This past Monday and Tuesday I attended the PCA DE event at Watkins Glen International. First thing...if you get the opportunity...DO IT!

However, the car ran awesome the first day and the first 3 sessions on day 2.
Half way through session 4 I had an issue when going top end on the back stretch.
When coming out of the esses hot (4th gear) I was pushing up and when the car hit ~8200 rpms it started to chug as if it hit a rev/speed limiter. I know the rev limiter is ~9500 and the speed limiter is over 140 and I hit ~117....so my question is....what happened?
I had no LED's or error lights come on.
I was able to reproduce this three times and after the third time I brought it in thinking there was something wrong.
Through those three laps I was able to red-line the car in third gear with no issues.

I can only think of 2 things that it may be:

1) Oil Pressure at that speed
2) Gas pressure -- I got back to the pits and my gas light came on

Has anyone seen anything like this before?
I was tempted to bring the car to the dealer and see if they can see anything from a readout.

Thank you for any help!

 

Sounds like you ran out of gas.

 

Does this happen only in 4th gear or have you seen this in lower gears? Is that last turn, in the esses, a left hand turn? How much fuel was in the tank?

 

The turn was into the straight so I wasn't pushing it hard into a turn....it was as I was pushing into the straight after the esses....but fuel starvation sounds like the right thing....just wanted to be sure....it was a little scary. i was able to redline everywhere else....but that was at the end of a turn followed by hard breaking...however after the breaking i was able to get on it. Maybe in 4th gear it wants more fuel?

 

I had the exact same thing happen to me at pocono. I think it was fuel sloshing. I was below a quarter tank and the straight was after the big right-hand banked turn.

My theory is that all the fuel was on the left side (near the pickup i believe) during the high-g turn. And when i straightened out it started sloshing and cutting out. Halfway through the straight I would get my power back. Although I did have a CEL flash briefly during that, it didn't stay on or anything.

 

That sounds about right. I was at the point where the car started leveling out but accellerating hard so the pickup must not have been on that side for the turn and the fuel starvation came a second or two later. On the third try i even shifted to 5th and still no throttle. I was very focused on the straight that I didn't notice a CEL come on.

Thanks for the head up....sounds pretty much exactly what happened to me.

 

It's fuel starvation. In my experience, anything below 1/4 tank on the track and fuel starvation is a possibility.

 

yep,

you are lucky. depending on the track and speed in the lefthanders it starts at 3/4 tank..

beers

 

Did the same thing at Gingerman. Once you get to 1/4 tank it's time to head to the pump.

 

LOW FUEL, keep it above a 1/4 tank. I learned my leason and it will never happen again. Cost me 10 min if track time at Thunderhill.

 

If you're getting starvation at 3/4 tank, you've got fuel pump problems. Check out this thread for a similar issue.

 

two of us were having the same issue in the same corner.. both with 3/4 tank of gas. the fight and problem is the newest version of the fuel pump went in january.

i have a new fuel pump resistor coming. we will see.

beers