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I hadn't thought about what additional things to look at. The standard set will give us all the info to see how the engine is doing. After that it will be data to show how efficient the car is moving around. Is there a brake pressure sensor front and rear? Can we tap into the wheel speed sensors? Is there anyway to get data off the suspension? Either damper position or pressure. This would tie into the braking and turning. I'm not sure what to do with any of it, yet. I'll try to spend some time on the AIM videos. Matt has many sessions where he talks about these things. Maybe I can download a few for the long flight tomorrow. If you are aware of any, send me the episode numbers.
Matt now has sway bar strain guages if u really want to go nuts. They do have hieght guages for the shocks too. The individual wheel speed data would be cool to see in a carosel turn
I hadn't thought about what additional things to look at. The standard set will give us all the info to see how the engine is doing. After that it will be data to show how efficient the car is moving around. Is there a brake pressure sensor front and rear? Can we tap into the wheel speed sensors? Is there anyway to get data off the suspension? Either damper position or pressure. This would tie into the braking and turning. I'm not sure what to do with any of it, yet. I'll try to spend some time on the AIM videos. Matt has many sessions where he talks about these things. Maybe I can download a few for the long flight tomorrow. If you are aware of any, send me the episode numbers.
You're thinking much more crazy than I am Paul - I guess what I am trying to get at is how the data can be compared to the old setup to see what the performance delta, positive or negative is specific to the change of power plant. Like, for instance, from 52 to 90 MPH took 7.2 second - how long does it take with the added power. Pick a couple data points that proved pretty repeatable from the old setup and use them as a bar to measure the acceleration in comparison to the old engine.
I love the idea of added sensors and will look at putting some more in during the off season. Shock pots, IR tire and brake temp, lambda for both banks and another brake pressure are all on the list. But for what's left of this year, stuck with the same old... well, same old plus the couple new ones and whatever the GM ECU can tell us. Actually, the PDM can log the demand on the electrical system too, may be some cool nuggets in there.
Got to take away positives when expanding your comfort zone. Today was shakedown day and it definitely did not go perfect, but, it could have gone so, so much worse.
Got to the track and unloaded the car, took it to the skid pad to put some heat in it and spend a little time behind the wheel actually driving it. Was really happy right off rip, the car felt... fine. Although it's really loud and makes a million little noises, everything felt the way I remembered it just putting around. That was until I got hard on the gas when I was greeted with a moment of hard acceleration and then none, even though my foot was still in it. This started off the process of trying to figure out why the car would lose the TPS signal at what currently appears to be random times. This was NOT something I considered may be an issue after the car spent so much time on the dyno with no issues. The real bummer for this problem is its not a simple shut the car off and restart and the issue is gone, the code needs to be erased by power cycling the ECU. The problem with this is although the ECU is powered by the PDM and turns on and off with the car's master power, it has a constant power feed direct from the batter, discrete from the PDM that allows the ECU to remember codes even after the master power for the car has been shut off. So, the fuse on the constant power needs to be removed from that circuit to fully clear the ECU and that is not something I could do when strapped into the drivers seat. Given the fact I really didn't want to lose the ability to use the throttle on track, I really wanted to figure it out. So, my buddy Chad went to go and get his scanner so we could run the codes. This meant I needed to recreate the issue to trip the code, well, I couldn't. I ran around the skid pad and it was fine. Decided with a couple minutes left in the session to just cross my fingers and run as many laps as I could get in.
The couple laps I ran were slow.... but holy **** is the car fast. It is a whole new thing that blew my mind. I got out of the car after those laps and thought... this is going to be a monster. The rest of the car seemed to be working great, it was a little taste of what is going to be possible and i loved it.
Unfortunately, on the next session the car lost TPS again on the warmup lap, my first time not coming off the track under my own power, embarrassing and to make it worse, it didn't throw a code so still don't know what caused it... so weird. So, there is some work to do there but I think I have a temp fix that will be good enough to get me back on track without the worry of being towed off while I work on the permanent solution.
All in all, I got a lot of confidence today, it's a car again and I can now actually see the potential. It is one thing to have it living in your head for a long time and a whole other to actually get a taste for it. Although I barely got any laps in, I got a lot of time on the skid pad which really helped, just the time behind the wheel reacquainting helped build a lot of confidence All the engine vitals were awesome - I think it can work and work well. Just got to get there.
Next track day coming up and the weather is looking promising.
Some of what is going on leading up to it.
When the car was driving, it was driving nice but that throttle problem was a killer and I am nowhere closer to getting to the why, so - some plans to deal with it.
1. Put a battery in the car that actually works in case some voltage inadequacies are contributing. The thinking here is that the only difference from the dyno, where there were no issues to the track is on the dyno the car was on a charge box the entire time. While I have low hopes this will fix the problem, it needs to be done. I wanted to wait until the spring as the tiny batteries have **** life and spending much of it on a tender all winter is not ideal from a value perspective but I need to rule it out.
2. In the highly likely event the battery does not resolve, I will be rigging up a way to clear the ECU from my seat. Aaron and I have some strategies on how to do this, some are less disruptive and require less steps than others. In any event, being able to clear the code will mean I won't get stuck on track. But, the process for that can be not so exciting, or more exciting depending on what is going on around me if the throttle fails. I still plan to take it pretty easy and try to avoid situations where I would be likely to become oversaturated.
Then we have the typical nut and bolt check, make sure nothing is egregiously different than it was the last time. This will be a bit more thorough than normal but pretty established process.
Next up, more generally. After feeling just how much harder the car accelerates (SIGNIFICANTLY harder) it got me thinking about, what's going to break. The first thing that popped into my head...axles. So, I picked up a spare off of eBay. It would be really cool to have a set of nice axles made, I am sure driveshaft shop could whip up something unbreakable but the reality is, this spare cost me a hundred bucks, I see a ton of them available and at that cost, I'm thinking I would need to break about 30 of them to equal a custom set. If it became something really prohibitive I would rethink but for now, I feel good having a stock backup. I am going to make an effort to get a pretty good spares package developed, especially for items that can be changed at the track. Nice to have that process off the ground.
Yeah take it easy or I'll never be able to keep up with you. I'm going to try to get a video clip following you like we did years ago.
Think I'll need earplugs?
Yeah take it easy or I'll never be able to keep up with you. I'm going to try to get a video clip following you like we did years ago.
Think I'll need earplugs?
I wouldn't tell you NOT to use ear plugs
That video you took back then is probably my favorite one ever taken of the car.
Actually, you have taken a couple of the best, the other one when you let me by when you were driving the VW, that clip has peak M96 sounds...
This is what I got. Maybe some of you guys might want to take a swing while it seems the getting is good, no promises but maybe worth a shot. Who doesn't love a little BOGO action.
This is what I got. Maybe some of you guys might want to take a swing while it seems the getting is good, no promises but maybe worth a shot. Who doesn't love a little BOGO action.
Nice. I just got 22 gallons in my 4.
Just don’t come to NJ and expect them to fill those blue jugs.
Nice. I just got 22 gallons in my 4.
Just don’t come to NJ and expect them to fill those blue jugs.
yeh along with not being able to pump your own gas they wont fill a jug that is not red. Gonna have to spray paint my cans which is even dumber then their laws.
yeh along with not being able to pump your own gas they wont fill a jug that is not red. Gonna have to spray paint my cans which is even dumber then their laws.
I hear Oregon is finally coming to their senses. Not much faith in NJ following suit though.
And... I tend to not travel to NJ, if I do I will damn sure try to BMOG (bring my own gas) for fear of prices even higher than where I live... in addition to that other thing where they don't think the folks present in their state possess sufficient intelligence to pump their own gas.
New battery in.
Put my own gas in, I got this sweet little electric pump that pumps out of the VP jugs, no more standing holding that heavy jug for me.
Got my work around for the throttle issue done.
Jason,
Concerning spares, you might want to get a few wheel hubs also (the part the axle slides into)and several axle nuts. I have sent several reports of these failing on high torque cars.
Your cars looks to be a great track vehicle. I would like to see it sometime. let me know if you are ever going to VIR, maybe I can come watch.
Mark
09-18-2023, 11:52 AM
