Sears Pointless Prep Work

Rod and I worked on the Z this weekend. The primary effort was to work on the roll bar to comply with the new regulations. There is a lot of concern that our roll cage will not pass the new regulations. Most of the prep work for Sears Pointless will be to do various patches to get the roll cage up to Lemons requirements. We might still have additional work on track, but are trying to get it as close as we understand it.

So, Saturday Rod spent a lot of time on the spreader plates. These are the six points where the bars are connected to the car. The new regulations require the spreader plates to be 24 sqin. All where originally 12 sqin. Rod got some 3/8" steel strip, cut up and we slipped them under the current plates. Additional bolts where added and we are now about half way done with tightening it all down. On Sunday we where able to finish tighten all the bolts down.

The second major issue we worked on is the exchanging of the transmission. We are not sure of the cause, but we think the syncros for 4th gear are having trouble. So, we are swopping the transmission with "new" (came with the current motor's) transmission. Right now we have the transmission out and the "new" ready to do in. On Sunday we where able to get the new transmission mounted and oil exchanged.

With the transmission and roll bar done as much as we could we moved to look into the rear differential. Rod was able to pull the housing out and get it ready of the new parts.

To complete this project some new half shaft oil seals are needed. So moving forward we still have the following needed task:

• Differential assembly and installation
• Complete roll bars patches
• Reinstall drive line

We look like Next weekend, February 26 will most likely be a work weekend.

Muddy

Karting Practice

Rod just e-mailed the schedule. There is an introductory Karting class offered on Friday, March 4 to practice at Infineon. Here is the web-site.

http://www.jimrussellusa.com/registrations?course_id=9

Anyone have interest?

Training Program

When I heard that Claus had run the last track in GT4 for countless hours, my first thoughts were those of one of my driving school instructors warning that "some people learn the line and get a head start, while others learn that crashing doesn't hurt".  Then Claus proceeded to have lap times 10 seconds a lap faster than me in the forward direction and about the same speed when they ran the track backwards.  10 seconds a lap!!!  Guess I need a new training routine for the next race.

So for considerably more than $500, I have a new TV, and with it a PS3 (as blu-ray player or course) and a copy of GT4.  I picked GT4 since it has both a Z31 and Sears point which seemed to cover both our car and the next race nicely. 

This weekend I got everything all set up.  At this point I wanted to report my best laptimes and start a friendly competition to see who could get the best times online and then compare those times to the actual track times in March.  Unfortunately GT4 doesn't work on the PS3, only the PS2 so that plan didn't work so well.  Feel free to post times anyways.

Anybody have a cheap PS2 for sale?

January Update

As January has quietly slipped away, physical work on the car has been postponed as another one of my passions enter the final stage of their season. However, this does not mean work has stop. Planning is in full swing for Sears Pointless (March 26-27). From the list of work, I estimate two days of transmission work, a day of seat change and roll bar work, and day work for brakes.

Some work has already begun. An early post indicated the results of some mechanical testing indicates that the engine is no worse for wear with further tests are coming. Sparky is actively working to decipher the ECU in Bletchley Park and I expect some Ultra ECU communication by the end of February. His code braking will allow us to get deeper into the working of the engine and hopefully see if the ECU is finding any trouble.

As we await the results of Sparky’s effort I have moved on to ask what we can do to improve our finishing position. One of the problems I would like to address is the car’s balance in the corner. Driving the car hard into the corner an oversteer conditions occurs. If this is not corrected the Z can get unpredictable with violent oscillations or if not caught out right snaps around. So, the question to you readers, is how can we get the car setup to drift better (place comments below)?