[Fot] Beaten by equipment

Mon Sep 15 19:20:44 MDT 2008

Greg, 
My TR4 used to have a similar mystery vibration, which in the end, after  
much frustrating searching over many events, turned out to be an out of balance  
rear brake drum.  Stupid, I know.  I had also been through  several attempts 
to balance wheels, replace wheels, and balance everything else,  and simply 
never thought of those old iron drums.  I swapped them out and  never had the 
problem again.  The strangest thing about it was that the  problem seemed to be 
intermittent, and would crop-up with no pattern that I  could figure out.  In 
the end, that was it though.  Upon more careful  consideration I realized that 
it was only happening at Road America, the Glen,  and BIR, all pretty fast 
places.  I was delighted to figure it out.   Hope this is your problem, and not 
something more expensive!

Good Luck,
John Houlton

In a message dated 9/15/2008 7:57:35 P.M. Central Daylight Time,  
lunkercars at earthlink.net writes:

Hello  all,
Beaten by equipment...
My previous posting from Brainard quoted the  common wisdom "you  
gotta' finish to win". Well, I was reminded that  you gotta' start to  
finish. Sunday at Brainard shaped up to be what  I would call "ideal  
conditions"... cold, wet and basically miserable  enough that only  
fools/idiots/& the die-hards like me [3 in 1]  would dare go out -  
perfect. Not sure if excessive oil pressure from  the 40ish temp on my  
20W50 caused it [doubtful] or if it was just  it's time, but upon  
startup for the sunday race the oil cooler chose  to rupture in the  
pits and that was the end of that. Could have  by-passed it for the  
next race but it was canceled due to conditions  too perfect for me to  
even imagine. Oh well - finding out that the  top 4 finishers behind  
me on saturday are all ice racers boosted my  ego enough and knowing  
that they were all gunning for me might not  have made sunday quite as  
enjoyable as saturday.
Interesting to  note that that although I do buy better that 50% of my  
perts from  Moss, 100% of my failures have been from parts they have  
supplied.  Once again, my cheepo nature has proven to be false  
economy   and bitten me in the butt.
Now on to good vibrations and bad vibrations.  The Beach Boys told us  
about the good ones but some aren't and never  will be. First time I  
ever felt the bad one was at Watkins Glen. It  may well have existed  
before but my car has never been on a track  that fast. So far as my  
butt and brain can tell, it doesn't come on  until somewhere beyond  
100mph. After getting the driveshaft  straightened last week I thought  
I had surely got to the problem.  First couple sessions at Brainard  
felt good but that proved to be a  combination of wishful thinking and  
not going fast enough. It's  still there. For a time at The Glen and  
again at Brainard I almost  convinced myself that it was 4th gear only  
but I am now pretty sure  that it is only dependent on road speed -  
i.e., it's felt near  redline in 3rd and only gets worse as 4th  
progresses. Scared the  speed right out of me the first time I felt it  
come on, but after  many teeth grinding laps with nothing coming thru  
the block  [convinced it's not engine related], the trans. case, or  
thru the  floor, I've lived with it thru the last two races. Doesn't  
mean I  like it and that combined with a bum oil cooler, moody starter   
[thanks again Moss Motors] and exorbitant entry fees, will likely   
keep me from going to Road America.
Any Ideas? The drive-shaft  straightening didn't seem to do anything.  
I've run it on 3 different  sets of tires and wheels, so that's not  
it. U-joints are fine [by  all appearances], can't find any slop in  
the trans. output shaft or  the diff, input [pinion] shaft nor any run- 
out  on the input shaft  flange or axles. Defiantly not coming from  
the front as it is not  transmitted thru the steering wheel. Rear axle  
bearings seem to be  in fine shape.
The engine is fresh and in good balance. The trans. is new  to me  
[close ratio in a TR6 case] but no recognized problems from  the  
previous FoT owner. I have given the original, stock, open.  3.70  
differential a hard life since it's early retirement but I  still  
can't see how that would figure in. The only unknown is my  frozen  
axle shafts... As part of my recent "freshening", I sent the  crank  
shaft [more on that later], stub axles, front hubs, rear hubs  and  
half shafts  to Controlled Thermal Processing  [http://metal-wear.com]  
to be cryogenically frozen [-300f/+300f in a  68 hour process].  Being  
unknown voodoo, I'm creating a  scenario where the axle[s] have a bow  
in it [them] causing a  imbalance, causing the vibration but not  
detectable from the flange  end - not very likely but I'm grasping at  
straws here [oh yea, I'm  still in the mid-west so it must be corn].
Please believe me, at this point  I am willing to consider any ideas  
regardless how far fetched. And  maybe one [some] of you know what I'm  
feeling and have the spot-on  answer.

Greg "Lunker" Hilyer
TR4 #314
Albuquerque NM 

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