I’ve just managed to get and review the images my photographer took at the 2011 Indy. In a few of the shots you can see the smoke coming our of the car as the gearbox strats to puke fluid onto the exhaust.
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After tearing third gear to little bits at the Edmonton Indy, we pulled the transmission out of the car to assess the damage. The transmission is a T5 with a G-Force straight cut dog-engaged gearset and the damage was bad. Third gear was toast on both the mainshaft and countershaft. As well, the countershaft bearings had oblonged the case. I had to buy new gears, new bearings and seals and a new case. It is all back together now and ready to go back in the car.
Well, another Indy is over. The car was working great and the speed was impressive, but the reliability wasn’t there this year. With five minutes remaining in the race I broke the transmission. Plan is to pull it apart sometime in the near future and see what all the grinding noises are about.
-Trent
After a late night thrash I managed to get the Aquamist water injection system in. Since it is a race car, I wired the injector signal to the secondaries and turned up the gain. During testing I was able to push to 19 PSI with EGT’s in the 1450 range. Previous 17 PSI attempts had EGTs over 1650. I think this setup will be a large benefit at the Indy.
Well, in possibly the least painful replacement of an entire component of a car ever, I mounted, wired up and fired up my upgraded ignition. No problems once I got everything to fit and the car. It fired up and idled better than it ever has. Today is the new hood and the water injection.
-Trent
Given the planned addition of water injection, opinion is the stock coils will not deliver enough spark at high rpm to ensure ignition.
My solution is a double set of new MSD 6A Digital boxes (6201) and HVC II coils (8253) These will replace the stock leading coils and ensure a quality spark even up high.
The problem is the coils are *HUGE* (look at the 1L oil container to judge size). I want the shortest possible plug wires, but there just isn’t much space between the brake lines, relocated alternator and the steering column. I’ll have to put the car up on the hoist and start taking measurements. From there I can likely come up with a plan. After the ignition, the Water Injection goes in.
-Trent
So, here I am again, another year, another Indy and another massive list of outstanding work. Back to Triage mode, fix what must be fixed, ignore the less important stuff and get the car ready to go as soon as possible. Hopefully time will remain for testing.
Last year there were two outstanding issues, oil temperatures and oil loss. I’ve attempted to cure the oil temperature with a re-alignment of the turbocharger, making more room for the oil drain line, some titanium header wrap and an additional heat shield. To cure the oil loss problem, I’ve drilled a vent hole into the front cover and plumbed in back to my catch can to stop the engine from pushing oil up out of the engine on hard corners under boost.
My outstanding work comes mainly from work yet to be done to maximize the front end re-work and add in the water injection system.
I have to vent the hood so I can flow more air through the intercooler and hopefully add a little downforce up front.
I also have to re-work my three year old plywood splitter for the new front end. The old layout had the splitter routing air under the front bumper and into the rad. With the new ducting up front I’m looking to add a lip to the splitter, hopefully creating a high pressure area at the base of the lip, pushing down on the splitter and adding downforce. This is all with the goal of keeping the front of the car planted as we get near my guesstimated speed of 150 mph on the 1KM long straight. Should be a fun few first laps as I see how the car reacts above 135 mph (which is the fastest it has gone do date)
-Trent
I’m happy to announce a new sponsor to the #27. Howerton Engineering has come on board, with Howerton’s help we’re adding an Aquamist HFS3 to the car. The fine fellows at Howerton have also supplied a 5 gallon surge-resistant tank for the water injection.
Stay tuned as we get the kit installed and debugged before the Indy. I have high hopes for water injection on those crazy long front and back straights.
-Trent
Friday night was the first Time Attack of the 2011 season. The weather was wretched, temperatures were 6 degrees and intermittent rain.
I chose to run my ancient Toyo RA-1′s instead of my usual Yokohama A005 Slicks. My thought was the Toyos might be better in the cold, moist conditions. I was able to run a few 64 second laps, with a best lap of 63.58 seconds. The time was enough for 1st place in Race tire. I had to turn the boost down to prevent traction loss in 3rd gear. The entire lapping session was an exercise in throttle control.
I’m happy to report the new cooling setup worked quite well, as temps stayed quite low throughout the evening.
Well, the oil coolers and rad/intercooler are all ducted in. The chances of dropping a grinder have gone way down.
