Scootin Racing

I’ve made some more progress on the car. Not too much as I’ve been busy with other projects, but I’ve got the radiator ducts figured out. I just need to do some additional fab work to get them into place, and also need to figure out how to attach the radiators at the lower mount points. Digging through the boxes of spares I have, I think I found all the hoses and misc. items that I need to finish out the cooling system.

I’ve also got the sidepods on the car – well mostly. I’ve gotta source some short bolts to attach them at a few more points.

I also found a small 8″ tall 1-gallon fuel cell for really cheap, and should have it here in a few days.

Here’s some more pictures of the current state of the car

Last weekend Garrison and I campaigned the Porsche in the SCCA National Tour event at the Seneca Army Depot. Despite typically running in CSP, I decided to run the car in FP (for which it is also legal). This turned out to be a great idea as all of us in FP had a great time. We were all off the “pace” relative to other classes, yet we were all within a second of each other going into our last runs.

Garrison picked up pace VERY quickly in the Porsche, taking off several seconds on each of his first three runs. Unfortunately he only had three runs on the first day, which wasn’t quite enough for him to “come up to pace” in the car. By the end of the first day he was within 0.5 seconds of me however. He improved even more the second day, and took home 2nd in the class.

My Saturday runs were much more consistent, but not astonishing. I coned my last two runs, effectively making my first “bank” run my best run of the day. On the second day I had two solid first runs, which were very close to each other on times (and also very close to Garrison). However, on my last run of the second day, I was able to take off a solid 3 seconds! This was enough to secure 1st place within the class, taking my first national-level win.

Also a big thank you to Jeff Blumenthal and Brian Ciarlei (and crew) who were very helpful in letting me “poke around” their cars. I hoped to come home with a better understanding of how to put together my F440, and I feel I did. I’ve still got plenty of things to figure out, but I feel more confident now. I can’t wait to get my car on the road!!

Here’s some links to photo galleries:

My Photos
Rich Hutchinson’s Photos
FLR Region Photos
Mageep (?)’s Photos

Here’s a copy of my event report on the CNY Subies message boards:

First off, big thanks to Garrison for letting me borrow his chase cam setup for the weekend. I’ve got some great videos up on YouTube showing a dry and very wet run around Watkins Glen. The g-sensor data is what I was really looking for. It looks as though the Porsche will do ~1.2G peak and about ~.9G sustained in the corners. However, in the wet I couldn’t get much above .7G without spinning (check out the wet #1 video for some excitement).

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any data on g-loading under braking. I ran into brake issues pretty early in the first day (my pads are nearly done, and I was overcooking them pretty easily), so you’ll see that my braking points are VERY early.

They did do some passing exercises in the first day, which was pretty fun. They basically paired us off with “similar lap time” cars, and had us pass and re-pass every corner – with a focus on trying to do late passes under braking. I was paired up with with a 968 (basically my car + 100hp) the first time, an ’09 Evo the second time, and finally a ’06? 997 Turbo the last time. The run with the Turbo was interesting, I had to stop & wait for him in the 5/6/7 section of the track, while he couldn’t hit the gas on the two main straights. I have some good video of this (including flames out the Evo’s exhaust), but it won’t be up for another few days as I had to upload the card to a friends laptop to free up some space.

The two videos here are of just a “normal” session in the dry, and then from our final session on the last day (where it decided to rain). I was running my RA-1′s for the dry sessions, but I switched to my street tires (Kuhmo MX’s) for the wet session.

Pictures (Mine): https://home.scootin159.com/gallery/ind … 2009-05-25
Pictures (Rutch’s): http://www.flickr.com/photos/rutch/sets … 843411670/
Video (Dry 1 of 3): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbuKgGH6IuY
Video (Dry 2 of 3): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U1nNhrHWA8
Video (Dry 3 of 3): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5EuTlpInBQ
Video (Wet 1 of 3): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnsvHAadt00 (watch @ 2:33)
Video (Wet 2 of 3): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9FtJtQhmbE
Video (Wet 3 of 3): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-d3itR_krw

While I’ve had it for a while now, here’s some pictures of the F440 “as it arrived”:

More pictures at: https://home.scootin159.com/gallery/index.php?album=F440%2F2009-05-17

For the record, the side panel you see on there, isn’t actually attached yet (notice there’s no rivets in it).  At the time of this picture, I was jus trying to make sense of all of the various aluminum panels which came with the car.

As it sits now, I’ve now gotten all of the aluminum panels riveted to the frame.  For the most part, they were a simple “bolt-on”, although a few (such as the firewall) have required some cutting to fit.  I’ve also got the new motor bolted into the car.  I should be reattaching the side pods either tonight, or some time soon.

This leaves the remaining major components as:

1) Installing the radiators and cooling system.  I’ve got two radiators for the car, but am not quite sure on the mounting of them yet, nor the routing of the coolant lines or an overflow tank.

2) Installing a fuel system.  The car came with two small fuel cells which would be perfect, except they’re both very aged and very cracked.  I’m looking for a small fuel tank which I can fit under one of the side pods (~8″ vertical height).  I’m currently winning an ebay auction for a 1 gallon 6″x6″x6″ fuel cell for a very reasonable price.  Being that the car is carbureted, it should be pretty easy to hook up the tank once I get it.

3) Wiring: yeah – all of it needs to be done.  I also need to source a battery (although I can run it without one)

4) Driveline misc – I plan on running pre-mix in the car, which means I can disable the oil injection system.  I just need to figure out how to do that.  I’ll also need to install and properly tension drive belts.

Once the above is done, I should be able to “test drive” the car .

I’ve decided to start a blog to record my motorsports related progress.  This will be mostly for my own records, but may also be interesting for anyone who wishes to follow along.

I decided to specifically start it now to coincide with the start of my F440 build project.  I’m a little late in this goal, as the car was actually delivered nearly a month ago (it was delivered May 8th), but as always: “better late than never”.  This blog won’t just be for the new F440 though, as I will also be posting about all motorsports-related things I enter.

To coincide with this, I’ve also created a new personal online web gallery, available here: https://home.scootin159.com/gallery/