ML's Whiteout

[Pat]

I love reading about what you do with your car. It's actually motorsport.

[ML]

Originally Posted by Pat

I love reading about what you do with your car. It's actually motorsport.

very grassroots! thank you

[ML]

My long recap post:

Comparison video of me being .1 second slower than my first time at Pine Mountain

I got back from overseas a week before my first race at the SCCA Appalachian HillClimb Series Presented by Summit Racing Pine Mountain event. So I had three days to prep my car which meant changing to the new Fortune Auto 520 coilovers I got months ago, new tie rods, a new hood exit header, and a few other little things. The one thing to the car I did before I left was rip out my manual brakes and swap in a BMW ABS unit with OEM brakes and booster, but I never got to test it... this was making me nervous.

I convinced Veronika to come with all the kids and Micah to bring his family so we could try to hangout after the long departure. We made it up Friday after noon and we got the car to the festival at Pineville KY. I received a trophy for the (co)points champion for the year before and the trophy is really cool with an engraved picture of my car!

Saturday first run, on turn 2 I went to press the brakes for the first time and my rear wheel locks up, so I stop and go back to the paddock. After closely looking at some other BMW ABS units we realized I plumbed the hydraulics incorrectly, so we quickly switched the lines around and bled the brakes. There were a few delays so we were able to get done in time. On the next run the brakes were working but we discovered a new issue that would prove to be my hangup for the rest of the weekend. The engine seemed to be breaking up only under load at high RPM full throttle.
We checked and checked everything and all the pins in the connector and couldn't figure it out. By the end of the day I didn't have a time any where close to being competitive for the top dawg OUTLAW class. It didn't help that Luka woke up at 2am that morning and I barely got any sleep. So we just called it a day once we lost daylight in the paddock messing with connectors.

Another thing that happened on Saturday was there was so many delays that we only got 3 runs, 2 for some. There were multiple bad crashes, cut fiber line, mechanicals, it was not going smoothly. But fortunately nobody was seriously injured and the workers all responded the best that anyone could have asked!

Sunday on the first run the car was still breaking up, but then after that I had the thought that maybe the engine harness had a bad ground so we ran the ground directly to the battery and this fixed the breaking up! This was exciting and all but I was still scared of the brakes. Even though we got the brakes lines fixed the ABS motors were not activating on full brake press and just locking up the tires so I was very nervous of the brakes and going way way to easy on them. so I was only able to squeak out a 1:57 which is 4 seconds off my time the first year I went in 2022.
The next run I was able to run a 1:53.9 and I thought I was on my way to a sub 1:50 run. but then on the third run of the day the weird engine breaking up was back! The ECU said the injector was over 90% , and getting trigger errors (crank sensor). I also almost spun out and then on the last run, we still couldn't get the issue to go away so I had to settle with being slower than my first year with 150 more horsepower and having Hoosier A7s vs 200tw tires. Its very very disappointing for me. There was also one more bad accident on the last car and the last run, fortunately the driver was ok though.

I felt off driving wise and very very slow. I'm hoping some time on the simulator and maybe an autocross or two can help me get my wits back. But at least I brought the car back in one piece and I can start getting the car ready for the next iteration.

Thank you to my wife and family for supporting me and thank you to my brother for being the greatest crew chief ever. Thank you to the SCCA and all our sponsors, and all the workers for keeping us safe. Thanks for the photos Guess Work Photography, thanks Jordan for the videos!

[autoracer86]

Thanks for the detailed write up was a fun read! Sorry to hear about all the issues Hopefully you can get it fixed soon and get your confidence back