Interview with Michael and First Repairs/Improvements to the kart

While the repairs of the kart continue I caught this interview on the BBC between David Coulthard and Michael Schumacher.


It is always great to see drivers open up a little bit, but the relationship between these two can be summarized in this clip.



In the interview below Michael discusses briefly his love of racing has little to do with, or even the lack there of, the adrenalin rush of a race or the sensation of the car. His Deutschland heart is set on the precision of the driving-line and holding the car 'at the perfect limit'.





I found it insightful when he said "I'm surprised that you do it for the adrenalin." Michael said to David, who until very recently was a great formula 1 driver [if you didn't gather that from the first video]. Hearing that he approaches racing from much more of a professional "This is my job and I don't get excited" point-of-view was certainly something that struck me as new. Again, the author of this blog, me, honestly doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground about the history or the opinions or the struggles of race car drivers. But, as a child that hated bumper cars because I couldn't win, I feel safe to now say , "I feel as though I understand you Michael. Race to win and nothing more. Those that give you the middle-finger as you cut them off, just weren't as good as you." Now being able to race by those words will be something I'll have to work vigorously to achieve.




to the repairs on the kart:

It has been enjoyable to finally get 'under the hood' of a vehicle that has no hood, or seat belt as it were.

The 'list' as I sad last post was: Fix the brakes, fix the king pin assembly, change the spark plug.

Well the brakes come first. One thing to consider when racing, if all the cars are equal, it is not a safe assumption to think you'll be able to pass someone by out-accelerating them. Indeed most passing happens in the breaking zone before a turn. The best way to get that extra car length on your opponent is by being able to break later than he and still hold the line well enough to then maintain your position. This is what most drivers are referring to when they are talking about driving on the edge of the limits of the car. Breaking late enough to get ahead of your opponent, but not so late that you go too wide and allow the person to pass you again while they maintain a standard path along the track. And not too early as to not be able to gain a usable advantage. In addition you must remember that the person in-front of you is also trying to brake as late as possible as well to maintain as high a speed for as long as possible. This is true in passing, however there are many different approaches when discussing how to run the fastest possible lap. 


I've shamelessly stolen the following diagram from vivaf1.com


http://www.vivaf1.com/blog/?tag=racing-line

But back to the brakes and king-pin assemblies. (By the way, I am going to try to include the following picture from now on to point at exactly where on the kart I'm talking. So please shout at me if I forget)

First, the brake rotors need some cleaning. Here is a 'before-and-after cleaning'  picture of the brake rotors with some scotch-bright, WD-40 and some elbow grease.

So rust gone I looked to the king pin assemblies. Again the king pin assembly is the group of parts that link the rotors and the spindles, pictured above, to the chassis. With these parts the spindle is allowed to rotate, then subsequently turn the car. Since I took these pictures and wrote this entry, I have rebuilt this assembly again so what is pictured, isn't exactly what is running on the kart now.

With these parts on the king pin assembly, you can modify the ride height of the front of the kart, the caster, the camber, and even a small adjustment to the wheel base. I'll get into what all of these are and how they change the performance in a much later post when I more fully understand their effect myself. i.e. when I've gotten a couple more runs under the belt. So the picture above and on the right, you can see the steering arms attached. You can use those devices as well to change the alignment of the front wheels. Most people have a feeling of what this is, but in racing you don't necessarily want the front wheels parallel.

Next came the hard part, rebuilding the brake system. The Tony Kart chassis that I have, while one of the top quality chassis for performance, has a problem with the brakes. They need to be bled every race. I showed the little device to bleed the brakes before, but to help prevent this I decided to upgrade many of the brake parts to newer, less leaky, parts. Here's a picture of a bunch of replacement parts.

So with a new set of cylinders and seals in the master cylinder, new o-rings in the calipers, the brakes might function better and require less bleeding from now on. With that rebuilt, I reinstall the front brake calipers.

So with the brakes cleaned and rebuilt, I moved onto fixing the radiator. 

First I wanted to fix the absolute crap of a radiator cap. The cap is what you think it is. It's the cap on the radiator and it keeps the water in the cooling system. So with a set of pliers and some grunting Ken actually bent the cap around a little bit. So with that fixed I then needed to fix the mounting of the radiator. It seems one of the bolts had just completely fallen out. So the radiator was just swinging 'freely'. In these pictures I had to remove the rear left tire to get access with a wrench and to take a better picture. The threading inside of the hole I wanted to mount to had been almost completely stripped. Taping a new set of threads might be in the future for me. 

I used a zip-tie to hold to mounting arm where it is, and there was just enough threading to hold the bolt in place with some lock-wire.


 In the last video of the first time at the kart track you might have noticed the notes I put a note on the video of needing a new spark-plug. Well upon removing the old plug I noticed a substantial amount of oil caked to the plug which was to be expected with a 2-cycle motor, but also I noticed the gap between the anode and cathode was only about 25-thousands of an inch. I figured such a narrow gap might explain the lack of power on the high end RPMs and the excessive oil might be the cause of the poor low end as well. Either way, a new plug is in and I gapped this plug to 30/1000". (edit: this turned out to be partially true. However I since then changed to a G class spark plug and gapped to 30/1000. That helped a little bit. The true culprit of the power losses was a leaking head-gasket. Easily fixed once the problem was identified.)

 I hope that I'll be able to get out to the track again this week. Get some practice and learn a bit more about this kart.


So until next time,


-S

PS: Practice is on, expect some good videos later in the week. I'd also like to thank my viewers from Canada and the one person from South Africa that reads this. Thank you for checking in.