Stockholm Cup, Tullinge Raceway 26 August.
Al bits and pieces were still not broken after the first test at SDC two weeks earlier.
Thats not something were used to.
We just fixed some small details lite adding a micro swich on the shifter so that boost increses everytime I shift gears.
Funny although we had so much time we didnt have time enough to take he car for a good test drive in the neighbour hoods.
All we had time for was one small burnout outside the garage
before we loaded her up to the trailer.
As a change from normal case all in the team could get home early and get som sleep the night before raceday.
As we came to the track early next morning it was so foggy
no one could tell if it was going to start raining or become good weather.
Luckily for us it got pretty good.
In the first run everything fealt good but after 250-300m the engine lost all power.
It didnt matter if I was giving her full throttle or if I gave her none.
arount 5000rpm was the rev nomatter what, so I turned off.
It showed to be a 40cm crack in the intake following a weld.
Since I managed to pass the finnish line after aprox. 13sec I qualifyed
and was secured a place in the eliminations.
Now all we had to do was to get the intake welded.
Anders at Turbocenter was handy at the track and offered to take it to his company near by to weld it together.
It took about an hour from start loosening the bolts to the intake until we were puting it together again.
Thats what I call service!
Even though we were rather quick,
the qualifyings were already over so we had to wait for the eliminations to start until we could get a new shot at the track.
For the first elimination round we thought we might increase boost a bit over the 18psi we had when we ran 10,89 two weeks earlier. That was a good thought but I failed to turn the automatic boost increase swich on, and the result was yet another 18psi round.
18psi isnt that bad as it might sound.
At 18psi I have 500-550hp to play with but thats rather far from the engines potential so to say.
Anyhow, this 18psi round resulted in 10,71s-212km/h even if the 60ft was 1,7 instead of 1,51 like in the 10,89-run.
That fealt good.
For the third round I remembered to turn the automatic boost increase on.
It was still not set to maximize the engine in any way.
We prefer to increase in small steps rather than just maxing it all out and not knowing what happened.
At 1st gear I boosted 18psi, 2nd gear I boosted 26psi and at 3rd gear I boosted 32psi.
It went away really fine, and for every new gear the power increasment was feelable.
Not beond controle, but rather just fine massive acceleration all the way.
That resulted in 10,18s - 236km/h!
Not bad, not bad at all.
To jump from 10,71 to 10,18 with just some more boost made everyone at the track a bit crazy,
so I decided to increase the boost just a slightly tiny bit more.
I still had a 60ft on 1,70 and if I just could 60ft at 1,51 like I once did the nine would be no problems.
For every 10th on the 60ft time you can cut you get two 10ths at the final time,
and to go from 1,7 to 1,5 would mean that I would have gone around 9,8...
....but thats just in theory folks. =)
At this stage I was already in final, and the weather started looking a bit unsecure
so we were not sure of getting any more chanses this day.
This was simply when it had to happen.
Just too bad my cluch werent too impressed over the extra power I gave it.
It slipped on first gear, even worse on second gear and on third gear it did nothing else but slip.
You can clearly see in the film how Im desperate trying to get it to grip,
but as soon as boost comes on the cluch slips.
Even though I managed to run 11,33s-189km/h at 402m.
As I tryed to get the cluch to lock up I slightly over reved the engine a couple of times.
If that was the reason or if Im just not the lucky guy I dont know,
but after the last round one of my lashcaps had jumped and got stuck halfway out of the retainer.
All intake valves were leaking alot and my Tommei MLS head gasket had leaked on three spots.
We had two weeks again until next race so we didnt feel any panic to get all issuse fixed.
I went down the 130km to DTE Racing to get new valve seats grinded,
a new MLS head gasket were purchased. A Commetic one this sime.
A new cluch were obtained too. The old one werent spec.ed to more than 810 Nm
but now we got one that was guaranteed to hold on to 1050 Nm.
Everything seemed to fall into place, but the night before the next race
we just got every thing together again and discovered that we couldnt get the breand new cluch to work.
It locked up ok, but we couldnt make it not to...
We realy did everything we could to get it fixed.
We worked from friday noon constantly until 16:00 saturday afternoon.
Then we gave up.
We missed the last race at Tullinge raceway for the season (our home track),
and two days ago they announced that the track will close permanently
due to some stupid politician pricks want to build houses at the airfield.
Ok, that was a pitty, but we found out there was a race on another airfield in a town nearby.
Not as well prepared as the Tullinge races but it would still be a oportunity to feel the new cluch.
We got the new cluch to work as it should
but 10 minutes before loading the car to the trailer
I wanted to do a small tiny little bornout
to see that everything with the engine was working ok.
The engine was ok, and so was the cluch...
...but then I broke a CV Joint instead!
It broke in such a bad way that it left pieces stuck and locked in the diff.
The diff was a special order from Quife for half a fortune so by then the season was over for sure.
Next race will be sometime in the beginning of May 2007.
Since our home track is closed we dont know exactly when or were
but we will be back chasing the nine.
Be sure!
/Björn
Heres a link to a film I made containing all of the runs.
Thanks to Dennis Rudolfsson for letting me use some of his photos in this article.
