18 August Points Race

What a contrast in weather we enjoyed this week.  Gone is the heat and humidity of July and we escaped the rain showers from last week.  Instead, mid to upper seventies with clear skies met us on race day.  Ideal for spending the day at the track!

Leading up to the race, I swapped in a 60 tooth rear sprocket.  This reverses the changes we we seeking earlier in the season.  During practice, the highest RPM Lian saw was 5220 but she was just as quick as ever and had no trouble keeping pace with the rest.  This confirms that even though a bigger rear sprocket will give you a higher RPM, the power drops off at that RPM and the engine stops pushing as hard.  Most likely, it just can't flow enough air through that small restrictor plate to make the power.

Another recent adjustment was to Lian's seat.  She has complained that her upper arm has been banging into the tall rib support - mostly on her right side, while making the tighter turns.  I couldn't really add padding to this as it would make contact with her arm earlier in the turn so instead, I added two pads in the seat.  One on the seat back to move her slightly forward, and another on the seat bottom to move her slightly up.  I hoped that this combination of 1/2" padding would move her arm further away from this rib support "wing" that has been bothering her.  Here is a picture of the modified seat with some toolbox foam added.

This hasn't completely resolved the issue for her so we may be looking for a new seat.  That can also change the dynamics of the chassis so we will look at re-weighing and making adjustments if we go that way.

I'm also a little concerned that there may be some corner weights that are off after the damage repairs I made last week.  To change this, I can either install an adjustable bearing cassette on the rear axle (this raises or lowers one end of the rear axle) or I can twist the chassis (carefully) to get the cross weight where we want it.

Looking back at where this all started, we realized that Lian may have been predisposed to this sport.  Here are a few pics of her motoring around the yard in the neighbor's toy Gator...

Three years old and jammin' gears...

Here is a picture of her working on her own toy Corvette with her dad's tools.  She told Mom "I'm fixing my Corvette so it will go faster!"

"You are going to put all those tools back where you found them, right?"

Lian started the Heats in 6th and 2nd, finishing 6th and 3rd respectively.  She started the Feature in 6th and was overtaken at the start by one kart and never found the chance to make a pass.  She finished 6th out of 7.  Her best lap time was 23.07 sec, a few ticks short of her best.  I guess everyone in the class was just getting better.  Lap times like that would have earned her a top three earlier in the season.

The crew chief is thinking about re-jetting the carb and a few other adjustments.  I'll keep you posted.  Next race is Sept 9th.