[s-cars] One Lap Saga long.

[Trevor Frank]

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It started bad and got worse,

It is Friday and the shipper said he is stuck in Reno Nevada due to
weather.  He will be here on Sunday but guarantee's the car will be in
NY by Thursday the 1st, the registrations is on the 2nd, the first race
is on the 3rd.  Sunday passes and he says he will be here on Monday
morning.  In the morning I call him and he say's that I will get a call
from the truck driver in 20 min.  I call him back over and over
throughout the day and his wife finally answers the phone at about 5
that evening and admits that they are in PA and where trying to get
someone else to pick up the car, so sorry but I am on my own now.

It is to late to get another shipper to ship the car so we decide to
drive the 3k miles to NY from San Francisco California.  I take another
day off of work and at 3 am Wed morning we leave to start our journey.
It isn't long before we notice fairly high egt's after the turbo, but
with a custom built by me 8 channel EGT display what is unknown to us I
figure I screwed up some wiring.

598 miles later at about noon we pull off of the freeway to elude a cop
that we speeded by just before we crested a hill.  At the bottom of the
off ramp the car dies and will not start.  We push the car to a gas
station and notice the Wells Hardware/Carquest/ Grocery store.  After
first educating them on the fact that an Audi is a car we locate a fuel
pump and have it Grayhounded to Wells, hopefully it will be here
tonight.  In the meantime we also talk to Ned Ritchie who informs us it
is likely the Crank sensor, we check the codes, swap one crank sensor
and one tdc sensor and it starts again.  I cancel to pump order and we
are on our way.

20 miles later the car has stopped running again.  Suck on exit 360 we
call some friends and convince them to go to the Audi dealer in Salt
lake pick up a new crank timing sensor and deliver it to us at the local
motel, where AAA will tow us.  A short 5 hour drive and at about 8 that
night we have a new sensor installed, while it was hailing on me.  Turn
over the car and sure enough it is still dead.

The next morning we call the Carquest and tell them that we would like
to reorder the fuel pump, guess what it showed up on the grayhound that
morning and we can come by and pick it up.

Me and my brother decide that it would be best to have a rental car, so
after he walks 5 miles to get the pump he goes to the local grayhound
station to take a bus to Elko Nevada to pick up a rental and an O2
sensor so that we can get other parts if we need.

I do all of the electrical diagnostics called for in the Bentley and it
looks like it is a dead fuel pump.  Take off the cover and notice that
it looks near to imposable to take it out with ought the Audi tool, this
is confirmed by the Bennett brothers " I have never gotten one out with
ought it".  After lacerating my wrist on the fuel tank and giving it all
I have with a screw driver I get the fuel pump out.

Now to put the new one it, I realize that I must put my bloodied hand
into the near full gas tank to get the new fuel pump in, painful.
Anyway get it in and car starts.  Drive it around town and everything
looks good.  My brother shows in the rental about 30min later and we
drive back to Elko to return the rental and decide we must continue to
the one lap, our first mistake?

With ought any real hitches we arrive at Watkins Glen in time to nearly
clean the car and put most of our stickers.  First run and I am easy on
the car, we end up in 5th in our class and 42 overall.  Second run and
still taking it easy and we end up 3rd in our class still 42 overall.

On our drive to Summit Racing we hook up with a group of cars that are
being escorted by a retired state trooper that is calling ahead and
telling the cops to let us through.  Man where the truckers pissed, the
cops where turning there radar guns off as we got close and let us blast
by them.  Averaging somewhere in the triple digits for over 300miles my
turbo which was always a little noisier that I and others thought it
should be now sounds like I have a turbine powered S4.  On the way to
IRP 600 miles away the turbo stopped turning.  I suspected a blown
bypass valve and put a new one on in the morning drove to IRP still with
no boost and pulled the intake boot off to find my ceramic bearings had
made pudding out of there races.

Bruce, the guy who runs IRP's safety team, basically all the support for
the track, cleared out one of there garages and lent us his truck for
the duration of our stay.  Innovative apologies profusely and sent us
our a new turbo, next day, no questions asked.  Unfortunately we arrived
at IRP on Sunday so it was Tuesday evening before we got the new turbo
in and started the car.  IRP was having open drags so we took the car
down the quarter with some really awful launches and about a 90 degree
ambient.  Also with our low boost box 24psi and we posted a 14 flat at
102mph.  All this with being very careful with the car for fear it might
blow again.

That night we head off to Memphis motorsports park, no problems still
running our low boost chips and 93 octane gas plus about 5 gallons of
104 unleaded.  Now a full tank and we get a 2nd in class and 29th
overall.  Second run my brother decides to show everyone the correct
Quattro line, and he gets penalized 10 seconds, we drop back to 4x.

Drive to Carolina motorsports park and we get 4x place after the first
run with me again being very caucius because I notice some oil in the
catch can.  Pull off of the track and see even more oil and decide to
call it.

The car is currently at the local Audi dealer awaiting transportation
back to CA.

The car was pretty neutral, with the Hapersized rear sway bar on full
soft, modified with about 1.5 " longer drop links, I cut a rear CV, one
of the reasons we left at 3am.  Rear shock where set at about 3/4 full
hard on the rebound and fronts where set on 1/2.  Rear springs are 400lb
and fronts 375's.  The front and rear shock definitely need more bump,
the amount of rebound that can be dialed in with the sport koni's is
ridiculous.  The amount of damp also varies from shock to shock quite a
bit.  Replace the fronts with double adjustable, make solid front and
rear sub frame mounts, aluminum, Delrin or 90 duro polyurethane.  Get
some decent double adjustable for the rear.  With these mods and some
more time in the car we could have taken the luxury sedan class.

I still have no idea about the high egt's,  I filled the intake system
with pressure, from an adapter where the maf would normally go and it
held pressure dropping slowly over about a minute or so.  We even tried
larger injectors 385's that did nothing to the egt's and different fuel
pressure from 40-70psi. New O2, disconnected the boost gauge, the vac
line to the diff and ac, all to no evail.

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