924Board.org

[paluck]

we finished our 24 hour Lemons race in Reno. Its the first 24 hour race the car has run, but our 4th Lemons race
Thought I'd give a run down of how it went
First - we came in 41 out of 72. Not as good as we'd hoped, but the event was very fun and we had an awesome time despite the weather which was cold / windy / rainy. 305 laps - almost 1k miles of track

Car is a 1979 with snailshell and upgraded 944 brakes.
* 5 lug conversion and those brakes are awesome compared to stock 924
* This is our second snailshell. The first one we broke 1st gear. This one has a crunchy second - I'm almost ready to give up and swap to different tranny.... We replaced the rear linkage bushings, but the shift lever is still very vague.
* We had some mild overheat problems caused by our front airdam bodywork
* We broke a front swaybar droplink. This was, I believe, due to our a-arm design. We bought new steel arms. They lacked the same sway mounting points as our originals, so we just welded on some steel tabs, but I think that made the mounting point too high and bent our droplinks under usage. We rectified this by halving the top bushing to effectively 'shorten' the droplink
* We had oil pressure loss under hard right hand cornering (?? anyone have this - do people recommend baffling the pan? overfilling the oil?)
* We had our front alternator bushing erode and the alternator rubbed on the bracket. We fabbed another one with a cutting wheel and some random bushing from another application.
* We woefully underestimated our necessary lighting. We had 6 wimpy lights, but had to borrow a pair of hella rally lights to be able to see past our bumper.
* Exhaust manifold wasn't torqued down properly - we wrecked our gasket.
I think that was most of our misfortune

so I'm in the market for front sway bar droplinks and advice on oil pressure loss.
We're aiming for next event in October at Infineon / Sears point
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paluck(at)hotmail.com
1989 944 S2
1979 924

[Fifty50Plus]

If rules and bucks allow, put in an Accusump for the oiling problems.
Chuck
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1979 924 NA race car H-Prod SCCA
1982 924 NA race car - Sold
1981 924 Turbo sold
1982 924 Turbo sold
1972 911 E race car - traded for Cayenne Diesel
1975 914 1.8 Building for H-Prod SCCA

[924RACR]

Front swaybar droplinks will snap, if they're original. I've had to replace mine. Maybe make better ones, beef 'em up? Curbs don't help.

+1 to the Accusump. Better check those bearings before you race that motor again.

Ditch the snail, get an Audi box.

We have steel bushings in place of those crappy stock rubber ones, happier on the track.
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Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

[emoore924]

All failures I've had one or more times over the years.

+1 on the change to the audi 5-sp.

Change to a 944S radiator, or a lower temp t-stat and fan switch if your stock raddie is good. You'll have to find hoses that will work. I have part #s PM if you need them.

See if the Weltmeister drop links are still around (although I've broken a couple of those too over the years. Always RHS, go figure.) Spherical bearings come to mind, like from Jeg's or Summit. JMHO but I don't think the break is an artifact of where you welded the tabs on the a-arms.

I overfill the oil about 1/2 quart. Accusump is better of course.

Many opinions on the alt bushings. I'd start with new ones and see how that goes. They are still readily available. Have to be careful here because you don't want to lose the belt.

More lights. 4 Hellas on a rack will do it. You'll also lose 10mph in the straights

Might want to consider a header if rules allow.

Sounds like you had fun. That's the important part.

[Khal]

[Cedric]

Cooling should work if everything is as it should (thermostat, fan, cleaned radiatior etc).

Oil pressure shouldnt be problem, a bit worrying, the only time that has happened for me was when my n/a had severely low oil level (due to a sliding stop on the dipstick ). Otherwise no problem, and I have tracked alot.

Alternator bushing: Its one of the few bits on the car that actually are crap. New ones wont work for long. So we did the front bushing out of some bushing plastic of some sort. Works much better.

Is a crunching second even a problem? On my 79 I never use 2nd gear on the track, 3rd is the lowest i go, even in very slow corners its enough. But i always doubbleclutch so bad syncs is less of an problem, try red line oil, got it clearly better.

Great work guys !
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1980 924 Turbo
www.instagram.com/garagecedric/

[Rasta Monsta]

Bring that car up to PIR for Halloween! You won't have cooling problems then!
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Toofah King Bad

• WeiBe (1987 924S 2.5t) - 931 S3

[fiat22turbo]

Cedric, considering this is an endurance race series and they have to stop in the pits every two hours to change drivers at the least, you can imagine that having a fully working gearbox is important to getting up to speed coming out of the pits. I agree that once the car is moving, it shouldn't be needed unless the course has a really tight corner in it.

Paluck, congrats! Don't worry about the finish order at this point, be happy you finished at all. Many don't as you've noticed Focus on organizing your pit stops and practice them to get the total time spent in the pits down. That helps quite a bit. Being the fastest on the track doesn't help if you spend longer in the pits than everyone else.

If the damage to the current transaxle isn't too bad, maybe you can combine the two boxes you have with a refresh kit from Ideola? Maybe you'll end up with a decent box to use while you work on gathering parts for an Audi conversion?

Definitely bring it up for Halloween in Portland and join the party. You'll be among Toofah friends (even if you're the only toofah running, heh)
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Stefan
1979 924 Carrera GTS (clone-ish)
1988 944 Turbo S (Silver Rose)

[Cedric]

[KDJones2000]

Great to hear, Paluck!

We started having the oil light come on after about 4 hours on the track, can't remember if it was lefts or rights that caused most of the problem. We tried to run the car with about and extra 1QT of oil, after doing that we didn't have any more troubles.

We added some cheapo driving lights to our car under the front bumper, which we pointed outwards to try to fill in the turns. Having 4 lights running was about at the limit of our alternator, as the ALT light was faintly glowing when everything was on. Be careful on how much wattage you put on would be my advise.

Sounds like yet another 924 trooper came through in a 24 crapcan race! I am thinking that you guys weren't all that competitive with the top runners, based upon your finish. That would be similar to our results. Kind of a slow and steady (not really) wins the race, I guess.

Glad you had fun!

Cheers, Keith
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1987 924S SPEC car
Team Toofah Racing
1988 944 Turbo S

[paluck]

Thx gang - good advice - here's my further musings
* Since we have a second snailshell now - maybe the first one is worth a rebuild. We feel more comfortable taking one apart knowing we have a spare - maybe we rebuild the first one. Redline fluid - we'll get some of that - advice on weight?
* Cooling issues definitely had something to do with our front bodywork - its not stock and cooling was better after its removal. I think we jus need to leave it off or redesign...
* Alternator busing - I think our new fabbed rubber will hold- but we'll ccheck it
* Oiling - we'll try the overfilling (that's what we do in the 944 world). Accusump would be too much for a Lemons budget - we'd get sweated pretty bad explaining that to the judges. Anyone ever baffle the pan? Pics?
* Drop links - I'm sure we caused that one, since the one that didn't break? we bent it. But my plan is to remove the struts while the front end is up and then visually watch the articulation to make sure we have the right amount of travel
* Our track performance was pretty good. We had a bit of variance with our drivers, but I was turning laps 12 seconds off the leader on an almost 3 mile config. Now - that's considerably slower, but I was passing some teams that made it into the top 10. Usually at these events there's a half dozen teams that are blistering fast and then everyone else. Reliability is, of course, key
* Tires we ran Dunlap star spec - 190 treadwear minimum is the rule.
1 set would have just ablut run the whole event, but we changed them with a few hours to go, since it was raining. Our wear was fairly ugly - we need more neg camber fo sho
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paluck(at)hotmail.com
1989 944 S2
1979 924

[Cedric]

Since its a 79 you can easily get more camber both front and rear. Max the adjustment out in the front and match with the rear. Its hard to get enough camber, particulary on stock like springs. Its easily the most bang for the buck regarding track speed.
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1980 924 Turbo
www.instagram.com/garagecedric/

[fiat22turbo]

What radiator/radiator fan are you using? I think the dual fan unit from a turbo car is supposed to help.

Under tray in place? Will help air move out of the engine bay, improving flow through the rad and pulling extra heat out of the engine bay.

An oil cooler might help reduce the thermal load on the cooling system as well. Pretty common thing found on the turbo and 944, so it wouldn't look out of place on your car.

One can build an accusump yourself, hit up google for more info. Paint it flat black and hide it under the dash and they might not notice it, especially if it looks DIY . Just use high quality line for it, leaks are bad, mmmkay?

A crank scraper will help keep the oil off the crank and in the pan, not full of air . A baffle might be a good idea as well. Not sure how it would get mounted, but the more experienced racers might have an idea on that.

Really excited to hear about more of your on-track adventures! Good job!
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Stefan
1979 924 Carrera GTS (clone-ish)
1988 944 Turbo S (Silver Rose)

[Cedric]

Dual fans could be something, seems common "over there", impossible to find here. I removed my fan since it didnt work and exchanged it for a spal fan that i mounted bolt on with spal connector kit. Its flush against the cooler. I think the biggest improvement was that i dont have a shroud, so air flow is much better when speeds are over 30km/h and the fan has less to say about the cooling. A friend of mine removed his undertray since he got very high oil temps, and the temp was lowered buy a bunch of degrees. But its much more aerodynamic with it mounted.
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1980 924 Turbo
www.instagram.com/garagecedric/

[paluck]

thanks everyone.
hmm... undertray - I'm not sure we ever had one.. but maybe that is affecting our airflow. I'm not convinced fans have anything to do with it, because I was "overheating" at speed, so not sure the fans would have helped - I should have been getting flow thru the rad.
Also - our guages may have been off and I was just near the red. We also hald the volt readings sitting right at 12v the whole race, and that wouldn't have worked for very long.
Maybe we first need to make sure our guages are reading correct or add another temp sensor....
_________________
paluck(at)hotmail.com
1989 944 S2
1979 924