NEW PERSONAL BEST YET AGAIN
grand bend technical layout. First session done and I pulled an entire second off of my last personal best at this track which was already a properly quick lap time. This car is absolutely insane. The ceiling is very very high.
Mindless passive driving. Just auto pilot. Feeling out the grip. Feeling out myself. Driving not so hard and the times just coming. This is nuts. Its very mental as the second i see my lap time, the goal to push for more comes in and that is the end of it. You wont go any faster if youre out there "trying" to go for a specific laptime. Its a mental game.
Beautiful day yesterday. Fantastic conditions. 17c. Cool air. Engine feeling strong. No GoPro from this lap unfortunately
Yesterday was a mental roller coaster. New personal best. I knew the time was fast but I didn’t know how fast.
My shop owner was at the track with some customers doing some testing on their cars. Was a good day with some good people and some radical drivers asking me what in the hell is done to the car that I’m only just off of their own pace haha. That’s always fun conversation when people see my $5000 sh*tbox just taking names.
The joke at the end of the day was “one minute you’re hunting down radicals and ariels, the next minute your swapping wheel hubs”. Haha.
Annoying failure right at the end of the day. Not to mention my poor engine
Now for the more serious. I think my engine is no more. After my first session with my massive PB, my coolant overflow was FULL. It had sprayed all over my bay. Everywhere.
I waited for the car to cool. Dumped the overflow back into the rad then went out again. This time I noticed 0 front end. No turn in. No braking. No nothing. The car sucked.
Turns out the overflow was full again pissing onto my drivers side front tire. Explains my lack of everything lol.
I dumped the coolant back into the rad. Adjusted some damper settings and went back out. Car was feeling fantastic UNTIL…The rear hub broke(pictured above).
I think maybe my season is done early. I will begin to remove the engine while the weather is still acceptable. First I will leakdown test it and compression test it. Then pull it and take it apart. See what I can reuse(oil pump, oil pan baffle, cylinder head, and that’s probably it).
Shame shame but it happens. This engine has just over 270,000kms. It has been to the track 40 times in my ownership with roughly 60+hours of track usage plus many many street pulls to 9000rpm. It’s just done I guess. I am sad but this engine did great things for me so I can’t complain. It was a good unit to get me where I am now in terms of driver/car development
One note to add. Coolant temp did not exceed 205f ever. Not on track. Not at idle. It was running very cool.
drive home was 2 hours. No heat issues. Temperature around 180-195f. The usual. I did not do many pulls on the drive home and the overflow tank only had a small amount of coolant pushed into it. It did still get some though so somethings wrong.
my guess is headgasket but a few friends told me to try the radiator cap first