Ricardos SC Shootout Journal.

ricardoa1

Registered User
I decided to post this up for some to see, not sure why I share with so much but here it goes anyways.


My SC shootout Journal,


I woke up Wednesday morning with hopes to make it to the shootout, car still in the body shop getting the new pieces painted on my car. Cutting it very close it was not a matter of just picking up the car and driving the car back. My agreement with the shop was that they were only going to paint. I got out of work 8:00pm during 5:00pm to 8:00pm was my most worrisome time I had ever had in a long time, because I was not going to take delivery of the vehicle but my friend was going to do the honors of driving it to his house till I went to get it. From 5-8 I kept getting phone calls from him telling me on the status of it since they were buffing it while he was waiting for it. Last phone call goes like this. "Got the car home, but how do you put on the Aero Catch hood latches on the car, seems that the hood is not fully closed" My heart jumped knowing that the only thing that was holding the hood shut was the safety latch on the car since the main latch did not work well with the fiberglass hood and the pins were not being used. That would have been very bad. But nothing happened thank god. I arrived to his house to pick it around 8:30PM, What I got back was a car with no trim or moldings, hood pins uninstalled and trunk half as s wired up. Got to work on it, I installed the middle tail lamps, roof moldings, brand new window moldings, re-align the trunk and finish wiring it, mounted the new Xenon 5285 Spoiler on, and my Kobel front air dam. Last thing to do was my hood pin/latches, those required about eight small bolts and nuts to be secured to the hood, a hex wrench on one side and needle nose pliers on the nut on the other side. On my last one I managed to slip and drop the nut inside the hood between the frame of the hood and outer skin, and it dropped to the bottom which if the hood is open it is the side where the hinge is. That required me to take off the hood by myself to place it upside down, balance and wiggle and not drop it, then the nut fell to the floor, Eureka, I installed last bolt and nut installed, at 3:30am. After a small nap I woke up to get an alignment since my car bumped steered and my rear tires were getting very hot in short drives. Arriving at the shop the guy proceeds to tell me that I went over the warranty period, and that the has abnormal wear due to tire pressure, his gauge reading 20psi, I questioned his gauge, I went to the back put air with one of the techs and they tell me that all my tires are perfect at 35psi. I leave the place angry, I called up my buddy and he tells me he has a friend that work at another shop, the kid worked on my car for 2 1/2 hours doing my alignment getting the rear adjusted to almost perfect, as well as the front. He only charged me 50 bucks, but I decided to give him a tip, so 70 bucks later I was ready to go to the 2008 SC/XR7 shootout. But that not before I put on the carpet protector my cars paint to make sure I did not get any stone chips and bugs.

Headed out around 2pm on Thursday. After a long drive and $150 in gas later, I arrived at the hotel around 3:30am. But I could not allow having my car seen with this entire plastic wrap around the front so I started to take the stuff off at 3:30am. Bumper and Air Dam came off perfect, but the hood not so. Glue residue was left on the paint but tired and exhausted I left it for the next morning so some of the guys could have a laughs in the morning.

Alarm ring around 8:30 am, that’s right 5 hours of sleep, and trying to rush to the dyno for my 9am dyno session. Greeting some of the guys in the morning I headed out in a small caravan to the dyno. I got to jump on the dyno around 10am due to an old Shelby race car having some troubles at the Precision dyno. I jumped on the rollers hoping for the best. But it was not long before the disappointments started coming. Car puffs black smoke everywhere and I am told that the car is down almost 35hp from last year. We checked things out like the MAF transfer functions and decided to put the sniffer before the cats, and turn off the knock sensor and put it open loop all the time. Trying again, smoke disappeared but the disappointing numbers did not. Jeff tells me that I should try putting on new 02 sensors and try race gas and 30 degrees of timing. I said ill go get them and I will be back later. Since I had more half a tank full and needed to empty the tank for the race gas.
After the dyno Friday felt very sad. I picked up my wife to go get breakfast. I then decided to wash the car and the residue from my hood. And finally hit up Advance auto for a set of 02 sensors "100bux later". Drove back to Precision, where I asked Jeff to let me borrow his 22 02 wrench and jack. Lifted the car up and started to take them off right side no problem left side not so easy. The wrench started to slip on the sensor. With no idea on how to get the damn thing off. I asked some the guys at the shop to lend me a socket and ratchet well I got it to turn finally but clicking it one click at a time I got it off twenty minutes later. Cool right....not the new sensor is a Bosch sensor and different then the originals and because of the excess slag from the weld did not allow the sensor to go in. So Jeff lent me a hand file and hand filed the slag for at least 45 minutes making little progress at a time. But I did manage to make it thread in and get tight.
I go up to Jeff and tell my I am done with my hands dirty, cut and bruised. I look around and I see everyone has left for the day and he looked like he got run over a truck. I knew that I had to wait for the next day for the race gas and race gas nitrous tune.
He tells me be here at 7:30am I said not a problem but with a feeling of "damn that sucks I got to wake up early again and not get any sleep" I arrived at the hotel parking lot, and by that time it was full of trailers and SCs, and barely found a parking spot. I got to say hi to familiar faces and got the see Chris Wise turbo car being taken off the trailer. Shortly after that I had to go to my room and tired kicked with my wife for a few hours, ordering room service from that guy from South Park "The Chef" after getting denied almost everything on the room menu, "Chef agreed to make us Hamburgers....That seems to be the only thing on the menu that was still available from the outdated menu.
I came back out to check out how many more people were in the parking lot. And the box of crap raffle was in progress, along with PHatbirds arrival with 3tons of painters tape in the front of it. Later as the alcohol consumption started to go up I got to witness the TBU flag being erected in place of the American flag at the hotels flag pole. After a few Veterans and military SCCOA/bird members getting a little aggravated, The American flag flew atop the pirate TBU flag. And all was good. I went to bed shortly after that, I think it was 12:30am.
Alarm rings again on Saturday morning. I am starting to operate like a Zombie at this point BTW. I came out to find morning dew on my car. After a few minutes I had my car clean again and off to Precision. Jeff must have been really tired since the shop was not open and we had to wait outside for a few minutes. On the dyno the car goes and race gas is added along with the race tune "30deg" with closed loop on and new 02s. Excited but only for a few minutes since I the end of the dyno Jeff tell me I picked up 7HP and 10Hp over the street tune total of 337.65HP/391.93TQ. Scratching my head, I felt like hitting the car with a hammer and pulling a Ferris Bulers kick the bumper moment. I asked Jeff to see if he had a scanner or a way to data log and he tell me that he doesn’t. I said well nothing we can do. Let’s try the Nitrous. He was watching my sad face telling him lets do it.
Bottle pressure at 1025, we made sure we had the jets right. I ran the .037 on the nitrous and .030 on the fuel. And off we go. But the dyno run seems to be shorter this time around then previous runs. I looked at Jeff and he tells me I just made 516.84ft-ls with my fuel pump not being able to keep up, HP came in at 378.41 since he shut it down at a little over 4000rpms. That 65Hp shot looked more like a 125 shot of nitrous. Why? We played with the jets coming down on the nitrous to .022 and .033 on the fuel that should be good for a 21HP shot. Similar results come out, Fuel pressure dropping, and more then expected HP. Why? (More on that later) We gave up after that and parked the car on the grass to be admired by other members as they congratulated me on having a nice looking car. Rest of the day I walked around seeing other cars on the dyno and car show. Also looking at the great work some of the other people put into their cars.
Award banquet took place later that night. Food was very good and the atmosphere felt great. People talking about car, and eating what could be better. Dalke too the stage and started handing out raffle gifts and I ended up with one of the FORD RACING fender covers, which I really needed, so that was perfect. Then as the awards started coming I was surprised to walk out with two. A Memorable Mention award and the Highest Torque award. Beating of some really powerful V8 cars that made it to the shootout. I did not keep track of the score board so it was a surprise to me. Happy we all left to kick it in the parking lot once again. Having a word with Neibert and his plans for the 3.8l SC, talking with Casey and our Intake temperature problems, And hanging out in a circle about the really dumb mods that we had over the years, as well as Micah talking crap about Mendolas old car. And explaining to some how I made my Supercharged Flying bird in my tails. Sleep time came too soon, but next day was going to be a long one so around midnight I headed in.
Woke up early to head out to track. Packed all of my stuff and made a stop at MacDonald’s. Arrived at the track and looked at everyone changing their tires for racing slicks or drags. I hated my self for not bringing mine. Then I saw some autocross cars on the other side of the track, in the distance I see Shane Glynns 35th. I run over to see what’s going on. And to my surprise Shane decided to run his car in the autocross event that was taking place that morning. I went to the booth and begged to be let in and run my car for the first time ever.
They agreed but told me I missed the walking of the track and I had to ride with someone. Shane was nice to enough to let me ride in the track prepped 35th and boy was that a theme park ride. I came out shacking with a smile up to my ears. I waited and till my turn and ripped it up :) I have not had that much fun for a really long time. 5 passes later I decided to call it quits since my car was having a hard time keeping the temps down since I was almost hot lapping between runs. I went back to the Shootout crowd and felt a little embarrassed that I split to go and have a different kind of fun. But I had not racing tires so it was a mood point to beat on my car up during test and tune.
I made it back in time during eliminations, and I had signed up for MOD 1 since I had no tires I was not expecting to run very quick. Well I must have been snoozing because by the time I got the car to roll all of my competitors were always in front of me even thought my times were faster. So I got disqualified, and sat at the bench. Out of two runs the best I could muster was a 13.6 at 106. Not too shabby for a horrible drag strip racer with 18s in the rear.
Awards were handed out and that concluded the 2008 SC/XR7 Shootout for me.
Drove home happy that I had so much fun with no major car trouble, which is a big plus.


And since pictures are worth a thousand words and videos are worth a million here are some of them show casting my car.







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Way cool Ricardo!! I wish I had known what was happening at the oval track. I could easily have been convinced to give it a shot. It looked like great fun!!

And yes, before I forget, congrats on high torque of the event! I know you were frustrated with the dyno results but it sure is nice bringing home that plaque!

Ira
 
Thanks Ira.

Michael, to my defense that was my first 1/4 of the day you already had 3 passes? below your belt by then.....:p
Ill get you next time. :D
 
Now getting back to my problems with my car. Changes I made since last year are the snow kit, and I was unable to use the enlarged manifold return adapter so I was using a stock one with an adapter plate, last I did extensive porting on the inlet side of the supercharger. The car now does not really drop out of boost like it used to do last year since the inlet porting. But nothing was done to the outlet side of the supercharger. 20-21psi was the dyno numbers similar to last year.

Now I have two theories why my car did not perform better then last year and actually worse. Last year I had supercharger outlet temperature problems that I though could be taken care of with the Snow alky kit. But even with the kit the car made less HP. Why. Will mechanical problems aside I think I because I ported the supercharger so extensevely on the inlet and nothing was dont on the outlet the intake temperatures were even worse then last year. Sending the Inlet air temp sensor in world of chaos. Once injecting nitrous before the sensor, the sensor was not happy and did not pull any timing on the car allowing the car to make its goal HP along with the Nitrous HP of 65hp. Making the car have tons of power to the extent of running out of fuel pump volume. Mind you I have not upgraded the fuel pump wires nor am I sporting the boost a pump. But I was running a 255lps HP pump.

The other theory is that my nitrous gauge is fubar and bottle pressure was tru the roof allowing a bigger shot then it really was. This theory will soon be tested as soon as I get a hold of another gauge. But it is highly unlikely, but possible.


Thats it for excuses for my car. Till next year. :D
 
Ricardo,

I'm glad you came over and gave autocross a try. I'm also happy you had so much fun on the lap that you took with me in my car.

Shane
Glynn Motorsports
 
so what was the deal with the nitrous? and your dyno #?

Looks like that adapter held up enough to get your there and back.
 
Now getting back to my problems with my car. Changes I made since last year are the snow kit, and I was unable to use the enlarged manifold return adapter so I was using a stock one with an adapter plate, last I did extensive porting on the inlet side of the supercharger. The car now does not really drop out of boost like it used to do last year since the inlet porting. But nothing was done to the outlet side of the supercharger. 20-21psi was the dyno numbers similar to last year.

Now I have two theories why my car did not perform better then last year and actually worse. Last year I had supercharger outlet temperature problems that I though could be taken care of with the Snow alky kit. But even with the kit the car made less HP. Why. Will mechanical problems aside I think I because I ported the supercharger so extensevely on the inlet and nothing was dont on the outlet the intake temperatures were even worse then last year. Sending the Inlet air temp sensor in world of chaos. Once injecting nitrous before the sensor, the sensor was not happy and did not pull any timing on the car allowing the car to make its goal HP along with the Nitrous HP of 65hp. Making the car have tons of power to the extent of running out of fuel pump volume. Mind you I have not upgraded the fuel pump wires nor am I sporting the boost a pump. But I was running a 255lps HP pump.

The other theory is that my nitrous gauge is fubar and bottle pressure was tru the roof allowing a bigger shot then it really was. This theory will soon be tested as soon as I get a hold of another gauge. But it is highly unlikely, but possible.


Thats it for excuses for my car. Till next year. :D

So are you still happy with the M112? I made the point many times about the outlet being to small. Did you open it up where your adapter plate is? As Dave said the M112 seems to be little improvement over a good M90. I agree with you that I think heat killed off your numbers. Tells me a M112 doesnt like to be spun fast and makes a lot of heat when doing so. I was impressed with your TQ last year but disappointed with your numbers this year. I was impressed with the nitrous shot numbers. That would be a hell of a kick in the rear when it hits:D All in all I wish I could have been there. I will be there next year as I have told everyone in my family not to schedule anything around September

Ken
 
Well, unfurtunately I had no one to do the work on the outlet, And I was always stuborn. Am I happy? yes and no. Having something unique is cool, But for the money I have in it is not paying off yet. I know once the bugs are worked it will pay off, boost is there but I have do something better then alky for the heat. Might give it another shot with the outlet like it should be. But the 400RWHP goal only got harder. :(
 
Ricardo, why were you classed in CP at the autocross? Was it just so you and Shane could compete in the same class or is it one of your mods? I would have guessed your car could run SM, same as I do.
 
Ricardo, why were you classed in CP at the autocross? Was it just so you and Shane could compete in the same class or is it one of your mods? I would have guessed your car could run SM, same as I do.

The people running registration did not know where to class him since they had not seen the car so they put him in CP. I found out just after the fact and told them he needed to be in SM. They were going to change it but we figured it would not matter since it was his first event and he just wanted to have some fun.

Shane
Glynn Motorsports
 
The people running registration did not know where to class him since they had not seen the car so they put him in CP. I found out just after the fact and told them he needed to be in SM. They were going to change it but we figured it would not matter since it was his first event and he just wanted to have some fun.

Shane
Glynn Motorsports

Thanks, I just wondered, since it typically takes cutting the unibody or gutting the interior to reach CP.
 
Ricardo, watching you autocross was really cool, I wish I could have gotten to ride in your car out there. I'm glad you had fun doing it, all that matters. And yes, shanes car was f'n insane out there!

Sean
 
Ricardo,

I have to ask. How did that tape on the bumpers work? Did it cut down on chips and scratches?
 
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