Shift_Munky

Uh huh huh huh…I said “log.”

After talking to "genikz” on FreshAlloy about getting our cars setup for racing, it made me realize that the SE-R knowledge base could be expanded to help both EC and WC SE-R Cup participants. Specifically, in the arena of racecar reliability. So I was wondering how well-received a “Reliability Log” would be, considering the competitiveness of the series.

It would contain the following:
1) Reliability issues that have been encountered on track, with details about how the car acted, what you did when it happened, etc.
2) The nature of these issues and the educated root cause behind them.
3) Suggested solutions for these problems.

I was thinking that if everyone could contribute to this log after each race while everything was still fresh on their minds, it would be a tremendous help to people like myself interested in ironing out possible reliability issues before hitting the track. Not only would this make the track a safer place IMO, but it would allow us to concentrate more on improving driver skill. Ultimately it'll make the field more competitive, which some might take issue with.

I was thinking this log could be in the form of this thread, a spreadsheet, or maybe a Word document. Please let me know what you guys think.

-Andy (who happens to have the title “Reliability Engineer” at work)

__________________
240SR track donkey

 

Rockwood

really low SE-Rs roadracing like to eat axles. OEM axles seem to be the only ones that last.

oil coolers and ducting are the best way to improve cooling issues. Stanza or N1 water pump pullies work well too, but require clearancing.

cryo/shotpeening and Ultra heavy shockproof are almost necesary to get a tranny to last a reasonable time. the shockproof is mandatory, as are regular drain intervals (like 2 times a season).

tow hooks will make your bumpers last a LOT longer if you break down on the track.

__________________
Steve Rockwood
98 200SX SE-R - Ginormous Turbo - 12.23 @ 129.8mph (street tires)
2002 F150 - 5.4L of towing powah!
92 G20 - PTD #73

scmser

Get a large radiator. CSF or koyo. Buy some stainless mesh, cover the opening to the radiator. Make a front air damn, skip the elaborate front end aerodynamics. They will only make the car more nervous at speed. Yes, it looks great, everyone will think your an oh-so-wise engineer/track whore. The powers that be have rendered rear underbody aerodynamics illegal, and wings are for appearance only, no gurney flaps or multiple elements, due to cost. But hey!!!, differentials are open game!!!! Makes sense to me, because a $900 diff is far cheaper than making a rear diffuser and rear wing out of 6061 for about $150 in materials.
Anyway, get some Carbotech pads, NX2000 brakes, make the car as light as possible, synthetic oils, use distilled water and your choice of additive (WaterWetter, Blue Ice, Neo ???cool) in the radiator. Castrol SRF is expensive brake fluid, but it is the best, period.
Drink water, eat light fare, get plenty of rest, stretch and relax. Enjoy your track time.

Greg Amy

I hate to sound snobby, because that's not intended, but we have had virtually ZERO reliability problems on our car. No overheating, no axle failures, no bearing failures, no wrecked brakes or boiled fluid (Ford Super Duty), no parts falling off, no suspension parts moving, no runs, no drips, no errors. (OK, we did toss a rod out the front of the block that one time on the new engine, but that turned out to be a defective rod bolt (~simmer~). But other than THAT, we've never had to thrash at the race track.

It really all comes down to prep. When we put the car on the trailer before a race, it is READY to go, to be rolled off, the tire pressures checked, and rolled to the grid. We've done all the preventive maintenance on the car, including nut and bolt checks, fluid replacement, and visual inspection, and there's no thrashing or running around "wondering" if it's all done and ready to go.

We have a four-part credo that we've vowed to never break:

- Always Safe
- Always Dependable
- Always Fun (i.e., "No Thrashing")
- GO FASTER!

...in that order of priority. Think about it and you'll realize that you can't go faster unless it's fun; it's not fun unless it's dependable, and it's not dependable unless it's safe.

So far that mission statement gave us the priorities we needed to make go or no-go decisions at any point in time (the only reason we thrashed on that engine was because we had just finished a 20-hour trip to get there and refused to go home empty-handed. We decided it would a lot less fun to go home than it would be to thrash that one time...) It should come as no surprise to anyone when they thrash like hell to get to the track and find themselves always behind the time frame, always trying to catch up, realizing they're missing key items in their checklists (you use checklists, right?) and then jumping into the car to find that their head is not in the game.

While you snort and say that it's impossible for you, you're wrong: the reason you're always behind is because...you're always behind! If you take the time to get caught up - even if it means skipping a race weekend - then once you're caught up it's easy to STAY caught up. Don't get sucked into racing when you're not ready, BE READY and stay that way.

Reliability is not an accident, it's a conscious, concerted effort to be on top. Anything else is just thrashing...

GA

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2006 ARRC/NARRC/NERCC ITA Champions!
My lug nuts have more torque than your Honda engine!

Rockwood

confuscious say: "man who go to sleep with itchy butt, wake up with stinky finger"

SE-Rs ARE extremely reliable racecars. i remember Tom Paule poking fun at an AI guy saying that he had a REALLY busy prep for the race: he had to wash TWO cars instead of the usual one.

in all seriousness, as long as you take care of cooling, stay regular on tranny fluid, and use OEM axles, you arent likely to break anything on the racecar. i would say the first thing to go would be the tranny or clutch disc, second would be axles and the motor a distant last.

how do spliiters, etc, make the car MORE unstable? an aluminum rear wing (a la Pep Boys) trimmed correctly will offset any instability a front spliiter will give you. SE-R cup rules allow enough rear wing to keep the car stable at speed.

Jim #98NX

A lot of what you are looking for can be found in the SE-R Race Series Yahoo Group Archive. Everyone has done a pretty good job of explaining and documenting fixes (especially Naji).

I prefer the new OEM axle route. We replaced our 160k+ axles with new ones and haven't had any issues. Others have found used OEM axles work well. While others have been rebuilding their axles with the OEM boot kit and high quality grease. The problem with cheapie axles failing was narrowed down to the cheap rubber boots and cheap grease they used and not ride height (although most assume that plays some factor).

That is one school of thought. The other has been to replace the stock water pump with an electric one. We went this route and got the $280 SR20 Meziere kit from Summit and haven't really had any heating issues with the stock NX radiator and no oil cooler. After the accident we lost the stock radiator and got a larger aluminum replacement and expect no problems at all. I guess the NX'es just run cooler... they certainly look cooler, right Greg?

Spoke like a true turbo guy! Maybe in an SRX car, but most people haven't had any transmission issues at all. Those that had problems either were running substantially more power than stock or using harsher clutches. Tom had to replace his trans, but I think that was the same trans he ran turbo on. He also had some multi-disk pack which caused some problems. Naji had tranny issues, but I am not sure he was using the Shockproof and think he traced his problem to a harsh clutch.

Those that use the Shockproof with 2000 SE disk and mostly OEM parts have been near bulletproof. I know Naji has this combo and he's been running strong. We've been running our original trans through a decade of hotlapping and racing using the 2000 SE disk, Quaife and Ultra Heavy Shockproof without problems.

I don't know any Cup racer who've lost a bumper to towing. Usually we just attach the tow strap to the A pillar of the roll cage, but rarely to SE-Rs get stranded.

Rocker retainers might be a good idea. More than once a Cup racer have missed a shift and had to replace valvetrain bits.

Zip tie your plug wires. OEM wires are less susceptible to falling off, but we've had this problem once or twice- coil wire popping off at the most inopportune moment.

__________________
-Jim
SE-R Cup Hooligan

Jim #98NX

Ask Tom after he went flying off Taledega during testing of his splitter!

You can run a big rear wing, but on high speed tracks like Willow you get eaten on the straights by slicker cars. The current train seems to be small splitters and stock rear wing.

The Cup rules were written so that rear wings won't have much if any effect. I know because Rob told me "Here's a bunch of wing changes to make them basically cosmetic."

Jim #98NX

I found a few more when reviewing my race history.

- Only use OEM or better lugnuts. Wheel fell off with Pep Boys nuts.

- The voltage regulator fails before the alternator. Too bad the VR is internal to the alternator, but you can replace it with the part from JC Whitney.

I believe now Nissan is selling OEM remanufactured alternators (all new OEM guts). Definitely get one of these instead of an auto store alternator. In my experience 3 of 4 auto store alternators has a faulty voltage regulator.

Rockwood

yeah, and theyre about $180 after you return the core from Greg V. not too bad, esp considering the Kragen POS specials are like $120.

Shift_Munky

1) I have plans to get Carbotech XP9’s for the car…I thought about XP10’s but they’re recommended for cars over 2600lbs. with R-compounds, both of which would eliminate my car at this point. 2) I assume you mean for a SE-R here. Because I’ll be running stockers for now until I can afford stock Z32 aluminum or better. 3) I’m still working on this one, but have made great progress thus far. 4) I plan on running synthetic once the engine gets broken in, but I’ll use conventional for the break-in period. 5) After seeing the white crusty chit in my SR’s water-handling system, I will definitely use distilled, probably with WaterWetter.

This seems like a very good habit to get into, as you can eliminate potential issues before putting the car on the trailer. It may take me some time to fine-tune it to the level you operate at, however. If you don’t mind my asking, why do you roll it to the grid as opposed to driving it?

Nothing makes me more nervous than to finish something at the last minute, be it work-related, personal, etc. because it stresses me out. So preparation is key to making sure I’m able to concentrate on what’s important. Hell, I tanked in the majority of my autocross runs one day simply because I’d backed into a trailer hitch before the first one! And I usually did very well.

As for checklists, I do not currently have any. How much detail do you get into? Because if I had the time, I would Czech all my suspension bolts for proper torquing! Would you be willing to share this? I wouldn’t be offended if you weren’t.

I’ve already budgeted for HKS RAS’s.

Thanks for the heads-up. I went onto Yahoo Groups today and found it. I would have sent the request to join already, but my work connection sucks donkeyballz.

-Andy

Rockwood

the search engine on yahoogroups sucks donkey. its easier just to read the subject lines on the message archives.

Greg Amy

Just a figure of speech. We usually drive it onto the grid.

We have weekly prep lists (for things we do every race, like oil changes, nut and bolt checks, chassis setup, alignments, etc), test day lists (of things we want to evaluate), and pre-race lists (usually with the things that can hurt me, like lug nuts). A lot of it is in our head, some of it is written.

Jim #98NX

Not to get off on a tangent here, but we wanted fun things like that to run in SRX. SRX is if a fabricator's class, where as SR is a driver's class.

A differential is a far larger performance increase than a wing or a diffuser on a 140 hp car. At Buttonwillow it is just more than a 2 second improvement in laptime on a 2 minute track. The stock VSLD just doesn't cut it for racing at all.

Shift_Munky

Errr...yeah I knew that. I...uh...was seeing if you did, or something.

Gotcha. That gives me a good general idea. But if you ever get around to writing it down, be sure to let me know.

Er...does this mean I can't be a "driver?"

Wow, that's a helluva time difference. But the info about the stock VLSD makes me because that's all I can afford right now.

choaderboy2

Dunno, the log would be very short. Once you keep a cup car from overheating, it will hardly ever break. Personaly I have only DNF'ed once due to driver error, I misshifted and threw off a bunch of rockers. Whoops. At least it was easy to fix. I think my car has the best finishing record of any cup car, well its either me or naji dahi.

Some very general stuff.

1. Use only genuine Nissan axles or at least good junkyard axles with fresh genuine nissan boots and grease. Cheapo remans don't seem to last very long.

2. Don't make the car more than 2" lower than stock, any more turns your car into an axle eatin machine.

3. Run shockproof heavy gear oil and the least agressive clutch posible, no solid hub puck discs. Change the gear oil every 5 weekends. Then the tranny will be near bullet proof.

4. The cheapest and simplest way to keep your car cool is to run the new Koyo 3.8mm pitch racing radiator and a underdrive pulley set. The car should really stay cool under almost all conditions. To really make it forget the heat cool, add a 13 row or larger oil cooler plumbed with -10. Electric water pump are not the cure all (even though they help hugely) and add complexity, need proper mounting and add leak paths. Cooling is the achilles heel of the SR and you really can't keep it cool enough. To really make things cool, run ducts to the radiator and oil cooler and have a ducted hood with properly designed exit scoops. A splitter, airdam and belly pan greatly improve cooling as well.

5. Sump temps reach over 300 degrees F on the track, run the best synthetic oil you can and change it frequntly. More motivation for a cooler.

6. After every race, put the car on jack stands, take off the wheels and look over the whole car for worn stuff, leaks, loose bolts etc. Pressure wash the enitre car upside down and inside out and while drying things off, check everything again. Fix anything marginal.

7. have the mantra, make the same mistake only once. If you DNF, bombproof the root cause to make sure your car will never DNF from this cause again. Cup cars are so relaible, I have never had to do this (can't replace the driver)

8. Don't cheap out on anything fuel, oil, water or electricticy runs through. That means get rid of all the water leak points on your stock water manifold, run genuine nissan or silicone water hoses with aeroclamp worm gear clamps or t-bolt clamps, wiring whould all be heavy gauge, soldered and heat shrinked. It should be secure so it doesnt flop around and wear against stuff. Get rid of excess unused wires for stuff thats stripped out of the car. Make the dash quickly removeable for repairs. Oil lines should all be genuine AN stuff.

9. Keep things simple. Trickness and gagets can screw you up. Racecars don't need much stuff other than oil pressure and water temp gauges.

Proper aero makes a huge difference. I am very comptitive due largly to aero. My car is the heaviest competitive SR car their is, its a portly 160 lbs too heavy. The suspension geometry is all screwed up and the chassis is flexy due to irreversable monkeyness done by the former owners. My fixes are semi effective bandaids. Basicaly my car is not as compatitve as it should be. I am a cautious driver, I don't push it hard, I am old and I have a young daughter that needs a dad for many years. Despite this, I am one of the guys that can be counted upon to be in contention for the win. In all my starts, I have been on the podium nearly every time. The reason is aero. It makes my car good off line and very easy to drive. I am the only the second cup driver to put time into building my aero stuff right, maintaining it correctly and testing it by adding adjustabilty and figuring out how to make it work. It can be a handicap on certan tracks like california speedway or when their is a large headwind but it can be a big advantage, especaly when its during racing conditions. It really helps cooling as well. The rest of the guys havent invested in it. Its what helps my margenal car get buy. Wait until my new car is done if you want to see fast.

But if you don't understand it, don't mess with it. Work on stuff under reliablity. to finish first, first you must finish.