Just wanted to warn everyone, LOL, that we will be running the #23 RX7 in the 1 Hour GT Challenge Race this Saturday at CTMP. The car has run great at the test days and we will be out to see if we can make an hour on fuel. The race is an hour long and we have always just barely made it on a tank. This time we are making more power, but running a bit leaner, so its touch and go. No refueling is allowed in this race, grrrrrrr. So if I run out, I run out. I hope that there is a long stretch of full course yellows.

Just trying a race this year to make sure that the car is running well. There are some rule changes in the wind for next year that may make it a ton more fun to go racing again, so want to make sure we are ready.

So if you have some free time, come on out and say hi. It always, well usually always, makes me feel better to meet with all of you.

Eric

 

I'll be there! I'll come say hi, can't wait to see the car!

 

If you can't wait, go here Nummelin Motorsports Group - Main Page and you can see pictures and some In-Car from it. Make sure to say Hi when you come by.

Eric

 

Oh Happy Days!!!!!

Just went out to the garage to move the car so that I could get to some stuff and the car started right up. just like it had been running 10 minutes ago. I was expecting it to, but you never know with them darn rotating triangles. Didn't need to boost it or anything. Feelings of joy are just enveloping me at this moment.

The last time it was running was unloading it off the trailer after the Time Attack Day at TMP in May. The tune we put in must be great, FINALLY, LOL.

Eric

 

How bout some pictures of the car?

 

Ummmm....... a couple of posts before yours I have a link to my website that has a number of pictures. If you can't get to the site, here are a few.

Oh yeah. For this race the car will have a different style of wheel on it with a fair bit more offset to allow the wider Conti's to fit.

Eric

 

Oh crap yeah I derped lol sorry. Looks awesome man good luck!

 

That license plate in Pic#2 is starting to show up more in pics..sort of like Waldo..lol!

 

Might stop by Saturday morning for a bit. make sure you get those Conti's up to temp/pressure

 

Best of luck on Saturday!

 

Any idea where I can find event details? Time for the races? It'll help me plan my saturday.

Thanks

 

http://www.casc.on.ca/sites/default/...tion_sched.pdf

 

I just got back from Niagara Falls New York and picking up my new set of KFP Magnum brake pads. Groovy Metallic Gold colour. You won't miss these on the car. These are supposed to be a trick piece for car brake setups that can't get Cobalts or the new Raybesto's ST-43's. Both make great pads but not for the single piston RX7 Calipers. I will need to work at bedding them in Saturday morning in Practice and Qualifying and then should be good to go.

The Conti tires are being mounted as I type this and I will be picking them up tomorrow and putting them on before loading the car on the trailer before going to the track Saturday. They are about 3/4" wider than the Toyo's I have been running and about 1/2" shorter, so it should be interesting. I hope they work great so that I can run the car on some modern style tires.

The only thing missing is the new 3 way shocks. That will be a winter project now.

Eric

 

I always appreciate any advice from racers. I may not use it, LOL, but I sure listen.

Be great to see you again.

Eric

 

Do you have the info about those tires already? If not send me your email address i can send it over to you.

also if you do plan on running the 4piston calipers you should take a look at the Hawk DTC60 they work really good... I have tried the Colbalt pads when i ran for another WC team and didn't like them as much as the Hawks. but might give them another try on our car as i herd good things about them.

 

a few pics from the weekend.

 

Wish I could have made it out this weekend. How did everything go?

Engine still running strong Eric?

 

Well, a long story....

Everything looked great going into the day. Had a plan to clean off the tires and start bedding the brakes in the Practice Session, bed the brakes in the second session and try to set some kind of time, make some changes before the race, then giv'er during the race and do as well as we could in an hour while trying to set a quickest lap in the car and make an hour on fuel.

Everything was going according to plan. We were running really, really rich in the first Practice and Dave figured out it was because the AIT Sensor was reading air inlet temps of 33C and richening the "h3ll" out of the mixture to compensate. The last time we ran the car the inlet temps were reading 98C and everything was set based on that. So we made some changes for the second session and the car started running cleaner, but we needed to go leaner still for the race.

With the new Conti's, the car was handling just great. I could position the car where I wanted to especially in the fast corners. In 2 I could pick the apexes off with no issues and even dive in and catch the dirt on the very bottom of the corner and let the car slide out to the exit curbing. Just great. In 4 I could go through flat, granted I wasn't at full speed yet, but things were very good. With the new KFP Magnum front pads and the Vortex race compound rear pads getting bedded in, the car was stopping with absolutely no muss or fuss and at a very deep point.

Needless to say I was getting excited. So we looked at the readings after the Qualifying session that I just floated around in trying to get a handle on the tire pressures we needed to run as the Conti's were building pressures like we had never seen before with any other tire. Bedding the brakes and just shaking the car down in and we decided that we needed to go further leaner, another 12% (wow), pull the pump shot enrichment back a bit and further trim the AIT effect as it was really adding a ton of fuel. Things were done and we waited for the race call.

In looking at the Qualifying times I knew that we had a bit of a long day ahead of us. In the GT Challenge Series, a number of teams have really stepped up their efforts and there are some wild cars in the GT4 class. In looking at the times, there were 5 cars in the 1:35's 2 in the 1:36's one at a 1:40, then me after farting artound to a 1:43, followed by about 4 other cars. GT4 was agin the biggest class. There were Turbo 240SX's, brand new Grand Am Camaro's, Supercharged Cobalts, a super cool Miata with a monster bridgeport in it, a couple of M3 clones and the Turbo AWD Subaru that I raced 2 weekends ago and pulled a 1:36.0 out of. I knew that with the adjustments we were good to go, but realistically the best we could hope for was a 1:37, so if nobody broke I could move up from the 8th starting place to at best a 7th, LOL. Oh well, it was like going to a gun fight with a knife, but we were going to do our best and see what happens.

Our time was due, so I dressed up in costume again, was bolted into the car, fired it up and man it sounded great. The exhaust was crisp and barking with a ton of pulse. The throttle response was hard again and when I was driving up to the Mock Grid just a touch of the throttle would spin the rear tires and the A/F's were reading from the 12's to the 13's again. OH HAPPY DAYS.... I pulled into the 31st starting spot out of 42 cars and waited. The F1200 (Formula Vee) race was going on. All of a sudden it went quiet, never a good sign. Then a couple of wreckers went out, then an ambulance, then the Doctors Car, then the extraction crew, then the track repair crew. All are bad signs and all of us on the Mock Grid were wondering what was happening. About 15 minutes later a Durham Regional Patrol Car came down the front straight, NEVER A GOOD SIGN! Then another police car........ and we waited. It had dragged on for about 45 minutes with no information other than the wreckers bringing some of the cars back. We heard all kinds of rumours and it was getting dark as it was about 5:30 at this time and very overcast. Finally an announcement was made that the race was cancelled for the day due to light conditions and would be rescheduled for sometime on Sunday.

This sucked as I had promised my wife that I would do some tiling because we are hosting the whole family for Thanksgiving Dinner and our fireplace surround needed to be covered, girls.... So we packed up and headed home and didn't actually race in the event on Sunday. In looking at the results on Mylaps, we could have made up a few positions and finished 7th in class and about 24th overall if everything had gone well for us in the race. A little disappointed in that we didn't get to race, but really looking forward to next year when some rule changes may mean we don't have to race against cars with tons more power than we have.

I want to find a late fall test day at Mosport so that we can put in some times and see where we stand, but I am very excited about how the car is running, its consistent, strong and flexible. We are just down on overall grunt and if I had a chance to do it over agin, I would have gone for the full BP instead of the 1/2 bridge. At Mosport, power is king. And thanks to Patrick (Mr. Cool from here), MArk and Dave for helping out again. It som much better to have good people who have your back and I appreciate all they do.

At least the car looks pretty racey.

Eric

 

Oh by the way the only people that came by to say hi were a couple of guys that were extremely interested in my truck and only mildly interested in the car. WTF!!!!! Having to talk about mid 70's Dentside Ford pickups when I have a cool racecar? Where is the fun in that, LOL.

Eric

 

These shots were taken by a Professional Photographer, Richard Cobourn. I think some of them are great shots as they show the car working very hard in Turn 3. After seeing these shots, I am really depressed that we didn't get to race as the car is damn near perfect through the corner. Look at the sidewall deflection on the outer tires, pretty equal and in a couple the car is flat and almost lifting the inner front, but not quite.

Enjoy.

Eric

 

Sucks you didnt get to race last weekend.

Now, dont take this the wrong way....

but when is the last time your car has been properly corner balanced and aligned? I'm not talking about laser alignments from the corner garage, I mean a proper alignment with toe plates and a measuring tape and camber gauges?
If you have, what are you running for camber all around? and toe front and rear?

After working with Sasha at SG Motorsport for a season of CCTCC, Compass 360 this past season running World Challenge and working for Uli Furtmair for the past 2 years wrenching on Porsches.....running aggressive toe and camber numbers work.

Also, why dont your rims/tires fit the car? They seeem soooo sunk in, you need spacers to widen your track width or much wider rims.
We would add massive spacers to the front of the Hyundai to get the track width wider and Sasha loved it, we even spaced the front fenders out wider so we could get a wider stance.

Oh, one more thing.....you REALLY need to get 4 piston calipers.

Bring that engine to me over the winter and lets make it a Full Bridge-port.


PS, I still have that lower control arm jig for the Cougar

 

PS, I still have that lower control arm jig for the Cougar

Hmm... would work for my Contour too...

 

Well Joe, the last time the car was corner balanced was 2 years ago and its only been on track 4 times since then. The alignment was done by me in June and I have been doing them for myself for about 20 years when I don't go over to Al's dealership to use his setup as an easier way to do it. I use the trailer as a level base with a laser level to ensure that I am somewhat close to a flat base. For cambers, I am running just under 4 degrees in the front on my Longacre caster camber gauge and just over 2.5 degrees on the rear. Both of these are static and do change over the suspension movement. Caster is stock. I have a set of bump steered spindles as well that I need to put on, but they will require me to change the rack arm length and I just haven't had time. These settings were based on discussions that I had with the Toyo Race tire engineers about 5 years ago and I get very even tire temps across the fronts and the rears, so I am happy. We have not set it up to take advantage of the Conti's as I was only trying them out for the weekend. I am going to take it in to either Can-Align or Simone after I swap in the new struts as that will change everything again and I need a new baseline to work from, but before that I need to see what tires I am going to run next year and talk to their race engineers for recommended ranges.

For Toe's, I have a set of toe plates that I got from a Cascar team about 8 years ago and I think that they work okay. I just use a tape measure, but as I still have poly bushings in the front and rear, the suspension deflects on the bushing more than the inaccuracy of the tape so I believe its okay. I run 0 degrees toe in the front and 1/8" toe in in the rear. I string the car myself and as this type of 4 wheel alignment has been good enough for most teams I will keep doing it. This is a compromise setup that works well at Mosport and as I usually run there I am happy with it. I get good stability and great tire wear acceleration and braking performance. I am fully aware that you can run really aggressive camber angles, but this wears out tires a lot faster and adds compromises in other areas to benefit cornering effects.

On the wheels, the ones on the car are 3/4" more negative offset than stock and I am running a 3/4" spacer on the front as well. That means the front track is a total of 1 1/2" wider than stock. At this track, I can sometimes catch a front fender at full lock and compression in the front. On the rear I sometimes run a 1/2" spacer on each side, but what I have found is that when I use a wider track in the rear, I need to bump up the rear spring rates to compensate for increased roll or use a bigger rear bar. Either option requires me to improve the amount of rear tire grip somehow and as I have 4 sets of wheels all about the same offset and size, I just try to make do running the 225x45x15 tires that fit on those rims.

Regarding the brakes, I know that 4 pistons can potentially work better, but in the 15 years that I have raced this car, I have never run out of brakes using the stock single piston setup. I have reached sustained rotor temps of just over 500 degrees and using the temp paint the most temp I have generated on the front rotors is between 750 and 800 degrees. I have a complete 4 piston setup in the garage ready to go on, but I like the reduced unsprung weight of the single and until I am going fast enough to exceed the braking capability of the stock singles or if I was getting supremely out braked then I would, but I am not at this time. Who knows about next year?

The big difference between what I am doing and what Sasha is doing with the Castrol Team or Compass 360 has done with its pay drivers, is that I am paying for all of this out of my own pocket and I am just a normal guy with a normal kinda job. Everything you are discussing I know and understand fully, but I need to keep the costs down to a manageable level as this is a hobby for me. I plan on continuing to do this for a few more years and keep a more than full time job and maintain 2 houses, 3 dogs and a family. I have seen to many guys get in, blow huge chunks of cash, go fast, get divorced and then disappear after about 5-7 years. I have been doing this since 1982 and I want to keep doing it. I have been reasonably successful over the years, but the most important thing is that at the end of the weekend I have had fun and everything is paid for.

Make sense?

Eric

 

Makes perfect sense!!

To be honest, all the pictures you post, dont show the amount of camber you run at all. Your camber numbers you list above are perfect!

Toe plates a measuring tape a pair of jackstands and a string will always give you the best alignments.
After both our World Challenge cars got tangled up in a nasty fender bender at the Mosport race, we had to replace all the suspension components on the right side of one car. Even after all the damage done to the subframes and body we did a full 4 wheel alignment in the paddocks and the cars were out for the race the next day. Both drivers said the cars handled great!

I'm not saying the single piston brakes arent working for you, but dont you think with the larger 4 piston calipers and rotors you could then brake later into corners and beat out that guy with the single piston brakes?

 

What happens is that the car generates so much grip that the outside wheels compress the poly bushings and straighten up the wheels some. This brings the instantanious cambers closer to about 2 negative on the front and almost 1 on the rear. In Turn 3 at this point we achieve a momentary g load of almost 1.3 G's. Look at the inside wheels to see the static camber as they are unloaded and show the camber better.

I have been trying to think of a way to rod end the front suspension for years to correct for that. I can buy the kit that AWR has, but its well over $700 by the time it gets here and thats another race weekend for me. I have also thought about running more front camber to compensate, but again that reduces the contact patch under braking. I have been pondering making up tubular control arms to take out all the compliance, but just haven't worked out the details yet.

Thanks for caring,

Eric