So I finally got the 87 Novakar on a road course, we had a track/test day yesterday and they were allowing open wheel cars. As many of you know I plan to get it out at vintage races for 2020 and the test day came in handy.
I took the alignment settings back to the set up sheets from when the car ran at Waterford Hills. The only exceptions being I kept the 7.5" front tires as those were fairly fresh, I changed the gearing to 15/50 in an effort to keep the revs down on the AMW motor and I left the brake bias as is (mistake).
Las Vegas is usualy in the upper 50s lower 60s this time of year but the temp was on 48F so I wasn't expecting to learn anything about the handling.
First the AMW motor survived the 30 or so laps I did without issue. I put this down to my jetting it fat and the fact that the motor never revved over 7K due to the tall gearing. Fuel mileage was 9-10 mpg so the smalll 4 gallon cell will just be enough to get it though a race (34-36 miles)
For autocross I have a lot of rear brake bias which helps the car rotate but for the road course it was waaaaay to much even for me. On lap 4 of the first session, the tires finally had some heat on them, I was braking hard from 120 down to 60 and at the end of the brake zone the rears barked and around I went in an instant. A tweak of the steering spun it back the right way and I continued on my way without ever leaving the track. I adjusted the Tilton regulator and this made it manageable for the rest of the day. I will obviously change it for it's next journey on track.
Despite the low temps the water temp was getting up to 175F; AMW specified 180 max. While the Honda Goldwing radiator we installed fixed the colling issues for autocross it's not going to be sufficent for the 80-100 degree temps we typically see on race weekends. So that will need upgrading.
The other big issue was the seat; I'd not poured a seat, instead I used some hard foam padding which works OK for autocross but it became apparent pretty quickly it wasn't working on track. Not only was my right elbow fowling the foam (a distraction) but the higher Gs had me moving around (I'm 5' 7" and 140lbs). Time to pour a seat.
Overall the day went well; I never pushed the car past 75% as it was cold and there were door slammers on track at the same time.
I will pass along one interesting tidbit; I came up behind a friend driving his 2018 Mustang GT (460hp 10 pseed automatic) and he didn't realize I was behind him. He accelerated off the 45mph haripin and down the back straight and the F500 stayed right with it. I knew these cars aren't slow down the straights but I was a little suprised that it kept up, espcailly considering my car has the AMW motor, which makes all of 85hp (his car will do 0-60 in under 4 seconds and high 11 second 1/4 mile times) and so I found that kinda of cool.