FJ Land speed racer

[fj1289]

Which basket is it?  I guess there are at least 2 different styles - one is more like a full slider basket. 

Have you seen anyone break a billet basket?  And what caused it?  I'm still thinking an all out drag launch with wheelies bars on a big slick is the worst it can see. 

[JMR]

Which basket is it?  I guess there are at least 2 different styles - one is more like a full slider basket. 

Have you seen anyone break a billet basket?  And what caused it?  I'm still thinking an all out drag launch with wheelies bars on a big slick is the worst it can see. 

Falicon basket (they also did the work)...for the stock clutch set up. I believe I have the clutch boss (inner driven drum) with the -.030 modification with it.
I haven't seen the an FJ HD unit break. I have see HD Suzuki ones that don't use a straight drive gear get messed up.

[fj1289]

With a hectic as everything before the race this year, I forgot to post an important addition to the bike:



Hope we can do them all proud next year. 

Let's not add to this list for next year either - everyone stay out there - be it at home, work, or play.

[FJmonkey]

Very nice touch...

[fj1289]

Tried using my normal method of parts cleaning on the oil pan - spray can of brake and parts cleaner.   Wasn't satisfied with the results so I pulled out the foaming engine degreaser and a chip brush.  Followed by some more parts cleaner.   Still keep finding little specs of clutch catastrophe...

Wish I had a real parts washer...but maybe I can get away with this...



Unfortunately I can't find a pots and (oil) pans setting - so this should do the trick:



If I don't post again within 72 hours, please call the authorities - my remains have been put through the garbage disposal and are being happily eaten by those teeny tiny things that live in our septic tank...

[fj1289]

Well, that worked out better than expected!  My wife went grocery shopping before the washer was finished.  It's now back in the garage.

[Pat Conlon]

It's when I use the kitchen oven for VHT paint curing that I get into trouble.
SWMBO has a keen nose. She knows that smell....

Keep at it Chris! Thanks for adding those names to your bike. It means a lot to me.   Pat

[fj1289]

Pat - I kind of see this group like a brotherhood - you take care of your own and you honor your fallen. 

[fj1289]

Quick leadup to the Colorado Mile this year. 

The plan after last year was to refine and improve on last year.  Part of that was upgrading the nitrous system for this year.  The old system (made up of various bits and parts) was replaced with all new components from the bottle valves to the discharge tubes.  The purpose of this was to maximize the gains made on nitrous as well as increase the overall capacity of the nitrous system.  The second big improvement was the ECU – moving from the microsquirt used last year (still a very impressive ECU) to the Megasquirt 3.  The purpose of this was to eliminate 4 external electronic "boxes" used in last year's setup and do everything inside the ECU.   

Unfortunately, budget and time constraints this year meant I didn't get nearly as much done, ready, and tested come race time as needed.   Two weeks out from the race and I was swapping the engine out of the street bike into the race bike, finishing wiring the new ECU, and doing all those "little" things that are critical – like installing and bleeding brakes, setting up the clutch, etc.  10 days out from the race and it's finally ready to crank the engine – and it's a no-go.  Engine won't crank and it keeps blowing the fuse for the ignition coils.  I go over the coil wiring – which hasn't changed from last year.  Finally open up the ECU and find some loose wires where it has melted the solder connection...CRAP!  Don't think I have the time to re-engineer the changes I made to the ECU and the input/output circuits on the additional board.   



Next day I do some rudimentary tests on the main motherboard of the ECU – everything there appears to check good.  I order a new harness connector and a new input/output card for the existing ECU from DIYAutotune.com and hope it arrives quickly.  It does – and 3 days later I've cut the aftermarket connector off the motherboard and soldered in the "standard" connector, added the integrated input/output card, and have what appears to be a fully functioning Megasquirt 3X ECU (now in a larger case and with horrendously large connectors. 



Out comes the cutting disk and a large file and a few minutes later there is enough room for the "new" ECU. 
The next day (just 5 days before the race) I have to chop out the old ECU connector and wire in the two new ridiculously large 1980's printer style connectors.  I get the bike cranked for the first time!  No time for any tuning now – there is still all the "support systems" to wire in – nitrous, shifter, shift light and dash board.  By the time all that is wired up and tested, it's two days until the race. 

Plan is now to do a quick ride to help get a rough tune for the lower rpm ranges.  Then pack up and go to Bandimere dragstrip for the test-n-tune session.  The bike runs good on the test ride – a little on the rich side but pulls hard.  Then, at the end of the test ride, it quits and won't restart.  Get it home and find the manual cam chain adjuster is backed out ... turns out the cams jumped time and bent some valves.  My own mistake for rushing through things and not double checking everything before running it.  I intended to swap out the manual cam chain adjuster for an automatic one and didn't lock the adjuster into place after setting the cams.   

Thursday morning comes and instead of loading the trailer so we can get to the track that afternoon and set up pits, go through tech inspection and the drivers meeting, I'm pulling the head to see how bad things are.  Bent the intake valves on #1 and exhaust valves on #4.  Luckily these are stock valves and I've got used replacements in a box of spares.  No time for a valve job – just lap them on the seats, cross our fingers, and let it fly!  Timing the cams takes me forever – I'm tired and it's getting late.  Eventually get everything where I am happy with it.  Carefully go over everything again and get it all buttoned up.  It's 2:30 AM on Friday – time to wake up the neighborhood  and see if it will run.  It cranks and is firing on all 4 cylinders!  We're making the race!   

[Mike Ramos]

Mr. FJ1289,

If you and your pit crew had not spent so many hours on another FJ's electrical problems, you would have had additional time for your more important project...

If I ever find the guilty party, I'll certainly give them a piece of my mind...!

Hmmm..... uh oh....!

Midget

[fj1289]

Mike - no worries!  This is just a late update and recap -- this was all a month + ago!  And even if we were getting ready for the race, helping someone in need is more important!   

The race bike is back together - with the billet clutch basket this time!  Trying to get out to Bandimere drag strip before they close for the season and get some runs in and get some more of the ECU settings ironed out.  So far have the VSS (vehicle speed sensor) working again on the rear wheel.   Have the fuel pressure sensor working.   And should have the pieces in the next day or two for datalogging the nitrous pressure too. 

Next priorities are to work on the low speed and idle tunes and get the nitrous tune sorted with the big injectors.  If I can get all that done before getting wintered out here, I'll call it a success!  And we'll be well on the way for next year!

Glad you made it back safe - that's a hell of a long way to travel on a "I think it'll work"!  Then again, if you're sure of the outcome, it's not really an adventure!  Good to meet you in person and hope next time it's at a rally or some other event!

[fj1289]

Continuing the long overdue recap from last month's Colorado Mile


At 2:30 AM Friday morning, after starting the engine after a hasty swap of four bent valves, a little discretion and reason wins out – rather than trying to get the trailer loaded and trying to make the morning drivers meeting before 9 AM, I decide it is smarter to get 3 or 4 hours sleep and make it out for the drivers meeting at lunch time.  Today I have Bailey (my son), Jeff (my wife's uncle) and Lance (friend from work that races a 450 Honda in the classics class at Bonneville) helping in the pits.  We finally get to the track, knock out the drivers meeting, set up out pit and get to tech.  The safety lanyard won't kill the engine?!  It won't crank if the lanyard is pulled, but it will keep running after it is pulled.  CRAP!  A quick rewire job through the existing kill switch and 40 minutes later we've passed tech!  

Doesn't look like there is much of a line – suit up and get ready to make our first run.  It's a motor only run (no nitrous) just to make sure it's running right and the tune is close.  The run feels slow but no issues – big relief.   Roll up to the timing tent and get the time slip – woohoo!  149.2 mph!  That's up 14 mph than the first run last year!  Get back to the pits, put the bike up on the stands and see oil on the back tire.  WTF!  Looks like it might be from the alternator seal.  Ugh – I've been through this before when I first put this bike together as a drag bike.  Never could get it sealed so I said screw it and installed a block off plate from Randy and went total loss.  I don't really have that option now with the ECU and fuel pump and nitrous solenoid needing a good, stable source of power.  Take the alternator out; seal looks good.  Clean it up and hope it's just residual oil that leaked out when I was putting it all together earlier.  Button it back up, adjust the tune a little, and back to the track.  

Go out for the second run – feels similar to the last run.  Look down at my boot as I'm pulling off – more oil.  CRAP!  Get the time slip - 149.5 mph with a little higher speeds on the 1/4 mile and 1/2 mile splits.  I have to do something about this oil leak!  We try the only other o-ring I have – but it is a thick one.  I don't think it is a thick ring alternator, but I'm running out of options.  Just in case this doesn't do the trick, I roll up a shop rag and pack it in below the alternator and between the clutch slave and the oil filter.  Hopefully that will catch any oil if it is still leaking.  

Clean the oil off the tire and go with a 25 shot of nitrous.  Run feels good.  Time slip says 156.1 – not bad for 25 shot (on par with the speeds from a 50 shot last year).  But my boot is wet with oil again.  The rag is soaked.  Trying to use the larger o-ring doesn't work – it cut it on the install.  I've got another alternator at home we'll try.  Time to knock it off for the day – and figure our something for this oil leak.  

On the way home, Jeff says it looks like we are missing two screws from the alternator.  I look, and sure enough, it looks like there is only one screw in the bearing retainer.  Get home, remove the missing screws from some alternator parts already on the work bench – yep, they have o-rings on them.  I think the leak is coming from the cooling vents of the alternator – not from the o-ring.  I really hope this solves the oil leak issue!  Just to make sure, on our way to the track Saturday morning, I have Jeff put a smear of RTV OVER each of the three screws just in case the o-rings on the screws are dry, cracked, etc.  

[fj1289]

Continuing the recap of last month's Colorado Mile

Nice to get out to the track early on Saturday morning.  Alan (Firehawk068) is a welcome addition to the crew.  We get the alternator installed, adjust gearing, and go back out on a 25 HP shot of nitrous.  Reviewing the datalogs last night revealed the nitrous never went above 20% since the rear wheel speed sensor (VSS) has quit working.  I planned to use the speed based progressive nitrous settings.  Instead, I have to run time based progressive settings.  The only issue is I have to reach up with my thumb during the run to activate the nitrous now.  The run goes well, check the boot – no oil!  Time slip says 160.2!  Time to turn up the nitrous a notch!  

Install the 50 HP jet and add fuel to the nitrous tune.  Feels like it pulls better, but the time slip says only 160.9.  I expected more than that – maybe the tune is too rich and is killing the power or I was slow to activate the nitrous.  Adjust the tune a little and go back out for another run.  162.2 mph.  Something's not right.  Pull the side covers and tank so we can check the plugs.  #1 looks good.  #2 looks good.  Crap!  I cracked #3 getting it out.  It looks good – but I don't have any spares.  I get out the electrical tape and hope it will do the job holding the cracked porcelain together.  Think about not checking #4 since the others are good and I don't want to take a chance on cracking it too.  I think better of it and pull #4 – and find the electrode is melted off.  CRAP!  OK, something is wrong – but what?  I also remember last year's meltdown -- #4 took the worst of the damage.  Maybe there is something going on with #4 that is making it more "critical" than the other three.  Maybe the coil is starting to go bad and it is doing the "early discharge" these coils will do if they are being over dwelled?  (I'm using Chevrolet LS-1 coils and wires off a Camaro/Corvette ).  Or maybe the #4 injector isn't flowing as well as the others?  At this point we've decided to call it a day and start calling all over Denver to find some more plugs (I'm running a non-projected version of the stock FJ plug one heat range colder - coldest NGK makes).   During all this, Greg Waters makes a 228 mph shake-down run on his Busa (Greg holds the fastest speed for a motorcycle at this track at 237.9 mph last year) and then goes down in the braking zone.  Lance said the saw blue tire smoke, a quick "waggle" and he went down.  Luckily he is up and walks away from it – a broken thumb, minor abrasions, and a LOT of bruises.  Wow!  I'm not real happy my wife sees the accident, but she's not freaking out about it (at least not on the outside).   I'd really like to make another pass now and not end on that note.  

That evening we grab another coil from the street bike and get the "big" decapped blue injectors to replace the "pinks" that are in there now (and were the ones we ran last year).  The FJR throttle bodies come with injectors that flow 318 cc/min.  The "blue" injectors I run are from a Subaru WRX and flow 440 cc/min and are good to maybe 100 HP nitrous shot.  The "pink" injectors are from a Subaru WRX STi and flow 550 cc/min and are good to about 200 HP nitrous shot or so.  The pulsewidth at idle is still large enough with the pinks to be able to tune the idle fairly well.  The "decapped blue" injectors are a modified set of blue injectors and flow approx. 820 cc/min!  That should be enough for more than a 250 HP shot of nitrous ON ETHANOL!  My biggest concern is these being too big for idle (especially on gas instead of alcohol).   Oh well, don't have a choice but to try them!  And if the bike does idle like crap, hopefully I can "ride around it" well enough to get off the start line and get underway...

Only video for the day was run 6: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wzW1jMYk2VU

[fj1289]

Continuing the recap from last month's Colorado Mile

Last day, Sunday.  Get to the track early and start making our changes.  Fingers crossed.  Warm it up and take a quick ride up and down the pit road.  Tweak the tune a bit – bike seems to idle OK with the big injectors – or at least it's no rougher than it was before.  My idle tune is way off and is hunting and surging a lot because it is idling too high and is starting to get into the advance curve and the "transition" area of the fueling table.  Again, no time to deal with it now, but will definitely get sorted after the race (assuming we finish this year with the engine in one piece!). 

That run goes well – pulls good.  Check my boot (out of habit now - still no oil) and roll up to the timing tent.  Time slip says 176.3 mph!  Yes!  Last year it took a 75 HP shot of nitrous to run those speeds – we just did it on 50 HP shot!  I'm really thinking the nitrous system upgrades paid off!  

Time to install the 100 HP nitrous jet.  Scale up the fuel for the nitrous tune and add a little for safety.  Run starts pulling hard, but something's not right up top.  It won't pull past 7,000 rpm in 4th or 5th.  Time slip shows 158.8 mph.  Two videos from that run:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OnGyncyuyPU
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U0fzTYeyOJU

Slowed down 18 mph – CRAP!  Pulled the plugs – look good – nothing melted, nothing fowled.  Go back through the ECU and try to see if we have some settings wrong that could be causing an unintentional rev-limit.  I also look for the ECU resetting -- with the microsquirt setup we had an issue around 6500 rpms with the crank trigger signal issue that required an additional resistor to clear up. No issues seen.  Make some small adjustments to the shift light setting and rpm setting for the nitrous.  The nitrous tune is a bit rich (showing 10.3:1 AFR in the logs – enough to lose a little power, but not too bad – shooting for 11.3 – 11.7:1) and reduce the fuel 10%.  Try again.  A little better, 164.9 mph but still not good.  
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8HfDwkul2uY

Still shows 10.3:1 on the nitrous tune.  WTF?  Try removing some more fuel from the nitrous tune and try tweaking a couple more settings.  

Run again (Run # 10 for the meet, 4th run for today).  A little better but still not pulling as much rpm as it should in 4th or 5th.  170.9 mph.  

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m4XluCz-jow
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5t-hXQv7V6Q

A little better, but the AFR's are still 10.3:1.  WTF again!  Bailey mentions he saw some black smoke from the exhaust during the run.  That explains it!  We are WAY rich – although the wideband O2 gauge is supposed to read down to 10.0:1 – this one appears to read no lower than 10.3, no matter how rich it really is.  All I know is we are richer than 10.3 but don't know how much.  Take out 10% more (that way if it is 10.2 or 10.3 it won't overshoot the 11.5 target).  

Run #11 – a little better, still too rich, and the time slip says 174.1.  
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OeBh10TQBW8

Small improvements, but still slower than the 50 HP tune!  Take some more fuel out of the nitrous tune and realize I've been taking fuel out of the BOTTOM of the nitrous tune, not the TOP as I had been intending!  The nitrous settings in the ECU have a minimum rpm and maximum rpm for nitrous use, and the amount of added fuel (in milliseconds pulse width) at those two points.  I've been adjusting the fuel at the minimum rpm setting – Not the maximum rpm setting as I intended (the min rpm setting is on the top, max is on the bottom – not paying enough attention in the heat of the battle).  I pull 10% of the fuel from the top of the nitrous tune this time and try again!  

Run 12, engine pulls a bit better and we go 182.5 mph.  
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-kweTu8Ik

We're running out of time quickly – I'll try one more run at 100 HP and then we'll have to call it close enough and bump up to the 150 HP nitrous jet.  Run 13 gets us 183.7.  
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=clYMM4us5cM

Still running rough above 8500 rpm or so, but we've got time to make one more pass.  150 HP jets are in, tune scaled up, and increase the maximum rpm for the nitrous in hopes that may get us the speed we need.  It pulls hard from 2nd gear through 4th, then shift to fifth and nothing.  Try shifting again.  Nothing.  The engine is still running, but it's not pulling at all.  Abort the run.  Coast out to the mile and take an early turnoff.  
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRhL4egcSRk

Clutch feels normal, transmission down shifts, just doesn't feel like the engine and the back tire are connected at all.  CRAP!  Wonder if we found the limit of the transmission?  Just thankful whatever happened it didn't lock up the rear wheel!  

The next day Randy tells me to pull the clutch cover and see if it broke the clutch basket.  Bingo!  

[fj1289]

New clutch is in the race bike now.  Billet basket:


The billet basket requires turning down the back side of the clutch hub approx .03" for clearance.   


Quick soak for the new fibers:


Bike is ready to head out to Bandimere drag strip (or maybe Pueblo) once work, family, and weather aligns!  Shooting for Sunday (last day of the season) at Bandimere for their Fall day test.