A little late recap of our weekend racing at The Reunion in Bradenton.
We went into this race looking to test and push our program further with some new gear ratios we worked up to fit an "outlaw spec" t56 car. The idea is a long first gear, much longer than anyone else is running, due to the shock we see to the radial tire when shifting from first to second gear. This has plagued me for the last 3 years, trying to pour the power into the car and it would knock the tire off in second gear even on a really well prepped track. So, getting that 1-2 shift further out where we have more wheel speed is very ideal for us. Being a small displacement engine with giant turbo, we can never recover from spinning in most cases and its cost me quick a few races.
This new ratio works great, and its gonna be a game changer for the program. I think it will really help other guys in the Outlaw class as well. The PGS Gearset Ratios are 1.98, 1.54, 1.21, and 1.00 (handcuffed 5th/6th). It took some getting used to driving, as I am used to jamming the car in 2nd much sooner, so i had to "wait" for the shift light, and I did short shift the car a few times trying to get used to this new gear.
One other problem we had with all other gearsets is the shift splits on 1-4 gears are very wide, making our gear change RPM drops large. Big RPM drops while under big boost causes a TON of stress on our engine program. We think this is the root cause of the rod pin-bore egging out issue we've been dealing with. We designed this gearset to have tighter splits between gears is dramatically better. So we think this gearset cures two major problems!
Due to the big change we had to start from scratch with the clutch tune... and with my Tuner being at a X275 race I enlisted the help of Eric Luzinski to accelerate our learning curve. This was the right move! After only about 4-5 passes we had the clutch working much better, and by the event on Friday we were printing 1.1x sixty foots. This event, we probably made 10-12 passes and out of those we had six or more sixty foots in the 1.1 range ---> Consisting of something like 1.26, 1.20, 1.17, 1.17, 1.13, 1.12 and 1.10 sixty foots. The 1.10 came on my new PB pass which was a 6.63 ET.
The gear can hold and requires a lot more power and RPM on the initial launch, so to allow that high RPM and power without striking the tire we also have to add a lot of clutch slip in the mix. A lot of people were asking about the cloud of dust when we would launch and that is the clutch dust. It was wearing a LOT at first when we didnt have a good handle on it, but on the 6.63 pass I only saw about .012" of wear which really is not much more than i would see on the previous gear setup.
In eliminations I full sent it, and got a new PB 6.63 but we had a strong crosswind, when the chute was out and i was slowing it picked up the car and i started sliding, and ended up spinning out at 190+MPH. The 6.63 was good enough for #1 qualifying spot so we were in good shape.
But on that pass we found it had a huge boost leak in the log, it was only making 65psi in 4th gear, when it should be making 80 or more... we found our intercooler pipe off the turbo expanded and broke out at the seams, so we found a local shop and John was able to fix it up and get us ready for eliminations on Saturday. We were down to the last 30 minutes putting it back together but we made round one!
Round one we had a bye-pass so I used it as a test hit for the heat of the day tuneup. I wanted to make sure it was soft enough for a hot track so turned it down and just did a 1-2 gear hit. Clutch worked great, 1.17 in the heat of the day. Now I had more confidence for our other elim rounds.
Round 2 we had a Troy Klutts low 7 second camaro, so I did run the car all the way out, but kept the same soft tuneup in the clutch as it was hot and the track was going away a bit in the afternoon heat. We got through that round and again got a 1.17 sixty foot and ran a 7.0 letting out after 3rd gear.
In the finals, we were running a 7.7x foxbody which was very consistent all weekend. I wasn't "going for it" here, I wanted the WIN, so... we went with an even softer tuneup but somehow spun at the line and lost the race.... Honestly, I am still in disbelief about it. This was one of the hardest to swallow losses I have had. Normally I always say "you never know in stick shift racing" and I usually agree with that, but we had a super consistent car and I continued to adjust based on competition and track conditions... There was no reason it should have knocked the tire off like that. By far one of the most frustrating losses for my team.
This race we had a 2 person crew for most of the week, and we worked super hard to try and win this race. Honestly, the 2-person crew works really good for us, and while it may be a bit overwhelming... John and I both know our roles and what we have to do to get the car to go rounds. John poured a lot of heart into this race getting the car ready to even get to this race, and then fixing the intercooler last minute as well... We both really wanted to win this race... We really needed the morale boost... but it just wasn't meant to be I guess.
But, we learned a lot, the car is in one piece. I got a new PB and we have this thing sixty footing and there is room to go FOR SURE with the boost leak fixes and just getting more passes under my belt with this new gearset. We are setup really well for success at the next race which is Street Car Bragging Rights in NC in May. I want the record back, and now I am more confident than ever that we will get it.
Thank you to Chris Delgado, John Evans, Eric Luzinski, Jesse Bretz, for helping at this race. Thank you to all my sponsors, PGS Transmission, Precision Turbo, GSC, TiCON, Powerhouse Racing and everyone else who makes this all possible.
