Dinosaurs or Gymnastics? April Autocross Report!

Somebody else registered with #77, say hello to NMS #411

For the 2nd event of the year, NMS headed north to once again do battle with the Porsche Club of America, this time at the Greensboro Coliseum. Interesting fact, whenever we drive in one of their parking lots, there are other events going on inside the buildings! This time, when I went indoors to visit the facilities, I was greeted with the rare sentence "Are you here for gymnastics or dinosaurs?" While those both sounded like fun options on a Sunday, I was there for the autocross out in the parking lot. 

I TOLD you there were DINOSAURS!

The Coliseum was hosting both the NC state gymnastics championships, and another exhibition hall had a touring dinosaur show going on! In our two autocross visits last year, there was a wrestling tournament going on, and another time there was a big dog show. Not all the dogs were BIG, but the SHOW was BIG! Maybe we can coordinate with these other events and get some dinosaurs driving cars with gymnasts doing their routines on the hood while the cars are driving! Maybe not. 

Anyway, special thanks to Julie Nixon for the big help in making the new #411 magnets. We found a template on line, and cut up an old magnet set I had with her fancy rotary cutting quilting equipment!

First run of the morning, what  nice day at 62 degrees!

With only two cars in my class, the NMS car sported #411 this time and took the class win. With great weather on tap, and a short but tricky autocross course, we had ten runs to set our best time, and then see how it stacked up against 31 other drivers. The course was tight, it was twisty, and there was turning to both the left AND the right! As usual, my goal was to go faster every run, but to tell you the truth, after improving from run 1 to run 2, I kind of got stuck on times in the 53 second range. I tried some different approaches, lowered tire pressures in the afternoon, and finally lowered my best time tp a 52.677 seconds on my last run. 

Afternoon kicks off at 76 degrees, still not too hot, but I lowered the tire pressures. 

In a way it is good to be consistent across so many runs in the 53s, but it's a lot more fun to lower your time on every run! Oh, and my biggest problem was on the first run, driving in manual mode. After the start I had trouble getting into 2nd gear, which I will blame on my weird little thumb-button shifters. It's not manual, and it's not big honking paddle shifters. When you turn the steering wheel, the little thumb-buttons turn too, so I'll blame that first run being the slowest on that! Hey, it sounds reasonable!

If I take off the garage door opener, the weight savings will make me faster next time!

Overall I had the 9th fastest time out of 32 drivers, and was the 6th fastest Porsche on the day. As far as being consistent, here's my 10 times:

Run 1: 56.728  Slow due to shifting issue, will go faster!

Run 2: 53.399  Much better, let's shoot for a 52!

Run 3: 53.154  Ooh, close to 52, make the car go faster!

Run 4: 54.226  NOPE!

Run 5: 54.85  NOPE! Ended the morning with a best of 53.1, go faster after lunch!

Run 6: 53.971  OK, back in the 53s, time to go faster!

Run 7: 53.482  Moving in the right direction...

Run 8: 53.415 Just BARELY moving in the right direction...

Run 9: 53.533 NOPE! These 53s are getting old. Let's try more braking on sweepers. 

Run 10: 52.677 BINGO! Finally into the 52s! 

After the event I spotted this Funny Car dragster, probably just finished at ZMax in the 4-Wide drag races this weekend. 

Auto Diagnosis

What is step 1 in diagnosing a customer complaint on their car? Confirm the complaint. This sounds simple, but, in the real world, if you take your car to a shop and tell them "It does X when I drive Y" they can't really fix it if they drive it and after doing X the Y part doesn't happen. So, like it or not, the mechanic really is supposed to verify the complaint. 

I think the top spark plug might have burned up JUST A LITTLE! The 4th plug from this 4 cylinder engine didn't want to come out, it was cross-threaded. Since this is diagnosis class, I think that's about as far as we got on this one, and let the customer know. It was driving very rough to say the least. Yes, we replaced these old ones with new plugs. 

Also, we had an oil leak to address. Here's inside the valve cover, with a pretty new blue gasket. We also replaced the four grommets that help seal the spark plug tubes, where the coil packs go in. Those gaskets were not soft rubber that sealed the hole, they had aged-out and graduated to hard-as-a-rock plastic that leaked. 

Maybe this is a weight rack in the shop? Not quite, just a supply of rear axles and differentials ready for the next Suspension class to tear down, diagnose, and rebuild this fall. 

Ford F350 back in the shop for some trouble codes on the transmission we rebuilt. It is driving OK but slipping in 2nd gear. At first we thought it was 2nd and 3rd gear problems, and since those are the only ones that use the 2nd gear shift solenoid, that was our first culprit, but wait, there was more. 

 The 1st thing we found is this ground wire that was frayed. In this photo we've stripped the bad part off, and are about to put a new connector on it, so that it connects to the bolt in the upper red circle.  

The new connector was put on, shrink wrapped, and bolted back on to the housing. This eliminated the trouble codes! However, it is still slipping, only in 2nd gear, so, we have to remove the transmission and investigate further. 

Used Auto Parts

I imagine you have a "used auto parts" store near you. Some of them go by names like Pick-N-Pull or Pull-A-Part, or maybe just "you know, that place out east of town with 10 acres of cars." Most of these places will have a wide variety of makes and models of cars, trucks, SUVs and who knows what else. Sometimes you can find cars for sale that still run too! One advantage of being retired means you can hit the junk yard just about any time you don't have anything else to do!

Back beyond the parts cars was the "about to be crushed" pile of cars. 

At my local place they have several riding lawn mowers, and even some boats that are available for parts. The only vehicle I saw for sale this time was a Nissan Sentra for $3,100. While that might have been tempting, I was in search of some specific car parts that will become part of a special gift for a friend of mine. I can't reveal who, or what this gift might be, so let's just take a look around at the highlights. 

1990 Geo Metro with a big whopping 3 cylinder. From what I can find on line these were re-badged Suzukis from Japan, later made in Canada. Also badged as a Pontiac Firefly. Oh, and this BIG HONKING THREE CYLINDER has a 1.0 liter engine, but it got really good gas mileage. 

"Ready for Scrap." Oh really!

Question 1: How do you move cars around the scrap yard?
Answer: Forklift.
Qestion 2: Hey, what's this funky purple car in the foreground?

Porsche Cayenne
Trust me, I looked for anything cool to use off of this thing. 

FIAT 500, just a reminder of my 2013 FIAT 500 Abarth.

Mercedes 2 seater, you know, the supercharger one with Kompressor!

Audi TT

Another Audi TT, with a Volva station wagon. 
It's like the United Nations in here!

April Auto Tech Update

School keeps rolling, five days a week for 3 hours each morning at York Technical College. The Advanced Diagnosis Class is covering a lot of different systems on the cars in the shop, so here's a bit of what's been going on lately. I've got four more weeks of diagnosis until the summer break. 

Our instructor is working with one of my classmates, using a bore scope to look inside the cylinders on this Cadillac. The car had a small coolant leak, so we removed the upper intake to look around. Then we pressurized the coolant system to see where the leak was coming from. Looking inside the cylinders was just a good check "while you're in there" because this car had direct injection, which leads to carbon build up, so that's what they are checking. This 2009 or so Cadillac didn't have too much build up. If it did, one way to clean it out is by blasting it out with walnut shells. Really. The carbon builds up with direct injection because the gas is being sent straight into the combustion chamber, and not the air intake where the gas would be cleaning the valves as it is sprayed towards the chamber. 

This kit should have everything you need to do a coolant pressure test. The various sized caps fit all kinds of radiator caps and coolant tanks. Then you use a hand pump (not shown) to pressurize the system. From there you can check that the system is holding pressure. If it's not holding pressure, then you can look for the leak. 

A 2006 Honda Accord on the lift, let's get to work. Plus, I thought it was a cool photo with the legs sticking out under the car, and one student in the background. Yeah, we're pretty artsy in composing our photos in Auto Tech class!

Replace the serpentine belt. Just to do this one by the book, I looked it up in ProDemand, our on-line resource. The instructions were literally as simple as "move the belt tensioner, remove belt, and install new belt." Dang, I could have written that! I might have used the traditional "assembly is the opposite of disassembly" too!

Here is an older Chevrolet Tahoe that is having some transmission work done. The transmission fluid pan has been removed, so we're looking up at the transmission filter (red arrow.) The entire piece of darker metal with the cut-out oval for the filter paper just pops in and out of the valve body. All of this "stuff" is swimming in transmission fluid, including those wires on the right. The other cool thing in this shot is the little red dots of fluid that are hanging on. At least I hope it's transmission fluid and not the red ANTI-MATER that Mr. Spock had to deal with in that one Star Trek movie!

Still on the Tahoe, here's looking a little higher at the rear of the transmission. The rear shaft is up there in the empty part, and would connect to the rear drive shaft. 

One more shot from the Cadillac. Before we tracked down the coolant leak, we drained the coolant from the radiator. I'd like to say THANK YOU to the GM engineers that made our job easy for a change. The red arrow is pointing to an expertly placed drain hole where ALL the coolant dripped out from the radiator. The fluid did NOT go all over the place, did NOT drip onto the sub-frame, and did NOT turn into a big mess. Imagine that! 
Happy ending, once we found the leak we replaced a gasket and an O ring, put the coolant back in, and the owner reports no problems!

March Autocross Report

Hey, let's go drive!

Reporting from the Winston-Salem cigarette pack, I mean, the Winston-Salem Fairgrounds, NMS is happy to report that the #777 Cayman took 1st place (out of 3 competitors) in the S03 class, as well as 8th place out of 33 Porsche drivers last Sunday. This was the first event of the season for the Carolinas Porsche Club, so NMS driver Bob Nixon takes the early season lead for his class. 

As much as I like my red car, some of these blues are nice too. 

While there had been a chance of rain predicted, it turned out to be a nice dry day, with some clouds and tons of pollen in the air. This explains why all the cars looked a little green, because there is just no way to keep all that pine pollen off your car during this time of year in the Carolinas. Driver Nixon reported his 8 runs on course in an exclusive interview. 

Waiting in line with my run group. Half the drivers are working on course, and half of us are driving. Then we all swap places. 

Run 1: I just wanted to get a feel for the course, not going slow, but just to establish a reasonable time baseline and then figure out where to gain time from there. Time: 52.1 seconds. Some drivers take it really slow on the first run, just to make sure they know their way around course, get the car warmed up, etc. Others go hard all the time. Put me down for the middle ground, or the Goldilocks "Just Right" method. I think you've got to go at least 80% up to speed to get a more realistic feel for the course and know where to keep pushing faster. If you walk the course ahead of time, you should not be concerned with getting lost out there.

Autocross events are generally open to all makes of cars. 
Here's one of the few Nissan 350Zs that NMS doesn't own. 
Ha ha! Just kidding. 

Run 2: Time 50.5, so a good gain in time. The twisty track and my first two runs reminded me that there really weren't any super hard braking spots, so I reminded myself to just tap the brakes to help the car rotate and maneuver through the sharp corners. I was running with pretty standard tire pressures around 30psi, the car stability management turned off, and the rear wing up. 

Just in case you don't read the language of license plates: 
NO FOREIGN JUNK

Run 3: With a time of 49.8, happy to get under 50, but still working on dropping time. 

Run 4: Before this run I lowered the tire pressures back down to 30 since they had started climbing after the 2nd run. It was also about 12:30pm and I was hungry, so I ate a PBJ for more energy. This extra weight kind of worked because my time dropped to 49.2 seconds but I also hit a cone in a tricky Chicago Box cone formation, so a penalty of 2 seconds means this run was really 51.2. This time told me that I could get into the 48 second range, so that was my goal for the day. 

NMS red Cayman and a silver one. 

Run 5: For the final run of the 1st session, my driving felt like it was a faster run but the clock had a different opinion of 50.0 seconds. Time to take a break and come back stronger in the 2nd driving session. 

Run 6: After working on course for the second time today, my half of the field started our final 3 runs. It was about 10 degrees warmer now, so I kept the tire pressures down to 30psi and hit the course. This run lowered my best to a 49.6. That was encouraging, and we had two more attempts to go and go for the 48s.

Not my favorite color for a car. If you have a brown car, no problem, just use a different color than black for your numbers. 

Run 7: After lowering my tire pressures even more to 28 for this run, it paid off with my best time of the day at 48.9. Another statistic I was monitoring was my speed at the finish line, trying to maximize a short all out sprint to the end. This finishing speed was also my best of the day, at 54.9mph. That's not world record fast, but on a tight autocross circuit it feels mighty quick in the drivers seat. 

Run 8: I kept the tire pressures low, had a good run, but it was 49.0 so just a tenth off my previous best. If nothing else it's kind of good to be consistent, and just maybe that was the fastest I could manage that day. 

All in all I enjoy autocrossing and spending the day trying to improve your time, figuring out where to go faster, and driving the car as close to the limit as you can, even if you're just gaining a tenth of a second at 47mph! OK, it's fun to go faster than some of the other drivers, but there's almost always people faster than me too!