Since September of 2011, I have done quite a bit. The 914 got a new forged crank shaft and we buttoned it all up and I went racing. In April 2012, I went to Heartland Park PCA Club Race in Kansas. Almost made it through the whole weekend too, but broken throttle linkage ended that weekend a touch early for me.
Also went to High Plains Raceway PCA Club Race in Byers, Colorado too. Only to have the brand new crankshaft break in half again during Saturday's Fun Race. Needless to say it was all very depressing.
In the months following we felt (rather, my mechanic) that what was needed was to somehow change the "harmonic" of the engine. That this bad harmonic was actually stressing and ultimately breaking the crankshaft. And so, a new engine rebuild, with a new crankshaft began again.
This time however we also changed a couple of other items as well. The old T-bar throttle linkage was totally replaced by linkage that involved running 2 cables (rather than 1), each one running directly from the pedal to each carb. Very clean and custom built. Photo below. Made carb adjustment and syncing much easier and maintainable.
The harmonics were changed by lightening the connection rods. Each one was ground, sanded and polished to remove approximately 35 grams. Each, when finished would weigh less than a gram from any other one.
Also changed out some of the bodywork - the front bumper and valance specifically. Returning the look of the car to an earlier version I had originally. I like it much better.
And after re-assembly and some street driving and a lot of tweaking, I went racing again in August of 2013 to HPR in Colorado again more on that in another post. And that pretty much brings us up to date. Read on to see how Colorado went and other Club Racing tales.
No comments:
Post a Comment