Today just wasn't my day !
I woke up at 5am and for some unknown reason felt like I should just maybe stay at home and not go out anywhere. I don't get this kind of weird feeling very often but when I do I always tend to regret not listening to myself ! Today was no exception !
I began packing for Fuji Speedway at 5am by taking my gear down to the car parked just outside the apartment. It started then when I was about to return for some more stuff that I realised I had forgotten my apartment key and simply couldn't get back into the apartment block ! My only option was to wait until some poor soul decided to enter or exit the building so I could sneak back in but I didn't like my chances at 5am and in particular on a saturday morning ! Fortunately some tenants here have dogs and thank god one of those dogs needed to take a piss at 5am so that was my one and only chance ! It bloody saved me !
Next, I drove down towards Fuji on Tomei Expressway and I knew I had to get off at the same exit I always do (and have done more than 10 times in the past), but for yet another unknown reason I completely missed the exit !! I had to drive for another 16km to the next available exit and come back in onto the highway ! Stupid !
My first 9:50am session at Fuji was great ! I managed to beat my personal lap record of 2'14''16 in 3 out of 9 laps I did in that session. My new Fuji Speedway lap record stands now at 2'12''09 ! An improvement of over 2 seconds ! Not bad eh ?!
So what did I do differently ?
Nothing really except I experimented with tyre pressures after having read an article online targetted at ADVAN Neova AD08 drivers. If you follow this blog you know that I always start off with 240kPa front and rear. This time I started off with 210kPa for the front and 220kPa for the rear and when the tyres were up to their circuit operating temperatures I dropped the pressures down to 230kPa for the front and 240kPa for the rear while in the pit lane. The car was a little harder to handle, it actually felt like it wombled under cornering but the grip was much better than with higher pressures and hence a better, faster lap ! I need to adjust myself to that feel of handling because it is mainly due to the tyre wall flexing more than usual.
Needless to say, my best lap was the only good thing that happened today !
In my 2nd session, the unthinkable happened and is still a mystery.
The car began to cut fuel under acceleration on some of the corners. First I was quite perplexed by this but then I thought maybe I was running out of fuel or the fuel pump didn't work or couldn't suck in the petrol under heavy swings during cornering. My fuel gauge was on low but it wasn't yet alarming me and then just as I was going through the NETZ corner it goes again and this time, not only did I loose acceleration but also power steering and oil pressure hit 0kPa!!! I immediately drove off into the grass and switched the car off and thought "Oh shit !!" I was worried that this kind of lack of oil pressure meant my engine was about to seize and that internal damage was immanent. The place I was at wasn't particularly safe for me and I saw yellow flags being waved frantically by the circuit staff and so I needed to get out there somehow !
After about a minute on the grass I decided to start the engine and hope for the best. It started ! Oil presure went up to the usual range and power steering worked as though nothing had happened. I slowly made my way out of the grass and back into the pits. I could not replicate this problem again but the fuel tank was definitely empty and perhaps that was the cause of the mishap. Perhaps I starved the engine of petrol and the ECU was somehow trying to handle the situation the best it could and eventually just gave up!
I packed away, ate lunch and drove back to Tokyo. There was no traffic and I was back near my place in just under 60 minutes. As I was passing the bridge over Sumidagawa River I suddenly heard and saw a cop on a motorbike behind me flashing and urging me to stop ! This was the second "Oh shit !!" I was speeding and doing 27km/h over the limt in a 50km/h zone ! He slapped me with a 18,000 yen fine (approx. 200 australian dollars) and 3 demerit points ! This was my 2nd run in with the law in Japan ever and I have no one else to blame but myself !
Tomorrow I have an appointment at Seeeker for an oil change and hopefully Ryo can advise me on what really happened at Fuji.
Enjoy the footage.
dude, I think you should try running on baffled oil sump. with the Gs you're hitting - there is no equal distribution in your sump causing engine oil starvation.
ReplyDeleteIt's not oil starvation problem but more like fuel starvation. Having said that, baffled oil sump does help
ReplyDeleteYea, most likely you were running way too low on fuel...and at the G's that you can produce on a high speed track like FUJI, I can see how fuel can be tossed away from the line in the tank and starving your engine. It's happened to my EK when I was at button willow raceyway once.
ReplyDeleteWhat's also happened to other people I know that don't run baffled oil pans is they lose oil pressure on corners that produce a lot of G's. This is especially true with B motors. Some guys have just filled up another half quart of oil before races, it seems to work even in my experience as a quick fix. I'm surprised you aren't having issues with lost in oil pressure from hard cornering since a lot of people here in southern California with K-Swapped hatches have had problems with proper oil distribution under heavy cornering.
Oh yeah, I forgot to also mention a theory. If you are losing fuel under cornering for whatever reason, sometimes the ECU will shut off your car as a whole (hence why you lost oil pressure and your power steering pump shut off) as a fail-safe mechanism to prevent further damage to the engine. This could be true in your case, but I am curious as to what really happened, keep us updated, and congrats with the improvement!
ReplyDeleteAfter discussing this with the guys from Seeker today we concluded it was fuel starvation related!
ReplyDeleteRyo recommended I should have at least half a tank of fuel for each session to avoid this situation.