Aaron Pfadt

We work hard to develop and test our products and now you can see first hand what it's all about. In the 2nd episode, we're racing at Miller Motorsports Park...and still trying to get ready to display our suspension components at the SEMA show.




Enjoy

-Aaron

If you missed Episode 1 you can watch it HERE!

lkelliott

I enjoyed both episodes Aaron. There is always a lot going on during the morning of a race day and I felt like I was right there with you. I can't wait to see episode 3.

Kent

PA Z06

Same here good stuff

TmillerC5

Damn coooool sheet. Would love to get out to that track, mountains in the background very cool also.

redvetracr

feel free to call me ignorant but whats the point of a tire pressure monitoring system on a race car? it appears to be more useless technology, if you get a flat your driver should be able to feel a low/flat tire besides that your chance for a win is basically over if you have to pit....unless of course you have a Nascar caliber pit crew.....thumbs up to Patrick on the video though..............

ZR1 MK

Great Stuff. Keep it coming. Great to see the family pet along as cheif security officer too. Wish I lived closer, Id be nice to hang.

Kubs

Looks cool! I hope to make it out your way sometime before I get too old to do some racing!

dvandentop

gonnna watch episode 2 now!

ssdeuce

ajcjr

very cool, love the way the vettes sound in race form.

Aaron Pfadt

The sensor issue is a frustrating one. There is no way right now to just eliminate the system. If we could eliminate TPMS without losing ABS, we certainly would. We do not use the sensors at all, we just try to keep the car happy.

There are many partial solutions to the problem, but none of them are particularly attractive. The basic problem is this, when the Corvette can not find one or more of the TPMS sensors, it goes into 'Flat Tire Mode' which will still allow driving but keeps the driver from disabling Active Handling and Traction Control. The car is undriveable on the track in that condition. We have 4 sets of race wheels for this car, and in the video we were actually using one of George's sets (from his C5 racer). You can see the difficulty in having to have TPMS sensors in all the wheels. Where this gets tricky, is that the system will retain the last tire pressure reading for a long time if there are no sensors around. However, when the battery is disconnected, the system resets and starts looking again, if the sensors are not close by (or in transmit mode), 'Flat Tire Mode' again....

GM's 'Official Solution' is to let the system fault out sending the car into a mode that has no sensors available, but still allows disabling of AHTC. That is shown in the car with a 'Service TPMS' message and xx in place of the actual tire pressures. It takes 45 minutes of uninterrupted driving at speed to achieve this mode. Not possible between run sessions. This is great, but it loses this mode if the battery is disconnected. Race cars must have a master battery cut switch. You can see where this becomes tricky. GM acknowledges this and suggests providing uninterrupted battery feed to a particular fuse to keep the memory alive in the BCM.

That is what we had done with the car, but we had something messed up in the feeding of that circuit. That is why we lost the system in the trailer in Episode 1. We solved it there, but then some other malfunction (probably related to the first one) caused us to lose the system 2 different times in Episode 2. That is why we had the underhood fuse block apart, we were putting things back to stock just to make the car work correctly.

The bottom line is that we have a solution, but it is not elegant (it is GM's solution). We just had an issue in the implementation of it that we should have caught in testing, but instead solved on a race day. This just points out how critical the system is and that GM's solution is not robust enough to work in a real race environment. There are some other 'brute force' solutions like putting sensors in all wheels and I have heard of some people making a small pressure vessel and putting the sensors in it and strapping that in the car. Not pretty, but it might be an option.

As an engineering company, we will come up with an elegant solution to the problem and market it to all the aspiring C6 racers out there. The right solution is to disable the system in the BCM completely, or hardwire the signal into the network in the car so that it always thinks the sensors are there and transmitting happy values. It's on the list of projects, and given our recent experiences, it is moving higher up

-Aaron

Mike04

Superbee

Have you tried building a container/cylinder you can put four sensors in, pressurize and bolt into the car where tech will not be concerned

L98Terror

What the hell no episode #3

Very cool, I don't understand the not trying to win the race on the first lap logic, that is my whole strategy

Aaron Pfadt

Mine too! That is why I had George start the race

Episode #3 is in the works (probably be launched next week), it will shed some more light on why George is a good endurance racer and me well....

-Aaron

Aaron Pfadt

Not yet, but I have heard of others doing that. I might do something like that until I come up with a more robust/elegant electronic solution. It gets old swapping tires out just for the sensors.

The other issue with that is that the car behaves very well when it gets into 'Service TPMS System' mode. If the sensors are nearby then, it will jump out of that mode and you run the risk of one sensor not transmitting for up to an hour and then being in flat tire mode until then. You can excite them buy driving with them on the car (they need to be rotating I think, hence the driving around the pits) or using the special exciter tool. The whole thing is very complicated.

-Aaron

Coldmale

This TPS thing is the reason I only have one set of wheels and tires

Pain in the ***

John

Aardwolf

Have you ran it with them both turned off then? Did lap times increase or decrease without ABS?

Aaron Pfadt

The only way to turn ABS off is to pull the master fuse for it. I have not run this car without it. That said, the system is not good enough to 'race in' meaning to drive in such a way as to rely on it for a lap time advantage. The ultimate braking is certainly diminished when the system becomes active. We keep it enabled to prevent flat spotting tires and for a little help in an unexpected slick track condition. It might cause you to go deeper into a turn than you would want, but it is better than flat spotting a $450 Hoosier slick in a practice session. The system also recovers pretty well, for example, if you get a little ABS in a braking situation, some reduction in pedal pressure will usually get the car back in normal braking (and full deceleration) while still in the braking zone.

-Aaron

MartyZ51

That was a great episode and made me watch the first one as well! What kind of top speeds are you seeing on the long straight at Miller?