There’s been a severe lack of updates! Things always get crazy at the end of the season and with the additional chaos of moving our Goodwin Racing home to a new larger location I’ve been even more tied up than usual.
We won the Pro Am round 3 at Buttonwillow which also meant winning the ProAm season for Limited class (the season points are measured against competitors with all drivetrains).
For that event I got the repaired GT1000 wing back on the car. Had to trim it down a lot in angle to balance with the 2017 front end. It was a hot day but still the first time I was able to take Riverside completely flat out, so the wing is definitely an improvement over the last… which is saying quite a bit coming from a massive Kognition airfoil before. I used to enter Riverside at about 110 mph and bleed down to 106 or so at the apex before accelerating out. This time I’m entering with my foot on the floor never lifting and at that same point I was doing 106, now I’m at 114 mph and climbing.
Power felt low all day and I had worries the engine was getting tired. Then in the last session after splashing some fresh gas in the power came back. I did some backtracking in my head on the age of the E85 that I had left in the tank and it was just at the 3 month mark in age. One of those things.. you know E85 ages out but then when you have an experience like that it really underlines it for you. I’ll be ensuring I get fresh fuel for every event in the future.
Following that, all eyes have been set on Superlap Battle. The primary focus has been rebuilding the 2018 front aero, with a trip back up to Blackbird Fabworx. We ended up cutting the splitter in half, putting the good half back in the mold and building out the other half fresh the same way we made the original. Pretty darn cool to do the whole layup and put it under vacuum and the finished half and the fresh carbon half just suck into the mold like a glove and cure together. Not saying it was easy, but certainly rewarding. Thanks to Chip for CNCing some aluminum bits that needed to go in to the splitter at the last minute for me.
Finished splitter came back to San Diego with me and then it was thrash time to rebuild the brackets, ducting, front bumper, etc. for that front end. The last of the VIR damage disappeared with the addition of some carbon/kevlar fenders.
Tired of the issues with the SPEC clutch I swapped to a Luk factory clutch/flywheel. Not ideal, but given the choice between 20 lbs and a clutch that works, I know what I’m picking.
Lots of other small updates like changing to Stoptech’s race floating rotor that allows a little more float which should help with knockback from the flexible factory front uprights. Full inspection on the car, replaced several bits, etc. Another corner balance and alignment and then we were ready to do a shakedown of all the new stuff.
With Superlap Battle coming up on the 8th, I went out to Streets of Willow this past Saturday. Great shakedown overall, worked through the many little things that always pop up on shakedowns with new parts, and the car feels great. The good news is the clutch is shifting way better. The bad news is that 5th gear is toast, too many times grinding into gear and the damage was already done before I changed to the factory clutch. It got worse through the day to where at the end of the day it refused to go into 5th any more.
Despite that, we happened to set a new Miata lap record for CCW… while coasting down the straight in 4th, and on the street tires we run at GTA. So, a lot of things are working right. Both aero and mechanical grip are dialed.
So, we’re back at the shop and last night I got the drivetrain out. I have another MV7 here, it’s the one I was running in 2017 that never shifted right because the shifter pivot was seized. We fiddled with the pivot for a couple hours and got it freed up, so in it went! This trans has had plenty of grinding into gear on the old spec clutch as well, so its health is unknown but it was still working when it came out so now with the good clutch in it hopefully it’s happy. Sit rep as of last night:
She’s back in the car now, getting the last bits bolted on and fluids in tonight. Fingers crossed the trans is good and we’ll be rocking and rolling in two days at Buttonwillow.