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Welcome to my official blog!
Here's where you will find pics and updates directly from my race weekends, plus other things such as stunt driving and sometimes posts not always about racing.
Cheers! /Carl |
| Pic of the week |
Grid before the race, Nordschleife 2008. |
| Songs to check out |
1. Little Black Submarines
2. The Pretender
3. Outkast - Take Off Your Cool
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| Food and Drinks |
1. Redondo Beach Brew. Co, CA
2. Huntley, Santa Monica, CA
3. Pistenklause, Nuerburg
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| For Sale |
| Pair of STATUS Ring Kevlar Racing seats, lightly used, very good condition. |
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| Redline Time Attack Rd4: Auto Club Speedway notes |
| Sunday, June 6, 2010 |
Photo: Speed Syndicate
Winning at the Auto Club Speedway Redline Time Attack event a week ago was more about wrenching than racing. Taking out the Z again, which had gotten a stock engine swapped in during the FD Irwindale weekend last year, when the built engine broke down, was a bit more work than expected.
One thing that's simple enough, is to secure the bumpers. In drifting, they're ziptied lightly to fall off if you brush a wall, but in racing they have to be rigidly secured for aero function as well as to not get cracked and damaged at high speeds.
Photo: K. Chieu
Other than that, it turned out the coilovers didn't have markings on the shocks anymore, to tell what setting they're at - and no endpoints to count from = just endless rotation (not a needle type valving). It was a guessing game for compression and rebound that just had one resolution: Drive the car and dial it in from there. I got away with a few runs up and down the parking lot outside the pits until security said "stop", although I was sub 35mph and drove silently. Oh well, got close enough adjusting some compression and rebound for some symmetry of the car, to at least start running on the track.
Also had a pair of minor topics to deal with to pass FD tech inspection, and that was pretty much my day on Saturday. I was nice at the tech, because they weighed the car; total weight 2864 lbs with nearly empty tank and without me in it.
Photo: www.driftfotos.com
Come Sunday, we made the final touch-ups of bumper reinforcement, thanks CTO Jack for picking up material for that. Tires were on, also thanks Jack for letting us use the wide rear wheels, allowing us to put on 285 wide Hankook RS3 tires in the rear, this would help us balance up an otherwise pretty oversteered car.
This weekend, we were helping out Conrad Grunewald, normally known from FD, driving the Hankook Camaro, to let him run our Z in the Redline drift car class while his Camaro was getting ready for FD New Jersey. Unfortunately, he came in already after his outlap with an oil leak on the Z. It turned out to be a return line from the right side turbo that just didn't seem sealed enough and from that point on´it was a constant battle to get this oil leak sealed.
In hindsight I'm not sure if the return lines are correctly routed because everytime the car is in a left hand turn, the sump oil is pressured up against the right side in the oil sump and the oil simply can't return from the turbo down into the sump. This might be a routing problem, or an issue with this oil sump vs the oil sump on the built engine that was swapped out during the above mentioned Irwindale weekend. Remains to be found out.
Conrad gets a lap in with our smoking Z, Kenny's MR2 behind gets a nice oil film treatment. Photo: Speed Syndicate.
The attempts to fix with new gasket and fluid gasked at least took us to one point where it seemed promising and Conrad rolled out on an easy lap with low rpm and then went for a fast lap. I could see during his fast lap that smoke started developing but it didn't look too bad and I had told him already to just go for it and get a time - it's a small leak so oil pressure would hold unless the whole line popped (which was unlikely). Conrad did push through the lap and could take 1st spot in drift class. 1 mission down, 2 to go!!
We're now at Sunday afternoon and my plan was to drive the car after Conrad's run and collect some points in Mod RWD class (same as I used to run with my Porsche), and I had also planned to take part in the Super Session wheel-to-wheel race to be able to not drop behind in the points vs my competitors in Mod RWD.
At this point, the leak was becoming a sensitive issue, because I couldn't have it get worse and worse, then I wouldn't make Super Session. The only thing I had time to do before my timed session (last chance of the day) was to fill up some oil and just hope for the best, with a steady eye on the oil pressure. Pressure was good and I stayed away from pushing the engine too hard, and I recorded a lap time to at least give me some points this weekend, 2 of 3 missions achieved! (and it turned out to be a class winning time)
Photo: driftfotos.com
As I was back in the pits, Redline officials came by and said we're still smoking (yep I knew all too well... ) and wanted to know if we had a solution, or they said we could not run Super Session, since they saw a risk of us spilling too much oil on the track surface.
During Conrads timed lap it had started and from then on it just got worse and we didn't have time to do anything about it, I saw there was actually quite a bit of oil that had come out under the car, it started on the exhaust which created a lot of smoke, and then it had ran all the way to the right rear wheel and it was a fine layer of oil up sprayed up in the rear wheel well. For sure that part of the car will never rust... Well, the oil definitely added to make the car pretty oversteered in left hand turns... really not bad in right handers like the hairpin or the right hander after the infield straight - but the rest of Cali Speedway is basically only left turns and it was not just the 2-way Carbonetic limited slip differential making the car oversteer. This limited slip differential actually still worked great on corner entry, and totally excellent on corner exits - if I was aiming to drift! (haha). Two-way 100% lock is not the way to go for grip, but the thing to bring from this event about the Carbonetic differential is that it is still incredibly strong after over a year of high powered drift and grip.
Anyhow at this point, I was pretty clear about the amounts of oil coming out per lap and at which rpm it started to get bad, so we did our best again to seal it and I promised Redline to not go over 4000 rpm during Super Session (which is when the oil pump really starts creating a high pressure and it starts leaking out). They told me if they saw a lot of smoke they would black flag me out of the race.
I spent almost two bottles of brake cleaner to clean up the underbody of the car, and then filled up oil again, made sure the car was wiped clean and tidy, then headed out for line-up.
Photo: Speed Syndicate.
The race was fun for just short of half a lap but soon smoke started coming into the cockpit and I just coasted around the track the rest of the race to collect some points. Photo: Speed Syndicate.
Photo: Speed Syndicate
Thanks to City Tire Jack and Gary for assisting to get the car ready to run, thanks AE Performance for bringing track support, tools, fluids and great spirits as always, Hankook for tires and support, AIT for lightweight body panels (let's do those front fenders now), APR for really good aerodynamics, Carbonetic for a strong diff, Redline for another well organized event and fans for making it a good time.
Thanks to all this great support, I am currently 3rd in Redline Time Attack overall driver points standings, with a total of 108 points, a mere 3 points behind current leader James Elterman (Mod AWD).
Next Redline event is at Willow Springs during the 4th of July weekend. Cheers!Labels: AE Performance, Carbonetic, City Tire Online, Hankook, Racecar setup, Racing, Redline Time Attack |
posted by Carl Rydquist @ 10:47 AM   |
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| Fast Facts |
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Name: Carl Rydquist
Age: 35
Home: Redondo Beach, CA
Web: CarlRydquist.com
Reel: Click to watch
Highlights: Winner of Zandvoort 500 (2005), Winner of Swedish Endurance 3h GT Racing Championship (2004), Winner of Swedish Endurance 8/12h GT Racing Championship (2001), Winner of Eurosport Super Racing Weekend Challenge (2001), Winner Super Lap Battle Lim RWD (2011), Winner Redline Time Attack Mod RWD (2010). 24 Hours of Nurburgring (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011). 24 Hours of Barcelona (2011). 25 Hours of Thunderhill (2010).
Memberships: FIA (intl racing license), SAG Stunt Driver (Screen Actors Guild), Formula D, Performance Two Stunt & Precision Driving Team (Hollywood, CA).
Teams: Berk Technology, City Tire, AE Performance, Steam Racing, STORM GT Racing.
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