Wow, what an eventful rollercoaster ride weekend it was! As some of u guys already posted, lots of people had problems with their cars, including myself. I totally jinxed myself on this one though on Friday talking with Aaron B, bragging to him about how great, reliable, and fast the little NA Lotus is as a track car. And that the stock tranny will hold up forever if you don’t up the stock HP. Bam! Right after talking to AB about this, I hoped in my car for the last session of the day and the shifter won’t get into gear with the engine on. I frantically checked all the external clutch components without finding any problems. All shift linkages were working, master and slave had full stroke, and we even bled the clutch with a whole bottle of RBF600 and the problem still persist. The clutch will not fully disengage with the pedal fully depressed for some reason. It was still grapping with about 40% of the strength I guesstimate. I was pretty bummed out. The car was running pretty consist low 57s with R888 before the tranny problem. And I was not even pushing it 100% of the time in all the corners. Not bad for still running on stock Engine, ECU, Airbox, with 165WHP eh. I was on the borderline thinking about running also in the Mod RWD on Sunday. If it wasn’t for the transmission problem I think I would of try to give Charles a run for his money in Oli’s car after seeing their practice times. That would have been fun. Anyways, I left the track bummed out on Friday evening and headed directly to Willow Ranch, got wasted with Matt, Clint, Drew and his land speed crew. Slept till 12 the next day, hung out with Nils and a few others with a hang over on track Saturday, and was hoping for a miracle on Sunday.
Sunday morning comes, the car was still in the same condition as we left it on Friday. No miracle there. The only way I can get the car to move was to put the shifter in reverse or 1st gear with the engine off before starting the car. Once the car is started it will creep forward or backward depending on the gear I’m in. When the car gets going I can shift up pretty easily without using the clutch. But down shifts take some precision with the blip. Boy was I crunching some gears out on the 2nd morning practice session. But the problem became intermittent towards the end of the session. Finally a positive sign and it helped me gain a little confidence for a podium lap on the TA run. My target was a 2:00 lap with some gear crunching. When out on the 1st TA run, laid down 2 laps, 2:00.4 and 1:59.3 with only a hand full of gear crunches. Came back in and was surprised to find that I’m now leading the overall street class times by 0.1 sec. Dude, I was so stoked!! But then I was so worried that I was gonna get beat up or something, cause now that everyone will think I’m the biggest sandbagger of all. I know the car is capable of at least high 57s on R1R in SRWD trim that day. But the best I can pull off was 1:58.8 by the end of the 2nd TA, just barely enough to take the win and just ~0.2 away from taking overall Street win. Definitely a weekend I won’t forget.
I like to thank some people and sponsors below:
APR Performance – for their continual aero development on my car
Toyo Tires – for making the grippiest street tire I’ve tried to date
Brent (Lotus Jedi Master) and AJ (the apprentice) - for the last minute suspension setup and tire size choice advise. And also for letting me borrow the side skirts. They made a huge difference. Now I was getting noticebley the same amount of rear DF with less drag.
Jack Fried – for getting me an adjustable sway bar at the last minute after hearing of my understeer problem during the shakedown at SOW. Though I never got the chance to install it because I had to be with my Grandma in the hospital right before the event. But I really appreciate your effort.
Kevin - for helping me with the complete clutch bled
Aaron B - for helping with jack stand so I won’t get my neck chop off by the carbon diffuser fin
Jeff Lee – last minute aero mod with painter’s tape
Evassive Team – for offering their precious time to help with my tranny problem when they themselves were have issues with their cars. Thanks guys!
All the trackHQ sponsors – 949 Racing, BigBrakeParts.net, motorsportlens, Ren Motorsports, R Motorsports, Speed Ventures, T1 AutoBahn, and the entire trackHQ community
Chris, Nik ,and the entire Redline crew - for the awesome series!
Lotustalk and community - for providing a library of valuable info on anything u need to know about the Elise. It comes in very handy for a home mechanic like myself.
