That said, I did do some work on installing the unit in the car and got together a plan for installing the driveshaft sensor and the EGT sensor. We already have one EGT in the #2 cylinder (it is a separate unit) and I am going to install without a bung, the racepak EGT in the #1 Cylinder. I decided to go with a non-bung install and instead use a hose clamp / set screw collar combination to save time and possible damage to the headers. Its also easier to move the EGT to another cylinder and simply cover the existing hole with a piece of tin and another hose clamp. We have done this on other sets of headers so I know it can be done without any leaks (although I wouldn’t have believed it if we hadn’t done it before)

So we are getting closer to the first event and I need to spend probably another 30 hours in the garage to get all the things ready that I want to be ready for race 1. It should be a very nice spring.

Where I was at before – it was racing all year long. It was still too cold to really think about risking breaking car parts – but you could go to the track in January and see some streeters running. Here? No way. Wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) even consider it.

Anyway, I’m in the middle of a Racepak install and can’t finish it because I would spend $100 just heating up the garage to spend a Saturday getting it done. I’ll wait for a warm day and git ‘er dun.

I did some tweaking of our wiring and got a switch and wiring hooked up. Once we get the unit installed we’ll have power for it. Decided to wire it to the network on the car that has power to the switch 100% of the time. The other network only has power when the main toggle is switched and that network is only for use while running the engine. We want to be able to power this even with the engine off so we can hook up the computer and what not.

I’m very excited to get it setup and hooked into the MSD. Then we might tackle the driveshaft sensor and the location of the unit.

Looking forward to having it on to see what is really going on with the main components of the car. Should be illuminating.

Also worth noting is that it cost roughly half of what it originally cost to back-half the car. Wow. But then again, that WAS 20 years ago.

Its pretty amazing to me how well the car is holding up given the time between runs, the age of the rubber on the tires and all the factors that use/abuse racecars.

I’ll try to post pictures and other information about the process as we go through installing the hardware on our car.  Feels like this kind of stuff puts in the realm of nascar or some of the top sportsman/modified classes.  What we do with the data will probably more accurately put us in that category because almost anyone can collect data – its understanding it, wading through it and learning something.  In software engineering we call this “data mining”.  Learning something from the data that isn’t inherently visible without knowing how to structure and query the data.

We are going to build a high horsepower race engine.

It is going to be high compression, and either a 400 or 455 block.  We have both sitting in the garage, so it will be a matter of determining what stroke we are going to use, and which blocks are in the best shape for this application.  Also, we are going to consider buying new main caps that have the splayed bolts to add some rigidity to the bottom end.  Shouldn’t be too big of a deal since we will need the block line-bored for our new internally balanced rotating assembly.  Usually we wouldn’t necessarily go for this trouble but with this engine we are stepping into previously uncharted territory.  That territory is to use something other than stock heads and crank.  We are still using a stock block, and we have used after-market pistons with steel or aluminum rods on several engines.  I just don’t want to see this thing implode because we didn’t choose a solid block or take the extra steps to beef up the bottom.

I imagine it will take a month or two until I get the block picked out and have a plan for what parts we will be buying first.  Its going to take some discussion with dad on rotating assemblies.  There are some great combinations on the Butler Performance website.

The other thing that we are going to have to discuss before we can get to buying parts is whether we are going to use O port heads or D port heads.  The reason this is important is because of the cost of headers – and budget is certainly a concern here.  We have some O port headers, but they are pretty rusty – they also have different clearance issues with regard to the ride height of the car.

So there is alot to consider.  We’ll try to keep the blog posted with details.

Competition Car Data Logging – Simon McBeath

Analysis Techniques for Race Car Data Acquisition – Jorge Segers

Competition Car Data Logging Manual – Graham Templeton