Thursday, April 3, 2014

The road to Lincoln

The day was finally here, making the long 1400 or so mile trek to autox Mecca...Lincoln, Nebraska for the ProSolo Finale and Solo National Championship. This would be my furthest tow to date, I was doing it solo and I didn't really know what to expect so I gave myself plenty of time to make extra spots in case I ran into any issues. It's I-80 all the way west so it made sense to stop by the shop on the way there to check in and pick up fuel.

Checking in with home base - 8/28/2013
I made the obligatory stop at the TireRack headquarters in South Bend, Indiana where I met up with Danny, James and Joshua.

At the Tire Rack - 8/29/2013
Danny's proof that he found me - 8/29/2013
Bumblestook and Toilet Duck - 8/29/2013
And then just a few miles past the hotel, they had E85 for dirt cheap right at the station...awesome right!? Uh, we'll find out later.

Wohoo, cheap E85 - 8/30/2013
Finally made it and found my spot, then it was straight to the practice course. This is where things started to go wrong. I was severely down on power. Bumblestook was sputtering coming out of every corner. I checked my IQ3 dash and sure enough, the E85 I got was only registering at around 70% ethanol and not 85 as it should be. 1300 miles away from Evans Tuning, there really wasn't much to do other than to whip out the laptop and adjust the compensation map until she at least started to run ok but I knew something wasn't right. I'd have to run the ProSolo Finale like this and let her idle use up all the crap E85 I got in Indiana so I could use the good fuel I brought from the shop for Nats. Oh and a few events before this, my fuel level sensor gave up so I couldn't even tell how much fuel I had in my car in the first place.

Lincoln, Nebraska - 8/30/2013
Test Course - Lincoln, Nebraska - 8/30/2013