September 13-16, 2018

Open Road Rally
Ely, Nevada

Bill and I just got back from the 2018 Silver State Classic Challenge Open Road Race. The car had some electrical and over heating issues in May so I missed the 2018 Nevada Open Road Challenge (NORC). We addressed a few things and dynoed the car before Bill moved to Arizona. Since I wasn't sure how well the car would hold up, I signed up for the 170 class instead of the 180 class that I ran last September. Parked in Ely, Nv next to the motel. We had a hard to start problem when I unloaded the car from the trailer, but after cleaning the contacts on the starter and hitting it a few times with a hammer, the car eventually started, though I think it was more of a fuel map issue since it acted like the car was flooding, and continual use of the starter drained the battery. After the initial incident, the problem didn't return. We did make a few 3rd gear uphill runs to tune the fuel and ignition maps for the higher altitude. In the finish pits. I started the race like I would if I was running the 170 class, but with an easy start and closely monitoring the temps. After a few miles I upped the cruising speed from 185 mph to 190, then up to 195. I didn't want to try for 200 mph until I got to the Speed Trap, just in case there was still overheating issues. When I got to the Speed Trap straight I slowly increased the speed up to and past 200 mph. I got to 207 mph when I passed the trap. Since there didn't seem to be any problems with the car, I decided to go ahead and run the rest of the race like I was in the 180 class. Since I was the only car running 170 this time, I just needed to finish to win... The car continued to run well, and I hit an 180 mph average before checkpoint 6 (60 miles in). I decided I'd better slow down a little so as not to pass the 10 mph avg over target speed limit at the official restart point and risk being disqualified. After that I continued on at a 179 mph average until I got to the Narrows, a 3 mile twisty section, where the average dropped down to 175 mph. After that I just maintained that average until the final straight, 5 miles long to the finish line where I decided to see how much the car had left. About half way through the straight I was at 200 mph, 19 seconds later I as at 210, then up to 213 mph 10 seconds later. Then I dropped back down to 211 as I crossed the finish line. Screenshot from the Garmin dashcam/gps video showing the speed at the bottom of the image. All in all it was a very good run, 176.1729 mph average, 213 mph top speed (though only 207 in the trap section), a 1st place trophy. This was the 30th event for this car (120-180 classes) and 3rd 1st place in 170, and 3rd 175+ avg mph run. I put together a quick video from all five cameras showing the start. Here is the next video from the race. It's the drive through the Narrows, the tightest, slowest section of the course. I did have some difficulty while traveling the Narrows, the GPS decided to restart. This is the one that shows the road using data from the previous runs, so is more accurate then the generic maps loading on the GPS. Since I didn't have a navigator to help with the up coming turns it's very necessary at these speeds. You'll notice I have the speed displayed on the bottom center. This is from the small text displayed by the Garmin Dashcam. I usually use the display from the LM-1 datalog or the video from the camera pointed at the GPSs and auxiliary gauges. On this run that video camera was not recording and the LM-1 log was not very useful. It seems that it was suffering from some of the electrical issues that have been plaguing the car recently. This is the run on the Speed Trap Straight where they get the official top speed. I included the whole 10 miles of the straight plus some of the curve go into and out of the straight. The GPS log show that I averaged 204 mph for the final 7.8 miles of the straight, that's over 2 minutes at 200 mph. Here is my last video from the 2018 SSCC. This is the run to finish line. Here is the GPS log from the final 4+ miles which shows an average speed of 206 mph for 3.4 miles with a top speed of 213 mph: The Garmin Nuvi GPS showed a max speed of 214 mph, but that could be a reading of 213.5 rounded up.

928 Results

Class Driver Avg Speed Place Trap Speed 170 George 176.1729 1st 207.24 mph

Thanks to Bill for all the help and to Todd (Erik and Tim also) for his help in May to get the supercharger checked out.

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Copyright 2018, George A Suennen