John Stecher's Blog

Some HPDE Fun in a 924 and a Skippy disappointment

God what have I been doing since I last posted. Well my time can be broken down into three main areas. One is work…this summer has probably been the most intensive year I have spent working at IBM. I have enjoyed it all, as always however still playing the lottery, but it was a lot of work! My second main area of time spent was figuring out what the hell car to buy and race next. Let’s just say this area will be touched upon in my next post. My last area of time spent was on the track baby!!

First we started off at Road America for the PCA HPDE event where my buddy Rob and I shared driving his brand new 1987 Porsche 924. While she had been prepped with a cage and stripped interior that was about all she had. We liked to call her the leaning tower of Rochester as we pushed her around one of the greatest tracks in North America. Overall the 2-day event was a blast and it was great to get back in the car.

A little picture of the 924 leaning tower.

Next up was a combined Skip Barber lapping day at Road America followed by a one day PCA HPDE event at Blackhawk Farms once again in the now newly race ready 924 of Rob complete with a full suspension setup, corner balance and real 7 inch wide phone dial wheels instead of the 6 inch ones she was rolling on before. First up was the Skippy Lapping day. Personally the lapping day to me was a bust…yeah it was fun to get the instruction but jesus we only probably got max an hour of track time for nearly 1k. Hindsight being 20/20 I would have just held off and done the 2-day school (which I plan to do this spring if the cash tree in my back yard grows). The PCA event at Blackhawk was a lot of fun as well but the weather sucked. We met up with Mark Repka in the morning after driving down from Milwaukee and that’s when the clouds opened up. It rained pretty much the whole day and learning a new track in the wet was a royal pain. It sucked even worse to not get to test out the new suspension that we invested so much time (not to mention eBay profits from our dead Porsche 914 project) in. But at least I have some knowledge of the track for racing down there next year.

With these days out of the way it was on to Road America for the SCCA Chicago Regions Kettle Moraine Double Regional Race which was going to let me keep my racing license. Once again I was behind the wheel of Rob’s 924 SP1 completely outmatched in ITS with my 135 rear wheel horse power versus the 200+ in some other ITS cars. More to come in my next update…

I'm back!

Ok I know its been way to long since I updated my blog and I promise thats going to change...I think thats what smart people call rededicating ones self Anyway the end of summer and fall were excellent and I actually did get some racing in due mainly to excellent friends. I'll be posting complete details here over the next few days complete with video...yep you can watch me struggle in all my glory.

Anyway over the next few days I am going to be putting my real updates together into this baby. I apologize for being a loser and not blogging after my car burned up. Just call it depression, call it laziness, call it my day job chaining me to a chair but no matter what its my fault. It will change.

And back to square one as the Stohr burns

Well back to the beginning...well actually further back than the beginning if you consider in the beginning I actually had a full car. During my first outing this year the car had a major issue with an oil cooler fitting and burst into flames. Here is my account of what happened as I posted on Trackpedia.com in this thread: http://www.trackpedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2494

Not to much to say really other than at least I went out in impressive fashion. Had the first test day with the Stohr all back together at BIR yesterday and things were going great in the afternoon after some purely crappy weather and rain in the morning. Got in two great session in the afternoon and then came in to fuel up and head out for the last one. Little did I know it was the last one for a long time.

Had little teething issues all day but worked through them and figured the car wasn't that bad and I had been lucky. My luck ran out on my 8th lap of my final session. Just turn in my personal best lap at 1:43 on the dash and headed down the front straight after passing Steve B in a SRF between 9-10 up to 140 under CarreraRS, PawPaw, Rob and others in the control stand with Conan up ahead and then turned in for one. Car squirmed and I looked in the left rear view and just saw a big orange glow. Thought first I just blew the motor, but then realized that it was on the opposite side of the exhaust so I checked my other mirror and same thing big orange ball. So pretty impressive site to see I can image...140mph (with given I could see nothing else in the rear view besides fire) with probably a 30 foot set of flames behind me in the middle of T1 at BIR.

First thoughts were honestly "why me?" followed by kill all the fuel, etc and get the car slowed down which was a pain as the fire was hot enough it was eating through the rear brake lines. As soon as I got the car straight and down to probably a 80-90mph I pulled the extinguisher and NOTHING happened. I dicked with the handle trying to pull it on the canister itself and nothing, pulled the dash handle one more time and said f*ck it I am out of here as I had fire now around me coming out the air intakes by my head. Slowly got the car down to 20 and just had my belts undone before she stopped rolling. Hoped out, ran away from the car and then just sat back and watched it burn.

What seemed like 30 minutes later but really was only a few the crew arrived on the scene and ran over to the car thinking I was still in it. Gary Curtis was the second one out there and also thought I was still in the car. After seeing I wasn't we started spraying the car down. Fire crew had a hell of a time putting out the car as it was pretty much engulfed in flames from the cockpit back and as I am sure you will see in some pictures later was burning really damn hot and kept reigniting.

I'll never forget looking up and seeing Sean's face after Rob, Mike and him got out to the scene. I think the look pretty much summed up everything I was feeling. It was just one of amazement.

After getting the car scraped off the track and dumped off back in the paddock the Trackpedia crew...

(Sorry Gary Curtis just called to check up on me - Once again probably one of the nicest guys in racing. Pointed out a good visual parallel to my car from his vantage point of a WWII fighter being shot down with flames out the back is what my car looked like.)

...and I stood over the mass of mangled fiberglass and carbon fiber looking for the cause and there it was right in front of me. The top outlet of the oil cooler had blown right off the units body. Were not talking the AN fitting came off, no this is the whole threaded in section of the cooler blew apart. Thus 188 degree oil at 60 some PSI (I had checked passing the start finish line) came rocketing out all over the cowling and side pods when then ignited when it touched headers. The Trackpedia crew on hand helped my scoop the remains back into the trailer and haul it home. It now sits at another friends place a big piece of ash from cockpit on back.

This was going to be a really short update as I have of course been swamped at work but it turned out to be my full account. My feelings on all of this at the moment are mixed. Number one all I can think of is I am ok. When you look at where my belts were burned too as I was getting out of the car and when I think back to being able to see flames around my head while still moving at a good clip I am happy I don't have a scratch on me. Also considering this was at the turn in to the fastest turn in North America at 140+ mph I got damn lucky I didn't end up upside down or worse. Secondly I just am thankful that I have the friends/TP buddies I do that were concerned enough about me to have the expression Sean had and the concern Rob, Steve, Conan, Dave Billy, Eric, and Mike had. Lastly I am pissed that I didn't do this to my car. I can handle my mistakes breaking something or me screwing up but I just turned in my best lap ever in the car everything was perfectly fine with the gauges and then as David Hobbs would say Kablamo. A stupid part rated to a way higher psi then I was running blew up. I really wish I had screwed up because then it would have been on me and I feel much better when its my fault.

If I had a car I would be back in it tomorrow. As long as it was painted Black and silver with the number 4 on it carrying the Trackpedia logo proudly. So rust in peace Stohr S/N 13. You were the most awesome thing I have ever been in...to bad our time together didn't even include the first race that I had bought you for.

So the process starts. Back to the garage tomorrow to sawzal off the burnt up body and attempt to take apart engine and out of the chassis. Fricking sucks but with the help of my friends and of course my wonderful wife understanding my obsession maybe the car will be back together next Spring. Who knows but luck was on my side and I got out of the car so like Bill Murrary says.."So I got that going for me."

One step closer

Spent all yesterday pretty much in the garage with Eric helping me in the morning with getting the cooling system to run and then dorking around by myself at night trying to get the oil system in working order.

The water system was a bear. Lets just say that I had more fricking air bubbles in the system than I could have ever imagined and they were harder than I ever could have imagined to get out. We started working on the cooling system about 8 and by 11 had things running and the little Davies Craig electic water pump spinning away. The main bear was just getting the coolant to pump up into the motor. The bikes have a intake to the water jackets at almost the bottom of the engine under the headers. Getting water to flow uphill as we all know is a royal pain in the ass! Then the radiator had a really goofy issue with the main inlets being about 3/4 the way up the radiator so as you can imagine this creates a lot of issues with getting all the air out of the system. I had to pull a plug on the top of the radiator to get her to push all the air out but it wasn't easy. I still honestly am not comfortable that the setup is correct as it just does not seem that I am able to flow enough water through the system but then again the switch to Evan's coolant and a little bit of advice from a Yamaha tech have me thinking it might not be too bad. Right now my plan is just heat cycle and try to bleed again later.

Hopefully today I can get her to fire for the first time.

Chassis is complete, Wiring underway.

Well the eagle has landed! My baby is finally back in my garage and looking, well, remarkably like a car again considering how completely stripped down she was when it rolled out of the garage and up to Carriage House Customs. It took a hell of a lot of work and without the excellent craftsmanship from the folks at Carriage House it would never EVER have been possible. Overall the cost was something I could stomach and much better than a few other conversion kits (Infact carriage house still has all the jigs if others want the same conversion completed) that I had looked at.

The real cost that came into this whole upgrade was the dry sump conversion as that is where the majority of cash was spent with the cooler, hose, dry sump itself and other related expenses. Behind that was the cost of the rework of the engine cradle. I hope to have a full break down of costs and work that was done here in the near future when I get a shot after the car is running here and gets it annual tech finished on April 21st. I would love to have this become a guide to other looking to do the conversion as while it was tough I think the upgrade to the newer engine will be well worth while.

Tonight with the help of my buddies Rob and Eric we got the wiring harness, fuel cell and battery back in the car and working. All in all about 4 hours of time which isn't bad at all considering the knowledge base of doing this on a DSR was zero. Main trick was just getting the wiring correct as there were some interesting bits dealing with the change from the 99-03 engines using a power interrupt based starter switch to the 04-06 motors using a grounded starter switch. Once we worked through that it was testing circuits and THANK GOD the fuel pump spun up AND the starter kicked on for a brief second ("hey rob try it now! BuZZZZZZ"). Thursday night hopefully will be dedicated to finishing up the wiring harness and plumbing in the fuel system as well as the new remote water pump.

I will snap pictures of the work as it progresses but here are some as she came straight back from the shop on Friday.

My racing schedule

Well just typed up a nice big long entry and what happened...of course it disappeared when I tried to post it. Mother F*cking software.

Anyway now a much shorter entry on my race schedule this year

May 19/20 - Mid America Motorplex - Midwest Division Regional/National
July 7/8 - Blackhawk Farms - Central Division Double Regional
Aug 24/25 - Road America - Central Division Double Regional
Sept 8/9 - Brainerd International Raceway - Central Division Double Regional
Sept 29/30 - Milwaukee Mile - Central Division Double Regional

I am going to do a Skippy lead/follow as well during June I believe so hopefully that will get me a little more comfortable at Road America as I really would love to get more seat time there and what better way than with a instructor following your ass.

Update on the car is that its at home and will hopefully be running by this coming weekend. I have fuel lines and wiring yet to do but I can't see it taking much more than a few nights to get that done. Then its time to hit the starter button and crank it over for the first time...man oh man if she starts the first time I will crap myself!

Stohr final mockups and chassis photos

Spring is in the air and my mind keeps wandering to racing. Good news is my car is coming back together quickly in the chassis department. Attached below shows the car in almost its final state at Carriage House Customs after some great work by Steve. The new engine was a hell of a lot more work than first thought as the new engine leans a lot more forward than the old one which required header mods as well as just the chassis work. In the end however it will be worth it if this thing is as bullet proof and reliable as I expect a EFI engine to be versus the old carbed on.

Another modification I had to make here lately was going with a custom oil tank versus the one I had purchased from Pegasus which was just too tall for the engine compartment. Its amazing how tightly packed the engine compartment is when you start to attempt to fab in what you need to support the engine.

Lastly I got my wiring harness tonight via UPS from George Dean and can't wait to hook it up to the bike and press the button and....of course have nothing happen. Its only my luck. I know George did a great job but as usual something has to go wrong.

The Stohr's new engine mounts

So after weeks of waiting for choromoly in the correct thickness to come in without having to buy it in quantities the size needed to build aircraft the car is coming together. Just need to box the rear of the mount in so that the rear trailing arms going to the spar can connect. Then wash rinse repeat for the other side.

Plan at the moment is to get the girl back by the end of March, spend the first two weeks of April burning the midnight oil to put the car back together and then fire it up by mid April. That means I should be able to shake it down in a local parking lot and be ready for the first on-track shake down on May 7th with Donnybrooke at BIR.

Let's just say i cannot wait to get this car and myself back on the track. I can't stand driving around the 4Runner during the winter months...longing to hear 14000 RPMS and the wind buffeting my helmet at 140.

So your probably sick of my helmet by now huh...

So Mike sent me an absolutely great show of my almost completed helmet. Tell me this baby doesn't look awesome! With regards to my car I am sorry i have been so lax in update, well I haven't been lax its just been that absolutely nothing has happened. I am starting to think that the Stohr is resembling my Ferrari in the way that both just seem to make money disappear out of my bank account every winter. Of course for the cost of a fricking Ferrari wheel bearing I am having half the chassis rebuilt...so I got that going for me.

I keep going up to Carriage House Customs to drop off parts and keep forgetting my damn camera along so I never have anything to really update you with here. Basically lots has happened. Last week I put the new fuel pump in the fuel cell which was a nightmare. Had to rewire the connector and then try to push the pump into the fuel safe cell's pump holder which if I would equate to being about as difficult as giving birth in that it was pushing an object to big through way to small of a hole. Aside from that George Dean is about done building my new wiring harness so that should be here next week. Beyond that I just sit around making car sounds imagining I have the DSR back while playing the new F1 game on PS3.

Yep I am sick like that. But hey what else can you do when you have had about 30 inches of snow in the past 4 days.

Hopefully I will be back soon with a lot more pics of the chassis rebuild.

Helmet moves along while the car stalls

So my helmet is looking just plain SWEET! Mike has been busy laying down paint on here and she is looking beautiful. Check out the pics below of the excellent work! My car on the other hand is at a stand still. We are waiting on the machine shop to finish up the bushings for the motor mounts and then should be able to start getting the car ready for the summer. I got all my parts over the last week here. Barnett kevlar clutch, DID chain, Ivan's smog block offs, Setrab oil cooler, etc are all sitting at my house ready to drop into my baby when she rolls home. I promise more pics of a naked Stohr (No not Lee) this week so you loyal readers can see whats going on.

Anyone have any opinion on Pigel shifters? Thinking about sticking one on but would like an opinion on them before I do. Specifically downshifts and leftfoot braking cooperation.

New helmet is starting to shape up

So my new lid got off to Mike Charness to have painted after Mike Skeen won the Trackpedia helmet painting contest. The design is migrated slightly to personalize it a little more for myself but I am about as excited as a kid on Christmas after seeing Mikes original designs and initial work. I think the color scheme is perfect for the Stohr with the red parts of the helmet being Ferrari red (Rossa Corsa) in memory of my old girl. Check out the initial pics and 'almost' final design!

Installation of a Taggart Dry Sump

Well since the car is still waiting to get the new engine cradle welded on due to the fact the that the shop needed to order some special order chromoly pieces I decided to bring the engine back home and install the dry sump kit while I had a chance so that once the engine was in the car it was in the car for good. Let me just say that if you need a dry sump kit for your R1 nothing beats the quality of the Taggart system (http://www.tpe-inc.com/).

Rob came over about 7:30, we had to run to Walmart for some RTV and Blue locktite so we got started about 8pm at getting this baby installed. I had already removed the old water/oil pump a few weeks back and it probably toook about an hour max. Installation was even easier! We started by breaking out the excellent directions Taggart provided and getting the required tools out. After that first step was checking the old o-rings to ensure they were in good shape, then dropping in the new pump. We followed that by getting the oil feeder and return ports installed into the block. After that it was a quick tightening of the two main mounting bolts, the three oil pump bolts and she was secured. We followed that by probably the most difficult part of the task which was getting the oil pump gear installed back into the drive chain. Once we get that installed we tightened the drive chain's bolt, installed the oil/water intercooler block off and it was all done! Now I just have to wait for a new oil pan gasket coming from the local bike shop for a whopping $6.14 and then install the new pan and everything is ready to roll.

I really just want to say again how damn impressed I was with the quality of the Taggart dry sump kit as well as just Yamaha's engine in general. I have never worked on such a sweet well put together engine.

The pictures below are of the dry sump, looking at the dry sump from the bottom of the engine, and the pan and oil/water block off.

Stohr Engine replacement part 3

The engine replacement in my Stohr is rolling along nicely. As you read about in my last entry on the topic I had everything out of the car (engine, wiring, cooling system, etc) and it was time to attempt to fit the new engine. Well thats really where the joy ended as I started to see there were multiple areas that the new engine would not fit.

1. I was able to confirmed what I had heard from Lee Stohr about the main engine mounts being different on the 2004-2006 Yamaha R1 engines compared to the 1998-2003 engines.
2. I was able to see that the spar also was not going to fit the new engine
3. Much to my dismay that the oil pan of the original engines oil pan would not fit.

So I knew this was going to be a costly investment but figured might as well just go for it after looking at and confirming the 2007 R1 engines mounts are the same meaning I had an upgrade path. So I fired up the trust Dremel and went to town.

My first step was addressing the fact that the new engines rear top mount was now about one inch to wide on the right to fit the spar. Thus after some analysis I decided to cut it off to make it fit the spar as there was no structural integrity being compromised and my new engine cradle would be built to unstress these mounts. Much to my further dismay I found that Yamaha actually change the rear engine mount more than just making it wider on the top. They moved the bolt hole approximately 5-10mm closer to the engine meaning I have to weld and plug the spar complete with redrilling the mount hole in the spar. This picture shows the engine and spar mating after I modified the engine.

So next up was trying to actually fit the current engine into the car so that I could give the local race shop an idea of how everything would mount up by putting in some template mounts. Despite what I had heard from others the new engine was too wide to fit into the old cradle so out with the angle grinder and back to cutting off one side of the mounts.

Once I got that done, placed the engine and rear spar into the car it was pretty clear the oil pan was not going to fit as it hit the floor. So since I was going to go dry sump anyway it was time to take the oil pan off and just put a simple seal on the engine bottom until Ken Taggert was able to ship me the new dry sump.

Once that was done we spent the day before Christmas putting the engine back in the car and bolting her together as best as I could possibly given the limited mounting points that lined up. It was then all ready to head off to the chassis shop where she remains today.

At the current moment the chassis is sitting on a chassis table, jigged up and ready to be re-welded while the shop finishes up a set of cars that is going to Barrett-Jackson. I hope to have the car back in the garage by the end of the month so that I can plumb everything back in with the new dry sump and move to single radiator. Should have that finished in February and I am hoping that the car will be starting and running in March. Fingers crossed!

New Arai Helmet Finally Arrives!

Got home from work today and what should appear in the entry way but a nice big brown box from the UPS man. I had to of course rip it open like a kid on Christmas and immediately try on my new lid. This Arai helmet is the highest quality helmet I have ever seen and I have seen a good deal. The fit and finish are excellent and it feels really light on my head which was really important to me. The visor mechanism is SOOO nice compared to my current helmet but no matter what I do I seem to fog up the visor so I am going to have to look into getting an anti-fog one before the season starts. Can imagine much worse than fogging up heading into the kink.

Next step is to shoot the helmet off to Mike Charness (http://www.helmet-painting.com/) to get her painted to look just like the Trackpedia helmet design contest winners vision. She should be once sweet looking lid as well as be comfortable as all hell on the track. Pictures below of the new helmet next to my current one and the new paint job (grey is chrome).

A big thanks goes out to Tom Shelton Jr. for organizing the group buy of the helmets and putting up with all of us whining.

Happy New Year - Tow vehicle maintainence day!

Happy New Year to everyone out there! I rung in the New Year watching the Chicago Bears get their asses handed to them by the Packers with my wife and dog. To tell you the truth it was a nice change from the usual bar scene. On New Years day here I spent my day out in the garage whipping the tow vehicle and my wifes car into shape. Took a good deal of time on my wifes Honda Accord rotating tires, changing oil and the usual jazz.

Then it was on to the Toyota 4Runner which occupied the rest of the day up until the Rose Bowl began. Had to change plugs and went with the Bosch Platinum 2 plugs instead of the OEM NGK Iridiums, that I became very happy with when I ran them in the Ferrari, for no other reason than they cost 2 bucks a plug less and they were actually available locally today. Outside that I changed the oil, and dropped in a K&N filter while modifying the air box to remove the stupid noise screen they had in there...just want to get every last pony out of that V8. I think if I could every car I have I would screw with doing stupids little things to it to get more HP out of it. Next weekend is going to consist of changing the diff fluid and transfer case fluid, putting the new tires on the car after I picked up a nail over the holidays and then all thats left is brakes in the spring. Anyone have suggestions on pads?

A much cooler post soon on taking the Stohr up to the local race shop to get the new engine cradle welded in. Happy New Year again everyone!