like Koenig’s, could account for the other 2 lbs.

Dynos runs are usually done in 4th gear, I believe. If that’s correct rotating drivetrain weight that might make a little difference in 3rd gear acceleration, will be only barely visible on a dyno.

#18

[quote=“theShoe” post=60209][quote=“Steve D” post=59916]For next year, I would support a policy that anyone with a chipped/cheated ECU be sent home immediately, not just lose previous results. I don’t think the non-compliance was intentional but that kind of violation should have stiff consequences.
[/soapbox][/quote]

I disagree. Starting at the back, (and losing previous results) with a fixed/legal car, seems appropriate to me. [/quote]
I agree with that approach for regional races.

For Nationals, there should be an expectation that the cars are thoroughly prepped and known to be legal.

Maybe my perspective is colored by Spec Miata where ECU cheats are known to make a significant difference. A stiff penalty will discourage that kind of development in our class.

#19

[quote=“Ranger” post=60210]That +10hp/torque wasn’t from rotating weight.

Dynos runs are usualy done in 4th gear, I believe. If that’s correct rotating drivetrain weight that might make a little difference in 3rd gear acceleration, will be only barely visible on a dyno.[/quote]
If you can offer an alternate explanation, I’m all ears. But, the car was dyno’ed twice, merely 4 hours apart, and the results were conclusive. The graphs looked exactly the same, consistent changes between the 3 pulls, just down 10hp/tq.

If you look at Palacio and Allen, they had power in the low-mid 140s, as well. But, I promise you, they were not at a 10hp/tq disadvantage to the average of the field.

#20

[quote=“Z3SpdDmn” post=60214][quote=“Ranger” post=60210]
If you look at Palacio and Allen, they had power in the low-mid 140s, as well. But, I promise you, they were not at a 10hp/tq disadvantage to the average of the field.[/quote]

Sorry but you are wrong there.

I did 3 pulls with Fred and SteveD a couple of hours after Friday qualifying race, which is the same conditions as those dynoed after that race. Was using my ‘dry’ setup (same d forces with shaved tires). My HP/TQ was 1 LESS than my whopping 143 after nationals. I was also 10 down to the others who dynoed then. So yes I was down on HP.