Category: Evo VIII

Hypercritical Podcast Recap of GTA Finale at Buttonwillow Raceway Park

by Daniel O'Donnell, posted in Evo VIII, Podcast

For those who haven't listened, head on over to your favorite podcast app to listen to the latest episode of Hypercritical where we cover the GTA Finale in all it's glory. Also, you may notice new cover art and a sweet Fuelab decal. Fuelab is officially sponsoring the podcast moving forward and we couldn't be more pleased to have them onboard. Tell them thanks for us and we thank you for stopping by! https://open.spotify.com/show/43TNLQ142rz9o0PPoso097

2022 Global Time Attack Finale Buttonwillow Raceway Park Recap

by Daniel O'Donnell, posted in Event Recap, Evo VIII

It’s been years since I’ve written a recap from one of our events. I can’t even blame the pandemic for this oversight! I recently had to look back through our history to document all the events we’ve been to and, to my surprise, it was much easier to find out what we were doing during the early years. Alec Cervenka and I had meticulously updated our blog month after month, year after year and then it sort of just faded away. Well, here’s my attempt at restarting the tradition, sadly it’s a month after our latest event, but the basics are still fresh in my mind. The Global Time Attack Finale, previously called the Super Lap Battle Finale, has always been the bane of our time attack existence. We’ve broken more engines than you can imagine, had multiple fires, creepy old guys chatting up friends and so many “almosts” at really setting a fast lap that it’s painful to think about. 2022 was different. There was less drama, much more smooth sailing, but ultimately, we were left wanting more. To talk about Buttonwillow in 2022, we need a quick backstory. We’ve been going out to race there since 2012, a freaking full decade of heading out to a dusty, desert track with little prestige outside of the time attack world. Sadly, due to the pandemic, we haven’t raced at Buttonwillow since 2018 and the car hasn't been on track since early 2019. In this time off Grant Davis, team mechanic, has spent countless hours rebuilding and refining so many aspects of the vehicle. A new transmission, engine control unit, wire harness, power distribution module, cooling system, engine and I’m sure I’m missing plenty more. With light approaching the end of the tunnel on the pandemic and the car build, Grant cracked the whip on Mike and me to start helping again so we could get this damned car on the track again! For the last 6 months or so, it was full steam ahead as the team itself reassembled, and then reassembled the car. We had teething issues at the dyno, which had glimpses of promise but not the full on confidence inspiring experience we had hoped for. We had one major, that turned out to be a minor, red flag of a potential engine issue. This slowed us down slightly, but was rectified quickly enough at a test session at Gingerman Raceway. That’s where things changed dramatically for the better! Testing The car just worked. Like really worked! I dusted off all my gear and drove the Evo in anger for the first time in, let me check my notes, 5 freaking years! We checked all systems, we re-checked, everything went so smoothly, it was hard to wrap our heads around it. We would experience a little thing here or there, but nothing like when we were blowing up engines and grenading transmissions in years past. We set our sights on Buttonwillow, a month away and started tying up loose ends. Practice Now that you’re up-to-date, Buttonwillow started with a practice session on Friday, November 11th. Yours truly got to drive the car again, my first time driving Buttonwillow in our Evo in, let me check my notes again, 10 freaking years! Overally, the car was healthy, the brakes where a little long, the wastegate duty cycle had to be reset, the power seemed a bit down; which we chalked up to my butt dyno not being properly calibrated, and we had one weird issue of the throttle staying open unexpectedly, which we thought might have been me accidentally side stepping onto the accelerator pedal. With little to do on the car, Mike and I spent the next 5 hours hunting down extra Ignite Red racing fuel as we were going through it faster than expected. We would spend the night in Los Angeles with longtime sponsor Ziggy from Zeitronix, before waking up bright and early to pick up our real racing driver, Tom O’Gorman, from the airport. Day 1 The following day, and the official start of the event, we arrived at the track midday with the intent of making sure Tom was comfortable in the car and getting it prepared for really setting a fast time the following day. Tom’s first session went predictably slowly, we gave him low boost and old tires and his lap time was 1:46.8. His main complaint being turbo lag and understeer, but no issues with the brakes, Grant did some lovely work the night before fixing the long pedal problem. We swapped over to new tires and full boost for the second and final session of the day and that’s when we realized low power was indeed a problem! Tom ran a 1:42.8, which was over 3 seconds off of our previous best and his top speed was over 15 mph slower than the last time we competed. We truly felt the Buttonwillow curse had reared its head yet again! https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl1f7DCJGW-/ With no more track time to figure out the issue, the team scrambled and started looking over all systems. Did the turbo fail? Did we lose compression? Did the exhaust manifold break? Everything looked peachy keen and the car ran perfectly. We poured over the data and I can’t remember who spotted it first, but we realized I had made a mistake on setting up the knock sensor. This sensor that controls how much timing the engine will run and it was pulling 8 degrees. Khiem Dinh, ex turbo engineer and still current friend, had arrived and told us that  pulling 8 degrees of timing will increase your exhaust gas energy greatly. This caused the wastegate duty cycle issues during testing which we didn’t realize was an indicator of an issue. Additionally, it will cause a massive loss of power! That evening we got special permission to test the car on a secret track to make sure my mistake had been rectified and holy hell, yeah, the car was … Continue reading 2022 Global Time Attack Finale Buttonwillow Raceway Park Recap

2004 Mitsubishi Evolution track car

How to make your street car’s cooling system race and track-day ready.

by Daniel O'Donnell, posted in Aerodynamics, Evo VIII, Evo X, Tech Tips

In the 10+ years of track experience we have had, we’ve made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of lessons. Hopefully, the lessons in this article will make life easier for you. First things first, I may interchange the words water and coolant, don’t get mad at me. In practice, you use water and coolant differently for different applications. Assuming you’re trying to maximize engine cooling, water cools more efficiently than coolant. It is also safer to use on a racetrack as it is less slippery in the case of spills. That being said, water will freeze at 32 F (0 C), so don’t use pure water if there’s any chance of being near freezing temps. Additionally, pure water can lead to corrosion, weird particulates and sludge, when used for long periods of time without some sort of conditioner. If you have a dual-purpose street/track car, the basic info below applies to equally to coolant as well. Enjoy! The biggest lesson, pressure management We’re going to start very basic, so bear with me, but rule number one: as water pressure increases, so does the boiling point. This is perhaps the most important thing to know about your cooling system. Why? Coolant needs to be in contact with the inner surfaces of your engine and radiator to cool. If the coolant boils, it’s no longer in contact with surfaces and then thermal failures can occur very quickly. Engines normally operate in a coolant temperature range of roughly 180 °F - 200 °F (82 °C - 93 °C) window. In standard atmospheric conditions, water boils at 212 °F (100 °C). You can see, without additional pressure, the engine is very close to reaching the standard boiling point of water. If you’re at the track, with extended high throttle conditions, the engine will produce additional heat. Without additional pressure, that heat will start boiling your coolant easily. Next thing you know, you have a broken engine. Check the number on your radiator cap to determine maximum pressure before the cap opens. 1.1 is in bar, a metric unit of pressure, in this case. Luckily, vehicle designers took this into account and came up with a pressurized cooling system! If you notice, there are the digits, 1.1, on your Fast and Furious Honda Civic radiator cap. This stands for 1.1 bar of pressure (about 16 psig). Side note, this number isn’t taking into account standard atmospheric pressure, which can be confusing. That 1.1 bar of pressure, in addition to the aforementioned normal atmospheric pressure, magically increases the water’s boiling point to about 250 °F (121 °C). This gives you much more headroom for heat to enter the coolant, without boiling. Thanks science nerds for figuring that one out! How a radiator cap works. Courtesy of http://www.sw-em.com/. You may be wondering, how does the cap increase pressure and boiling point? Well, it doesn’t. The cap acts as a two-way valve. Depending on coolant system conditions, it will hold pressure, open to relieve pressure or open the other way to relieve vacuum. When the engine warms up, the water expands, increasing pressure. In the case of the 1.1 bar Civic radiator cap, it will keep the system pressurized until 1.1 bar (16 psig). After that, the radiator cap will overflow coolant into an unpressurized reservoir tank. Once the system cools back down and compresses, it’s possible that the cooling system would be under vacuum. In these conditions, the radiator cap will allow coolant to flow back from the reservoir, refilling the system. Neato! It should be noted, just because your radiator cap says 1.1 bar, your system may not fully reach that pressure. This means, you might not exactly have a 250 °F boiling point in practice. Additionally, any air in your system hurts the pressure increase as well, lowering the max boiling point. REALLY FREAKING IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT CHECKING COOLANT LEVELS The last little paragraph above is critically important for track day drivers. Why? At the track, we can have cooling system issues, causing us to lose coolant while out in a session. This will then cause us to check coolant levels. While not recommended, many of us relieve the pressure of a warm system by slowly removing the radiator cap. Then we top off the coolant/water and head back out. DON’T DO THIS. We had to insert the stereotypical overheating radiator image somewhere. If your car is doing this, don't refill the coolant and go right back on track. The cooling system relies on temperature differential to increase system pressure to a point where the coolant won’t boil. If you release the pressure at a high temperature and go back out before the system fully cools, guess what? Your cooling system’s boiling point is dramatically lower, making your car more likely to overheat. While it is critically important to replace any lost coolant during a session, it is also critically important to keep the cooling system in the proper pressure window. Don’t open the system at higher temps, unless you can re-pressurize! See the MotoIQ article below for Dave Coleman’s tips and tricks to get around this problem. Bernoulli's principle. This is important for your cooling system and aerodynamics. Learn it, know it, be it! Now that we have a basic understanding of cooling system pressure, it is important to understand that the cooling system has different pressures in different areas. Bernoulli's principle shows us that flow will indicate pressure levels. Areas of high flow, such as the return line from the radiator to the water pump, will have relatively lower pressures. Areas of low flow, such as in front of the thermostat or convoluted areas of the engine block and cylinder head, will have relatively high pressures. Then to complicate things further, heat effects pressure. With higher temperatures yielding higher surface pressures (unless the coolant is boiling). Why is this important? This means each area has different, localized boiling points. Most importantly for this lesson, the radiator cap may be … Continue reading How to make your street car’s cooling system race and track-day ready.

Global Time Attack’s Super Lap Battle at Buttonwillow Raceway

by Daniel O'Donnell, posted in Event Recap, Evo VIII

After our success at Gridlife, hopes were high for finally overcoming the Buttonwillow curse that has plagued us for years. In the past, the car would perform perfectly for numerous events and then have a massive failure in California. This year, we were determined to overcome that destiny. Preparation for the event went well, we salvaged the bumper that was damaged at Gingerman Raceway, constructed a new splitter from plywood using our of the shelf diffusers, fabricated a new core support to replace the bent factory piece, and installed new brake master cylinders after discovering issues when reviewing Gingerman data. While those weren't exactly small jobs, they weren't overly complicated. This was a testament to how well the car ran at the last event. At the track, the car was ready to roll the moment it came off the trailer, with its new driver, Tom O'Gorman, ready to drive the fastest car of his career. Immediately, he found comfort and cracked off our best time ever with a low 1:40, despite being on the lowest boost setting! The remainder of the first day we worked out some small setting errors on the ECU, dialed in brake balance, as well as damper settings, and prepared the car to chase the overall lap record of 1:37.308 the following morning. On day 2, we mounted up fresh Hoosier A7 tires, turned the boost to 11 and let Tom loose! He set a 1:38.454, while having to brake heavily to avoid a competitor that lost coolant in front of him. At that time, it was the fastest lap of the event and a new AWD track record! We knew we had a 1:37 no problem, we just needed to find a clear piece of track. The car was working perfectly, with all temperatures in check and not a single indication of anything wrong. We sent Tom out in the following session, ready to bask in the glory of a new track record, when he called in on the radio and indicated the car wasn't running properly. Back in the pits we were to discover a crank signal that was reading intermittently. AEM Infinity guru, Tony Szirka, found a quick fix changing a few settings on the ECU, the car fired right back up sounding completely normal, and we were put at ease. We'd have 2 sessions left to secure a clean lap... only when the next session arrived, the car wouldn't start again. This sent the team into scramble mode to figure out what was happening with the sensor. Team mechanic, Grant Davis, quickly got to work and found the sensor was seemingly fine. We run the same sensors for both crank and cam position, so we can easily diagnose if one is working and one wasn't, but both worked as a cam input and neither worked for a crank input. The wiring was quickly tested and seemed to be fine. We found another sensor that would work for the crank position, but wasn't technically the right sensor for the job. We installed everything back into place, the new sensor seemed to work fine and the car ran perfectly again... With the final session for the event happening right after the car was started back up, we were quickly on grid and things seemed to be good. The car started its flying lap looking healthy, but unfortunately, we got a call on the radio that the issue popped back up again. The car died and Tom safely pulled off near a corner worker's station. While we were disappointed, we were confident in the performance of the car and happy with the victory... until Can Jam and their Subaru STI surprised us. They were very strong competitors, but honestly, we weren't that worried about them beating our time due to multiple issues they struggled with throughout the event. During that final session, while everything went wrong for us, everything went right for them and the just sneaked by us with a 1:38.281, good enough for a new AWD record and a win. Hats off to them for overcoming so much to win the event, but it sure was deflating when we knew we had the potential and it slipped between our fingers. That being said, a second place and the 4th fastest production car ever to drive around the Buttonwillow is nothing to sneeze at. The curse? Well, it's almost lifted. There's a lot of time left in the car and all the more, we've learned so much this year, we feel we can continue to improve. Thanks once again to our friends, family, and partners for helping us get through the rebuild. We can't wait to see what 2019 holds! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krLcvOiWdCI Full results for the event are here: Full Results at Global Time Attack Many thanks to Janel Wenger and Brian Steinbrunner for the photos!

Back in the Saddle Again at Gridlife Round 5 Gingerman

by Daniel O'Donnell, posted in Aerodynamics, Event Recap, Evo VIII

It was 10 months in the making. After two engine failures, a fire, and coming so close to the fastest lap ever at Super Lap Battle 2017, we knew we had a big rebuild ahead of us. In that time we’d repair the bodywork, rewire the entire car, update our data acquisition system, install a new engine, add a dry sump system, thoroughly check the entire drivetrain, rebuild the suspension, and make countless other small upgrades and tweaks to improve reliability and performance. It was incredibly difficult to see events come and go and not be able to compete in them. We got by on the hope that the end result was going to be worth it. With the car nearing completion and Gridlife Round 5 happening at our favorite test track, Gingerman Raceway, we knew it was the perfect opportunity to get out and see the results of our hard work. There was one issue, though: weather appeared to be mocking us. The day before leaving, we saw at least a 50% chance of rain happening every single hour of the event. We didn’t even know if we were going to take the car off the trailer. On arrival, though, the race gods were smiling upon us. The weather threatened throughout the day by sprinkling here and there, but the bad storms went north and south of the track. This gave us the opportunity to get right out on a mildly wet track to do a systems test to check if the rebuild was more or less successful. With Dan, your humble author, taking the car out first, everything was incredibly good! The engine felt strong at high rpm: even on the lowest boost settings, the brakes were nicely balanced, the suspension was well damped, aero felt effective and everything was looking great. Two minor things: one of the exhaust gas temperature sensor’s wiring become disconnected, as indicated by our AEM CD-7L dash before even getting back to the pits and our MIVEC system wasn’t reactivated after changing out our crank sensor system from the OEM design to Kiggly Racing’s billet system -both easy fixes. With the track drying out and rain constantly threatening, we switched to having Andy Smedegard drive the Evo to gain some comfort, offer additional feedback, and to see how fast we really were. Of course, on his first lap the car’s engine didn’t sound right and he limped it back to the pits to tell us it felt like it wasn’t running on all 4 cylinders. Time attack life is never easy! The car would idle and with a quick look at the exhaust gas temperatures on the AEM dash we saw cylinder 2 wasn’t firing. Right away, Grant saw the connector to the ignition coil wasn’t fully seated and once it was snapped into position, the car was happy again and that was the last issue we’d have to deal with in regards to how the car performed the entire weekend. Immediately, Andy took the car and posted a time of 1:26.8, the 2nd fastest time of the event, beating our previous best lap time by 3 seconds and the 3rd fastest time ever for a production based car on the track. To top it all off, this was on our lowest boost setting and year old Hoosier A7 tires. We would get one more session to see what the car would do on our second highest boost level, but unfortunately due to yellow flags and traffic, an opportunity to get a flying lap in was impossible. Day 1 finished with no work to do on the car, our fastest lap at Gingerman ever, weather predictions saying that we’d have hours of clear track the following day and plenty of potential left in the car with more power and seat time. We were feeling very optimistic to say the least. Team mechanic, Grant Davis, was so bored at this point he decided to help a competitor swap a transmission! Day 2 and we realized that being on Lake Michigan means that you can never trust the weatherman. We woke up to rain and the radar said we were going to get more of it for most, if not all of, the day. The rain wasn’t extremely strong, just enough to keep the track damp, so we took the opportunity to do some aerodynamic flow visualization testing. This involved taking powdered paint, mixing it with mineral spirits and spraying the combination all over the car. After that, we drove the car around the track to get the fluid to spread and let us know how the wind interacted with the surface of the vehicle. With this information we could see how our aerodynamic components were working and see what areas had room for improvement. During these tests, the rain started to taper off and the weather improved, just in time for the last time attack session of the day. Quickly, we prepared the car with fresh Hoosier A7 tires, confirmed all settings and performed our safety checks on the car. Andy would get one opportunity to see if we could get victory and possibly set the fastest Gingerman lap ever, which was a 1:23.7 set by World Time Attack competitor, Will Au-Yeung, earlier this year. Andy would have enough fuel for two laps and his first lap, a 1:25.1, was fast enough for the victory and the 2nd fastest production car lap, but when pushing for more, on the final turn of his 2nd hot lap, he drove a little too hard and went wide and into the sand. The damage was relatively minor, a broken front bumper, tweaked splitter, a bent core support and sand EVERYWHERE, but the car returned to the pits under its own power and the team was overall still very happy with the victory. https://youtu.be/kMv3CB1aKeE With one successful event in hand, it’s back to grind we go. The potential in the car is unreal and exciting. Next we’ll … Continue reading Back in the Saddle Again at Gridlife Round 5 Gingerman

Recap of Global Time Attack/Super Lap Battle

by Daniel O'Donnell, posted in Event Recap, Evo VIII, Online Media Publications

Global Time Attack's Super Lap Battle has always been a tale of two stories for the team. One where we are hit with monumental adversity and challenges in the highest-pressure situations. The other, where all these issues are overcome at the last moment and the team rises to the challenge, besting all expectations. Riding this knife edge is full of tension and stress, but the team has been able to thrive in these conditions. Leading up to the race, we had done everything in our power to reduce the chances of problems popping up, but of course Buttonwillow seems to always have other plans, and this SLB would be no different. The track would throw every possible problem our way, and the team would have to fight tooth and nail to meet the expectations we have of ourselves. This year, the car was mildly evolved, with refinement as the goal and a new Stig, Ken Dobson, behind the wheel. After having a successful and moderately reliable Gridlife event we focused on upgrades and modifications as we didn't have to fix many problems before going out to California. Upgrades consisted of improved datalogging capabilities, fixing wiring, tweaked aero, improved engine reliability and suspension adjustments. With all seemingly going to plan, the car started its cross-country journey with Grant trailering the car out and having smooth sailing on his trip. Mike and I arrived at the track to see Grant had prepared everything and left the garage, which was provided by Fortune Auto, in a tidy, organized state, ready for the upcoming days’ activities. The garage and advanced preparation, along with a 5 a.m. wake-up call, meant we were prepared and ready to run well before the first session on the first day. In retrospect, I think all this positivity was just the car gods lifting our spirits, just before kicking us square in the pants. Ken would go out in the first practice session to familiarize himself with the car, do a systems check and make sure all was well. With low boost and old tires, a 1:46 was achieved with little effort. We were feeling pretty good that this was going to be a special Super Lap Battle. The car was sent back out for the next session, old tires, but this time with more boost to see what he could really do and find out what the car was capable of! This is when Buttonwillow decided to get involved. After a familiarization lap, Ken really started to push it. Entering Phil Hill, the car lost oil pressure, sprayed the oil down the passenger side, and a small fire came to life within the wheel. From our vantage point, the team didn’t see any of this, only realizing that a problem had occurred when the car didn’t show up around the last turn as expected. Being the consummate professional that he is, Ken immediately killed the engine and held off from pulling the fire-suppression system, which while potentially saving his life, would have caused a big mess. Thanks for putting yourself at risk, Ken! Team photographer Nelly Wenger happened to be in a position to catch all the drama, and as we walked over to watch as the car was loaded on the flat bed, she showed us the pictures and our imaginations ran wild with all sorts of negative imagery. We also felt terrible for all the other competitors’ time we just wasted by requiring the track to be cleaned. Not a fun time in the Professional Awesome camp. The rescue crew at Buttonwillow did an amazing job of putting our Evo on their flat bed. Our car is so low we expected the worst, but they got it up without a scratch and back to our pits for us to assess the damage. Assuming a blown engine or oil line, we were surprised to find no source of such a major leak. For those of you familiar with the team, this is exactly what happened last year, when a loose oil filter was found to be the culprit. This year, the oil filter was on tight with no additional damage other than our oil temp and pressure sensors being tweaked, but not leaking. Everything seemed healthy and happy, with the exception of 3-4 quarts of oil sprayed everywhere. Eagle-eyed competitor Andy Smedegard noticed what might possibly be a bulging seal on the top of the oil filter and even offered a replacement filter to boot. Not completely convinced this was the cause of the issue, the team cautiously fired the car, saw no problems and began the painstaking process of oil clean up … again. This would cost us the remaining sessions of the day, but offered a glimmer of hope that the team would recover and get back to kicking ass the next morning. Day 2 would start with much needed rest for Mike and me. Things looked up, the team was optimistic, weather seemed to be as good as it possibly could be, and we knew we had to strike while the irons were hot. Out were the old tires, and in were fresh-sticker C91s, ready to give their lives in the name of fast laps and racing glory. Conservative boost settings gone, now we would be at mode 10 out of 11. We were going for a banker lap, with just enough in our back pocket to go faster later, after we set our first, fast time. The car rolled out, looked good on the warmup lap and ready for the kill. On the fast lap, everything looked great until near the Bus Stop, when I noticed it seemed slower than expected. In would come Ken with complaints the car wasn’t responding to throttle inputs. I notice the dash light warning of high engine coolant temps and fears would instantly spread throughout my body. Back in the garage, we would find the coolant level abnormally low, but no data suggesting a headgasket issue from our water pressure sensors. The lack of throttle response was a safety protocol … Continue reading Recap of Global Time Attack/Super Lap Battle