Colonel Red Racing 2005 STI Race Car

[Sgt.Gator]

Saturday Enduro. The rain had stopped since the end of the SPM race 2 hours before. Weather apps showed 0% chance of rain. The entire field went out on slicks. I was using the Medium boost map. The first few laps were dry. Then Lap 5 it was raining only in turns 10-11-12. Everybody pretty much realized the problem at the end of the back straight with going too fast into turn 10. It wasn't too heavy, slicks could go thru at 50-60 mph. The front straight was dry. With no chicane the speeds really cranked and were able to brake almost normally for Turn 4 (Turn 1 in Non Chicane).

Then it started to rain a bit harder, but the front straight and brake zone were still fine. My pit crew saw dark clouds coming and checked the weather apps. Major Rain coming! Lap 11-12 we decided to box for Full Wets but they had to run back to my trailer and get the tires and tools. One more lap and they'd be ready. It was one lap too far.

I came down the front straight at 120 mph then saw a gray wall of rain in front of me. No flags <yet> at the Starter tower station. I lifted off and started braking at the chicane turn in. That's a long way from turn 4. The brakes went to full ABS. At Turn 4 I was able to slow to 60mph but there was zero traction. As I went off the track I noticed there were 4 other cars already off in front of me and I might hit at least one of them. For 7 long seconds I slid sideways across the grass, hitting the NASCAR wall at 12 mph. I hit almost entirely sideways on the driver side. Right in front of me only a few feet away were severely damaged C5 Corvette and Spec E46 that had T-Boned into him. I figured my race was over, but what the heck I restarted and backed out of the wall. The Subaru AWD was giving me grip to get going! I threaded my way past two Pro 3 cars stuck in the grass/mud and back on to the track. Hmm, everything feels pretty good. No weird sounds, no shake. Wow!

I made my way around and into the hot pit. The crew looked over the car and said all 4 wheels seemed to be pointing in the right direction! On went the wet tires but the race did not restart. The NASCAR barrier was too damaged and would take too long to rebuild. That ended the race with me in 3rd in class.

Back in the paddock, the damage was a bent front fender, bent rear fender, rear bumper cover folded, left rear taillight lens broken, and diffuser broken on the left side. A little pry tool work and gaffers tape and we are ready to race on Sunday.

 

 

 

A Little Tape and Ready to Race!

 

[Sgt.Gator]

[Infosecdad]

That'll buff right out :-D

 

Right at 11:20... She didn't even try to turn, just straight off

Edited May 5, 2022 by Infosecdad

[whitexc]

Great footage. I enjoy watching that stuff.....especially since I'm unable to partake.

 

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

[boxkita]

Driving PIR in the rain and going for a ride at the end of the straight separates the wannabe's from racers. Hitting the wet grass at speed is harsh introduction to physics.

 

Watching you go ~130 down the straight on the previous lap to pass the pro3 cars? Wasn't that fun? The next lap you were 10mph slower and went off.

 

Congratulations on keeping your cool and not getting involved with the vette.

[Sgt.Gator]

Driving PIR in the rain and going for a ride at the end of the straight separates the wannabe's from racers. Hitting the wet grass at speed is harsh introduction to physics.

 

Watching you go ~130 down the straight on the previous lap to pass the pro3 cars? Wasn't that fun? The next lap you were 10mph slower and went off.

 

Congratulations on keeping your cool and not getting involved with the vette.

 

Laps 11 & 12 the track was wet but manageable, much like turns 10-12 in laps 5-10. But during my lap 12-13 the floodgates opened up in a very specific line right at the chicane turn and the track became a lake. That caught us all out. 5 seconds later and the Start / Finish stand had the yellow flags out and I would have slowed a lot more before hitting the wall of water. If you look at my G-Meter you see I go from acceleration to neutral to deceleration at the chicane. From there all the way to the wall it was like riding on a air hockey puck.

 

Sunday was great racing in Group 1 SPM. A Spec E46 and I had a nose to tale battle swapping leads for 22 minutes, then my DS couldn't keep up with 6700 RPM shifts and the oil got too hot. I had to back off and concede the race to him.

 

Despite both situations it was a blast! I really enjoyed the weekend a lot. Having my buddies at Retro Racing down from British Columbia again was great.

I'm skipping Pacific in two weeks to get 3 good test days in the 818R with it's new 4 scavenge pump system. We are already converting the STI to the 4 scavenge too.

Then on to the newly re-opened Spokane County Raceways, now called Qlispé Raceway Park. The Kalispel Tribe is committed to making it a first class facility and I can't wait to race there.

[Sgt.Gator]

 

 

At the start I was able to move up to 4th where a great race ensued between me and Simon Asselin in his Spec E46 for 3rd. I tried to pass him on the straights but he would late brake me into the corners, sometimes on the inside, sometimes on the outside if I tried to block the inside. It was awesome racing because we were both giving each other just enough racing room to not make contact. I was finally able to pass him and make it stick, but now he's right on my bumper in every set of corners. I have to pick a line that blocks him just enough to discourage a late brake attempt. We are in 3rd & 4th but then the car in 2nd drops out for a DNF, now we're fighting for P2. It was great. Then 22 minutes into the 30 minute race my oil temp alarm is going off and smoke is coming from the front left hood area. I know exactly what it is. To stay in front of Simon I was forced to rev to 6500 – 7000 rpm. My current dry sump setup can't keep up with that much blow by for that long and went positive crankcase pressure, blowing oil out my engine bay catch can. I had to shift at 5K for several laps to cool things down. By then he was long gone and and I ended up in 7th in class.

The fix should be a 4th scavenge stage and HTD drive. We have that work done on the 818R, so we'll have some data soon.

[Sgt.Gator]

When Arcflash first suggested I switch from an AIM MXm to the AIM PDM32 I was very hesitant. I was thinking it was just a fancy PDM. But now that I've spent some time with it I see why they wanted me to switch, it's very impressive. Calling it a PDM is not really accurate. It's a massive datalogger (4GB) with a ton of inputs that integrates with standalone ECUs, eliminates a great deal of wiring, has a a choice display Dashes (6" or 10") to rival any other, and GPS. Alarms, Shift Lights, even datalogging on the Voltages.

 

It's not just for race cars, it has plenty of inputs to control wipers, lights, all the usual street car accessories.

 

Next fall we will put one in the STI.

 

If I were building a new race car I would certainly start my specs with this unit.

 

If anyone wants a powerful and compact datalogger/display, my AIM MXm is up for sale. $1,000.

I also have an AIM Lambda Controller as a separate item. It works with the MXm or any AIM dash, over CAN. But it does not include the Bosch Motorsport LSU4.9 wideband O2 sensor, you'll need one of those.

[Sgt.Gator]

ORP 818R Test

We took the 818R to Oregon Raceway Park for it's season first testing after the extensive upgrades to the dry sump, ECU, datalogging, and display.

First the good news:

The new AIM display is fully readable in the sunshine in an open car. In the past this has been an issue but the screen brightness was fine.

The new 4 stage dry sump with HTD drive worked better than expected. At cold startup idle the vacuum was -3.1 psi (about -6-7" vacuum) Before with the serp drive this was the when we had max vacuum, usually around -8 psi (-16" vacuum). That's a lot of vacuum at idle, so the new HTD drive has fixed that issue. Here's snapshot of the typical AIM data:

 

 

At full tilt, 6K+RPM, 17psi boost, we still had -4.2 psi (about 9" vacuum) and 58 psi oil pressure. Out standing! The least our datalogger captured at high rpm was -3.5psi. Here's snapshot of the typical AIM data:

 

 

This means we will certainly be swapping the STI over to the 4 stage and HTD drive shortly.

 

<<>>

The second session the engine called it quits. In the video you can see the moment it happened in the small video box from the camera facing backwards. It smoked so much for awhile I thought I might be on fire and was ready to pull the fire system. So did the corner workers who called out the fire brigade. But it was all internal, no oil spill, no chunks of aluminum engine block and pistons sprayed across the engine (yes, it's happened that way before).

 

I have a new engine sitting on a stand, we'll pull this one out and swap over the accessories, and install.

This engine was used from a 2015 STI and bore the brunt of the learning process about dry sumping and oil issues. We intentionally did it that way because we knew it might be expendable, and saved the new closed deck/forged pistons block to be installed once we had the formula correct.

 

I'm re-evaluating my desire to hit all the ICSCC races this year. The tow costs have skyrocketed. I figure at least $500 in diesel for round trip to Spokane, plus $200 in gas at the track. I may only go to ORP Club and races at PIR.

Let's Go Brandon!

Edited May 19, 2022 by Sgt.Gator

[boxkita]

It looks like you were doing good until the half pipe? Any idea what failed to produce all that smoke?

 

Jeez, I wish I'd driven that track more than twice. so much fun.

[Sgt.Gator]

It looks like you were doing good until the half pipe? Any idea what failed to produce all that smoke?

Jeez, I wish I'd driven that track more than twice. so much fun.

 

It failed in the brake zone leading uphill into turn 8 ( AKA The North Bowl). All the data logging showed no problem until it popped. We won't know what failed until we pull it apart. Right now the STI is taking precedence before we start on swapping the 818 engine.

And yes, it's a lot of fun. I wish it had one long straight, but it is what it is. Come down for one of our ORP Club days as my guest and drive one of your street cars next time your are in Central Oregon on vacation.

[boxkita]

pit crew practice system

https://seattle.craigslist.org/est/wto/d/snohomish-nascar-practice-tire-changer/7476999543.html

 

[Sgt.Gator]

pit crew practice system

https://seattle.craigslist.org/est/wto/d/snohomish-nascar-practice-tire-changer/7476999543.html

 

 

I wonder if it's setup to practice cross threaded wheel studs?

[boxkita]

I wonder if it's setup to practice cross threaded wheel studs?

 

ouch.

[Sgt.Gator]

I looked bit harder at the data, there's a weird oil pressure glitch that wasn't there before...occasionally the oil pressure drops from say 60 psi to 29 psi and shoots back up, but it takes place in 2 tenths of a second.. The kind of change that wouldn't even start to register on a gauge.

 

I'm starting to learn how to use RS3 Analysis, it's got some good tricks. I've come to the conclusion that the oil pressure drops only happened at a few places on the track, but the same ones every time. They share one thing in common: Turns with high Gs laterally and negative vertical Gs (decompression) at the same time. Under Compression it never happens, and under neutral vertical it doesn't either. Right hand turns were far worse, but Left hand turns with decompression also caused a bit of pressure drop too. Nothing compared to the Right turns though. We were running clockwise so I suspect CCW would have caused more Left hand turn issues.

 

Oregon Raceway Park is most famous for it's elevation changes combined with corners at elevation transitions. In this data I hit -.67 G of decompression, and 1.5G lateral. I probably could have run around Portland International Raceway or Spokane (now called Qlispé Raceway Park) and had no problem. And the STI with it's taller and narrower tank might not have seen it.

 

I've run the 818R around ORP for years now and not seen this particular oil issue. However we usually run more oil in the tank than this time.

 

In short, there was not enough oil in the 818 tank to keep the drain covered 100% with oil under those combined G conditions. Hopefully I'll never make that mistake again......

 

The LINK ECU has some very cool logic for setting alarms. Instead of the simple Alarm whenever oil pressure drops under 20 PSI type gauge alarm, we can set up to 50 conditional events that set off alarms such as:

 

If Oil psi <40psi @ >4,000rpm then alarm. If oil psi <45psi @ >4500 rpm then alarm....etc., up and down the rpm band. We just have to be careful not to set off a bevy of false alarms, which we will learn from experience and data reviews.

 

The STI should be ready to go with it's new 4 stage system for testing by June 13-14. It doesn't have a LINK or AIM data yet so it will be the old style gauge watching.

[Sgt.Gator]

I'm in the ICSCC race at Pacific Raceways this weekend, July 16th & 17th, in the Group 4 race as an ST class car.  I'll have the STI with it's updated dry sump system. I hope to see some of you Seattle area folks there!

Gator

[Sgt.Gator]

Good racing last weekend at Pacific Raceways. Our STI ran flawlessly. It's rare that all I have to do is put gas in it and go! Oil Temps, Coolant Temps, Crankcase Vacuum were all good. The key is  to shift at 6K 90% of the time, with only occasional runs to 7K if I have to pass a competitor. The rear diff got a little warm, reminding me I really need to install a diff cooler. I set a  new PB in ST trim at Pacific, a 1:32.53.  There was no NWMECS Enduro his weekend, so I stayed in ST trim for both races.
In the pics: It was the the 20th anniversary of Pro3 racing which is very popular in the PNW. We had special races for them, 57 Pro3 cars in one race!
The driver side air deflector I spotted on this GT1 car is an idea I'm going to steal for days over 90 degrees. 
Igor's yellow Viper GT1 car is super fast, when I see him in my mirror I know it won't be long till he's blowing by me. Saturday he did great, but Sunday something went wrong and I beat him. 
And it was great racing with the team from Retro Racing again out of BC. I'm so glad they can cross the border again!

 

[Sgt.Gator]

Ver1 of my CRR Driver Cooling Ducts. We'll be testing them at Portland International Raceway Aug 13-14.
The question now, do I need to drill holes in the rear window to let the air out?  I've looked for aero studies about holes/slots in the rear window but can't find anything in the literature.

[ehsnils]

I think that the inlet of the duct shall be a bit further forward because at the A pillar by the door there's usually an underpressure.

Aerodynamics around corners of an item is tricky.

 

[Sgt.Gator]

17 hours ago, ehsnils said:

I think that the inlet of the duct shall be a bit further forward because at the A pillar by the door there's usually an underpressure.

Aerodynamics around corners of an item is tricky.

 

I considered that and it's easy to do. But first I want to see how much air is coming in with Ver1 at the track. There's a Lowe's very close to PIR!

[boxkita]

maybe its time to read the rule book. a mesh screen windshield is legal in some classes...

[Sgt.Gator]

The Colonel Red Racing Team took another podium at the 2022 Cascade Festival of Endurance 8 Hour race at Portland International Raceway. We made it the full 8 hours to finish 3rd.  Boxkita crewed again this year, thanks for your help. There's a lot more write up to come but here a short video Boxkita took at the race end when I pulled into the pits: 

 

[Infosecdad]

"My Subaru can go eight hours!"

[Sgt.Gator]

Some drivers love driving the night sessions, others hate it. You have to have confidence you know where the turn entry is even though you can't see it in the unlit portions of the track. If you've never been endurance racing, last lap to the checkered flag, the crews come across pit lane to the wall to wave to the finishers.

[ehsnils]

My biggest fear for night driving is - Moose.