Chump Cars at VIR

I saw member TDIRacing last week and he was getting his Golf ready for this event.

http://www.chumpcar.com/register/supplementalrules/126.pdf

The #188 GTDI at VIR

Yes, I'm packing to leave now to meet TDIRacing at the track. We'll be running the car some on the Friday test day, but hopefully it's still running well and we won't need the test day.
A few familiarization laps for each driver, then it's Miller time.

The race is a full 24hrs, from 10AM saturday to 10AM sunday.

We're attempting to set a world record for most distance in 24hrs on BioDiesel. Thanks to Patriot BioDiesel for partnering with us in this effort. We will be using 100% safe, pure biodiesel from Patriot Biodiesel in the famous Smoke Ewe VW at VIR during our Guinness World Record attempt.
This North Carolina based company has a history of working with competitive tractor pulling and land speed teams running biodiesel and we are proud to continue that tradition.

We've also had help from Falken Tires, so we will be rocking a new set of AZENIS RT615K's. We've run them before and had good results, so we are looking forward to racing on them again.

Spectator info:
http://virnow.com/events/optima-batteries-chumpcar-world-series-vir-24-hour-classic/

We'll be in pit box #9, IIRC. Look for this car:


You can find me easily, I'll be driving this to the track:

Good luck Jim and Oliver! I can't make it down, but I hope you do set the record.

How did you make out?
Bob Mann

We did OK, all things considered. It rained...Hard. At the start of the race, there was standing water in many places on track, which can ruin a RWD BMW's day at 110MPH.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4bgw3Dwg7g

I started the race on brand new, full depth Falkens, and had no real issues with tires or traction.

The rain slowed the race pace considerably, so we were not able to make enough distance to set the 'farthest distance on Biodiesel in 24hrs' world record.

With all the moisture, many teams, us included, had electrical problems. Our radios were failing faster than they could be fixed. We lost communication in the first few hours.

Of course the wiper motor failed. After all, it was original to the chassis, so was 27 years old with 175K miles on it. No fix for that.
Many rolls of paper towel & bottles of RainX were consumed in the remaining 23hrs.

At some point the car came in running badly, and we found that a wire going to the VR on the alt had chafed through and was contacting the starter stud, ramming a full 13V into a small warning light terminal. not surprisingly, this fried the VR, no more charging. Being a diesel, it ran a long time on the battery alone, but the batt voltage finally went low enough that it ran bad since the ECU could no longer accurately control boost & fuel.

Fotunately Oliver had brought a spare alt, and we had been given an Optima battery to install per the Optima/Chump sponsor agreement. Taped up & relocated the wire, replaced the alt, installed charged Optima. Car ran fine & went back on track for more fun.

Sometime in the middle of the night, the car came in with a weak brake complaint. The hard line from MC to pass frt knuckle had chafed through from touching the body after 6 years of racing. We didn't have any spare line, but did have a union, so repaired it by removing the damaged 1/4" of line and coupling it back together. It will be replaced before the next event.

Pic of the car on track from Racing Strong MR2


We finished P31 out of 86 entrants. The VW diesel parts, Falken Azenis Tires and Patriot Biodiesel fuel all worked excellent.
We know what kept us from a top 10 finish and can work on those things for next time.

Oh, and here's final race results:
Mylaps 24hrs of VIR