Magic Triangle Chump Car

[D_Eclipse9916]

After our Charlotte run-down, we got to work getting the car ready for the VIR 24 hour. This is a 24-hour straight race on VIR's Grand East Course.
We brought in a renter who had racing experience, so we thought we would do great.

Paul and I tore into the car to get the car running right. It always had a funny idle and would break up in the 3500-4000 range. Since we did such a quick swap for the Charlotte Race and the tight deadline, we never messed with it. It ran, (better than it not running).

1st thing we noticed was the fuel pressure regulator was blocked off. We hooked that back up to a vacuum source.
2nd welded up an entirely new exhaust to the car to fix the bottoming out of the previous one.
3rd we bought one of these Jegs panels and wired it all up. This is a really cool panel that I will be putting in my race car as well. Really clean way to clean up any switches

4th we put in a catch can, and did a nut and bolt of the car.
5th we wired up some auxilary lights in preparation for the dark at VIR. You are limited on the brightness, so these fit within the rules. (we would find out that NOBODY follows these rules)

Now we were ready for VIR, as much as we would hope!

Morning of the race, 165 gallons of fuel in the back of the truck, no idea how this would pan out.


Start of the race! About 10 minutes in our car comes stumbling back in. Not a great way to start 24 hours. We suspect coil packs as it is breaking up while hot. Switch coil packs - go back out.
10 minutes later, car back in.
Switch spark plugs/fuel filter - go back out
10 minutes later, car back in
Swap TPS to known goodo ne - go back out
10 minutes later, car back in.

At this point we are frustrated and done for. It is now 2 hours in and nothing to show for it. We knew it ran before, so I begged Donnie to go out one more time as I disconnected the fuel pressure regulator.

Car doesn't come back in...wait what? Don't ask me! Car runs better with fuel pressure regulator having no vacuum source, and continues to run.
Things go great for the next ~12 hours. We are really slow on our pit-stops but are making up good ground. After the 2 hours trying to solve the running issue, we were in ~102nd place. Our hopes were dashed by the 2 hour delay in getting top10. Now we had a new goal top50. Being 34 laps back, we had very very little chance of getting there. But this is 24 hours! anything can happen.

Beggining to be night out


So it was Paul G., Donnie W., Me, Renter, Ryan Farrell. We had a scheduled pitstop somewhere around 3am in the morning. Paul just sat down to take a nap as he was exhausted. I had done the previous stint, and Donnie was coming in to swap seats with the renter. We send Farrel to get the renter. Donnie comes in with the car....where is our renter? Donnie and I 2-man team the fuel...renter still isnt there. Ryan comes running back. Renter just wants to sleep. We considered quickly our options.
Donnie just got out of the car, by the rulebook he couldnt go back out.
Paul was sleeping, not dressed in racers stuff, and would be at least 10 minutes to get him into the car. He also was a bit more exhausted after having never driven a race car before in this environment. He wouldnt last.
I had to jump back in the car. I had gotten 5 hours of sleep the night before, woken up at 5AM to get everything ready, had already done 3 stints totalling 5.5 hours of driving in the car and it is 3AM in the morning. Now I had to go race for another 1.5 hours.

Lesson learned, we need to stick to our sleeping schedule, everyone skipped out because "they werent tired earlier".

However, we had moved ourselves from 102nd place to 52nd after my stint. A whopping 50 places. We only had a few more to go for our goal.

After my stint, I went to sleep. In moments of coherence, I would hear "overheating", car is loud, etc.

I would catch about 3 hours of sleep, ready to catch the last 2 hours. During my sleep, the car had loosened bolts on the exhaust flange and was hanging loose. That was fixed, but more worryingly, the car was drinking coolant and overheating. We trudged through the next hour and a half with refills of water anad just kept going. We were finally in 51st spot. 15 minutes to the checkered flag and our car dies. We were enough laps ahead of 52nd place to secure our spot in 51st. At first we were disappointed, and then through a reshuffling because of penalties we were awarded 50th! Ecstatic and happy, we went home with a list of must-haves and wants.