The Cuda Beast's timing controller had bad timing in more ways than one at Huntsville last weekend. Paul and the Cuda Beast team headed to the Rocket City full of optimism, with the engine at full strength and backfiring problems likely solved. But the first test pass revealed that the timing controller, added when the Beast switched from a clutch setup to an automatic for this year, was not working. Paul said today he had been suspicious of it for a while, but Saturday, the suspicion was confirmed.
The 4 seconds or so of a run are sliced and diced into intervals of tenths of seconds by the timing controller -- pulling timing out of the engine at the start to get the car off the line, and putting it back in at various levels for the rest of the run (that's my layman's understanding of it; hope it's reasonably accurate). It's hard to imagine that such tiny changes, happening so quickly, could have such big effects, but they do. Paul's controller wouldn't pull timing out at the start, so the Beast blazed the tires at the start, killing any chance of a decent pass.
With the controller not working, Paul took a guess at the timing to get the car off the line -- timing it would have for the entire pass. No luck. The team passed up the first round of qualifying, readjusted the timing and went out for round two and blew the tires. They dropped the timing again for the third round, but again the Beast killed the tires.
Saturday's racing wrapped up fairly early, so Paul said he set about trying to find someone who had a spare controller like his, an "8973." In asking around, Paul said he found out that 8973s had fallen out of favor, and a new and less-expensive device, called a "grid," was now in wide use. A fellow at Huntsville had a rolling chassis for sale that had a grid, and he let Paul borrow it for the Beast. After church Sunday, Paul and the Beast went out for the final qualifying round with the grid, and took a stab at the timing, the lowest Paul said he has ever used at the start. The Beast spun the tires all the way to a 4.39, and the same went on in the second-chance race. Paul bought the grid controller, and is now looking to Montgomery in a couple of weeks.
Paul said he talked with the mechanic for another team, who said Paul needed to consider one of two factors to get the car launched: blower boost or backing the timing off. Paul said he now has a boost graph to look at that is a picture of the boost for an entire run. He said he's inclined to leave the boost alone, and concentrate on the timing to get the car off the line. "We're not shaking the tires. We're spinning them," he said. "We have a mountain of torque -- we've got to harness it."
So, Paul plans to hit the track at Montgomery as soon as it's ready, to get at least a couple of test runs before qualifying starts. If the Beast responds and hits its potential, somewhere in the high 3's, that meet will wrap the season. If the right combo is still elusive, Paul says they'll look for other races. "We'll go to Florida if we have to. We'd like to end in the 3.90s, and know where we are going into the next year."
We'll be back in a couple of weeks to set up the Montgomery race.
No comments:
Post a Comment