Re: OT: My 2024 BCHMR Day 1 (for all my devoted followers).

Alan <nuh-uh@nope.com> wrote:

Well, it was great to get back on track.
 
With the help of the son of one of the previous owners of my previous
car, two weekend days of work leading up to this past weekend put the
car almost back together (although that "almost" came back to bite me a
little bit). We went through the car—checked and bled the brakes and
clutch, changed the engine oil and made sure everything was properly
bolted, and when it was all done, we discovered that:
 
1. We needed new brake pads all around.
 
No problem! Our local race supplier, (shameless plug for Frank Micucci
of driversedgeautosport.com) promised to have brake pads for me first
thing Saturday morning and changing pads on a formula car such as mine
is normally a 15 minute job at most.
 
2. The battery needed to be replaced. The car has an alternator, so it
will run if started with a jump battery, but then you need someone to
come to pre-grid to jump you again when the one minute signal is given,
and if you should happen to kill the engine in a spin... ...well, not
having a working battery makes for too many problems.
 
No problem! After much searching for a less expensive option than the
Odyssey PC545 (now renamed ODS-AGM15L) which really was overkill for a
car that wasn't running a total loss system (thanks to the Honda engine
rule requiring that an alternator be included) and which was out of
stock in the locations that had it for the best price, I found out that
lithium-ion batteries have come down in price a lot, and I could get a
200A (cranking amps) NOCO NLP5 for $127 from Amazon with free 2-day
delivery. 1.5lb vs 11.4lb.
 
So all was looking good, except:
 
1. It appears that quality control at Hawk Performance isn't all it used
to be, and when I went to install my new Hawk "Blue" pads into the LD20
calipers... ...they wouldn't fit! At first, I assumed I hadn't retracted
the caliper pistons far enough, but closer inspection showed that it was
the overall width of the backing plate that was just marginally too big.
It appears that the backing plates are punched out of sheet steel and
the punching dies are starting to wear out.
 
Fortunately, in a racing paddock you have neighbours and my neighbour
(and good friend) Marty Knoll (shameless plug for MK Technologies; maker
of quality pit equipment for racing at almost every level) had a trailer
with both an angle grinder, a vise, and electric power (note to self:
add DeWalt cordless angle grinder to my tool arsenal), and so I was
looking at the depressing prospect of spending perhaps 30-40 minutes
grinding down the width of 8 pads so that they'd fit properly.
 
Even more fortunately, when I grabbed the first pad of the 8 to fit onto
my car, I by chance grabbed the one that fit the worse of all of them.
So the grinding ended up taking only 15 minutes or so. But still, that's
a 15 minute job that ended up being 30-40 minutes; maybe even a few more
as I discovered I'd run out of the cotter pins that we use to hold the
pads in place and I had to round up some new ones.
 
2. And I'd forgotten just what a pain it was to get beneath the cover
that reveals both the battery and the car's ECU and actually change the
battery. It was clear that it was worth removing one of the front
suspension's coil-over dampers to gain better access. And then...
 
...I hadn't reckoned with the fact that the new battery was a lot
shorter from terminal to terminal than the Odyssey I was replacing. The
Odyssey was 5.56" between terminals and the NLP5 from NOCO was only 4.5"
long overall. Fortunately, the NOCO had enough different options for
connecting the main leads that I was able to use the connection from the
side of the battery to make everything fit.
 
So with both of those jobs running long (and with a 20 minute forced
hiatus in the time before the first session for the drivers meeting), I
ended up missing the practice/qualifying session for the combined open
wheel and sports racers group. Honestly, not a big deal, but it did mean
that I would have to bed my brakes on the pace lap for the first race
(which was pretty easy as I was starting from the back and I wasn't
changing compounds anyway).
 
So, first race (and all of these sessions are short in vintage racing—15
minutes) I started from the back of the pack, hung back enough that I
could do "lunges" forward followed by hard braking to get enough heat
into the pads and rotors, and when the green flag dropped, I quickly got
by all the Formula Vees, the very slowest of the Formula Fs and worked
my way past Erle and Keith and was hoping that the race would last long
enough that I could close up on the single FC in the field and take the
outright victory (he was a novice, and I'd already noticed on the
practice day Friday that he wasn't yet running good enough lines, so
there was probably a chance). No luck. I don't have times yet, but first
in FF, second overall and I was probably 2-3 seconds faster than the
next fasted FF even running on two year old used tires.
 
Next race, my best time in Race 1 meant that I was gridded 2nd next to
the FC, so I figured I was in with a chance of winning outright. As the
race started, I found it pretty easy to keep up with him on the first
lap—not really a surprise, but I think it surprised him and so after
keeping pace with him for all of lap 1 and most of lap 2, he eased off a
little in turn 9 of that lap and let me by. Talking to him afterwards,
he confirmed what I thought at the time: he wanted to watch my lines for
a while and figure out how a 1.5l Formula F Honda with maybe 118
horsepower could keep up with his 145hp Pinto-engined FC. And for the
next however-many laps of the race we did that. And he learned that if
you want to be fast, you have to use ALL the road.
 
I'll post a video shortly and you can see for yourself how much room he
leaves on corner exit.
 
But for the last 3 laps of the race, he clearly felt that he'd learned
enough, and I sensed that he was going to try and get back past me for
the win. And that's when he learned that being faster and getting past
someone are two very different things.
 
Unless you have so much greater power and speed on the straights (and
assuming you drive a line that lets you unleash that speed and power at
the corner that exits onto the straight), you're going to have to pass
in a braking zone at the end of the straight. And suddenly, I wasn't
driving a line that used all the width of the track—entering from wide
and exiting from wide. Suddenly, I was braking for each corner where
there was a realistic opportunity to pass from the MIDDLE of the track.
For three laps, I defended each time he was in a position to make a
late-braking pass attempt.
 
The first time I did it in turn 1 of the ante-penultimate lap, he tried
to late-brake and go around the outside of me, and that is almost never
a winning strategy unless you're trying it in the first of two linked
corners. Then outside becomes inside in the second corner...
 
...but then of course, you'd defend that differently. 😎
 
So for three laps, I frustrated all his attempts to get around me, and I
took the outright race win.
 
Tomorrow would tell a different story, but we'll get to that.
 

Nice to hear that you’ve had the time to get things sorted, even with the
additional surprises.

Just back home this afternoon from my own exploits..will be awhile to sort
things out & get caught back up at home.

-hh