Monday, January 27, 2014

Preparing for Barber

The big change for the South region schedule for 2014 is the addition of Barber Motorsports Park.  I'm excited, as I've never been to Barber.

The car ran well at the last race.  We had no serious mechanical issues.  So for Barber we can focus on making improvements rather than repairs.

Shocks have been a sore point since the beginning.  We swapped the springs fairly early in OLPD's racing career, but the shocks are still original.  This is most evident in the way the car can hop sideways through certain turns.  We found a set of beat up shocks that we think we can repair/rebuild.  Hopefully we'll get a dispensation from the powers-that-be, but we'll face getting some penalty laps if we don't.

Also needing to be addressed is the aero "package".  In addition to the wing, we also have removed all of the glass, so drag the car sees on the straights is significant.  The open windows also tend to suck some of the exhaust into the car.  The guys that run the Magnum PU Prelude had enclosed their back in a hatch-like fashion using a sheet of 1/8" polycarbonate, some 1" square tubing and lots of rivets.  Vincent was kind enough to send me step-by-step photos of their process.


We are planning to follow their construction technique, but with one difference.  Because our rear window slope would be much more severe with a sedan, we are going to make it Kammback ala the CRX.


It's what all the cool hypermilers are doing.