The car has not been performing like we knew it would and we have been making baby steps to get it to perform better. We have been studying the data and noticed that the car was sluggish off the starting line. We made the transmission oil change which moved us in the right direction and led us to the real problem.
We are using a device called a "Two Step" that keeps the engine from revving too high when I lock the transmission and go wide open on the throttle. The device is supposed to let the engine go full throttle about 1/2 second before the car launches. Turns out the device was not triggering in time to allow the engine to build maximum horsepower prior to the car launching. We decided to do a test this morning and bypass the device and allow me to have direct control of the throttle. I decided to go wide open on the throttle as soon as both myself and the car in the other lane have staged. This allows the car to rev to the electronic ignition rev limiter setting. Our test gained 3 tenths of a second in ET. We did it the next round and got the same results. It was amazing how much harder the car launched!!
The car went from 1.3 second 60 foot times to 1.0 second 60 foot times. That is a big change!
The improvement in the launch of the car also created a new problem. The car launches so fast and hard that it created a consistent .081 second red light and caused me to lose in round 1 today. To compensate, we have programmed and additional delay into the computer to keep me from red lighting on Sunday (hopefully).
Tomorrow is a new day and we get one qualifying run to make sure we have our delay set correctly.
I think we will win some more rounds soon!
Here is a comparison of the data of two runs after the changes made in comparison to the qualifying run before we made it. The upper 3 sets of data represent engine rpm from the the point that I release the transmission brake. Notice the Red line is significantly below the Yellow and Purple lines. The Yellow and Purple lines are from the runs that we bypassed the "Two Step". The three sets of lines in the lower part of the screen represent drive shaft speed or wheel speed. Notice the Green one is significantly lower that the other two. Notice the other two track right on top of one another which means the runs were consistent, which is good. Also notice that drive shaft speed started sooner on the two quick runs which is what caused me to red light.
This has been a lot of fun figuring this stuff out! The "Black Hole” will be about 10 times more complicated!!!!
This is the ET from the fastest run that I have made since I owned the car. We ran a 4.69 ET. Much better!
Sunday was even better!!!!
We went 3 rounds in the Sunday race and got our computer dialed in where we were getting good reaction times. We had a .015, .004, and a .028 reaction times today and consistently ran in the 4.70s.
We learned more this weekend than any other weekend. Our adjustments on the car are starting to get real results.
It is getting fun now. I wish the season wasn't over!!!
Now it is time to go through and overhaul the "Blue Banana" and get the "Black Hole" finished.
Click on the Blog Archive hierarchy on the right hand side to see my posts in order. The ones at the bottom are the newest posts.
Or
Getting better every time! Go team :)
ReplyDelete