Getting Ready for 2023 Racing Campaign
Well, it’s April and time to get the 1964 XKE Coupe ready for another year of Racing.
I put together the following ambitious schedule:- April 27-30 Mitty at Road Atlanta HSR
- June 15-18 Indianapolis Motor Speedway SVRA
- July 14-17 Road America, Weathertech Elkhart Lake
- Sept 15-17 Road America, Elkhart Lake, WI VSCDA
- Sept 22-24 World Wide Tech Raceway ST. Louis-SVRA
- Oct 13-15 Ozark Intl Raceway, Gravois, VSCDA
The Jag finished the 2022 season at Ozark International Raceway and ran perfectly! We were on the podium for all our races. The only thing I wanted to do was install set of ITG Mega Foam Carb filters for our 50MM DCOE Webers. ITG is a company in the United Kingdom who produces a wide range of racing filters for carburetors not fuel injected. They make a laser cut baseplate that fits right onto my DCOE 50 MM Weber Carbs to which the Foam Filters attach. These filters improve maximum air flow, maximize cleaning efficiency by stopping most airborne dust from feeding into the engine clean air, and have the capability to absorb a large amount of dust without reducing air flow capacity. We had ordered the base plates and filters back in November and now was the time to get them installed prior to going to Road Atlanta for the HSR Mitty.
I got the Jag down from the lift where it had been on a battery tender since late October and got it into the trailer and headed down to R & R Motorsports in Benton, Illinois. This race shop is owned and run by Ray Barthrone and his son William. Ray is the son in law of Bill Terry. Ray got the Foam Filters installed in about an hour, with everything going very smoothly and they sure looked great! Ray recommended putting the XKE on the Dyno to make sure all was running smoothly with the new filters and just to check everything out.
The first thing discovered was that the tires had been stored all winter with about 19 lbs PSI and were down to about 12 PSI when we put it on the Dyno. It was quickly apparent that something was wrong. When we race the tires are set between 18-20 PSI, however, Ray said when you’re done racing, you MUST fill the tires back up to 35 PSI or they won’t stay round. Well, you learn something new every day. So, Ray put 25 PSI in each tire and started the Dyno. At higher RPMs, we were getting backfire from unused fuel and was missing a bit. We have been running Champion Plugs and had put in a new set in October. Ray recommended trying Autolite AR3932 with a gap of .35. We changed out the plugs and …..NO MORE backfire! Another lesson learned and we will be running AR3932s from now on. Ray ran than the Jag up to 135 mph at 7000 rpms and the airflow and everything looked perfect. We tested out at 315 horsepower to the rear wheels. We put the Jag back into the trailer and we’re ready for Road Atlanta!
I’ll update the club with our results after the races.
Phil Taxman
