The car was about 4 inches too high which caused a lot off excessive wear to the tires, not to mention the tread was wearing off sideways. The car also had a issue with bump stop when you turned all the way to the left or the right, the last inch or so didn't exist so it was like waiting for the steering to recognize that you really wanted to turn back the other direction.
The big issue was overheating on the track. The track was long enough that when you did overheat you ended up driving another mile or so before you could get off the track and back to the pits. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the overheating issues and we spent a lot of time at the track dealing with them. My friend Pat had suggested the trick that Carroll Smith had wrote in his book Prepare to Win.
A simple but effective way to separate air from water moving through the engine.
I was a little skeptical at first, how could a little tank pull air out of water and keep it from going back into the engine? Well after working on a couple of mock up designs based off of his theory I decided to get serious and see if the thing actually worked.
Yes that's an enchilada can!
The finished product.
The new reservoir tank that allows water to replace the air as it moves through the system.
The finished unit in place waiting for testing.
On Saturday our new team member Bill, myself and Andy hooked up the system.
Using a clear tube to go from the swirl pot to the reservoir we watched as the swirl pot literally pushed air out and into the reservoir and pushed fresh water from the reservoir back into the motor. This doesn't sound like a big deal but when you spend so much of your time at the track trying to get the air out of your cooling system, this little guy is a miracle worker. It works and it works really well. We now need to test it at a constant high RPM on a regular road surface to see if it can handle the pressures that we see on the track.
