Update on the radiator. I'm loving the new radiator/water pump. I don't think it has much more cooling capacity than the single Porsche radiator, but having another cap in the front is helpful. I can check if the waterpump is working, add coolant and bleed the system easier. I did notice that air was circulating around the radiator inside the trunk and not going through it. I bought some foam from Hobby Lobby and filled the air gaps around the radiator. I think I have my cooling issue solved. I'll know more come May.
The cooling issue has been a learning experience. Even bigger than that has been what tires to use and driving style. Everyone dictates that you need to use winter or rally tires and drift like crazy. I tried those winter tires and my times were down. I thought that maybe I needed to drift more now that I have the "correct" tires. Times were even slower! Maybe that's the case with some tracks, but where I race it seems to be wider and stickier tires work best. I've also noticed that the more the ass end swings out, the slower the car.
This past weekend I was at COTA helping some friends race in WRL. It's an endurance race with a 8 hour race on Saturday and 7 on Sunday. We finished second out of 22 both days and I think we're third out of 60+ in points for the year. We were only 10 seconds behind first on Sunday. The corvette that beat us blew it's radiator right before it crossed the finish line. One more lap and we would have gotten first and it would have also bumped us up in points to first for the year too. That's racing!
Anyway, while I was there I noticed this huge pile of tires. I believe they were left over tires from F1. I went over to look at them and noticed that about 1 out of 10 were competition racing rain tires with more than half their tread. There's still ton of life left in them. I quickly found someone who worked at COTA and asked what's the story with all the tires. He told me they were going to have to pay someone to take them away and I could have as many as I wanted. So I quickly stuffed as many as I could fit in my subaru. They were all for 18 inch wheels. I wish they were 17's but I can live with 18's. Specially when you're getting $400 tire's for free. There were a verity of widths. I grabbed 8 260mm, 2 280mm and 2 300mm wide tires. I skipped on the 320's.
Now I'm on the lookout for some 18x10or11 turbo twist