ASA LS1 Race Car Won't Start Is Not Always The ECU

We recently drove up to the grid and parked, to go out for the first race of the new SCCA year.  At two minutes, they blew the whistle, and the same car that we just drove up to our spot, would not start.  No way, no how.  The tendency is to blame the ECU right away, especially with these cars.  But the folks up a Schwanke say they rarely if ever see one go bad.  At lease not with out a good reason (attaching a welder ground for instance)  It's real simple, you have to have spark, compression, and gas.  In our case, the fuel pump was not priming the system, and there was no go juice, up at the inspection port we installed, on the engine fuel rail.  After tracing the  dual fuel pump circuit back, we found a slightly unexpected burnt (to a chrisp) four prong wire connector, which kind of ruined the day, and the weekend.  Allstar makes a replacement OEM style four prong unit, PN # ALL76269, rated at 20 amps.  Our very small packet arrived in a very large box, with a couple of air bags, to reduce the chance of damage (?). 

At any rate, we were glad to pay the $13.50 in shipping for this $3.75 shipment, to get after fixing the problem.  Make sure you order extra individual male and female connectors, because there is a reason they sell them seperately.  We ended up building a whole new harness, on the switch side of the system.  There was very little extra wire to work with anyway, so we made sure it will be easier to deal with, in the future.  The LS-1 burped to life at the frst spin of the Tilton, and we are back in business.  See the seperate blog, about the time the pump connection vibrated loose.  These cars are fun, cheap, but somedays, an electrical challenge.

http://www.gearheadzproducts.com

Easy To Install Race Car Switch Panel

This is a good time of year to review everything in the cockpit,  add some upgrades such as an LED oil pressure light, radios, dash labels, etc.  A clean toggle switch arrangement is very important for the driver to have easy access to.  The photos below show our GT-2 house car dash board, as orginally supplied by the fabricators at Port City Racing, in Muskegon, MI.  All the operating switches are to the drivers left, easy to reach, and read as well.  You can purchase toggle switch extensions, which make it much easier  to access the switches, when buckeled snugly into the car.  The panel shown in the second photo is an easy to wire up and install unit, with most  of the hook  ups already made for you.  We had to relocate the fire bottle in the car when we brought it home, so it was in easy reach of the drivers left hand.  A very important detail, the last owner overlooked.  Don't forget to add high density padding, to all areas around the driver, and anywhere near by. 

http://gearheadzproducts.com/racecarcontrolpanel.aspx