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Jon Nelson and his Valiant Effort team are representing Slant 6s well this weekend at Thunderhill Raceway in Willows, CA.
I’m sure Jon will post a recap in a few days.
Way to represent Team Valiant Effort!!
Thanks Rob! We had a blast at thunderhill with the valiant. We only made one change prior to the race but it was a big one. We pulled the push button A904 and did a complete stick swap to a A833 4-speed from a 64 dart. Granted thunderhill is a 5 mile course, but our new best lap time with the stick was 17 seconds faster than the last one at thunderhill with the same setup!! The car was also so much more fun to drive, and so much easier to drive int he corners. It doesn't sound believable but we can pretty much hang with anyone through the tight turns, although we still watch them disappear on the straights. The car is incredibly well balanced and stays very neutral through the turns and you can easily adjust it with small throttle adjustments.
We did have one problem that took us off track Saturday for a couple hours. We failed another rear wheel bearing on the 8.75 axle. Again it was the driver side just like our heroic fix issue a few races ago, but at least this time we had spares. Still getting it sorted, finding a press, and putting it together took 3 hours. We are running green bearings but it sounds like they are working well for others. I think we probably have a axle or housing issue, probably a axle that has some runout. This is the second wheel bearing failure we have had on the same axle. We chalked the last one up to a driver hitting a curb hard, but this time we haven't touched anything the 3 or 4 races this bearing has been on the car. Fortunately this time the driver realized something felt off and came in before the bearing failed completely and let the axle become loose. We clearly have some trouble shooting to do here. I'd be curious to hear ideas from other racers. A almost stock /6 shouldn't be breaking 8.75" axle bearings..
Once we went back out on Saturday I had a hung throttle as the quite old return spring gave up the ghost. I got it back to the pits by turning the ignition on and off to keep me going slowly and we did fix it quickly and get back out. I did have to go speak to the judges as they were worried i was speeding in the pits due to the noise, but once I explained the failure and how I was flipping the ignition on and off at like 5mph in first they let me back out. This is the second stuck throttle I've had while driving although different reasons both times. I'm going to go over the returns and other stuff with a fine tooth comb before the next race.
On Sunday the car ran flawlessly from green to checkers. We ended up 64th I think out of 108 cars. If we take the time we weren't on track due to the axle and hung throttle and just assume we ran our normal average lap times we would of been about 30th. Not bad for a basically stock slant six, but clearly we need to fix our problems and execute to get there.
We have some stuff to do before the next race.
First and most important we have to figure out why we are failing green bearings and fix it. Then we need to science out the carb linkage better.
For performance improvements I have some stiffer torsion bars and a holley 390cfm and we might do one of them, but sticking to the theme of one mod at a time probably not both.
We also need to science out why our seat is flexing which is a bit concerning when you drive. Everything is tight as it should be and appropriately rated but we are having a lot of flex in the seat sliders themselves we need to figure out.
One of our teammates put some go pros in the car so you can see what it looked like here:
https://www.youtube.com/@stephenabraham6787
Anyway, were getting quicker, the car keeps getting more and more fun, and I can't wait until the next one. Rob was super cool as well and fun to hang out with! He really helped us a ton when we were off with the axle issue so thanks Rob!
-Jon
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