Goodguys Summer get together

[Cobra #3170]

We ran CSX3170 at the Summer event and won the pro class and the Sunday shootout and set fastest time of the event. But..... we were in second place
when they shut down Saturday afternoon and although we won it was only by.8 second on Sunday not as much of a margin as the last event. The course was even tighter than last time and the tightest Goodguys I have ever seen. It is hard to hammer the competition when we can't use the acceleration on them. We are learning more about tuning the car every time out. The drive shaft speed sensor worked perfectly but the traction control activated light did not. I installed an LED in Scott's helmet so that he would have a visual warning when traction was broken. The traction control actually works but it worked so well on the first run that I deactivated it after that. I need to spend time learning to tune it so it is not intrusive. We have new front shocks this year with divergent pistons that cap maximum force above a specific shaft speed. Seemed like a good idea, the car really puts power down but the front end jumps up about 3". When the throttle is dropped and brakes applied the front drops way down initially and we get a touch of front end push on turn in. The old shock pistons seemed to be a better compromise between turn in and and power down so we will probably go back. The engine is really starting to work now and we are finding that it can take a bunch more throttle at lower RPM than the 498 could. We started adding secondary opening angle on Sunday and picked up 3 mph on the initial straight. I watched the data traces and Scott was on the floor 7 different places on Saturday on Sunday's last run he only had 100% throttle in two places. This engine does not make peak torque until 7500 rpm (54 mph in low) so driving it is similar to a turbo car, you lean on it and then pull back as it gets on the cam. The chassis ride height was still off too we had it too low in the rear but did not change after the shoot out started. WE actually went faster under the worst conditions of the day when grip was down so I think our chassis tune is coming around. We got 1.4 G lateral load on Sunday Morning before chassis and engine improvements. When it got hot and slippery due to oil coming out of the asphalt we slipped to 1.22 G.
We are on concrete next weekend so will need a different chassis and engine set up. We ran it at the Crows Landing test course 2 weeks ago and equaled the best time my GT3 Porsche ever ran in 2 runs scuffing tires so we are pretty happy with the new engine now. He hits 9150 rpm on the initial straight in the attached video.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2SKCFfofNo