924Board.org

[924RACR]

PUB Racing retook the track at Waterford Hills to open the 2007 last weekend, May 5-6th. We were looking for a strong start to follow up our great finish to the 2006 season - and we got it! To recap, the last race of the season gave us 1 win and 2 second-place finishes behind the #66 BMW 320 of our perennial competition, Doug Spencer and Fast Frog Racing. The last race of all, in particular, was very exciting, as we broke into the 1:19's with a 1:19.664 while chasing Doug (very closely), within a second of the lap record, and very nearly managed to pass for the win on the last lap!

Prior to the race weekend, we'd done only modest prep-work, having many other track and race cars to attend to; we limited ourselves to maintenance, oil changes, alignment/corner balance, and some dyno tuning. As previously mentioned, while on the dyno we isolated some of the misfire that had been plaguing us for years, freeing up approximately 5 hp across the entire powerband. We also replaced an ignition pickup sensor in the distributor, which was expected to completely eliminate the misfire.

Qualifying quickly evolved from a moderate session of scrubbing in the new "sticker" tires to a bit of a sprint; the second lap clocked in at 1:19.775 and we knew we had a runner! However, we weren't the only one moving quickly, and Doug bested us by 3/10ths of a second for the ITB pole. No matter, we were comfortably right back on our pace, and the car was running quite well - all that dyno time paid off, and the engine was pulling very well.

Race starts, and pretty soon Doug's got his mirrors full of Porsche... for 10 laps straight! Again, the pace was very fast, clicking down into a 1:19.46 (new best laptime). While we were able to get next to Doug a couple of times, show the nose, and disturb his concentration, we didn't quite have enough outright speed to get around him - the handling, while improved from 2006, was still a little weak, the car was still a bit tough to get into the corners. Still, an excellent result to push so hard through the race, and a whole lot of fun! Great video too - will get it on the website eventually, once the home computer's back up and running.

For the Sunday Class race, we added a pound of air in the rear tires to try and help the turn-in response of the car, the only complaint from the previous race. As soon as the flag drops, however, we can see we're down on power; the car had run rough on grid, and hadn't gotten any better. We nearly gave up at that point - but hey, this is Waterford - you don't need power to get around this track!!! Well, I guess we managed to prove that; refocused on the task, chasing Doug down after the initial lead of a tenth or so that he pulled initially, we managed to shave even more time off our lap times, getting down to an unheard of 1:19.17! That's now only 3/10ths off the lap record - with an engine that's running badly! Clearly the tire pressure change was good, as the car handled noticeably better. Still, we were only able to chase Doug, no direct pressure applied, and came home not too far behind.

Digging under the hood after the race and the car had cooled off delivered a clear answer; when the distributor was disassembled to install the new pickup coil, two screws holding the vacuum advance unit on were not loctited... so they vibrated loose and fell out. This meant that our base timing was uncontrolled and free to wander, causing misfires and poor power output.

After hunting around for other options, Doug, paddocked next to us, was able to donate two screws from a spare distributor (Bosch standard parts, basically) to reassemble (with plenty of loctite!!!) and reset timing back to where it was intended.

With no other changes, we lined up for the Sunday Feature race... which we'd taken over pole for, thanks to the 1:19.17 lap! Doug had managed only a 1:19.4, and the Feature is gridded by best race lap time (not including qualifying). The polesitting Miata of John Bartholme got a great start, so did we, and while Doug also did well - he did no better than us, allowing us to tuck right in behind John and lead the parade.

Proceed with 10 laps of give and take between us and Doug; pull away a little bit, fall back a little bit... but our performance once again was stronger off the corners, so Doug was only able to close back up as he entered the corners faster, never get alongside. The race turned out just like a mirror image of the first race, him chasing us, but not quite able to challenge too much, and finishing just behind us!

A great weekend, great results, good progress with the car, and no real damage or other abuse to the car - so should be only modest work to turn it around and be ready for the next race... which promises to be even more of a thriller!

Pics and video will be posted eventually, as mentioned once my machine's back up and in business...
_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

[924RACR]

Nearly forgot to mention the status of the other 924's and Porsches!

Well, Chris Marsh's ITB 924 (formerly Jeremy's #53 car) didn't make it to the weekend; while it survived Driver's School, that was only barely, as the transmission was on its last legs. While a new trans was procured, there wasn't enough time to get it in and everything else done prior to the race weekend, so it had to sit this one out. Chris, however, did not, and took a co-drive in his buddy Kurt's GT3 Mazda RX7 - and had a blast!

Steve Philipson got his ITS 924S out for the very first time; previously he had competed against Doug and I in the ITB class with an ITB Geo Prism. We had spent quite a lot of time this spring getting the beasty finished in time for Race 1, and it paid off; he managed to avoid plenty of incidents in his group and bring her home in one piece, if a little dusty after a few offs! He's working through getting used to the car and the setup - especially all that new power and brakes! Unfortunately, he's severely limited right now by the lack of a good diff; the extra power of the 2.5L motor often ends up doing nothing more than lighting up the inside rear. So we're hoping to get him a good used diff before long, so he can put all that power to use. Even so, he's doing a great job of hustling that car around the track, and enjoying every step of it!

Mark Mazuro had a great comeback in his ITS 944 after being put off-track in a Lap 1 Turn 1 incident, clocking an impressive 1:17.9 in the process - but didn't quite have the speed to chase down the leading RX7 of Kristian Smith. I'm sure the Mazuros will be doing some serious tweaking to that car for the next race weekend! Gregg Steen was also there in his ITS 944, working his way through the ITS group, putting in a solid performance.
_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

[fiat22turbo]

Awesome report, can't wait for the video!

[Chrenan]

Looking forward to videos as well!
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1987 951 - M193 Version for Japan

[924RACR]

1 pic and 1 video finally uploaded... expect we might have a few more pics later, but no more vids till next race:

http://www.vaughanscott.com/videos/race1_07/Sat_race_01_07.mpg (38.5 Mb)


_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

[gla924sem]

Vaugh;

Looking at the lap times you've been posting for WHRRI has the track gotten faster for 2007????

Had a DE there on 5-10 for our PCA region and the track seem faster than 2006 and I was not pushing my 911 hard in the instructors session.

[924RACR]

Nope.
_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

[morghen]

congrats !

i cant see the movie...what codec did you use to compress it ?
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Supercharger and EFI kits
https://www.the924.com

[924RACR]

You'll need the Divx codec from divx.com IIRC... it's MPEG2.
_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

[!tom]

Doesn't seem to work in that either.
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78 924 NA
5-lug

[924RACR]

I usually use Quicktime to view it... Windoze MP sucks...
_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype