New personal best ... night from HELL ... 1.53! ... snap, crackle, pop

[JekylandHyde]

What a night. Hyde made his way to Numidia Raceway.
I've never been there before and this is the 6th dtrack for Hyde to run on.
It's almost at a 1000' of eleveation (I normally race between 32' and 330').

It is one of those out in the middle of nowhere tracks ... in the country/woods ... 97% domestic land. I was really welcomed which was cool.

Tech was fun:
Tech guy, "Nice Car."
Me, "Thanks."
Tech guy, "What's it run?"
Me, "I was runing 11.8s all alst weekend."
Tech guy, "Oh, You know what you are doing."
signs tech card and hands it back to me ... never looked at the car.

An the way to the track I had an awful metal-on-metal scraping nosie only on left turns and it was coming from the right rear. Swaybars, brakes, suspension, tires ... everything checked out. I could not figure this out so ... like a fool , I went racing anyway.

On the 45 minute trip to the track, I told myself that I was going ot break tonight. That noise was just not a friendly one.

First run:
Racing against a red F-body Pontiac and I have the video camera pointing rear-ward (wait until you see this video!). So I do a wonderful smokey burnout and pull up to the line. I forgot about how longthe sportsman tree was, so I got off boost and then back on and was asleep at the light with a .7 ot his .2 .... however, I nailed a new personal best 60' of 1.53!
I will upload the video later ... awesome friggin launch.

He we 14.X and I went 11.7 @ 118.x. I have gone 11.7 four others times on three other tracks.
I think I went 11.72 which would be a new best since I my best was 11.731 ... I may have gone 11.732 which would be friggin ironic. This was at a higher elevation so at Maple grove that would have been a 11.6/11.5 @ 120 or so.

My scraping noise got worse ... much worse.
So what does a dumbass do? ... keep racing of course!

Run 2, I do an awesome burnout and they tell us to kill our cars becuase of a timing issue.
They back us up and the second burnout sucks (the second one always sucks).
I get the light and I had monster boost built up and WHAM ... bang ... I think my LSD blew up

I pulled to the side and continued on thinking I broke an axle. I finished with an impressive 29.X run @ 30 mph. I was embarrased and asshamed when I realize that my diff gave up and I was actually dripping crap.

So Kupop on the board was there and he drove me 45 minuntes home to get my truck and trailer ... 1/2 way back to the track a tire on the trialer blew up and got shreaded *sigh*
So I drove 10+ miles on 3 tires ... got to the track, swapped the spare trailer tire on, loaded up Hyde and made a pathetic trip home.

I just got home and I broke at 6:30

I think Hyde will be down for a while.
I can't afford to keep up any more ... time to step back.
This year is killing me.

[JekylandHyde]

Intercooler update: One thing I did note was my intake temps. They were about 29°C (84.2F) at the beginning of the run and were 34°C (93.2°F) by the top of 3rd, as soon as I shifted they went down to 31°/32° (89.6°F) and were back to 34° (93.2°F) by the end of 4th. Ambient temps were probably around 25.6°~27.8°C (78°-82°F) On the GReddy IC I would see temps as high as 150°+ by the end of the track! Not bad for an eBay intercooler ~ eh?
I just picked up my slip form the car and it was exactly 80°F.

And this was a new personal best.
The slip:

1.533 - 60'
7.562 @ 92.22 mph
11.728 @ 118.74
Picked up 26.52 mph in the top of the track

My previous best 11.731, so I improved by .003
That has to be one of the smallesst margins of improvement I have ever seen.
Nothing like spending a few thousand dollars to go .003 faster


Videos ...

In-Car, rear-facing burnout video:
http://www.jekylhyderacing.com/image...ar_burnout.mpg

11.72 from in-car facing rearward ... this is what a 1.5 in the 60 looks like:
http://www.jekylhyderacing.com/images/hyde_11728.mpg

[nodrogkam]

hey man those videos are real awesome! im glad you had good runs and what not that night but i sure hope you dont give up what you're doing. hope things work out better for ya!

oh and have a good labor day.

[ScMr2Man]

How much did you wind up paying for the Ebay IC?, If you don't mind me asking.

[EVOLMTR]

Great video, loved the second one. Sorry to hear about your diff. Hope you get it taken care of soon DOC. Good Luck

[Hamsterman]

wow man, that is very nice

hope you can get it up and going again, but i know that downtime is always a factor in modding

[JekylandHyde]

ScMr2Man, the actual intercooler core was $185 + shipping.

[MR2Jedi]

you crack me up Doc! but I gotta admire your die hard attitude can't say you didn't give it all... I would say all in all a good season... what would you say?

[OEMonkey]

You've been at this long enough to know that "that's racing."
You need to change that clutch anyways so that tranny was comin off either way.

[JekylandHyde]

MR2BAD, yes it has been a succesful year IMO ... 8 races, 5 wins, a 3rd place and 4 records.
It has just been disgustingly expensive. *sigh*

OEMonkey, sure I know it's just racing, but to have this happen to a brand new tranny is enough to make me vomit. Also, why would you say I eeded to replace the clutch? It was brand new at the beginning of the year and only has 1200 miles on it or so?!

[MR2Jedi]

I have read that after 400hp the tranny gremlins start coming out. that sucks though. Lord knows how much you've spent on Hyde this season...So what are u gonna do about the trans? is there one out there for Hyde that can handle the HP/TQ you're cranking out now?

[OEMonkey]

Sorry, didn't know it was a brand new tranny.
I saw the .003 improvement in addition to assuming you replaced the clutch every season. Shows you how much I know. Anyway, good luck and don't get too down. Hyde is still the coolest MR2.

[JekylandHyde]

The OEM tranny should be able to handle what I am putting it through.
There are people running a lot faster than me on it.
The OEM LSD might be a weak link though.

I am going to dig into tomorrow to see exactly what broke.
I have a spare 93 LSD tranny with some bad gears that I can scavenge if need be.

[Strat42586]

Doc! Don't give up man. You and your countless victories and records are an inspiration to MR2 owners everywhere! Everything will work out, and you'll be running sub-11s in no time. Keep pluggin away man, you have everyone's support here, and on MR2OC.

[JekylandHyde]

Wow ... I might be right back on track.

I trailer Hyde down to David Hawkins home.
He is the owner of twosrus.com and the president of Club MR2.
We tore into Hyde and the first thing we noticed was the driver-side axle was sticking out about 1" from the diff

We tore in there first. When we pulled the axle out of the tranny ... it ended at the smooth part before you get to the actual splines! It was twisted like you would not believe creating a spiral crack around the entire inner stub until it broke in two! The spline portion was stuck in the tranny.

We removed the p-side axle to poke out the stuck part. When we took off the p-side tire we notived the end link tab for the swap bar had cracked and the end link was wedged between the strut and the body. I am hoping this was the screetchy noise I was hearing.

We also saw that both boots on the ball joints were falling apart. Since twosrus sells these parts, he had them on hand.

David is having the tab on the strut welded up this week, I am going to try to source an LSD inner stub and he is installing the new ball joints. If all goes well, Hyde will be back in businees on Friday and I can make the Weatherly hill climb the following week!

What a year. I can't believe how much the MR2 community rallies up and helps to keep Hyde rolling. I really figured this season was done for last weekend!

... to be continued ...