The Corrado ran five MARRS races at Summit Point in 2007. We ran MARRS 1,4, 7 and the MARRS 9 double. Evan drove in one of the MARRS 9 races, Nick drove the rest.
We ran the whole season with the stock engine with well over 100,000 miles on it. We had the 02A transmission rebuilt with a .424 final drive and a clutch-type lsd from Bildon. The car had it's new KW suspension with double adjustable dampers. WE used Kumho V710 tires for the whole season.
The MARRS 1 test day was the cars first time on track. There was a lot to learn, suspension settings, alignment etc, but it ran well and we were getting lap times around 1:33 - not a fast ITS time, but respectable for an undeveloped car. The only drama came when the driver-side inner CV joint broke. Luckily we had a spare driveshaft & John Cummins of Kearney racing swapped it in in a jiffy.
We qualified mid-pack as expected. However on the start of lap two, the expensive new transmission failed, leaving me with only 4th gear. I chose to complete the race, lapping in the 1:36's and finished near the back of the ITS field.
The transmission was sent back to its builder who discovered a stripped 3rd gear. Meanwhile for MARRS4 we found an 02A transmission from a Jetta with a quafe lsd. Unfortunately its final drive ratio was ridiculously tall, so during the race we were changing gear in the middle of turns, using 2nd gear where we should be in 3rd, and never getting into top at all. Despite this the race went well and we collected a 4th in class finish with a fast lap of 1:31.677
For MARRS7, we were still using the makeshift transmission. The car was still running well however, but during the early part of the race the left rear tire wore through to the cords which didn't help handling at all. However we managed a 3rd place finish with a fast lap if 1:31.912
MARRS 9 came along and we had the repaired race transmission back in the car in time for the practice day. It lasted a couple of laps before we lost 3rd gear again! Luckily we had brought the backup, misgeared-but-reliable gearbox, and an all afternoon thrash ensued to swap it in. Evan discovered that replacing an 02A transmission in a Corrado is a different sort of job from replacing an 020 box in a Scirocco!
Another problem was caused by us installing a brake bias adjuster and somehow getting air into the abs system. We never got the brakes properly bled, despite repeated attempts at the track. At one point during Nick's race the pedal went to the floor approaching turn 1 resulting in a brief visit to the mud outside of turn 2.
With the backup gearbox in the car we got through qualifying with no problems. Evan ran the first race and quickly got up to speed, coming in 8th in class with a 1:31.415 fast lap. Nick ran race 2 and also came in 8th in class with a 1:31.670 fast lap.
Due to the various gearbox problems and our limited schedule we didn't really make the progress we'd hoped for with the car's suspension setup. One thing we learned is that the nose heavy weight distribution and fwd makes the car very hard on the front tires. In the later stages of the races they were really overheating. I'm hoping suspension setup changes along with adjustments to driving style can keep this under control. We might experiment with different types of tires too.
There's lots of work to do to get the car ready for 2008, not least build an IT race motor with a lot more horsepower, but we're determined to come back with a much faster car for 2008.
2 comments:
Thats pretty bad ass. I wonder if a vr would be more reliable as a track car than a daily, ha ha. You think about getting cryo treated gears?
The good thing about race cars is you just take off all the unreliable junk and throw it away :-)
Cryo treatment's a good suggestion given the gearbox issues we've had. I might look into it a little.
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