Seconds out, Round 5

It's Friday and it's race night, that means one thing: Sidcup !
My folks are visiting at the moment and I dragged my dad along to see what it's all about. He seemed to be surprised that so many people of all ages were involved, both male and female (more male than female though, I guess that's how it goes with car stuff).

The prep:
After last sunday's good run I felt the car was running well enough not to make any changes to it, but I knew I needed to swap the motor out and decided to give it a rebuild while I was at it. I decided that for a change I'd use some new brushes as well, so cut the comm, cleaned the motor out, replaced the brushes and then broke it in using a trusted technique (8 mins at 1.5v) I could see that the motor was pulling 3.5 - 4 amps which was quite good. After the break-in procedure was done, I put the motor on the dyno that I've got an spun it up for a test run. It peaked at about 8 amps, but the more important number for me was the revs, all 38,000 of them :)

Remember, this is 27 turn brushed motors we're talking about. Somehow I've managed to get myself a freak motor because a "good" stock motor revs somewhere between 28,000rpm and 30,000rpm. I have three 19 turn motors (which are supposed to be quicker) that rev to 32/33k rpm.

As the rebuild was officially "complete", I put the motor in the car and headed off for the club. Once there, I spent a little time chatting with a few of the lads and introducing my dad to them before we got started for practice laps and heats. Before I had run the car, I had come up with a crazy idea that I'd put a ratio on the car that was lower than normal. This didn't really work as the car felt sluggish out of the corners and couldn't really get up to top speed on the straight. After a few laps, the car seemed to be handling well so I simply changed back to my standard ratio for this club (8.2) and left it at that.

Heat 1:
Had a nice little battle with Gary and we both ended up on 23 laps. We took each other out, but as is always the case between the two of us, we waited for each other to be back in the running before moving on.

Heat 2: This heat was very very good indeed :) Gary had out qualified me in the heat previous, so he was starting 1st and I started 2nd. The difference between 1st and 2nd off the grid is about a second or two. I followed him for 22 laps no more than 5 or 6 inches from his rear bumper and as I had closed the gap to less than a second the announcements were coming "in the lead car 3 (myself), then car 2 (Gary)" we were both confused as we'd lapped everyone else a couple of times at this stage and we both knew Gary was in front, not me. In the final couple of laps, Gary pulled away and finished on 24 laps, as did I 0.95 seconds behind him !

Heat 3: Gary and I had a chat in the time between our heats and had decided that as we were 1 second away from getting that magical 25th lap that we'd go for it this time. No more letting each other go, no more waiting :)
Steve, (who is selling his Serpent if anyone's interested) came and gave me a pep talk as well and said "Go for it, just push it as much as you can"
The heat started in the same order, Gary 1st and me 2nd but this time Gary overshot the first corner and got caught up in the barrier. I had a clear track to run on ! About halfway into the heat I felt like I had a REALLY quick lap as it was one where I felt i got everything right, but of course I had no idea until the end. I managed not to crash and not have any tussles with the other cars, and when the buzzer finished I listened for the announcement.
I had finished first in the heat, and then i heard the magical words "Improvement for car 3" I had got my 25 laps !!! :)

One of the next heats up was one that Charlie was in and tonight (as with sunday) his car seemed to be going REALLY REALLY well. As he was racing I looked over at the computer to see how he was doing. "Predicted 26 laps" I thought to myself "Come on Charlie, you deserve this one mate, it's been too long"
I don't know if he's being punished by the racing gods or not, but by some bizarre sequence of events his shell became lodged (yes lodged) in the track barrier. The marshall who was nearest simply could not free the car from the track. He eventually got it out and Charlie went on his way though, but the damage was already done :( Sorry Charlie, it's not fair mate !!!
The result ? a FIFTY TWO second lap (this is on a track where the quick guys are doing 8/9 second laps)

Finals:
No change for the finals, except that I completely blew it and ended up last with some problem in the drivetrain. I've not checked it yet, and to be fair I really don't care, qualifying on 25 laps made my night !