Asklemmy

It's not as glamourous as it seems lol. It's so much awful shit sometimes, but it's fun sometimes too.

I'll preface this story with here are some articles about a car we built (engine/wiring mostly), and took to Bonneville Salt Flats. (I'm not sure if links are allowed, so if not, LMK) If you want to read about it, there are about 15-20 pretty technical articles on Moto-IQ about the build (I'm co-owner of 5523 Motorsports, so articles with us apply). You can see them here (they don't seem to be in any particular order, and there's other unrelated shit, but they were publish chronologically originally and I suggest reading them chronologically). If the link doesn't get them to load, search project LSR on Moto-IQ site.

So, we were out at Bonneville, running the LSR 240SX which had our destroked SR20 in it. We get up to the line, start our pass, take off, and the car spins at right about 200mph (we never officially clocked 200 (lame), but datalogging shows we exceeded it). Next pass, same thing (I think it was a total of three times it spun that weekend). One of, if not the last pass we did of the weekend, we were in line in front of (maybe we were right behind, it's been a while) Danny Thompson (Mickey Thompson's son), who was running his dads Challenger II car (google the history, it's long, sad, and sorted). Our team was mostly at the start line, but I was at about mile 5.

Whichever order the cars went out in, I saw both from mile 5. Challenger II takes off, and I can't see it (curvature of the earth, I couldn't see it until it reach somewhere around mile 2) but the announcers are broadcasting on an AM channel so I can hear whatever they are calling out. I hear mile 1 xxx MPH, mile 2 xxx MPH, mile 3 xxx mph. I witnessed this car go 450.9 MPH on salt. I know that kinda sounds dumb, but you're brain really can't comprehend how fucking fast that is until you see it in person. I've been around cars, and fast car my whole life, but this was something else. Danny beat his dad's old record, which was the point, but my god that car was impressive.

So we go back out for our next pass, and what do we do, again? Spin, of course. There is the in car video of it in this article on page 3. The funny part, is that I have series of pics (which I'd have to go searching for now), where you can see the spring come off the chute, then the knob (the cable for the chute itself wrapped itself around the knob and launched it when it deployed), then the chute starts to deploy, and the last pic of the series was the nose of the car facing the fully deployed chute. We did set the record though. yay!

IDK how interesting that story is, but it was a fun weekend of racing. If you ever get the chance, going to the races out there is really fun. It still feels like back in the day, where everyone helps each other, and seemingly wants to collaborate, in some capacity. The crew next to us in the pits had a ranchero that they had put a Nissan engine in. It was an older Nissan engine (I don't remember it even having a true ECU in it) and they were struggling with the "tech" that was in it. IIRC it was just one of those MSD electronic ignition boxes (like the 6AL). We helped them as much as we could, and they lent us some tools. Hell, tech inspection, after we spun was some dude rubbing his hands around the circumference of the tires, to check for anything abnormal, and then the thumbs up to go again.

I will say the most flattering part of the whole weekend was these HUGE teams that were running these crazy cars really took notice of what we were doing with our little team/car. I didn't even have to be near the car, or mention it, and people would ask me about it. It's really something different from most other forms of racing anymore.

I found a REALLY shitty picture of a computer monitor with the dyno of the SR15VET we built for the LSR car.

sorry it’s an instagram link

You can see how low the power is until about 6k rpm, and then it’s like a switch was flipped, and POWER.

Little bit of the wiring

Everything about cars is that way. You think you know something, and then you learn a little bit more of the tech behind something, and it just makes a million more questions.

As for the powerband, if you think about it, it all kinda makes sense. If you’re driving a technical, short course, like streets of willow, for instance, you want a wildly different powerband, and probably car, than you would if you had to run down the back straight at big willow.

For streets you’ll want power in the low to mid rev range. You don’t need top end, because, unless you’re dumb like me, and drive an 89whp RX7 with like 3 ft-lb of torque, you aren’t likely to be anywhere near top speed, or the top gears. But, because there are tighter, more technically corners (which you’ll slow down more for), you’ll want some lower end power to get you back out of them fast.

If you’re on a much more open, and longer track, where you may reach top speed on a straight, but don’t need to pull the car out of tight corners often, you’ll probably want power in the mid to high rev range. Using my RX7 as an example, I’d run out of power long before I ran out of straight away on the back straight. Not the right car for the job.

For land speed racing, it’s far more important to have top end power, since it’s going to be closer to wide open throttle (mostly), and probably at the end of gearing, all the time. Once you get the car off the line, you aren’t going to slow down until the run is done. In fact, there are a lot of the vehicles there that get bump started off the line with a truck. So because we wanted as much power, at the top of the rev range, we chose a turbo that would be at peak power where we wanted it, which meant it seriously made like 50ft-lb until it didn’t.

The surface is wildly varied and racing gets cancelled often because of the surface conditions. The ever hating shoe person that I am, I had my feet in the ~~sand~~ salt as much as I could. The end and outside edges of the track are where the “crunchies” are. Imagine if salt built itself up naturally to be little peaks and valleys. Stepping on it collapse it to flat. The flattened edge of the racing surface is wet enough to make little snow men out of. I know, I got bored waiting for cars. lol. But it’s relatively thick (disclaimer it’s been losing salt for many years, and there are people trying to bring awareness to restore it. Don’t go out and do dumb shit to it. People have gone out and damaged it more than once. Article here ) actual track surface is pretty well packed. It’s surprisingly cold to the touch too. It’s really weird. If it’s submerged, I actually didn’t walk in that so I can’t for sure but driving on it, it was pretty stable. More like driving on hard packed dirt than loose sand.