Race Aftermath

August 15, 2010

Alan and I will be getting together tomorrow to draw up short term plans for fixing what needs to be fixed on the car now, due to last week's race, and what we want to do to make it better for Buttonwillow. Here are a few points we'll discuss:

1. Brake Rotors - It looks like the LF rotor is the only one warped, and we have parts car rotors we can use, but over the weekend we found a source for two slightly used rotors.
2. Brakes - bleed and inspect
3. Transmission - We'll be rebuilding the original tranny and fixing/rebuilding the one that is in the car now. The original tranny has 3-4 synchro issues due to the broken synchro shoe. The one from the parts car grinds getting from 2-3 unless, as I found out those weekend, you take your time and shift in the H-pattern, instead of trying to get from 2nd to 3rd in a near straight line. 4-3 down-shifts still grind, a bit. Also, we may have a source for a recently rebuilt 4-speed. Like new! Cost is so far undetermined, but we may be able to cover it in our residual.
4. Cooling - Sunday morning the water temperature was steady at 190F, but it climbed a bit in the afternoon. We had solved most of this problem on Saturday. Repeat, most of it. A too long a fan belt might have been the main cause of the problem in Saturday and Sunday. We've got a shorter one in the car now. We'll be looking into getting an oil cooler, and in this several other Opel GT owners have offered great advice, such as getting the oil cooler out of a Volvo.
5. Engine Stuttering - It got pretty bad by the end of the race to the point that it even backfired a bit, and as I've noted it seemed to happen in hard cornering situations. We may have solved this one. Before leaving for Monterey I did a quick check of the engine and other stuff, and this included pulling the spark plugs to see how they fared. All four looked great! Dry, lightly tanned, clean white ceramic, and only one needed its gap tweaked. But in the process of doing this I found that nearly all of the screw-tabs were loose, and on cylinder #2, it was off and up inside the spark plug cable. Basically, that cylinder was almost unplugged, and in high-G turns it probably was unplugged. The problem had gotten progressively worse during the last session on track so the wire must have been working its way off. I screwed the little tabs back on tight, plugged the rat-chewed cables back in, and never once did the engine sputter all this weekend (to and from Monterey). Granted, there were no high-G turns on I-80 and 680, and no runs into the 5000+ rpm range, but also - never once did the engine bog during hard acceleration, another problem we had at the track. Cross fingers, maybe that problem has been solved, too.
6. Gauge panel - We need to replace the "Main" switch. It broke during the race.
7. Oil - Change the oil and send a sample to Blackstone for analysis.
8. Oil Leaks - The leaks seem to be at the front and rear mains, plus we've developed another minor leak at the front of the valve cover. We need to take care of these things before Arse-Freeze.
9. Secure the Car - While we can drive the car on public roads, we can't really park it safely. We can take the wheel to prevent someone driving off with the car, but we have to do something to prevent anyone flicking a few switches and starting the car. We'll either install a hidden kill switch or something similar, or maybe making a bracket that will let us lock the existing cutoff switch in the off position. Also, should we find a way to lock the car in gear?

As for driving the car to and from Monterey, a few notes:

1. Having time in the car in non-race-like conditions was very useful. You got to really listen to it and monitor the sounds and gauges under steady driving conditions.
2. The water temps hovered around 150F most of the time and got to 160F during the drive home in the hot part of the day. (The thermostat has been removed.) The car was running at 3000-3500 rpm most of the way, with a few short runs up to 4000 rpm. Meanwhile, the oil pressure was steady at 40 psi at those engine speeds and 25 psi at idle. The Opel folks I talked to over the weekend said we should see pressures in the 30-50 psi range. I think we're doing OK. I did add about ½ qt on the way down but Alan and I checked the oil when we left, and I just checked it again, and we lost almost nothing. Maybe 1/8 quart. Probably less. The leaks seem to be coming from the front and rear-main seals.
3. The car makes a lot of weird noises and some seem to come and go, or maybe it is my noticing them that comes and goes. You get paranoid after a while, but all the way there and back the gauges said everything was fine. When I finally got off the freeway and either stopped or was driving slow, the engine sounded fine. Great, actually.
4. The drive down was fracking cold! 6:30 AM is cool enough, then you add freeway speeds and no windows, then you get on 680 south going through the 40 mph lateral gusts, then the chilly fog from Benicia to Monterey.... I was hugging the tunnel for warmth. On the way back I had my jacket and windbreaker on, and it was hot. No fog. August afternoon temperatures. The tunnel was hot and when there was a slowdown on 101 just north of Salinas it got pretty uncomfortable in the car. Things to remember for the December race.
5. Noise - other than the sweet sound of a race engine, and ignoring the rattles and clunks, after 3+ hours in the car you start to realize it is a pretty noisy ride.
6. Fuel - We used a bit more than ½ tank getting there, and I just checked, slightly over ½ tank getting back. That works out to be roughly 26-27 mpg during normal freeway driving.

Besides all that, the car drove well and is fun to drive, if not more work, rougher, and noisier, than what we normally drive. But most of all, the car appears to be solid. I think getting through our race weekend, except for the tranny, was not a fluke. The engine appears to be in pretty good shape, ready for a few local autox's and Arse-Freeze Apalooza!