When i pull my spark plugs out on my daily i get red deposits on them but small. I use fuel cleaner every few months so is just a side effect of that

Is it stinky? like sulpher?

Justin DuBois said:

Is it stinky? like sulpher?

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Nah its just a fine like powder that burns on. I not noticed any smell from it. The ceramics tend to go red/brown vs staying while or light tan. Im not sureif i got my old plugs anymore but if i doni shall snap a pic.

I have not opened up the system on my daily to see how far if any it goes back. Some cleaners are worse then others. But i dont know from one to the next as i only ever use 2 versions myself

Justin DuBois said:

Ooof, well it would be interesting to know if there is metal degradation under it.

Many questions:
Does it come off easily?
Is just iron reacting this way or is it all exposed surfaces?
I'll bet your WB02 gets some residue - do they last long?

I'm guessing your fuel setup is way reactive - like corrosive - at high temps on iron.

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I'm usually only cleaning it from the tailpipe and it cleans off easily with wheel cleaner and a brush. I'm also able to clean it off the o2 housing etc. with some brake cleaner or solvent like that. The wbo2 sensor gets coated just like everything else, but I'm on the same NTK production grade sensor I've always had with the Ballenger Motorsports AFR500 since 2015. In fact, every time I go to calibrate it (which is once or maybe twice a year when it's convenient), it never needs adjusting. In comparison to how many sensors I went through with the Innovate LC-1, I love this thing and have no idea why more people don't use it!

So last we left off, I dropped my hot parts off at the machine shop 4/17. I hadn't heard anything from them by last Wednesday, so I called them up to see if the parts would be done that day. They knew I was heading to Pocono Friday. Well, the guy said they wouldn't be done that day but at least they would know if they could even machine them. I get a call an hour later saying the parts were "hard as shit" and they wouldn't be able to do it. So I immediately went to pick the parts up. They only managed to surface the manifold flange to the turbine housing and said they had to change their tooling twice to even do that. Rather than trying to find another shop that could do the job literally overnight, I purchased a belt sander Wednesday night, had some ceramic belts shipped from McMaster, resurfaced all the parts myself Thursday night, and reassembled the car the same night. We got the car running shortly after midnight and decided to wait until Friday morning to test drive it.

Friday morning I took it for what I thought would be a quick spin just to make sure everything was fine. I immediately hit boost cut and the boost jumped up from 21/22 to about 24/25 psi. Odd. The flange surface on the O2 housing between the two holes was very wore down, at least 1/8" of an inch low. To avoid taking too much material off the flange while resurfacing, I actually welded up that area to bring the height back up. I thought maybe it being so worn previously could explain the boost loss. But the fuel cut didn't hit due to boost (the limit was set to 30psi), it hit due to load factor. Even more odd. A quick comparison to logs from a couple years ago shows my load factor is higher now than it used to be. So I raised that threshold because I didn't have time to mess with it, lowered the boost a bit to be safe, and the next drive was successful. Close enough, on the trailer it went!

We had a good friend crew this weekend: Brian in the Miata, Camaro, Thunder Roadster (friend previously with the Evo), and an NB Miata (friend previously with the GT4). And of course tons of Corvettes since this event is put on by the local Corvette Club every year.

The first session had a couple weird hiccups with boost levels spiking, but the bigger concern was when I got back to the pits, the hot parts were glowing red. I don't remember ever seeing that before! Looked at the logs and found that timing was peaking at like 10-11 which I'm assuming was leading to crazy high EGT's. Thinking back, my VE table got tweaked sometime last year and isn't exactly ideal right now, this increased the load factor, this got me into a part of the timing table I'm not normally in with low timing. So although my parts weren't ever glowing red before, it's quite likely my timing has been too low for some time so I'm sure that some of the exhaust gasket failures were due to my negligence on the tune. Live and learn! I got it to a safe enough place to run the weekend and all was well, but I do need to retune it at some point to clean things up properly.



Other than that, the car was pretty good all weekend. I did put some RTV on the top of the trans near the weld bung but it's still leaking, so I'm going to try replacing the crush washer for the reverse sensor next. And after my test drive Friday I noticed a tiny rattle sometimes - one of the exhaust hangers is touching the metal on the carrier bearing. It was really close before but resurfacing the flanges must have been enough to move it just enough so that hanger needs to be bent. It didn't cause any issues but I'll get it fixed soon.



I was supposed to have a student this weekend but he had to cancel, so I rode with a few different students throughout the weekend and gave some rides for instruction. This car was awesome - Factory Five Type 65 with a Gen 3 Coyote. The guy was a little hard of hearing and the car was ridiculously loud so he really couldn't hear me even with the comms system. But he literally had ONE MILE on the engine and entire build - brand freaking new car. He had some issues with the clutch in the first session we went out and I'm actually not sure if he got out again. He's working on getting it titled - it has a full sound system and everything.





The weather was surprisingly good (for Pocono) and we only had a couple slightly damp sessions. We convinced them to let us have open passing with point by at the end of Sunday and we all had a blast in the sessions that we all ran together. It's fun going fast, but even more fun playing around with friends on the track



I did manage to put down a 1:58.90 which was the fastest lap for most of the weekend to my knowledge. Although there was an orange C7 ZR1 running towards the end of Sunday and I would be stunned if he didn't go faster.

Hot lap videos coming soon. The next event is Memorial Day Weekend at NYST with EMRA so that will be another fun event with good friends!