This guy shows up at a lot of the autocross events at Charles Schultz Airport in Santa Rosa CA. I am told the car has a Rebello 3.X stroker motor in it. By the end of the day he had eaten his fan belt with all that torque. This particular event is at Infineon Raceway, Sears Point for you old purists and it is a Porsche Club event. If you watch carefully, you see my silver 914 - #20 sitting in the grid area in the first few seconds of the video. The guy who posted the video incorrectly identifies it as a Redwood Region event. It is actually a Sacramento Valley Region Porsche Club event.

http://www.youtube.com/user/bschoenh#p/u/48/-glHMbw6TRQ

Edited March 26, 201014 yr by conedodger

Way, way, way too many cones but then again it was a Porsche event so I guess they didn't want anyone going off course and getting lost.

Only reason one eats fans belts is because they are too loose or too tight. My 3.2L Rebello has yet to eat a belt over the past 9 yrs and I would never be mistaken for a timid driver.

Misaligned pulleys eat fan belts quite often, as do high wattage alternators used with the belt for a 40A unit. I am not sure how "excessive" engine torque could cause a fan belt to snap since the load that the belt sees is essentially independent of the torque produced by the motor. Any properly running motor has sufficient power to destroy a fan belt in short order.

If you left the pulley on that hi-wattage unit it might do that since it could be narrower. Instead you can use the pulley from a 40amp unit so that you could use the same belt. I have been for 7 yrs with a 1-wire GM 105amp unit. I change the belt every few yrs just as a matter of preventive maintenance.

Hadn't thought about misalignment. Good point.

Belt or no belts...the best music was from the Z...a close second goes to the 928.

I agree, Z was the best sound, (and looked fast)! The early 911/912 (couldn't tell which) sounded like bolts rattling in a can... The 928 sounde pretty good too.

Way, way, way too many cones but then again it was a Porsche event so I guess they didn't want anyone going off course and getting lost.

Only reason one eats fans belts is because they are too loose or too tight. My 3.2L Rebello has yet to eat a belt over the past 9 yrs and I would never be mistaken for a timid driver.

You do realize that this is the paddock at Infineon Raceway? The eventmaster had to line the outside of the course with cones as a barrier so people doing the track day event didn't cross into the autoX course (insurance requirement). There are more cones being used to line the course boundary than there were to make the course.

Besides, considering the sheer size of the course, that was not too many cones. The course was 350 yards long and 150 yards wide. Wide open course too. Only one spot that if you carried too much speed you could lock up and hit cones.

I explained that poorly, sorry... He didn't eat his fan belt. He snapped off the water pump shaft with the torque and the fan belt and fan practically came through the front of the radiator.

You do realize that this is the paddock at Infineon Raceway? The eventmaster had to line the outside of the course with cones as a barrier so people doing the track day event didn't cross into the autoX course (insurance requirement). There are more cones being used to line the course boundary than there were to make the course.

Besides, considering the sheer size of the course, that was not too many cones. The course was 350 yards long and 150 yards wide. Wide open course too. Only one spot that if you carried too much speed you could lock up and hit cones.

I explained that poorly, sorry... He didn't eat his fan belt. He snapped off the water pump shaft with the torque and the fan belt and fan practically came through the front of the radiator.

I thought the same thing: that course is WIDE open. It would be a good track for a high hp Z car.

I don't agree about the torque though. Why would rotational force snap the water pump pulley? Was he running tar for coolant? I think it's far more likely that some gorilla with a prybar tightened the belt way too tight and that snapped the water pump shaft. Just guessing though...

Not sure Jon... He blamed torque and I had the grid to run when I wasn't running myself so I never looked. He probably would have been TTOD had it not been for that too. He got beaten by a 130hp 4 cylinder 914 with slicks. Weighs 1326# dry. He was very aggressive and a good driver.

Sorry, I've been a tad busy with rain damage and getting the race car ready to reply to the issue of the # of cones on an AX course.

While 350 yds long is a goodly distance there is no reason other than poor driving skills to warrant that many cones. The designer has made the layout into a road course and all that was needed was to either paint lines down the middle or add curbs to each side.

I take my course direction from Peter Johnson (National Solo course designer and author of design manual) who was kind enough to spend time with me a few years ago. He is all about removing superfluous cones or as he says "sea of cones". The course shown would fit that description to a T.

On similar courses (size-wise) we run 2/3rd fewer cones and on larger courses, old airfield with distances exceeding 2000 yds, we use just a dozen more cones than the smaller courses.