As Clint reported, our ice racing season started this past Sunday. I found it interesting to see how my dry-weather track experience would help me on the ice. Overall, the body of technique is more or less the same. Basic concepts of The Line and car control apply on any surface, in any car, and I certainly made good use of both during the races.
The Line
All of my track experience regarding finding the best line really paid off. The key to driving any stretch of pavement (or ice, in this case) is figuring out which line to take. For most corners, I found that the traditional line worked best, which wasn’t that surprising. What amazed me was how far down the straights I could feel the affects of different lines. Because turning is such a long process on the ice, if your car is not pointing exactly where you want it to be at track out, you need to lift off the power for a LONG time in order to rotate the car sufficiently. This problem could be compounded by a lack of traction at the track out point, making rotation even more difficult.
Most competitors recommended looking for traction, and taking whatever line coincides with the highest areas of traction. I actually found that this was not the best approach, at least not for the course we ran on Sunday. As a general rule, and certainly as the day wore on, there was more traction on the outside of the corners, and less at the apex. But, if I took a rimshot, I would yield the inside line to one of my competitors and they would get by me. So I actually found the best approach was to go slower through the inside, making sure to hit the apex and close off any daylight for the other racers.
Racing Mindset
The biggest shock to me was getting into the racing mindset. At SCDA track days, there is no problem getting passed, and I always try and get out of the way of faster, higher horsepower cars. This of course is exactly the opposite of what you want to do during a race, so it took a few laps to adjust to ignoring whoever was on my tail.
Overall, probably the most important thing to do while ice racing is damage control. By that I mean both controlling your car so it doesn’t hit a competitor, and so that you don’t fly off of the course and get stuck. This involves assessing your entry speed and changing conditions of each corner, and entering damage control mode as soon as you realize that you are going too hot. I had a few instances where, early on, I realized I was carrying way too much speed into the corner. I then immediately began to scrub speed and do what I could to keep my car on the track, even if it meant a very slow exit speed. Any exit speed is better than getting stuck in a snow bank, which would give you no exit speed at all. This skill is absolutely critical, as the longer you take to realize you are too hot, the less time and distance you have to fix your mistake and the more likely you are to leave the track.
The Adirondack Motor Enthusiasts Club held its first race of the season at Lake Algonquin in Wells, NY yesterday, and Noah, Chris, and I were on hand to compete. Because only part of the lake had frozen sufficiently, we were competing on a very short 7/10 mile course. Throughout the day race officials had to slightly modify the course because puddles and slush were making parts of the track undrivable. But I’ll leave further comments on the course and the driving to Noah, whose path to motorsports fame began yesterday with a top-10 finish in his very first ice race. In fact, Noah and I are currently 8th and 9th.
Many of the entrants in the Street Legal and Modified groups were veterans, but there were also a number of new Street Legal cars—nearly 30 in total. 30 cars on a course less than a mile long is crowded, to say the least, but bunching wasn’t as much of a problem as I thought it might be. One issue we did have, however, was finding opportunities to pass. Straights were very short—nothing like the long straights last year, where I was seeing 80mph—so there was a lot of tight passing in corners.
To our Boston- and New York-area readers: If you’re interested in doing (or just watching) some ice racing, look through the rules and schedule at icerace.com or email me at clint.fralick@pansypatrol.com for more information. All you need to race in SL are snow tires, a fire extinguisher, and some numbers. Membership is 20 bucks and race fees are 45. Some combination of us will be there for every race this season, and we’d love to meet some readers.
After we had just about finished taking all the parts we wanted, we decided a little fun was in order. The engine was out; Chris had taken the suspension, the window regulators, some interior pieces, and some brake parts. The next step was obvious.
We tipped the Protege up on its side. With a good portion of weight removed, it was quite easy. 3 of us lifted, but it could have been done with 2. Once we got it most of the way up, Chris and I steadied it while Tim positioned the jack so that the car would balance nicely.
Chris, ever practical and efficient, realized that it was a perfect opportunity to remove his exhaust:
We thought about throwing it onto its roof, but in the end we just tossed back into its normal position. It landed with a nice crash. There are more photos of the car on it’s side in this gallery, along with photos of the engine pull from earlier in the day.
Last week Chris’s protege sacrificed itself for our purposes. The B6 (SOHC 1.8, 102hp for those who do not know) in my Protege is probably a little tired after 248,000 miles, a bunch of track days, and only 2 oil changes in the last 103,000 miles. The BP (DOHC 1.8L, 125hp) in Chris’s Protege is in it’s infancy, relatively: 148,000 miles. The engine/transaxle assembly is an easy direct swap, so I pulled the it out of Chris’s car. Here’s what it looked like to begin with:
The left front had been damaged in an accident, so there was a lot of cutting, hacking, and other violence required just to get the radiator and some other normally easy stuff out. But soon enough the engine was out of the car…
…and then Chris went to work taking other stuff:
The best part about pulling engines out of cars you don’t care about is the recklessness with which you can work. A/C, power steering line, or other part in the way? Hack it in half, dump the fluid all over the place, and move on. A bolt won’t come out? Just cut parts around it until it doesn’t matter, like I had to do with the shifter rod. Need to relieve fuel pressure? Cut the lines with a knife. Gas goes all over the place and pressure is relieved.
The Protege engine is very easy to pull. Someone with moderate mechanical skill can have it out in just a few hours. If, like me, you’re swapping (or planning on swapping) the DOHC BP into an SOHC Protege, make sure you also take the driveshafts, ECU, wiring harness, and ignition coil from your donor car. All those are unique to the DOHC model.
This photo is officially the worst traffic jam I have ever seen at an intersection:
There are certainly worse traffic jams in terms of sheer volume. Take a ride on Route 128 outside of Boston during rush hour, and you’ll see what I mean. The beauty of this particular traffic jam is that it manages to COMPLETELY block the intersection without any accident. Traffic is literally locked up. Most traffic jams stem from a bottleneck issue of some sort, such as lanes merging or a poorly timed traffic light. People can get through as normal, just not at a very fast rate.
Not so with this traffic jam. The only way this jam will end is if a few people on the edges abort and let other cars through.
Last spring, it was time for a new set of tires, so I decided to try a set of Falken Azenis RT-615s in 205/50-15. For the two years prior, I had been running 195/50-15 Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3s on my Miata. Now that I have some experience with more than one set of tires, I can give a meaningful comparison and review of them.
My Miata’s Setup
I’m going to be talking about how each tire feels, but that doesn’t mean much without knowing exactly what has been done to the rest of my car. So, here is what I’ve done to my 1999 Mazda Miata: Flying Miata Springs (the older models); KYG AGX 4-way adjustable shocks; Flying Miata sway bars, set at the stiffest setting front and rear; Kosei K1-TS wheels, 15×7 inches (the older, 11 pound model). I also have a racing seat (a rebadge of a Cobra Monaco), and a 6-point, 2 inch Willans Harness. The racing seat and harness help immensely with feeling connected with the car, and really make the subtle nuances of each tire stand out. My car has no ABS, so threshold braking feel is also important. Read the rest of this entry »
From the last article on this subject, we know that a planetary differential is capable of distributing torque unequally to its outputs based on its design. We discovered that torque split is constant for any rate of speed and irrespective of which output rotates faster, neglecting the viscous coupling (VCU) action– but what sets this ratio? Can it be changed? How can we easily determine the design torque split of a planetary differential?
Despite how complicated it looks, the ratio of a planetary differential is simple to find. When the ring gear is the input, as with the 3000GT/Stealth AWD center differential, the ratio of the sun gear to the ring gear gives us the proportion of input torque supplied to the sun gear output. In other words if we have a ring gear with 100 teeth, a sun gear with 40 teeth and the ring gear is the input, the sun gear receives 40/100 or 40% of the input torque. If 10ft-lbs is the input torque, 4ft-lbs is applied to the output (neglecting friction).
And the torque supplied to the planet carrier? That’s the remaining 60% in this example, or 6ft-lbs.
Let’s look at a model of the actual 3/S center differential. If the stock sun gear is 27 teeth and the ring gear is 60 teeth, we find a ratio of 27/60 to the sun gear (front output), or 45% of the available torque. The remaining 55% goes through the planet carrier to the center output shaft and to the rear wheels.
What if we wanted to change this ratio? Someone with the knowledge and resources to cut his own gears could modify the factory center differential with a new sun gear and a redesigned planet carrier (the original planet gears could be reused). Such a modified differential could achieve significant changes in torque split just by adding or subtracting three teeth from the sun gear:
And so a rear-biased 60:40 ratio is hardly out of reach. For someone going to the effort of fabricating a new sun gear and modified planet carrier, more radical torque splits are a minor design change away. Getting a radical 65% of drive torque to the rear wheels could be done with a 21-tooth sun gear!
What about the planet gears? Believe it or not, the planet gears have no effect on the torque split of the differential — none. The factory center differential has 13-tooth planet gears, but the following differentials have the same torque split ratio:
In fact, the outer planet gears can even be different sizes than the inside planet gears without having any effect on torque split. Remember: the ratio of the ring gear to the sun gear alone determines torque split.
So why not make the planet gears as small as possible to shrink the differential down? Besides approaching a practical limit to how few teeth a gear can have and still make good contact with another gear, the simplest answer is strength. Because drive torque is still transmitted through the planet gears, they need to be large enough to carry the load.
That’s the long and short of it. Anybody want to machine some gears?
After we got back from our cross-country drive, Henry and I decided that we needed to do something–something–with the truck. So we got Noah on hand to document the shenanigans, and then Henry did a massive burnout with his Miata inside the U-haul. It made an extraordinary amount of smoke–so much that the Miata was immediately obscured from view. A cloud of smoke came out of the back of the truck as I pulled away, and you can barely see anything by the time it’s all done. But, in the end, we proved something very important: A Miata can do a burnout in a U-haul while it’s moving.
Replacing the rear wheel bearing on a first generation Mazda Protege is a very easy job. No pressing–no special tools of any kind, really–are required. Unlike the front wheel bearings, which require a press or a lot of hammering to replace, the rear wheel bearing comes as part of a bearing/hub assembly (Beck-Arnley # 051-6018).
To replace the hub/bearing assembly, remove the wheel, brake caliper, and brake rotor. The caliper is held in place with 2 14mm bolts.
With the caliper and rotor out of the way, access the retaining nut by removing the retaining nut cover. Use a screwdriver or (better) a small chisel and gently hammer at the lip of the cap, as shown here.
Using a 36mm socket, remove the retaining nut. You may also use a 1 3/8 socket. If you don’t have a socket of this size, your local Sears, hardware store, or tool shop will likely have a shelf of impact sockets that run this large. The axle nuts for many cars are this size, so a 1 3/8 or 36mm socket is a good thing to have.
Grasp the hub/bearing assembly and pull it off. It is not a press fit and should slide off the post very easily.
It’s a simple as that. Slide the new hub/bearing assembly onto the post. Reinstall the nut, then reinstall the rotor and caliper. All told, you should be able to do the job in about 30 minutes.
As reported by ABC News, 58 year old Stephanie Cole of Bristol, UK has been banned from driving for 7 days. Her offense? Driving at 10 MPH on the the highway.
Cole defended her actions by saying that she didn’t like that particular stretch of highway, and just happened to find herself on it. In court, she referred to this stretch of highway as her “nemesis.” Her car apparently had a sign in the back window that read, “I don’t do fast, please overtake.” Unlike most motorists, she was OVERJOYED when the police pulled her over - she thought they could help her and drive her home.
I hate people with this mindset, although this example is particularly extreme. There are minimum speeds that people are expected to maintain on ANY road, and particularly on the highway. If you cannot keep up with traffic, you should not be driving. Period. You just become a moving roadblock and a danger to everyone.
