hellafunctional

This is neat:

A new season of Redline Time Attack is ready to begin, and it should be a good one. Time Attack is a form of Time Trails racing. Most of the cars are imports built by tuner shops, so giving it the name “Redline Time Attack” gives it more appeal to kids or something like that.

Anyhow, there were some changes to the rules and management of the series this year, which will hopefully be for the best. The four classes are Enthusiast, Street, Modified, and Super Modified. These classes are further divided into Front, Rear, and All Wheel Drive categories. In enthusiast class the cars need to remain mostly stock, with some suspension, tire, and slight power upgrades allowed. Street class has much more lax rules on power output, with the only requirement being unleaded fuel. Tires, suspension, aero, and weight reduction are all restricted. Modified allows much more freedom as far as power, weight reduction, aero, and tires go, and in Super Modified (formerly known as unlimited), just about anything goes.

As it happens, I’m involved in the preparation and maintenance of quite a few of these cars, the most recent being the white and orange EVO I posted about a few weeks ago. I was actually out finishing up some wiring to get it running yesterday.

I’ve also done some work to these cars:

and, to a lesser extent (alignments and such) these cars:

The first event is at Buttonwillow raceway just outside of Bakersfield, CA, on March 26-28th. For more info, check out the following links:

Redline Time Attack website
Time Attack Forums
An article like this one only slightly better

I’ll be at the majority of the time attack events this season, and you’ll be seeing a lot of hellafunctional stickers out there.

Anti-lag is a very interesting technology that came about in the 1980s, when turbocharging became standard in rally cars. To fully explain it, first I have to explain what lag is, and why it occurs.

An engine is an air pump, and the more air that goes into a motor, the more power it will make. The primary factors that determine how much air is flowing through an engine are displacement and RPM (although in reality it is much more complicated). So for example, as engine speed increases, so does the amount of air that goes through the motor. The same goes for displacement. So, if we want more power, we need more air to go through the motor. Eventually we will end up at a point where adding displacement or revs creates a motor that is either too heavy or too expensive. This is where forced induction, and the turbocharger comes in.

A turbocharger is a compressor spun by exhaust gasses. The purpose is to both reclaim some of the lost energy from the exhaust, increasing efficiency, and to increase the pressure of the intake air. Forcing more air into the motor means that you can make more power with less displacement.

The downside is that it takes some time for the turbo to get going, especially when you are using a large turbo to make a lot of power out of a small displacement engine. Until the engine is moving enough air to spin the turbo, you’re stuck with a low displacement motor with low compression and no boost. This is called turbo-lag. In some cases you can compensate for the lag by increasing the revs to give you a larger in-boost powerband, but higher engine speeds mean much higher stress on the engine components. Additionally, many racing classes require the use of an intake restriction, which limits the amount of air that can be drawn in, and therefore limits the maximum power and rpm that can be achieved.

The most simple form of anti-lag, used in the 80s, was to never lift off the throttle. This mean significant wear on the brakes and transmission, given that cars of the time were making over 600hp in some cases. Soon, systems were created to keep the turbo on boost even when the throttle was lifted.

To make the maximum possible power, it’s necessary to have the turbo providing boost before the engine is actually capable of flowing that much air. The simple way to do this is to increase the idle speed, dump a bunch of fuel, and then wait until the super-rich air fuel mixture is on the way out the cylinder before igniting it. So, instead of having the combustion event force the piston down to make power, it explodes going into the turbo, creating boost.

As you might imagine, having the combustion occur in the exhaust is bad for the exhaust valves, exhaust manifold, and turbocharger. It sounds a little something like this:

The “add fuel, retard timing” form of anti-lag was used in the late-80s to early 90s, at which point rally teams began to come up with more sophisticated methods. Bypassing the combustion chamber entirely and injection air straight into the exhaust manifold allowed more boost at lower rpm. The Mitsubishi EVO VI, for example, came stock with an air injection anti-lag system that could be enabled simply by modifying the ecu. Then Prodrive came up with an even more complex system:

That little doohickey attached to the up-pipe is known as “the rocket.” A canister connected to the charge pipes stores pressurized air, and when the throttle is closed an air/fuel mixture is ignited in the rocket, spooling the turbo. This allows the 2.0 Subaru WRC motor to create useful boost (and 200hp) at the idle speed of 2000 rpm. By 2500 rpm the manifold pressure is 30psi, and reaches a maximum of 45psi by 3000 rpm. Peak torque is 520 lb-ft, and a little over 300hp is available from 3000 to the 7500 rpm redline. The important part about this system is how precisely it can control turbo speed and boost. By using a turbo speed sensor, this system is much more efficient, and allows more manifold pressure at lower revs with less wear to the exhaust components and turbo.

Wow it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything on here. Partially because I was out of town for a few weeks. And then after that I was pretty busy working on some race cars. One is this evo 9 that is soon to be a modified class time attack car:

On the power side the car already had a well built motor being fed by a GT35R. On race gas that’s good for over 600whp.

On the chassis side, we gutted the interior and added a roll cage:

The car is getting a very nice voltex widebody kit to fit massive tires, as well as lightweight robispec carbon rear door skins:

My favorite part, however, is the suspension:

Those are JRZ 4-way adjustable dampers, which cost about $13000.

We should have this thing all finished within the next few weeks so expect another update with more details then.

Round 7 happened awhile ago, but this video was just posted over on the time attack forums. I thought I’d better post it for the hellafunctional content:

Spring Mountain Redline Time Attack 2009 from GambleitFILMS on Vimeo.

today I went on the internet, and found this:

In 1982, FISA created a new class of rally called group b. The limitations were that the vehicles had to be production based, with a minimum of 200 homolgation models, and weight to displacement limitations. This opened the door for awd cars and turbo- and superchargers. Audi started up the insanity, and won the championship right off the bat in 82. Lancia, which was still running a 2wd car, managed to win it in 83, and by 1984 Peugeot, Renault, Ford, and Porsche all had group B cars in the works. By the end of 85, the Lancia Delta S4 and Audi Quattro S2 were making somewhere in the 600+ horsepower range. After Henri Toivonen, his co-driver, and a number of spectators were killed, the series was banned partway through 1986. Here’s a nice video:

Here’s some footage of cars lapping last week at the time attack.

First up we have Matt Andrews in a turbo miata that I used to work on:

That’s a 1:46 something, where his fastest lap was in the 1:45s.

This one is Billy Johnson in the FX Motorsports NSX running a 1:36.1, which is almost the fastest anything has ever gone around the roval:

And here’s some video put together of JC Meynet:

JC managed to squeak past Matt by 0.08s after throwing on a set of 295 R888s

What a jerk.

If you live in the US you probably weren’t aware that a new season of Top Gear just started. Well, it did, and if you’ve been watching it on BBC America, you’re missing about 20min and most of the music compared to the original broadcast. Also the episodes are around a year old. Check out finalgear.com

Here’s a nice video of Jeremy that I thought I would post even though it’s a few months old:

Last weekend was the series finale of the Redline Time Attack racing series. For those not familiar with Time Attack, it’s a time trial series with somewhat vague rules. This means there are always interesting and creative cars. It’s divided into Street, Modified, and Unlimited classes by drivetrain configuration.

Street class stays relatively tame due to aero, tire, and weight reduction limitations, but power is essentially free so you end up with the occasional car with 800 or so hp, like the Reese Tuning evo and the KBR Eclipse.

Here are some street cars lined up:

some mod cars:

and some unlimited cars:

There were even some girls there:

I was there helping out with this Z and a few evos:

My friend Clint Boisdeau was racing his Focus, and is the Street class FWD champion:

Here’s Jon Drenas of HB Speed in his EVO:

Steve Ruiz of Stoptech and GMG:

John Lindeman sporting a hellafunctional sticker:

Matt Andrews trash talking with JC Meynet:

And Billy Brooks, who appears unamused:

Billy Johnson turned out to be the fastest car out there in the FX Motorsports NSX, followed closely by the AMS EVO, Sierra Sierra, and the GOTO-racing GTR. In mod class Ryan Gates won AWD, and JC squeaked by Matt in the S2000 by a mere 0.08 seconds. The full results are here:

http://everythingtimeattack.com/?p=165#more-165