racing tale
 

just a little track story.
this past weekend a guy I know who races an EP 1st gen was runnin in a qualifying session in the afternoon. he was on new tires he the car was feeling like a dream. Well, he was hauling ass down "the chute" at Summit Point. (The car is streetported so the redline is already like 9200 or something rediculous like that) So he's at about redline 4th gear and he goes to shift to 5th, but instead grabs THIRD and lets the clutch out all the way. He hit at least 16,000 rpm, the car lurched forward, absolutely screaming, and just died. The tach broke at 11.5k rpm.

Now he was thinking, as would anyone, thats a sign of a motor gone, right? He had this big plan to swap the motor the next day and blah blah this and that. He hopped in his friend Phil's gsl-se and raced down to his house to get tools and parts while the car is sitting under Bret DePedro's canopy. Well someone decided.. "hey lets just do a compression test to see how bad it is." The motor was perfect. So now we're standing there thinking what could be wrong. Bret then took off the dizzy cap and pulled out the rotor, and you should have seen this thing. Both arms of the rotor were broken, melted, and hanging on by stands of plastic. The contacts on the inside were destroyed. So we swapped in a new cap n' rotor, fires right up.

So we call Rick's cell phone he's like "I'm at the house, im getting this tool and that, do you think ill need that... etc etc." Bret says "Hey rick, stop. Listen to this" We fired up the motor and started revving it haha. He was so happy he didnt know what to do. Amazing that all that broke was the distributor rotor.

WHO SAYS EP CARS DON'T HAVE REV LIMITERS?

that is messed up.

I have seen this happen many times and at the last race one of our team cars had the same thing happen. it is kind of the rotary rev limiter. I have seen the cap break apart as well. the rotary can take the revs and as long as the rotors don't contact the side housings it should be fine.

oh, and he took the car out on Sunday and won.

Awsome :beerchug:

I was running on the Jefferson Circuit and heard that story, since Phil was paddocked next to me.

Quite an amazing tale.
One use/fused rev-limiter :)

--Ashraf
93 RX-7 (track)
94 MX-5 (waiting for rollbar...)

That is some tale...

oh really? i heard that Mazda Club thing was pretty cool. ya know Phil payed $200 for that beautiful SE? damn him.

Good stuff :). Man, I can't wait to track my 7 again....not too many roadcourses out here, unfortunately :(

hell you guys prolly arent into this kinda car or race, but i was racing two of my friends (a TII and a TT supra) on the highway in my 69 camaro and redlined in third and slamed it into 2nd DOH! the 406 had to have hit upwards of 11k! nothing was wrong, car kept running, and i just took it easy for the rest of the night. :D