Saturday, June 9, 2012

ESP Camaro Update - Engine Power is Back!


On the Road to Blytheville, AR This Morning

After my disappointing results at the Lincoln National Tour two weeks ago, I dropped the car off at LG Motorsports in Dallas for a dyno tune. I picked up the car yesterday on the way to Bytheville, Arkansas for the National Tour race this weekend, and am pleased (well this is good and bad, I guess) that we were actually down on power on Lincoln....not just going crazy and making excuses. We were giving up 25 peak HP at the wheels and lots of "area under the curve" especially at high RPM which is exactly how it felt on track. The silver lining is that I was still able to manage a 5th place finish with the poor setup and low power so there is much room for improvement.

Ali and I met my parents at the Arkansas Aeroplex today and I had some setup and car development plans for the car before we hit the test n' tune track. Based on my read on the car balance/performance the past two events, I decided to take a step back and "reset" the car's base setup and make an effort to reduce weight. My basic philosophy was the If I increased power from the dyno tune, reduced weight and improved the power-on  oversteer, I would improve my pace. Sounds logical, right? I started off by installing an 11.5lb Braille batter in the rear of the car. This is a 19lb improvement over the stock battery which I had mounted in the factory position. I then removed the subframe connectors and went to a softer rear ARB. I got to take a few runs on the test n' tune car afterwards and the car felt great with 28psi in the Goodyear Eagle RS tires. Transient balance was good and the car would rotate under the brake progressively and it was a monster power-on. Hopefully this translates into improved pace for the National Tour which starts tomorrow. We are running 2nd heat so wish us luck!

You can follow live timing and scoring here: http://sololive.scca.com/

We should be running around 10:30 tomorrow morning.

No comments:

Post a Comment