Bonneville...

["Storhok, Eric (E.M.)" <estorhok@domain.elided>]

What an incredible place to be.  I'm not much of a hot rod fan, but to go out, and see the creativity in some of the cars, its a real treat.  If I had my way, I'd make all design engineers visit the race every year to see some of the BEST packaging of big things in VERY small places that you will ever see.  Anyway, I digress...

Darren has been nice enough to post what has been going on, and I'd just like to put in my 2 lira.

It was really nice to have the team completely concentrate on one car.  Better yet that Jim Steck build an incredible motor that, of my leave yesterday afternoon, has not had a single problem.  Spinning at 7200-7400rpm at 22psi of boost, continuous.  No major blow-by, no misses, ran like a turbine.  Its Thursday morning now, and I have not heard from Jim, but hopefully, the turbine housing change went well, and the max boost issue has been somewhat fixed.

For me, I really learned that even turbo cars suffer at altitude.  After finding a solution to the data logging system (more later), when Craig ran is back up run Wednesday morning, we did get a maximum boost of 23psi, which was the highest of the week.  In my opinion, if he didn't run the spoiler, he would have gotten 2-3 mph, but that is an opinion.

Like Darren said, we struggled getting the Electromotive properly logging the data, but once that was figured out, we did get 4 runs of excellent data before my computer physically broke- not the hard drive, but the screen came loose, which caused the computer to reset.  Since I did find the screw that came loose, perhaps I can fix it.  It was funny to try to log data early, as I asked Mike to put in a bracket in the car, the extension harness wasn't long enough, and real wire was not packed, so we ran the line with power extension line.  Next to the ignition coils.  Bad idea.  Thankfully, there was an instrumentation specialist on the salt, and he gave us about 15 ft of cable, and we were all set, once we figured out that charging the batteries at 17volts (16volt system) interfered with the computer... Who would have thought it?

In the end, between Darren's improved aerodynamics and Jim's improved engine, the week was very eventful in the best of ways- records and no failures.

I know it's sick, but I can't wait to go again.

Eric Storhok
Core Emissions and Fuel Economy Team
Advanced Powertrain Engineering
(313)33x75011
MD 35, FPC-B
Ford Motor Company
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