NEFR

[321go]

Looks like Friday's rally was good for the 99 and not so good for the 900. Sat. rally was the opposite.
How come you guys did NEFR instead of WV?

[Crazyswede]

The decision to run NEFR was made several days after the decision to not run RWV. We were working hard to build have a brand new car done for West Virginia when we ran into an issue with the engine block for that car...the kind where you need a new block. At that point we stepped back and decided that it would be unwise to rush the build on the car and the event was called. We still wanted to run an event but both driver and codriver were feeling the financial restraints....partially due to having spent a lot of money on parts for a car build and partially for other reasons. We figured Maine was closer for codriver and crew and could be run with less vacation and travel time.

[Geoff]

Yeah, we incurred some body damage on SS2 on Friday but that didn't cost us more than a few seconds, just a panicked service to do some repair. On SS4 on Friday the 4spd transmission decided to destroy itself and we lost 3+ minutes. A new transmission (5spd) was found and put in over night. The only other real problems were an ignition/fuel pump/starter combo switch (custom) which shorted out a few times (causing a non-start condition) and the coolant temp sensor must have been unplugged during the transmission swap and it wasn't noticed until we had completed 3 stages on Saturday causing T5 to throw a minor fit which resulted in hard starts and low power.

The 99 had a heat extraction issue on Saturday

Jalopnik article:
http://jalopnik.com/a-dispatch-from-the-certifiably-insane-world-of-amateur-950216784

[Crazyswede]

I have 3 HD gopro videos to upload from incar 99..unfortunately we forgot the mic input cable but the video is still good. We managed to get the 99 up to about 90 mph in 4th gear and were sitting around 7500 rpm for several sustained sections of road. The engine made a lot of heat during this time and we couldn't keep it cool. A fuller write up is on its way.

[paulh]

Nice! When did you guys get done with the trans swap? Beat our previous record? Think we got to bed around 5ish.

Paul

[Geoff]

Our transmission story:
About 1/3 of the way through SS4 our transmission decided not to go into 3rd or 4th gear so we did the rest of the stage in 2nd. When we got to the end of the stage we could hear what sounded like gravel in the transmission. We limped the car back to Main Time Control (35 miles away) in 2nd gear.

After we turned in our timecard we hooked up with our crew and started talking about options. Within an hour we had decided to try to find a gearbox and replace it over night. Mike made some calls and found two 5spds (an '85 and an '89) down in the Portland area. We got back to the house we rented a little after 8:00 and Mike and his dad headed out to collect gearboxes. Breck Sr. and I went over to Pooh Corner Farm and borrowed the engine hoist. Carl, Breck Jr. and Brett were disconnecting things when we got back. The engine was out of the car around 10:15 and I cleaned the metal transmission gasket and block surface for a while Brett, Carl, and Breck Jr. went to get some rest. I went to bed around 11:30 and Mike showed back up around 12:15AM with a trunkload of transmissions. Carl and some others worked on putting the new box in the car. The '85 box was chosen because it had the same front cover and same drivers so it required less work. I think people got to bed around 5AM. The car couldn't be tested because we didn't have enough spare engine oil. So when Mike got up he drove to Gorham to the 24hr wallyworld and got some oil (probably an hour to an hour and a half round trip?) and got back a little after 7AM. The car was started and test driven and things seemed OK.

We loaded up the car and prepared to leave around 7:30 (we had to be at Parc Expose by 8:00 which was about 12 minutes away) and the car wouldn't start. We suspected a bad fuel pump/ignition/starter switch combo (which had given us problems the day before) so Brett replaced a wire in it. After lots of cranking the car fired up and we left around 7:45. We rolled into Parc Expose at about 7:59 after being stuck behind some bozo that didn't know how to drive...

When we were due to check into the timing control leaving Parc Expose the car didn't want to start again without lots of help from the starter. We realized later that the coolant temp sensor was unplugged and plugging that back in fixed the starting and low power problems we had that morning.

[Crazyswede]

The coolant sensor was the culprit for all of our running issues at STPR. We didn't have T5 on that engine but its amazing how such a small little piece with no moving parts can have such a big impact on the EFI.