Good news and bad news over the weekend. Got my COMP license, but it was in a rented SM and not my Evo. And I wasn't able to run at all on Sunday. Judging by the results, it wouldn't have been much of a challenge for me as my buddy got the overall on Sunday and is usually 3-5 seconds a lap slower than me (my TTA vs his TTB build).

We spent Saturday morning checking fuses, wiring and chasing electrical diagrams through the pouring rain. Had 2 sets of clothes, shoes, socks soaked before noon. We're pretty damn sure it's the alternator, we had that idea at first but didn't want to just blame it so we dug up wiring diagrams to verify connectivity at the alternator itself.
The same friend that was helping troubleshoot (electrical engineer by day coincidentally) had the SM for rent and we triple-teamed it all afternoon with me running COMP school, him running TTE and his wife running the Lighting racegroup.

The SM was fun enough; although I'm pretty sore from fighting it through the oval at Gateway! I ended up running faster laps in it than the owner did in TTE with it - so that was pretty cool at least.

 

i like what you did with the jack points! i never thought to do anything with that on my car, even though it looks like yours did

its pretty easy to estimate the cage weight. take a tape measure and measure the length of all the tubes, and multiply by the weight/ft of the type of tube your using. i assume it was a .095x1.75 or .120x1.75? DOM mild steel?

 

Dude, sorry to hear about the electrical trouble I hate troubleshooting electrical crap more than anything else on the car.

That last point, though, had to give you a little bit of an ego boost. Good job!

 

Same thing happened to me the other weekend, Saturday it started pouring on the warmup lap, everyone was spinning off because of all the fresh oil that was brought up. I made a bad choice and mounted my 7 year old NT01's, I spun, backing it over the curbing, then coming down the straight (now in last place) the power left the car, wouldn't respond to throttle input, and finally died. Took us 2 hours of going over everything and we finally found the ground wire on the fuel pump housing came "off."

 

Congrats on the comp license!

I'm sure you guys went over the kill switch? Being an alternator problem and just hooking that up throws a red flag to me. Altho, those kind of coincidences seem to happen all too often.

 

Yes that's what we spent a lot of time on - the new Master Cutoff Switch. Some people suggested different ways to have hooked it up, so we'll see. But it looked to be wired correctly.

 

You guys remember when you first started doing HPDEs? Change fluids, show up, drive, go home. Sorry to hear about your challenges Nate. Im sure youll get through them.

If you think it was fun driving a SM, wait until you do some races with it. I highly recommend it, but only do it at the events where there are a lot of SMs showing up. Remember this...

My friends car is a SM. Did a couple races with them in Jan and Feb. Had an amazing time.

 

Those were the days when my main worry was rotating tires and turning my camera on!

Yeah, the SM fields are usually pretty good sized around here. 6-10 is small; the Mid Ohio events push over 20. The ST2 fields (where I'll probably run my PTA build regionally) push 6-12 at various events though too.

Here's the SM I completed COMP school in; it's a 1.8:

 

Here's the synopsis of what happened - electrically - with the car this weekend and why we think it's the alternator at this point. If anyone has any advice or suggestions, I'm all ears. The full details are on the blog here:


...Drove it over to get gas and accidentally left the lights on. Tried to start it, completely dead. So I jumped it (2nd time) drove it about 30 ft and it started sputtering and died. My guess was the battery was 100% drained so it needed to charge for awhile?? I had a friend help me push it back to my pit area....I hooked it back up to my truck and left both running to recharge the battery.

After awhile I disconnected the cable and the Evo started under it's own power. I got suited up, hopped in the car and lined up for S2. After a few mins in grid with the car running the gauges started looking weird including all 3 lights of the ACD on. So I decided to shut off the car, and when I tried to restart it - nothing. The grid guys helped push-start me so I got it going. I got about 1/3 of a lap when the gauges starting flaking out again, then sputtering, then it died.

Back in the pits I hooked it back up again to the truck and let it charge ~5mins while running. I unhooked it and left it running with the lights on and defrost on high to see if it'd die and by the time I was back from our classroom session it was dead. So it officially wasn't the battery, it had to be a wiring issue with the cage, the new Master Cutoff Switch or the Alternator.

We set off checking the wiring in the rain, checking fuses, using the voltage meter, etc. I had a friend there that's an electrical engineer so I let him lead the search. After verifying the Master Switch wasn't necessarily wrong, we downloaded some wiring diagrams, and checked all the voltage on the alternator plug as well as the stock gauge cluster that was not showing the alternator/battery warning light. Everything checked out with the wiring, so we're left with the Alternator being bad.

 

Put a volt meter on the actual alternator post on the back of the alternator and see what it is putting out next time you start it. There's a chance the cable from the alternator to the battery was eliminated or left off, maybe something that simple. If the alternator is putting out more than the battery than it is working, if not, you know what to do.

 

It really does sound like the alternator is not supplying the necessary voltage or amp flow and the battery slowly gets discharged until it dies. You will want to see 14.0-14.5v at idle if the alternator is working properly, with the voltage dipping down slightly with lights and defrost accessories on. Still, a charging system should always be at least trickle charging the battery even at idle, and be able to charge the battery fully at cruise. If the battery is older than 2-3 years then probably best to replace it along with the alternator as a first step to resolving the issues.

 

I don't like the wording "not necessarily wrong". It would make perfect sense that the alternator was fried because it's not hooked up right. Because it sounds like an alternator!

 

More testing with a voltage meter!
I turned the Master Switch on, and started up the car and repeated the this test 3 times. The test was checking the lead terminal on the alternator for a reading. Got a reading of like 1.3 - 1.6 on the alternator each time. Battery still reading about 11.4 after all this. Only had it running for a few seconds each time.

Dug into the fuse mass that my cagebuilder relocated off the battery. Check out the closeup of the bottom one. First is the 5 wires and the fuses that the shop all wrapped up into a rubber protectant and relocated a bit. The 2nd is a closeup of the bottom fuse (I twisted it sideways for the pic below).

 

...looks like JB Weld? Or the inside of whatever was covering it. I've pretty much had to redo any shop's electrical work because they just don't take the time with it.

 

That fuse is blown, replace it, we have them in stock.