Fuel

Explosions

Why You Don’t Mess With Fuel Cell Foam

2013-04-26 dr. diandra 3

We’d been hearing rumors of penalties stemming from Kansas and everyone expected them to be announced Tuesday. Since penalties usually have some scientific component, I was sort of hoping for some new material. Tuesday came and went. Nothing. Wednesday, all heck broke loose as penalties were announced for the No 20 JGR car (engine issues) and the No 98 ThorSport truck.
The more interesting — and less discussed — penalty is the ThorSport/Johnny Sauter one. (It was a tough week for Wisconsin drivers). The team was docked 25 points, which is pretty huge for the Truck Series and the crew chief fined $10,000. (I realize that seems small when compared to the Sprint Cup Series penalties, but the Truck Series has correspondingly lower purses and salaries.) […]

Electronic Fuel Injection

Engine Maps Explained

2012-03-10 dr. diandra 1

In my last post, I detailed how the relays in the ECU system allow the system to flip to a default engine map. This lets the team keep running, even when something fails, and it decreases the chances of the ECU doing something that blows up the engine. Here’s a short explanation of what exactly an ‘engine map’ is and what it does. […]

Childers, Rodney

Phoenix: Relay Race?

2012-03-06 dr. diandra 1

The race at Phoenix was the first non-restrictor-plate race. A number of drivers experienced engine-related problems, leading some media outlets to start blowing the “EFI problems” horns as loudly as possible. Mark Martin, the pole sitter, was an unfortunate casualties of a “flipped circuit breaker”. One of the most interesting exchanges to me was a series of tweets and a radio interview with Mark Martin’s Crew Chief Rodney Childers (@rchilders55) in which Childers repeatedly said it not “an EFI problem”, the radio commentators persisted in saying that it was. […]

Engines

The Math of Fuel Mileage

2011-06-10 dr. diandra 6

I guess when you have people feeding you all the numbers you need through your earpiece, you think they’re easy to come by. That’s the only explanation I can figure out for the snarky comments by television commentators about crews not being “smart enough” to figure out how much gas to put in the car so that it doesn’t run out before the end of the race. There have been a lot of fuel mileage races the last few weeks. Pocono is traditionally also highly likely to be a fuel mileage race, so let’s clarify how easy (or hard) it is to not run out of fuel. […]

Engines

Eight Issues for NASCAR in 2010: #6 Get Serious About Being Green

2010-04-16 dr. diandra 7

I’ve gotten a little behind in my blogging.  My Mom was diagnosed with cancer in February and passed away last week, which threw me for a bit of a loop in terms of catching up.  […]