The site out in West Virginia was great. Plenty of paddock space and the area for the course was pretty good. The surface had a couple small undulations that bounced the car around, but in the grand scheme of things, I would rate the surface as "mostly smooth". The drive there and back was and absolutely beautiful trip through the foothills of Appalachia but somehow it felt like a longer drive even though the drivetime was an hour less than that to Joe's Speedway. It might be because I got up early and hit the road instead of going up the night before. Fuel mileage wasn't as good as the trip to Joe's, though, but I think that's because there were a lot more hills along the way and the speed was a little lower. Somehow, the Merc seems to do better at 70mph than at 60.
ZB was there with his GTI again and at lunchtime he was about 19.5 seconds ahead of Pete who was about .75 seconds ahead of me. I had a really bad first run where I was having a hard time finding grip and stabbing at the brakes was inducing behavior that I wasn't used to since I've had the booster de-powered all these years. To put it in context, ZB ran a 49.174 for his first run, Pete ran a 52.390, and I was at 55.682. Over the next four runs, I clawed back .3, .8, .3, and then 2 seconds to second place, but I was nowhere near first. ZB held that spot with a 236.773, Pete was second with a very pleasing to look at 256.256, and I trailed him with a 257.004. In the afternoon, I was ahead of Pete after the first run, putting up a 27.432 to his 39.635 and stayed out in front of his times for the remainder of the day. Unfortunately, ZB had an issue with the GTI cutting out on him so he was dropping at least 10 seconds each over the four afternoon runs, and it took him out of contention. After nine runs, I had a time of 405.551 for first, Pete came in at 410.776 for second, Sid was 413.183 for third and ZB wound up down in 6th with a 430.658.
I would have much preferred to take second than to win the class because of reliability, but since this is a build thread, I guess I should count that as a win for the car. It is quite a bit of a shift for me to be the one benefiting from the faster car breaking since I spent so many events having to winch my broken car back on to the trailer.
There were a couple things that I noticed, however. First, is heat management. I was running the passenger window down, the cooling fan, and the interior heat on full blast. We had enough cars that the cool-down between runs was long enough that the temps came down while waiting in grid and the stock temp gauge really never budged from the "normal" position. The auxiliary gauge, however, which is teed off the upper radiator hose was swinging up fairly high - 240ish, I think - and that should be measuring the coolant that is freshly warmed by the engine. "In Theory", though, the stock coolant temp sender in the thermostat housing should also be reading that same coolant and that's also what Megasquirt is reading. I didn't have my laptop with me to check what MS thought the temp was, but I did notice that if I turned the car off and then immediately clicked the key back to the "run" position so that the temp gauge was active but the engine was not running, the aux gauge dropped down to around 180-190. And when I restart the engine, it goes right back up. There's some sort of noise in there that's screwing up that reading, I think. But I do know that the factory temp gauge will creep up if I'm hot-lapping and/or am a little low on coolant, so I'm not totally ignorant on temperatures.
Second, having the brake booster hooked back up is kind of a double-edged sword. I like it, but it's going to take some getting used to. A quick jab at the pedal is all I need now to kick the car a little sideways, but anything more than the slightest jab and I start to lose speed fast. It's almost like the brakes are doing their job or something. I seem to remember that I used to be able to drive the car with the accelerator mostly flat the whole time and using my left foot to modulate the brake to control the speed and it was pretty damned fast. When I tried that approach on the morning of day 1 of the last event at Joe's, though, I was cooking the brakes and was really really slow. When I went to an approach of using all right-foot for the afternoon, I got way faster and that technique was good this past weekend as well. I don't know what I'm doing differently now, but I think for now I'm going to keep the booster hooked up and just see about learning how to drive. I may look to do a hydraulic handbrake on the rear down the line to try to get a "best of both worlds", but for now I think the loose nut behind the wheel is what needs most of the improvement.
Finally, I'm not entirely sure if this was actually happening, but I think it might have been cutting out a little bit on hard right turns. I was trying a different seating position so that I had the seat a little farther back and banged my head on the roof less, so it might have just been the bumps causing my foot to come off the pedal a little. It really felt like it was bogging a little, though. But only in the turn. And only in the afternoon. Of course, I don't have a working gas gauge - because of course I don't! - and I really don't remember how much I drove the car since I put fuel in it last. I know that it only took 3.4 gallons after the Joe's Speedway event - which was basically like doing 4 events, so under a gallon of 93 per race - but I might have driven it around town more than I recall after filling it up.
