Radio Installation

This weekend's project was wiring the radio into the race car. Basically, I took a walkie-talkie and cable-tied it to the roof and roll cage so that it hangs upside-down with the volume knob within easy reach of the driver, and the antenna is unobstructed. Then, I hard-wired it into the car's electrical system so we don't have to mess with batteries. Then, I wired the microphone and headphone jacks on the walkie-talking to the switchboard that's mounted in front of the shifter. I also wired in a "push-to-talk" button within easy reach of the driver. Next, I made an adapter that allows us to plug the drivers' school standard Chatterbox headset into the mic and headphone jacks that are in the switchboard. Now we have headphone and mic built into our helmets that plugs quickly into the dashboard during driver changes. The push-to-talk is within easy reach.

Below is my helper. She thought it was a lot more fun to wear the helmet inside the car while I talked around the neighborhood to assess the range.


The first switch on the board controls the radio. The middle switch will soon be wired to a homemade cool suit system. The 3rd switch will operate a pump that provides drinking water to the driver.

Again, Caroline demonstrates the radio button in the photo below. Note radio mounting in the top of the photo. Also, be sure to admire that nice-looking 5-pane rear view mirror that Patrick installed. That's a Northern Tool special that literally spans the entire width of the car.

Maiden Race

I have to admit, our maiden race didn't go so well. We did not finish. The culprit was a clogged fuel pump strainer that was limiting the supply of fuel to the engine.

We trekked up to Summit Point on June 18th. The car passed tech on Friday with flying colors.

On Saturday, Patrick's first stint in the car went well. After 40 minutes, he came in for a driver change. He reported that the engine was beginning to skip at high rpm. I, Allen, went out for the second stint. The car was running very rough. The longer I drove, the worse the problem became. Intially, I could rev it to 6000 rpm, then only 5000, then only 4000.

I noticed that the battery light was on on the dash and the gauge showed low voltage, so I brought it in, hoping the low voltage was leading to an ignition issue.

Back in the pits, we quickly went to work. Rick worked the phone to locate another alternator while Patrick and I dug into the blazing hot engine bay to try to determine the cause of the problem. We found it - broken wire going to the alternator. Marty rounded up an electric coupler from his buddy, CJ. We crimped it on and were ready to go once more.

We sent Rick out for the 3rd stint. The initial indication was good. We thought we had solved the problem. Before long, Rick showed a thumbs-down as he drove past our pit location. The problem was back.

The long and short of the story is: we thought we had an ignition issue, so we made buddies with a team on Toyota engineers who were also racing a Gen1 MR2. They had a trailer load of parts that they were very kind to share with us. We changed the ignitor and distributor. Both times, the driver initially reported that the engine ran well only to have it sour again.

At that point, we had replaced every part of the ignition. We changed the fuel filter (which was really nasty) and we still had an issue. We were certain that we had a fuel issue.

On Sunday, we tried several other attempted to fix the car. No luck, so we called it a race and went home to investigate further.

Although we were disappointed to have not gotten more track time, we still had fun. Also, we were able to eliminate a lot of possible issues which helped us get to the root cause much faster. We learned that our car has the capability to be competitive too. Our lap times would certainly have put is in contention for a top-10 finish had the car run well and had we executed our driver changes optimally.

We certainly be better prepared for the next race.

Engine Rebuild: May 2010

After a thorough search for decent used engine, we decided to rebuild the engine instead. At least we would know the condition of the internals even though the rebuild would take lots of time. We decided this in early May, and we were scheduled to race on June 19th. That didn't leave us a lot of free nights and weekends. Off to work we went.

With the engine out and on the stand, we disassembled it and found some really ugly rod bearings. In the photo below, note the distortion of two of the bearing shells.

We had the crankshaft ground .0020" on the rod bearings and .0010" on the mains. We honed the block and went back with fresh rings and bearings on the bottom end.

The cam bearings surfaces were a little rough from the rod bearing fragments that must have been force up through the head. We couldn't find a good head in short order, so we went with what we had.

We reassembled the engine, bolted on a new clutch, and had it running with a week to spare.