Alright, this admittedly took a lot longer to complete than I expected. Partly due to work, partly due to having an old Macbook, partly due to other priorities, but enough excuses. I wanted to share with you our recap video from the 2023 One Lap of America event. The whole event is a ton of fun, but really long (and that is the point).


We've already signed up for the 2024 event. If you are curious, you can check out the event here: https://www.onelapofamerica.com/

 

can you post the plain YouTube link? That embedded video isn't working for me. Congrats on getting the #3 cylinder issue sorted!

Joe at Corsa is great, he's saved my bacon multiple times. You're luck to be close.

 

Here you go...

 

That was a fun watch - thanks for taking us along for the ride(s)!

 

Well... it's May, and really the end of May. Kids are getting out of school, most racing seasons are well and truly started, and here I am just about to dust off the Mini and get going.
https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/oloa2024 has already concluded. Through an unfortunate turn of events, I wasn't able to find a co-driver and had to back out of this year's event. That was pretty disappointing. OLOA is one of those events that gets into you and if you don't do it you really feel like you are missing out. The #FOMO is real. For those of you that have never experienced it, it is the closest thing to doing a for real people. This year featured several tornadoes, attacks of tumbleweeds, and a gauntlet of Kansas Highway Patrol. I'm sure the https://driftpointmedia.com/one-lap-of-america/ will be amazing.
The Mini is ready to go. After surviving last year's One Lap event, a few minor issues had popped up. Two really: first, there was a vacuum leak; and second, the car wasn't keeping cool. We had a rush job to rebuild the head and get it on the car literally the day before OLOA last year and chased the vacuum leak and Check Engine Light the entire event. That ended up being the purge valve and a sensor that needed to be replaced.
Cooling was a bigger issue. At event at Hallet we noticed that there was some oil floating on top of the coolant in the tank. There was no obvious problem other than the oil and the sudden increase in engine temps when not moving. Our best guess (and consultations from others) lead us to believe there was a small leak in the heat exchanger. This has been a problem previously on this car. I took the Mini to the team over at Corsa Crew to help me sort it all out. The oil in the coolant seemed to have been just leftover from the previous issue with the heat exchanger, a full flush and refill solved that, but the trust wasn't there. So, we replaced the heat exchanger for an full external oil cooler. We also fixed / replaced some resistors on the fans that weren't working properly, a small leaking seal, and then vented the hood. All in all, the car idles 10 degrees cooler, intake temps are way down, and the temp doesn't spike after use.
The car is ready, and I'm ready to kick off 2024. This weekend will be my first "Knock the rust off" autocross. Also really excited to continue our partnerships with Red Line Oil and RaceBox. Both are exceptional products backed by great teams that genuinely care about the people in motorsports.

 

Are you, saying you removed the heat exchanger integrated with the oil filter housing? What did you use for an adapter/block off plate? I planned to do this last year but could not locate a solution.

 

Yes.... I'll grab some pictures. It is a fabricated solution, not off the shelf.

 

Thanks!!!

Hoping your fab shop doesn't include a CNC machine or high-falutin 3d printer. 😂

I found a place that had an adapter to allow an remote filter, but it didn't get rid of the exchanger setup. 🙄

 

Back in the saddle again, and it wasn't completely comfortable. The Mini ran great. There were 2 primary goals going into this event: first, shakedown the car and make sure we've sorted out the cooling issues; and second, shakedown the driver and see if he remembers how to drive the car.
As far as the cooling updates go, everything went perfect. The day started with a small thunderstorm that passed before the driver's meeting. Once that passed we were gifted with a southern summer day. That is to say, it was freaking hot. The perfect day to test cooling. The Mini would warm up to a starting operating temp of 185 degrees, if you were to keep (normal) driving on roads it is stable there with fluctuation up to 195. Obviously when pushing the engine hard, those temps would rise.
In the middle of the runs, when the car was hot the temp while moving was between 195-215. That's still really good. The concern was hot idle. That's where we were seeing issues at the end of OLOA last year. The good news is during hot idle (waiting in line for my next run), the temperature would climb to 220-222, but then the fan would kick on and the temp would drop back down to the 215 range again. I still did pop the hood between runs to prevent any heat soak, but all the cooling fixes and mods seemed to really do their part.

The driver on the other hand could use a bit more work. The course design ended up being fairly difficult for some reason. Lots of folks hitting cones, over cooking corners and having offs, a few spins... I was not immune from those effects. I think I hit more cones in this event than I did in the entire season last year. I managed 2 clean runs out of 7 (I gave up my last run so that Eli could have a go in the Mini). The best of those runs was good enough for 21st overall raw time (I don't believe in PAX) out of 78 timed drivers. Overall not terrible, but I really should have found more time throughout the day, and I just didn't. All my runs were in the 54s to low 55s and most of them were sloppy. Even my best run wasn't on the ideal line in a couple key spots.
Overall, a really good day to be back racing. The weather was great, the group of people racing with ALSCCA is great, the event was great... and to top it all off, my grandmother was visiting and got to come out and watch the event.