Lists. Perhaps 80% of my professional life is drafting and conquering lists of things to do, a skill meticulously trained to those in engineering professions the world over. But man do race weekend lists become lengthy for a new car combined with the first race of the season combined with COVID combined with being a board member/co-race chair for the weekend. Nevertheless, I find lists are critical to success, I really do not want to forget something...torque wheel fasteners...buy water...re-inspect strut gland nut tightness...it all comes together to bring a sense of documented preparation leading to pre-race confidence on the grid. Just as critical for me is the new-found discipline to set aside the distractions and focus on ensuring the list item has my full focus and is correctly done in the moment -- a skill I learned from a good friend and sailplane pilot a while back.
I was prepared well enough for the first track day for the new car to sleep pretty well the night before, which is rare. Once on-track, I chose to run the car in the non-competitive, high performance lapping group for Saturday. So that I could have a moment to check the gauges and sort out how the car itself wanted to feel versus how I would want it to feel if I was gridded up and racing the swarm of Miatas. The car felt good for the first 5 minutes, but would then enter the well known Saab 'base boost' engine mapping which cuts boost to a minimum of PSI and limits the Viking torque king to a...not so powerful king. With all-new boost controlling valves and sensors, my thought was that the T7 ECU was itself 'deciding' to limit the boost on the basis some input was was not satisfied. T7 looks for all sorts of wild things to enable full boost...good fuel quality, MAF readings...and working brake bulbs. Yes, our Swedish friends feel that brake light illumination criteria shall be met if full turbo pressure is going to be on the table. Aircraft level design mindfulness. I ended up messing with the brake light bulbs and then the clutch pedal position switch. The car would now run ~10min before base boost. A simple on-off-on of the ignition in the hot pits restored full boost but nevertheless it would keep happening.
Minus the base boost challenge, the car ran like a top the whole weekend. A top with terrifying 280f oil temperature (the RX-7 guys always told me to pull it over to a full stop at 210f!), so some further oil cooling R&D is needed. But largely a huge success. I passed SWMS' detail annual technical inspection Sunday -- a car I had assembled, woot -- and then entered the races at the back of the grid. My original plan of leveraging Saab torque worked, I could pull out of the 2nd and 3rd gear turns with gusto, smiling ear to ear. Until T7 recommended base boost. Whew, what a letdown.
Weeks later, I would learn on the T7 Trionic Tuning forums that the car watches for the proper resistance on the taillights as well as the high-up hatch LED 3rd brake light strip. I had tossed that 2.7 ounce lump of LEDs in the name of simplicity and weight savings long ago in the build. After picking up a second hand one, all is fixed. And if I had had the in-car Saab Information Display panel that I had also dumped in the name of #becauseracecar it would have been telling me 'Brake Light Failure' the moment the boost cut out. Lessons to be learned.
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