Hello Again

Sorry for the long delay since the last post. Been traveling, tore ligaments off the bone in my left knee, rehabbing the knee, family stuff etc.

Also met friends with similar cars in the North Georgia mountains for a week of driving the wonderful roads of N. Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina. Unfortunately it rained most days but we still got to spend time with good friends, had several great meals and lots of good car talk. Also got in about 1 1/2 days of great driving.

Denise and I have discovered a great hilly, twisty, curvy road in Michigan that Car and Driver Magazine has written about. It took us a while to figure out the route but it makes a great day of driving to go there, drive several laps, have a nice dinner and then return home.

I've also continued to work on the car. The most recent projects were replacing the front brake rotors and pads. The pads were not nearly worn out but they were very abrasive to the rotors and the rotors had worn relatively thin. The new pads have been much friendlier to the new rotors. :)  Front to rear brake bias also needed to be adjusted because the new pads are not quite as sticky as the old pads.

UGGS also has new rear tires.

The latest project was to install a toothed wheel that DP provided on the transaxle's right inboard CV joint along with the associated wiring and GM inductive pickup.  After proper coding of both the GM VCM (engine control computer) and the MOTEC digital dashboard, I've been able to improve the accuracy of my speedometer and odometer. Previously the mileage and speed inputs depended on GPS logging from the MOTEC.  GPS is great unless you drive under tree cover or under highway underpasses...

Now that the VCM knows exactly how far and fast the car is going, I'll be able to set up the VCM to shut off the fuel injectors when at speed and zero throttle. In addition the VCM will be able to turn off the cooling fans if the engine is hot and forward speed is over i.e. 30 mph. Both functions will slightly improve fuel mileage.

Total mileage on the car now is a little over 11,000.

Next week I plan to visit the Performance Racing Industry (PRI) show in Indianapolis. Hopefully I'll get a new posting up before too long.

Orlando Speed World Drag Strip

When in Florida we trailered UGGS to a Wednesday night Test and Tune Session at a drag strip. Nice people and nice facility but the weather was super humid and drag strip traction was quite limited. We made several runs but had trouble getting the car hooked up. As an example there was so much dew and borderline fog that I used the windshield wiper to get moisture off the windshield before my last couple of runs!

Another problem was that my Toyo R888 rear tires are worn out. They show the wear strips and are heat cycled out. I was still getting wheel spin in 3rd gear at over 100 MPH. Definitely time to get new tires.

My best run had a 60' time of 1.9 seconds and 1/4 mile of 11.0 at 133 mph.  I think the car can and will do much better with better driving from me, tires and track conditions.  I was hopeful that UGGS would beat my Stalker's best times of 1.5, 9.94 and 141.5 (on drag slicks).  Time will tell.

A fun thing was that a TV crew interviewed Denise and I at the end of the night. They are making some kind of documentary about Auto Sports for teens and promised to let me know how to find it when it airs. Unfortunately we neglected to get contact info for the team that did the filming and conducted the interview.

I tried to do a good job of promoting safe driving, Palatov and Stalker cars.  Hope it comes out well. If/when I get more info from them, I'll post it.

Great Fuel Mileage

It was a beautiful day in NW Indiana today. Denise and I drove UGGS about 300 miles over rural roads with almost no traffic and at consistent speeds of mostly 50 to 65 MPH. I was amazed that we averaged 40.7 MPG!

That tuning session certainly paid off.

April Fool. :) The true mileage was just under 21 MPG. Not bad for a 427" engine that makes close to 600 HP. Also I think I can tweak the VCM again and improve the mileage a little more.

Dyno - Mileage

In Daytona I took the car to Redline Performance for extra tuning of the engine control computer. Although it ran well and made lots of power, fuel economy was very low at about 14/16 mpg when driving gently on the street.

We ran the car on Redline's Dyno Mite Chassis dyno, monitored air/fuel ratios (AFR) using the dyno's Wide Band Oxygen (WBO2) sensor on one bank and my Innovate LC1 WBO2 on the other. This allowed us to safely lean out the AFR at low load and RPM for better economy (and improved pollution control).  We couldn't resist a couple of runs and minor changes at higher RPM and full throttle. Minor changes also added about 15 HP at some points in the power curve and around 10 HP at high revs and peak power.  When compared to the base map that was developed on a SuperFlow engine dyno a couple of years ago, power, mileage and driveability are all improved. :)  It was a productive half day.

Fuel economy improved to around 21 MPG in the several hundred miles driven since the "Tune Up". :)

In total we drove Uggs 1323 miles in warm sunny Florida during the trip.

Kirkey Seats and Mileage

At year end 2014 I had put about 6000 miles on Uggs' MOTEC digital dash/data logger.

The picture shows about 650 RPM on the graph, 199*F coolant temp, 194*F oil temp, the big 0 is the current gear selected and is calculated by RPM vs forward speed, the car was stopped therefore no valid calculation could be made, i.e. if the car was going 60 MPH and the revs were 2000 it would display 5th gear, 29 PSI oil pressure, 0 MPH calculated via its GPS satellite sensors, 7.6 gallons of fuel remaining and 6035 total miles logged. The total miles displayed is around 5 or 600 miles low because I did not have the MOTEC installed until after the car had been running for a short while.

 

Santa brought Denise and I new Kirkey Intermediate Road Race Seats for Christmas.  As seems to be normal it took me longer than I had planned to get these properly installed prior to our departure for our 3 week trip to the Daytona Beach Florida area. It was a scramble but it got done. Pix follow.

More info will follow in the next couple of days regarding the dyno tuning and drag race experiences. Thanks for following this blog.

 

Long overdue update

Just returned from 3 weeks in Daytona Beach Florida with the car. Prior to the trip we installed new Kirkey seats and changed front brake pads.
During the trip we:
1. installed my Innovate LC1 Wide Band Oxygen (WBO2) sensor and connected it to my HP Tuners interface so that I can monitor, display and log Air/Fuel ratios for proper tuning of the fuel injection system
2. ran the car on a chassis dyno and modified the engine control computer's calibration to improve power slightly, low speed drivability and fuel mileage (significantly)
3. ran the car on Orlando Speed World's 1/4 mile drag strip
4. enjoyed about 1400 miles of warm and mostly sunny Florida roads
5. cruised Daytona's Bike Week among the interesting custom bike show
6. attended New Smyrna Beach's Collector Car Show that is held monthly
Now that the rush is done, I will try to do a better job of posting regular updates