New personal best ... night from HELL ... 1.53! ... snap, crackle, pop

[JekylandHyde]

What a night. Hyde made his way to Numidia Raceway.
I've never been there before and this is the 6th dtrack for Hyde to run on.
It's almost at a 1000' of eleveation (I normally race between 32' and 330').

It is one of those out in the middle of nowhere tracks ... in the country/woods ... 97% domestic land. I was really welcomed which was cool.

Tech was fun:
Tech guy, "Nice Car."
Me, "Thanks."
Tech guy, "What's it run?"
Me, "I was runing 11.8s all alst weekend."
Tech guy, "Oh, You know what you are doing."
signs tech card and hands it back to me ... never looked at the car.

An the way to the track I had an awful metal-on-metal scraping nosie only on left turns and it was coming from the right rear. Swaybars, brakes, suspension, tires ... everything checked out. I could not figure this out so ... like a fool , I went racing anyway.

On the 45 minute trip to the track, I told myself that I was going ot break tonight. That noise was just not a friendly one.

First run:
Racing against a red F-body Pontiac and I have the video camera pointing rear-ward (wait until you see this video!). So I do a wonderful smokey burnout and pull up to the line. I forgot about how longthe sportsman tree was, so I got off boost and then back on and was asleep at the light with a .7 ot his .2 .... however, I nailed a new personal best 60' of 1.53!
I will upload the video later ... awesome friggin launch.

He we 14.X and I went 11.7 @ 118.x. I have gone 11.7 four others times on three other tracks.
I think I went 11.72 which would be a new best since I my best was 11.731 ... I may have gone 11.732 which would be friggin ironic. This was at a higher elevation so at Maple grove that would have been a 11.6/11.5 @ 120 or so.

My scraping noise got worse ... much worse.
So what does a dumbass do? ... keep racing of course!

Run 2, I do an awesome burnout and they tell us to kill our cars becuase of a timing issue.
They back us up and the second burnout sucks (the second one always sucks).
I get the light and I had monster boost built up and WHAM ... bang ... I think my LSD blew up

I pulled to the side and continued on thinking I broke an axle. I finished with an impressive 29.X run @ 30 mph. I was embarrased and asshamed when I realize that my diff gave up and I was actually dripping crap.

So Kupop on the board was there and he drove me 45 minuntes home to get my truck and trailer ... 1/2 way back to the track a tire on the trialer blew up and got shreaded *sigh*
So I drove 10+ miles on 3 tires ... got to the track, swapped the spare trailer tire on, loaded up Hyde and made a pathetic trip home.

I just got home and I broke at 6:30

I think Hyde will be down for a while.
I can't afford to keep up any more ... time to step back.
This year is killing me.

[JekylandHyde]

Intercooler update: One thing I did note was my intake temps. They were about 29°C (84.2F) at the beginning of the run and were 34°C (93.2°F) by the top of 3rd, as soon as I shifted they went down to 31°/32° (89.6°F) and were back to 34° (93.2°F) by the end of 4th. Ambient temps were probably around 25.6°~27.8°C (78°-82°F) On the GReddy IC I would see temps as high as 150°+ by the end of the track! Not bad for an eBay intercooler ~ eh?
I just picked up my slip form the car and it was exactly 80°F.

And this was a new personal best.
The slip:

1.533 - 60'
7.562 @ 92.22 mph
11.728 @ 118.74
Picked up 26.52 mph in the top of the track

My previous best 11.731, so I improved by .003
That has to be one of the smallesst margins of improvement I have ever seen.
Nothing like spending a few thousand dollars to go .003 faster


Videos ...

In-Car, rear-facing burnout video:
http://www.jekylhyderacing.com/image...ar_burnout.mpg

11.72 from in-car facing rearward ... this is what a 1.5 in the 60 looks like:
http://www.jekylhyderacing.com/images/hyde_11728.mpg

[clawhammer]

Sorry to hear about Hyde.

MR2's use FWD tranny components, right? So the LSD is a part of the transmission, right? Which you just replaced a couple of months ago, right? Or perhaps the OEM LSD wasn't meant for close to 400 ft lbs of torque.

[speedthrill]

Great that you improved yr personal best. Don't forget to update the sig

How long will you be out you think? I'm gonna miss the videos and stories.

[alphalanos]

that sucks. wow that mr2 really hooks up! awesome.

[carrrnuttt]

And that, my friend, is the definition of bittersweet.


Good luck on getting her running again, mang.

[CassiesMan]

You said that the car was making a weird scraping noise, but all the suspension components checked out fine?

Thats kinda wierd, cuz my Rav4 that I've been driving till Cassie gets up here was making this really loud, really bad sounding scraping noise, comming from the left front tire area...and it just stopped...I'm gonna run it over the toyota dealership...

[Igovert500]

Wow, sorry to hear about Hyde. Nice run though.

[Andydg]

I'm sorry to hear about the car, but glad to hear abou the time you ran. Great vids too!

[JekylandHyde]

There are people putting 600-700 rwhp throguh the OEM tranny, not sure what diff they are using though.

I have no idea how long Hyde will be down for.
It is entirely probable that this is the end of my season ... I am out of time and money.

We'll see. I haven't even looked yet to see what all broke. That is how I will be spending my Labor day

Thanks for the well wishes though, it does mean a lot.

[2000LS1Z28]

You need to correct your sig, cause hey, 11.728 is faster than 11.731. Anyways, it's not like you're really suffering, you still have another MR2 to drive. Personally I think you should just take some time off, you've been spending money on that car like there is no tomorrow (Atleast that is what I get from your posts). Personally I think you should be ecstatic w/ an 11 sec. car. Your car can beat 98% of the cars on the road out there.

[chevytrucks92]

Tough break. Congrats on the 1.53 60' though. You can now beat my car's short time (best this past weekend was 1.61, and that is a new best for the 355 "mouse motor" under the hood BTW). I'm running at about 1500-2000 ft. though.

And don't give up on the year man! Its only September! If I can change engines in less then a week and not miss a race, totally out of pocket, then surely you can get a new rearend within a couple weeks having sponsors!

Either way, good luck with it. I know it sucks to break something, especially when its major.

Good luck and congrats on the new time.

[JekylandHyde]

Wow ... I might be right back on track.

I trailer Hyde down to David Hawkins home.
He is the owner of twosrus.com and the president of Club MR2.
We tore into Hyde and the first thing we noticed was the driver-side axle was sticking out about 1" from the diff

We tore in there first. When we pulled the axle out of the tranny ... it ended at the smooth part before you get to the actual splines! It was twisted like you would not believe creating a spiral crack around the entire inner stub until it broke in two! The spline portion was stuck in the tranny.

We removed the p-side axle to poke out the stuck part. When we took off the p-side tire we notived the end link tab for the swap bar had cracked and the end link was wedged between the strut and the body. I am hoping this was the screetchy noise I was hearing.

We also saw that both boots on the ball joints were falling apart. Since twosrus sells these parts, he had them on hand.

David is having the tab on the strut welded up this week, I am going to try to source an LSD inner stub and he is installing the new ball joints. If all goes well, Hyde will be back in businees on Friday and I can make the Weatherly hill climb the following week!

What a year. I can't believe how much the MR2 community rallies up and helps to keep Hyde rolling. I really figured this season was done for last weekend!

... to be continued ...

[mason_RsX]

Im not a LSD genius, but I think I know what your describing, nice wording...any Idea what could have shifted your axle?

burnout + race video is so sweet, man that car can fly, and it sounds like its revving so high...I bet the thrill of a 11s car must be amazing

[TatII]

thats what i call a tight knitted community. anyways congrats on your new run, and look on the bright side, atleast your engine didn't blow.