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

SCCA Camaro GT-2 GTA LS 1 Motor Will Not Start

We recently ran into an electrical issue with our Lingenfelter preped LS-1 engine, that would come and go at random.  The engine would start to miss, then quit completely at the track.  On another occasion at the races, the engine ran, then died when we pulled into the pits for a flat tire, and would not refire.  Later back at the shop, it started with no problem.  We ended up tracing and checking all the grounds, and found a loose connection, at the positive side of the battery terminal.  The lock nut holding the cable had vibrated loose.  It was covered with  a plastic terminal cover, and could not be seen until we removed the Optima AGM design battery to check it's status.  The cable was still connected, but with no positive force.  Always check the basic battery and ground connections with these cars.  There is a ground on the back of the right side cylinder head.  There are also a series of fuses in the electrical system.  Our car has an eight fuse box, located by the driver.  Very close to the OBD 2 port.   Make sure the battery is on a trickle charger all the time, and stays fully charged, when the car is not in use.  For a battery charger, we prefer the C TEK micro processor controled unit, shown below.   It is compact, and simple to use,  with a easy to read level of charge indicator.

http://gearheadzproducts.com/ctekbatterychargermus4.3.aspx