Track Day 5 -- The Ridge -- 2024/08/17
Fresh off the back of the last set of track events, the Accord came out to the next event with very little changes. I had put the car up on Quijaks trying to find the source of the leak/oil contamination that cropped up at the last event, but after having snugged a few minor items up in our external oil system and letting the car run on quikjacks for 20 minutes, there wasn't a drop to be found. Dave also came and took a gander around the car, and everything was to his satisfaction. We did discover the belt had been damaged, so we replaced that and added a bit of plastic to help shield that area from incoming debris, which we fancy tried to get between the belt and one of the pulleys causing the damage. With this all resolved, we loaded up the car for the Ridge.
At the event, both Dave and I drove the car in back to back sessions, which was yet another test of how the car handles extended hard running. There was a healthy bit of traffic in Dave's group which kept lap times down, but as the day and experience of those at the event stepped up the pace increased and the Accord got a ton of hard lapping in. The car did demonstrate to be doing pretty well, but transmission temperatures were able to get up to 260 degrees, which is about the point ATF starts to fail. Oil temp and pressure, along with coolant temperature, all were great though, so those coolers are all working. Unfortunately, both Dave and I experienced some power steering issues, which was denoted as something we'd look at after the event.
The picture above is Dave showing off where he crunched the Accord on one of his two off track excursions entering the carousel. Dave was pushing the car harder than ever and really powering into understeer. While surely not the fastest way around the track, nor the best for endurance driving, Dave was learning a ton and improving as a driver!
I was able to get a bunch of lapping in, and with a neighbors mom as a passenger squeezed off an entire session of 2:06 laps, basically running at my perosnal best pace for an entire session. That surely stressed the car out!
Having pushed the car a bunch of laps with a passenger at my previously best pace of 2:06, I knew the car had more in it. So for my last session out I hopped in the car and could tell right away the entire car had some time to cool and had that extra bit of grip in it. I took a mild 70% warmup lap, and then just went for it. That allowed me to turn a personal best of 2:05.405, about .75 seconds faster than previously. This time actually borrowed some inspiration from seeing just how far Dave would push the car, and while that was clearly way too far, it demonstrated there was some speed to be left from mid point to exit of the turn by getting on the throttle earlier and exiting the turn with more power, even if it meant you'd understeer a bit on the way out.
Dave also set a personal best of 2:09.583, improved from a previous best of 2:12, so notable improvements there! Dave definitely stepped up the intensity of his driving, as can be seen by the light front end crunch from one of his two excursions off track. Dave was able to run a ton of laps at the same pace as his previous PB though, setting him up for success with the endurance style of racing we can expect in Lemons.
VIDEOS FROM THE DAY:
Problems with the cars / takeaways:
Bringing the car home we first noticed when we turned on the car that the power steering pump sounded horrible. Checking the power steering fluid, it was clearly aerated, though it would eventually all go back to normal but return to sounding horrible again as we steered. We also obseved that the car was indeed again covered in fluid underneath. We also observed several times wisps of smoke coming from the engine bay during the trakc day.
Current thought is that our leak is possibly power steering related, so we'll run the car again after a cleaning and try and turn the wheel back and fourth and see if perhaps under pressure there is a leak somewhere in the system. We're really hoping it's not from the steering rack.
Knowing that the pump likely experienced extremes temperatures and aerated fluid, we're going to replace the pump entirely along with the commonly problematic O-ring on the pump, if not outright replacing the O-ring connection with a custom welded on AN fitting. We're also going to replace the power steering reservoir with a larger one that is also baffled to try and help prevent aeration.
While we're at it with the power steering, we're going to increase the size of the transmission cooler to try and help keep the trans cool, while also taking the current trans cooler and adding it as a second cooler in the power steering setup. Given the current power steering and trans cooler are identical, converting the trans over to power steering shouldn't be that big of a deal to do.