October brings three things to Southern California: Hoodies worn un-ironically, pumpkin spice, and the end of racing season. The Foximus team rolled into Fontana this past weekend looking for redemption for missing round 4 back in June, and to try and get back on track and shake out any last issues before Super Lap Battle in November.
Since this was the first time that GTA had run the Roval configuration, Saturday was a setup day, allowing the teams to get three 20 minute sessions to shake down their cars. It had been two years since the team had been at Roval, so they used the time to dial the car in and see how the new setup would handle the demands that Roval places on a car – it’s a track that has the most consistent WOT time, and you have the added challenge of the banking in turns 1 and 2. The first two test sessions went flawless, but the third session would be a struggle for the team. The car would melt another front main seal, as well as see a throttle body error. The seal problem will be addressed in the off-season with the addition of an oil cooler, but all the tools were brought along to replace it, and that repair was made Saturday night – getting a new seal in, and making sure the engine was healthy and ready for Sunday. The team decided to try and address the throttle body issue, a problem that had been plaguing the car off and on all year.
There has been discontinuity error issues all year that result in having to power cycle the car. Basically it sees the Pedal at X and the Throttle Body at Y for more than a time of Z it thinks the throttle has hung. After a handful of tests, it was found that the gear drive mechanism was failing and binding up, which was responsible for these errors. Luckily an Autozone in LA had another LS4 throttle body for us to pick up. In these tests, however, we wound up locking up our Infinity ECU. The ECU is one of the few spares that we don’t currently keep on hand, but we were lucky enough that after some help from Tony at UMS Tuning troubleshooting, he was able to get ahold of our friend Istvan at Night Motorsports ( a fellow AEM Competitor) who was able to lend us a spare i508 computer so that we could get on track – knowing what all was hanging in the balance for us this weekend. Trevor and Jackie drove out to Subiefest to get the new ECU while Chis and Erik worked to get Phoenix ready to go, knowing time was not on our side.
After a day spent thrashing, the team was able to get the back together and running for one session. In time attack, you want 1 perfect lap, but this time we just wanted 1 lap. That one lap, while not as fast as we tested at, was good enough to move us to the top of Street FWD for the day, giving us our third win of the year, along with now holding a track record. The results were also good enough to push us to the top of the standings, winning the GTA Pro/Am Street FWD Championship, and finishing second overall in Street Class. Onward to Super Lap Battle!
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