Runoffs E Production 2011

A very dissapointing end to a very difficult season for us.

We had ordered a new engine from our engine builder in January and it was to be delivered in time for the Juine Sprinits. Unfortuanley, the engine was not ready in time and we had to run our three year old motor for the Sprints which was way down on power at this point. In qualifying a connectying rod came through the side of the block and that was it for that motor. We took the engine apart to see if there was any signs of why this might have happened but nothing was obvious so we figured the engine had just cycled out. We had hoped that the new motor would be ready in time fro the Cat but no such luck. We had an old spare motor that came with the car that had a very large crack in the block. We welded the crack and brought the engine to the Cat National. We had oil pressure problems which we figured were caused by a bad dry sump pump and were unable to qualify. We rebuilt the pump and turned up the oil pressure at the regulator and figured we had it fixed for the race and started the race DFL. By turn 5 of the first lap the engine tightened up and stopped. We had lost another motor. We were certain we had some sort of oil pump problem with our drysump system.
We needed that finish to qualify for the Runoff's and were out of motors so I had to rent a ride at Gingerman to get my finishes in. The new motor arrived one week before the Runoff's and with some very long nights had it fitted in the car with a new style of oil pump.

We arrived at the Runoff's late Sunday night and had to quailfy on Monday. On the first lap we lost oil pressure and destroyed our brand new motor. I was completely gutted and wanted to pack it up and call it a season. I started putting things away for the trip back home well my crew chief Don, stood in the trailer. There wasn't a lot of conversation as he knew that I was upset. After about a hour Don came out of the trailer and said we may have enough parts from our three broken motors to build a new motor. I thought he was nuts but he responed and said "we are here now, what can we lose, we may as well try".... (out of space for a forum reply see next post for the balance of our Ruunoff's saga)
 
Started building the motor in the trailer. Three 18 hour days getting it togther and in the car. Missed all remaining quailifying sessions and had to use a quailfying time from our warm up lap which gave us a 29th place starting position. We broke our cams which had been over heated and scored when installing them in the new motor. Fortunately, Mike Sturm had an old set he didn't run anymore which he described as a mildly tuned street cam profile. Well, better than nothing so we bolted them in. No dialinging them in as we didn't have a dial indicator or degree wheel. It was also a completely different profile than we had been running so the fuel curve in our ecu was not going to be ideal. Actually, I wasn't even sure if the engine would run. The only pistons we had left that hadn't been burned up I had gotten from a company in California called JG Engine Dynamics. I have had this pistons for three years but was afraid to run them because I didn't trust the guy we got them from. JG has a very bad reputaion that I had found out after ordering product from them. We recieved what they described as their racing camshafts which was simply a stock camshaft with the base circle ground down. The connecting rods they sent us were a Chinese made piece that I wouldn't put in a street motor. The block was bored with 2 thousands difference from the top to the bottom of the bore making it junk....And the there was the pistons. I was pretty sure the skirt coating was spray paint as it rubbed off when it came in contact with fuel. We had never put them in a motor becaue we didn't trust the source but that is all we had with us.
By this point we realized that three different motors with two different oil pumps all blew up when connected to the car. There had to be something wrong that was not part of the engine. What we discovered was that the suction line leading from the dry sump tank was sucking closed when the oil got real hot, which is why we never noticed it on warm up up or in the shop. The same lines in the car for three years without issue but we learned that over time they become soft. Changed the old oil line to a hard line coming from our oil tank for suction. (out of space again continued on next post)
 
Rob,

It was a great run and fun to watch. It was a bad time to make an honest mistake but I'm sure you are not complaining about the end result. I bet your whole team is a little embarassed about it, but for those nay-sayers that think it was an intentional cheat - Nobody is so ignorant to think they could get away with that at the Runoffs - if Rob knew, he's smart enough to have stayed in 4th and avoid the tear down. That way they could have enjoyed the $50.00 hard charger award in style...Dollar Menu-aires all the way back to Canada.

I would like to nominate you and your entire crew for the "It wasn't over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor"* award for heroic effort in making it to the starting grid.
:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

Better luck next year!

Steve Smyczek
#17 EP
Out but not down

* Young folks, watch Animal House before commenting!
 
Congratulations to Justin and Greg! Very impressive lap times given the conditions. Hard to believe we would get a race with worse conditions than 2009. I guess I better quit going there it must be bad luck for me.
Rob tough luck on the compression deal. You ran a great race and I wanted to say that you raced me clean. You were clearly faster but very patient. When you pulled me exiting 14 you were gone!
Sam....WTF????? You were perpendicular to the track and all 4 off as I'm entering the corner. The turn workers have you on a hold. You look right at me and bump the car on the track then pause. I move once and would have cleared you and stayed on track but then you move right into my line again. My choices were to t-bone you and probably kill you or take the grass and hit the wall. Your welcome and by the way I saved your life a second time that day. When my crew chief saw the car on the wrecker he was heading your way until I stopped him. You're lucky I did.
SCCA....way to go, you totally ignored another major on track violation and handed a guy a podium finish who should be banned for life from racing. What a bunch of bullshit.

Have fun racing next year guys, my entire budget for 2012 will be spent fixing the car assuming the frame rail isn't stuffed.
 
Thanks Steve, thanks Ron.

You are exactly right Steve, we could have easily run in 4th if we thought there was a problem. Our new race motor that we blew up had a lot more in it than the spare parts motor we put togther at the track. I have to say thank you also to the Tech Officials, yes, believe it or not those guys were as sick about it as I was when we found out the motor was over on compression. No argument to the equipment they used either, I believe their compression test is as accurate as there is.
I suppose we could have gone home on the first day of qualifying when we blew our race engine but I am glad we stayed and raced even it the end result was not what we wanted.

Hopefully what we learned can also be useful to someone else;

-Always hard line the suction line coming from your dry sump tank to the engine. No steel braided hose allowed.
-If you race a Honda, never buy anything from JG Engine Dynamics or at least check out their reviews on line before you do.
-Racing in the rain is all about patience
-Always eat Sydney's Speed Cookies before a big race.
-Hoosier bias ply rain tires are the ticket in a heavy rain. I wasn't on them but Brian was.
 
Bit more info on rain tires for those that might be interested-

Justin Prichard- Hoosier bias ply rain tire. If anyone has driven a RX7 in the rain you will know that they are evil to drive in wet conditions. Justin is obviously a very talented driver but in my opinion he had the correct tires on his race car for those conditions.

Greg Ira Hoosier- 205 DOT radial rain tire. In my opionion Greg would have beat Brian or made a heck of a race out of it if they were on the same tires.

Rob Coffey Hoosier- 225 DOT radial rain tire. Can't speak for anyone else but I was aquaplaining when trying to brake for in turn 1, turn 5 and Canada corner. I believe the tires I raced on may be a decent racing wet condition tire but not a good tire for the down pour like we had for the E Prod race where there was standing water all over the track.
 
Smyczek":3dt9qgz9 said:
Rob,
if Rob knew, he's smart enough to have stayed in 4th and avoid the tear down.
Click to expand...

Rob Coffey":3dt9qgz9 said:
Thanks Steve, thanks Ron.
You are exactly right Steve, we could have easily run in 4th if we thought there was a problem.
Click to expand...

Really?
 
We do have a radio in our car. I was aware of our position on track and passing Sam for third was not easy.

I know some people will think we were trying to cheat but those who were pitted near us or stopped by for a visit were aware of the hell we went through trying to build a motor out of broken engines and borrowed parts.
 
I don't think you were trying to cheat, I saw your post race interview.
As soon as I heard your compression was to high that was the first thing
I thought. Mismatched parts you didn't know would result in to high
of compression. The Really? Was the idea it would be OK to
"run in 4th if we thought there was a problem".
 
Rob Coffey":3veb6azk said:
Bit more info on rain tires for those that might be interested-

Justin Prichard- Hoosier bias ply rain tire. If anyone has driven a RX7 in the rain you will know that they are evil to drive in wet conditions. Justin is obviously a very talented driver but in my opinion he had the correct tires on his race car for those conditions.

Greg Ira Hoosier- 205 DOT radial rain tire. In my opionion Greg would have beat Brian or made a heck of a race out of it if they were on the same tires.

Rob Coffey Hoosier- 225 DOT radial rain tire. Can't speak for anyone else but I was aquaplaining when trying to brake for in turn 1, turn 5 and Canada corner. I believe the tires I raced on may be a decent racing wet condition tire but not a good tire for the down pour like we had for the E Prod race where there was standing water all over the track.
Click to expand...

Were the DOT rains the new 15" H20 compound they released this year?
 
Rob, you don't have to run a hard line on the suction side, just get the proper inside spring to support the hose. A hard line can crack and break because of the rigidness, the inner coil spring will solve this problem.

Great run either way!
 
We looked at the springs for inside the hose and even found some in Millwaukee but with just one 12an line for suction from the tank we were worried about decreased oil flow. We felt that if we were going to use the inside line support springs that we would have had to switch to a 16an braided hose and those size fitting are hard to find in stock anywhere.
I agree with you on the hard line cracking concern so for the hard line we actually used a 4' long extruded aluminum finned oil cooler which just two short pieces of 12an Aeroquip braided steel line on either end of the cooler to the tank and the fire wall bulkhead fitting. I feel comfortable with our design that we won't have a cracking problem but thank you for the heads up.
 
Rob - The spring is a flat wound spring that has very little effect on flow. When I had my oiling problem last year I thought for sure that I had a collapsed line and bought some of the spring material. I actually bought way more than I needed and it is quite expensive, like $16 a foot. If you need some let me know. I'll treat you right on price.

By the way, I had some long discussions with Doug Learned at Fast Forward, and his feeling is that the suction side for the standard oil pumps that we use should never be larger than dash ten. I always thought that bigger was better, but apparently that is not the case.
 
Rob you had a great drive, we learn from our mistakes the fact that you didn't quit says a lot about you and you're crew ! josh carroll # 9 E/P and I went home early due
to geting bit by the KINK two years in row we were the guys lent our chain hoist to you in the Mazda car port we will be back next year
 
Josh- Thanks for lending us your chain fall. When I went to bring it back you had already packed up an pulled out. Mike Henderson, in the stall next to you in the Mazda tent said that he knew you and would be sure to get it back to you so I left it with him.
Your car wasn't looking so good when I saw it last. Hope you can get it back together for next year.

Ron- I feel that you are right about the springs in the oil lines but after losing three motors to a line collapsing we decided to over kill the problem with the hard line. The other reason that we went for the hard line was because it was an inline oil cooler. We didn't previously run an oil cooler and relied on the large volume of oil in the system to provide the cooling. With the inline cooler we were thinking that we may be able to switch from a 5 gallon dry sump tank to a 3 gallon and get some more weight off of car which has always been well over the minimum allowed weight.
 
Ken Shreve":3swj7khc said:
Congratulations to Justin and Greg! Very impressive lap times given the conditions. Hard to believe we would get a race with worse conditions than 2009. I guess I better quit going there it must be bad luck for me.
Rob tough luck on the compression deal. You ran a great race and I wanted to say that you raced me clean. You were clearly faster but very patient. When you pulled me exiting 14 you were gone!
Sam....WTF????? You were perpendicular to the track and all 4 off as I'm entering the corner. The turn workers have you on a hold. You look right at me and bump the car on the track then pause. I move once and would have cleared you and stayed on track but then you move right into my line again. My choices were to t-bone you and probably kill you or take the grass and hit the wall. Your welcome and by the way I saved your life a second time that day. When my crew chief saw the car on the wrecker he was heading your way until I stopped him. You're lucky I did.
SCCA....way to go, you totally ignored another major on track violation and handed a guy a podium finish who should be banned for life from racing. What a bunch of bullshit.

Have fun racing next year guys, my entire budget for 2012 will be spent fixing the car assuming the frame rail isn't stuffed.
Click to expand...
Wow, a driver podiums by ignoring the corner workers then pulling a really bone head move that could have seriously injured of killed someone and there are two pages talking about the tough luck of a DQ'd driver? Can you kinda understand why the SCCA makes the decisions that it does if this is the kind of attention and acceptance the drivers display? Ignore a yellow flag, you get a penalty. Ignore the directions of a corner worker, cause a serious accident and you get a podium? Really?
BTW, still not a peep from the driver that cost Ken the podium and a ton of money, no email, no ppm, no phone call, no post race visit. Nice.
 
Update: Jeff, thanks for coming to my side. You guys need to understand that Jeff has many hours in my car so more emotion. I just checked my pm's and have received a nice note from Sam and a few other drivers. Unfortunately I finally had the stomach to look at the car close last night and the frame is bent. If I make it back it won't be for quite a long time. Good luck to you all in the future. Hopefully I'll be back for the 50th.
Ken
 
Hey Ken,

That sucks...the car I had two years ago when we were parked next to each other in the Mazda tent was totalled in the rain because of another drivers bone-headed move. At least you got a message. I'm pretty sure the one that got me is completely oblivious to the fact that he did anything wrong. "Sorry" goes a long way.

It took tons of work, but I was back with one straighter, lighter and faster. Good luck on the project.

Steve
 
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