≡ Leg 1 - South Avalon
⊆ September 15th, 2008 by evolved |Today was Leg 1 of Targa Newfoundland 2008. The day is limited to 6 stages, all held on the eastern portion of Newfoundland just outside of St John’s. In the morning is a run through Argentia, the coastal village of Placentia, and the high speed road of Osprey Trail West. The afternoon is spent running through town stages at Adeytown/Deep Bight, Port Blandford, and the Eastport Peninsula.
Our run through Argentia was good. The car was fast, easy to drive, and I had no problem making my time. This tight stage is an interesting one, with narrow lanes and a couple of serious switchbacks that really test a car’s handling. The Evo did well, although our new taller gearing meant that 1st and 2nd gear was required for more than a few junctions. Unfortunately, our misfire has continued, and so we reduced boost to less than stock in order to limit the problem. This did not relieve the poor running of the motor, but we’re hoping to limit damage while we work for a resolution.
In the second stage of the day, a medium-speed run that ends in a very tight, broken pavement town roads of Placentia, our stage was cut short part way in by a BIG wreck. The classic Mini finished 3rd in Classic in the 2007 event was spit off the road and rolled into a ditch, and the co-driver was trapped in the car. We were waved down by another team and asked to find a radio point to call in for medical. We proceeded to drive through the stage at 7/10ths, frantically looking for a radio sign to call for help. The nearest location to call for medical was at the end of the stage, and so we came into the finish and the volunteers shut down the stage and called for medical to roll to the scene. Thankfully both driver and co-driver were not seriously injured, and the stage was ultimately cancelled.
Osprey Trail gave us a chance to stretch the legs on the Evo, where the car flew through at high speed, sticking confidently to the tight sweepers and bounding easily over the crests. Our misfire persisted, but now isolated to two seperate problems — a breaking up of the combustion process at high RPMs, and a break-up when you get back on the gas after an upshift. Once again, we reduced boost and tried to drive around the problem by taking time on shifts and by short-shifting when the car began to misfire.
At our lunch stop, we talked through the problem with a few of the more knowledgeable mechanics. Frank Sprongl (driver of the ex-Group B Audi, multi-time rally champion, and owner of Four Star Motorsports outside of Toronto) suggested that we try changing the gap on the spark plugs. His hypothesis was that the boost was blowing out the spark and causing the misfire. This seemed plausible, so we re-gapped our spare plugs and installed them during the break.
The rest of the afternoon was fairly uneventful. The re-gapped plugs helped the misfire at the high RPM, but the problem persisted on shift. To further hurt us, the car picked up a very nasty high speed shake under braking — there was clearly pad deposit building up on the rotors and every time I braked hard the steering wheel would almost be ripped from my hands.
The brake problems, reduced boost and the break-up of the engine under accelleration contributed to missed concentration and me losing 9 seconds on the final stage of the dayon the Eastport peninsula.
We ended the day at service in the parking lot of the Gander arena. We proceeded to replace the two-piece front rotors on the Evo (which requires swapping hats) and bleed the brakes, while we talked through the misfire problem with the factory Mitsubishi crew. Judging from the characteristics of the way the car was misfiring, the Mitsu team proposed that it was most likely caused by a fuel map in the ECU that was not appropriate for the Canadian race fuel we were using at Targa (we tuned for California 100 octane, but ran Canadian 101 as we could not bring fuel across the border). Guessing from the symptoms that the misfire might be running too rich (unburnt fuel building up in the cylinders), they recommended that I try cutting the octane of the fuel back a bit to see if that helps. A quick trip to a local gas station blended our octane down top just under 100. A quick test on the highway seemed to bode well for this helping, but we would not know until we got back on the stage in the morning.
It was time for a good night’s sleep before a grueling 8 stages tomorrow that taked us on some of the highest speed roads of the event.
