Did not go quite according to plan, had engine issues all weekend even though it had performed flawlessly up to and even in the Friday race until a blow head gasket reared it's ugly head. On Saturday the car had been repaired and was good to go again and started the race but the engine began to run rough. It was pulled behind the wall and after a hot valve adjustment and a spark plug wire swap the car was getting ready to go out again when the engine started to knock and it was immediately shut down. It may be a couple weeks before the problem is found because they need a break from the action so to speak.
On the other hand Team Pontiaxed did very well and had a good showing on both days!
[This message has been edited by BrittB (edited 08-04-2014).]
well it was not the weekend we had hoped for, we have a broken car and I have a badly burned hand... We learned a lot and had a good time hanging out with friends and meeting new people!
I will be tearing the car down in a couple weeks and hope to get her fixed and racing in october, it all depends on the extent of the damage. Needless to say the car will not be at the northwest fierofest like i had hoped.
I will update with pictures and some video when i can type again!
Thanks for the great pictures Britt and all your help this weekend, it was nice to meet you and I hope to see you in the future!
I had a great time and I was happy to meet such a stand up group of great people that know so much about something I so enjoy. I had a lot of fun helping to remove the top end so we could do a hot valve adjustment! I sure hope you can race in Oct as well, I'm hoping the engine is something simple as it didn't sound like a major component from down below but more of a valve train issue and I think we shut it down quick enough to minimize the damage.
Well its been a while and is time for a bump! Never fear the car is running strong and Team Fieroline has been having a great race season this year!
I got a little discouraged posting in this thread since it was used against us by another team and some of the images I posted have bitten us related to those fancy roller rockers... I had worked them into the value of the car but it still caused some extra scrutiny. I plan on continuing to update this thread but may not be quite as forthcoming on the details. After spinning a bearing last season I can assure the engine is definitely totally really fully legal now...
Enough about that, since I have not had a chance to go through all my pics I figured id post a few videos from our last race. We attended the October 2015 Chumpcar race at PIR. It was a new experience because in addition to the 2 short endures there were 7 sprint races and a qualifying race. This is a new short race format that turned out to be an absolute blast!
This is the highlights from Fridays Enduro, it was a great success even though we suffered through a transmission failure, don't worry we swapped in our spare and were able to finish the race!
Kevin ran the qualifying session, not quite as much action as the sprint races but we were happily running the fastest laps we ever have!
This is Kevins sprint race, this was the first sprint race we have ever done and were quite nervous but Kevin did great and the car performed well.
Thats all I have for now, we are slowly working through the footage and adding more videos.
We will be racing next weekend with Lucky Dog Racing League for two 8 hour enduros at PIR, if anyone is in the area we would love to see you! Entry is free and the pits are open for visitors.
[This message has been edited by thedrue (edited 10-23-2015).]
Great thread. Would really like to know, what wheel bearings your using that could last 6 hrs racing, given reputation stock Fiero's have for wheel bearing issues. Or is that issue only prevalent on 88's ? Also suspension set up, looks stock on rear. Most have tight springs and roll bar, as car pretty flat in videos.
Hey Drue was wondering something. What kind of stint times are you pulling? Stock 86 fuel tank? Are you guys experiencing fuel starvation at 1/4 tank when cornering hard? These are issues I'm concerned with. My daily driver does so I thinking my chumpcar will as well. I found a product that will almost eliminate any fuel starvation. It is a little pricey but well worth it in my book and totally undetectable by tech. It's called the hydromat by Holley. Here is a video of it in action. Aproperly sized one should allow me to run the tank almost bone dry before it starves of fuel.
That Holley Hydromat is very cool, we might just look into it!
At this point we have an 87 fuel tank with some adjustments made to accommodate a complete fill with no air pocket in the top. We are getting close to 2 hours on a tank of fuel but are not quite there. We only need to get to 2 hours but when it gets low we definitely start to get fuel starvation and have to pit to refuel. This gives us a bit of a handicap depending on the length of the race because we have to make an extra pit stop in relation to other teams and that really kills our chances of being competitive. We are working toward a solution and this may just be it!
As for wheel bearings, we have stock fronts that get checked often but have never needed anything in the last couple seasons. The rears are the issue. We run stock used units since I believe they are better than any of the aftermarket options on the market. They are also cheap and we have not had any bearing failures but we have broken 2 of the wheel flanges. This is a bit of a problem and we don't have any good strategy in mind for dealing with it yet...
Luckily they are easy to change and we have several spares but at this point all we can do is inspect them often and hopefully see a failure early enough it does not effect our race.
Here is my lovely wife during her sprint race at PIR
And here is my sprint race, lots of action and some great racing!
We will be racing with a new series this weekend, two 8 hour endurance races over saturday and sunday. The new series is called Lucky Dog Racing and should be a hoot. We might even have some live telemetry being broadcast to everyone in internet land so I will post a link so anyone who wants can follow along!
This is the first race we have had wheel bearing issues. We attribute it to a completely dry weekend coupled with faster times than we have ever ran as well as maybe too much rear camber. We did have a couple of off track incidents that put some pretty huge stresses on things. At this point were just going to pay really close attention and hopefully this doesn't become a trend!
We are racing all weekend but anticipate less stress on account of rain all weekend.
We are trying out a Race Capture telemetry system this weekend. The folks at Race Capture are series sponsors and are gracious enough to provide some demo units for teams to try out and I got us on the list!
You can follow along in real time at the links I have posted. This should give a very interesting look into the weekend of a crapcan racer! If this works out as well as we hope I have a feeling we will be jumping on the bandwagon and purchasing our own telemetry system...
Just a quick preview of the race today... No visibility and a completely flooded racetrack. It was definitely an adventure and we look forward to tomorrow's race!
Feel free to follow along with the telemetry links!
[This message has been edited by thedrue (edited 11-01-2015).]
Just checking back in! We have not fallen off the face of the earth and are preparing for 3 events this season. We will be racing in June at PIR with Lucky Dog Racing League and we are not ready to release any specifics but lets just say the car has gone through quite a transformation!
I know everyone will like it and we are antsy to get back on track this year!
Wow, its been a while. I haven't had much time to spend on Pennocks recently but I suppose I should pick up where I left off.
Last Octobers race at PIR was brutal. It was a monsoon and the car came away a little worse for the wear but we won our first trophy in the process!
We had our first encounters with the walls of the track and managed to hit the wall 3 times throughout the weekend. The car held up well and the damage was only cosmetic.
These are just a couple shots of the car before 2 days of perilous racing.
Some random shots of our damage. I don't have many good ones of the right front of the car after Katey stuffed it into the tire barrier but it did extensive damage to the hood and right headlight bucket. The impact also knocked the battery loose and we thought our race was over. Luckily after reseating the battery and repairing the battery cables the car fired right up and Kevin brought us home for the trophy!
Here is our bad ass minion trophy for winning our class in the October Lucky Dog Race at PIR!!!
Ill end this entry with the highlight videos of this weekends racing.
[This message has been edited by thedrue (edited 07-29-2016).]
As you can see in my last post Miss Fieroline was looking a little ragged around the edges. She had raced valiantly but those racing hours had taken their toll... I had every intention of simply repairing the stock Fiero Aeronotch body work and had even collected all the body panels I needed. Thats when things suddenly took a strange turn and got very out of control!
Somebody on the Fiero Facebook page posted about a ferrari kit car that had just hit a Portland junkyard... The timing was perfect as that weekend was half off day and this proved to be much to big of a temptation. After playing hooky for a day with a team mate and spending a grand total of $137 look what followed us home...
I have to be honest the car it came off of was a pile of trash and the kit had been assembled horribly and is in truly terrible shape, in other words perfect!
We couldn't help but start hanging panels...
Then the work really began...
If I had released how terrible our wheel fitment was going to be I might have reconsidered but it was too late now!
Rick from Projector Retrofit did our graphics and they turned out absolutely amazing.
When I painted the splitter white, the whole thing came together for me and although I am not a kit car fan I feel in love...
We spent faaaaaar too long polishing this turd but after many, many hours and tons of fiberglass dust we emerged victorious. We had a "new" car and since we were racing the La Fauxrrari now we changed our team name to Skidiera Fauxrrari. The car turned out stunning and was a blast to build... Then we took it racing...
Ill leave you guys with a little intro video Kevin put together to introduce the "new" car. It turned out very well!
[This message has been edited by thedrue (edited 07-29-2016).]
The car looks great. I'm jealous you guys managed to make it look so good so quickly, while I putz around on mine (308 that is). I'm a bit curious on the body. I don't think I've seen a 308 or 328 in which the decklid was short like yours.
Thanks for the kind words. We transformed the car in a matter of weeks to get it ready for this race season. It wasn't as easy or straightforward as I hoped but it wasn't difficult either. It's easy to make quick progress when your not looking for perfection. It just has to look decent from across the paddock and on track at a hundred miles an hour. It photographs well but the body work is truly horrific. When you polish a turd this much sometimes even it looks decent.
As for details about the kit. I'd be glad to take photos of anything you want but I have no knowledge of any details. I'm not in the kit car world and do not even know what to look for or any differentiating factors. All I know is the guy who built the car we got it off of did an absolutely terrible job. Honestly it's bolted together better now on our race car than it was on the guys road car.
Howdy everyone! Team Fieroline is still charging ahead and are just finishing prep for a 14 hour race at Thunderhill in a couple weeks. The car is getting better and better!
We have had a very successful season and are running at the pointy end of B-class with 2 trophies from Laguna Seca to show for it!
Between the busy life, and Photobucket debacle I do not keep this thread updated as much as I would like... I encourage anyone who is interested to follow along on our team facebook page instead. Its easier to post updates and we have all our telemetry links and video links will be posted there. You can comment and message me there with any questions about the car or build and I will do my best to respond.
I figured maybe I should at least upload a couple pics of Miss Fieroline in her current state... Come follow along with our team facebook page to learn more!
i really enjoy reading the blogs of people racing their Fieros. This is what racing should be: low buck affairs for the average Joe and Jane. i'm gonna be following this one closely blessings jon
Nice aerofoil, unless your regs dictate it though, your endplates are a bit small. Current theory suggests about 150mm/6" above the mainplane and 180-200mm below, 100-150 ahead will give significant gains.. Always a juggling act between weight and sideload and cost. Foamboard laminated both sides with two layers of woven glass cloth, Not Csm, is a really cheap but strong option. If you find the sideload is pulling the fasteners through then a layer of diolen cures that. Or a 3d core.
