After the last race, we have to get ourselves some new Zip. A couple of us plan on doing some prep work the week after Thanksgiving. We will unhook the wiring, hoses, intake, remove the radiator, driveshaft, exhaust. Then the weekend after, we hope to pull the old (ventilated) engine out.
We will spruce up the spare engine with a new timing belt and some gaskets, then swap it in.
If you are really lucky, we will post photos :)
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Charlotte Chump Race - Take 2 Results
Saturday morning, race day! Everybody was up bright and early and at the track well ahead of the driver's meeting. Except Duncan, who had an alarm malfunction possibly related to user error. The CTS-V made some sonic boom noises heading up I85, and he barely rolled into CMS at 6:31.
We were out of the driver's meeting, in the car, staged on pit row, and ready to rock. But c'mon, Charlotte Motor Speedway Chump Racing ain't racing without some drama. Mother nature did not cooperate. It was so foggy, the guys in the control tower couldn't even see the cars on pit row.
A 15 min delay turned into a 30 min delay, then 60. Finally, a few minutes after 8am, the fog had lifted enough for the green flag to fly. There were 52 cars in the lineup, and after 65 minutes of frustration, there were some happy drivers out there.
Because two of our five teammates did not get a chance to drive at the last race, we inverted our driving order this time. Jason was the first up.
The course was set up strictly on the oval. The CMS Christmas light thing was set up in the infield. To keep non-NASCAR drivers awake, with both hands on the wheel, Chump set up a chicane on both the front straight and the back straight. The chicane at the front was fairly wide and not particularly tricky. The chicane at the back was the opposite. It really wasn't wide enough to go in two wide, and the exit of the chicane was a little tricky. So this prompted a few spins at the front chicane, and a WHOLE LOT of screw ups on the back chicane.
Jason settled into the car well, with frequent interruptions for yellow flags. He reported the temperature of the car would stay reasonable as long as he didn't run it too hard. Short shifting at 4k or 5k rpm seemed to hold things together. The car was handling well, and the brakes were phenomenal. Top speed was around 105mph, a bit of an improvement from the last race. Jason completed about 80 laps before roaring into pit row.
After a quick addition of five gallons of gas, Brad was up next. With plenty of open track in front of him, Brad scooted around half a lap before doing a great job of exploring the tire wall in the back chicane. After sliding to a stop about 2" from it (2:37 in the vid below), he waited for a chance to reverse and get back into the mix.
Another 30 minutes went by, with Zip6Racing showing as high as 13th or 14th place. Then Brad put the finishing touches on a strong passing maneuver down the front stretch by managing a lurid slide and a complete 360 going into Turn 1. No harm, no foul, no impact or crunched body panels, but good for a bit of a pucker.
Alas, the vg30 was fading. An oil pressure warning light, set to go off when oil pressure dropped below 10 psi, went from flickering occasionally under heavy braking and low rpm, to flickering frequently under hard cornering. Engine temps would only stay down if the car was kept below 4k rpm.
Roughly 128 laps into the race, Brad accelerated out of a chicane and knew something was wrong. The car seemed to lack power, and was reluctant to pull up to speed. A few hundred yards later... BOOM! She blew:
We got a tow back to the garage, and mourned our dead engine. Even if we had a spare with us, it's questionable whether we would've had time to swap it in and get back on the track before the end of the race. We packed up and headed home. We'll be back! In the coming weeks, we'll decide which of the 2014 races we want to shoot for.
We were out of the driver's meeting, in the car, staged on pit row, and ready to rock. But c'mon, Charlotte Motor Speedway Chump Racing ain't racing without some drama. Mother nature did not cooperate. It was so foggy, the guys in the control tower couldn't even see the cars on pit row.
 |
| Thick fog delayed the November CMS Chump race |
Because two of our five teammates did not get a chance to drive at the last race, we inverted our driving order this time. Jason was the first up.
The course was set up strictly on the oval. The CMS Christmas light thing was set up in the infield. To keep non-NASCAR drivers awake, with both hands on the wheel, Chump set up a chicane on both the front straight and the back straight. The chicane at the front was fairly wide and not particularly tricky. The chicane at the back was the opposite. It really wasn't wide enough to go in two wide, and the exit of the chicane was a little tricky. So this prompted a few spins at the front chicane, and a WHOLE LOT of screw ups on the back chicane.
 |
| The Charlotte race used the entire oval, with a chicane added in each straight as marked in yellow |
Jason settled into the car well, with frequent interruptions for yellow flags. He reported the temperature of the car would stay reasonable as long as he didn't run it too hard. Short shifting at 4k or 5k rpm seemed to hold things together. The car was handling well, and the brakes were phenomenal. Top speed was around 105mph, a bit of an improvement from the last race. Jason completed about 80 laps before roaring into pit row.
After a quick addition of five gallons of gas, Brad was up next. With plenty of open track in front of him, Brad scooted around half a lap before doing a great job of exploring the tire wall in the back chicane. After sliding to a stop about 2" from it (2:37 in the vid below), he waited for a chance to reverse and get back into the mix.
Another 30 minutes went by, with Zip6Racing showing as high as 13th or 14th place. Then Brad put the finishing touches on a strong passing maneuver down the front stretch by managing a lurid slide and a complete 360 going into Turn 1. No harm, no foul, no impact or crunched body panels, but good for a bit of a pucker.
Alas, the vg30 was fading. An oil pressure warning light, set to go off when oil pressure dropped below 10 psi, went from flickering occasionally under heavy braking and low rpm, to flickering frequently under hard cornering. Engine temps would only stay down if the car was kept below 4k rpm.
Roughly 128 laps into the race, Brad accelerated out of a chicane and knew something was wrong. The car seemed to lack power, and was reluctant to pull up to speed. A few hundred yards later... BOOM! She blew:
 |
| This twisted chunk is what's left of a connecting rod that went through the oil pan |
 |
| A now well-ventilated VG block |
Charlotte Chump Race - Take 2
As some of you may have known, ChumpCar was nice enough to rebook us for another race at Charlotte Motor Speedway since the previous one ran less than smoothly.
Zip6Racing had a good bit of work to do in preparation for the event, but it was an order of magnitude less than for the previous event. The car had a few issues at the last race, and we wanted to fix those as well as make a few improvements. A portion of the list:
Flush engine/radiator
Diagnose charging system
Trace MAF issue
Remount bumper
Plug header hole
Fix melted wire loom
Put pins in window net bar
Fix hole/replace tire
Check front brakes
Check rear brakes
investigate low oil pressure
fix camera system
fabricate headlight covers
better temp gauge
Head lights
Mount side windows
Replace rear window
Adjust pass. side windshield wiper
fix cylinder head temp sensor
check compression
The intermittent miss seemed to go away once we soldered in a new connector for the mass air flow sensor along with putting a jumper in the cylinder head temp sensor harness. With the engine running better, that left us with 2 main things to worry over.
1) We had a tire that somehow suffered a puncture at the very end of the last race (possibly when loading it on the trailer). We patched and plugged it, and it seemed to hold air. We would have preferred to replace it, but every retailer seemed to have this tire in our size on backorder. So we were crossing our fingers we wouldn't have an issue with the plugged tire.
2) Our venerable vg30 engine, as tough as it is, had been through a lot. When we changed the oil, it looked ok, but we noticed it was smoking at good bit at idle. A compression test confirmed our suspicions:
Nissan's min for this engine is 128 psi. We barely made that on the #3 cylinder. Nissan also specs a max differential between cylinders of 14 psi. We were nowhere close to meeting that. From our inspection of the engine last year, we had
cyl #1 200psi
cyl #2 165psi
cyl #3 187psi
cyl #4 170psi
cyl #5 200psi
cyl #6 185psi
so even then we were flunking the max differential requirement. And as you can see, the numbers had fallen dramatically after Race #1. The engine was not healthy. Our spare engine was in Columbia SC, and we really didn't want to go through the trouble of retrieving and installing it. So... engine health was a worry.
We actually installed plexiglass in the rear hatch frame twice. The first time, it looked cloudy, and it was removed only to discover an additional layer of peel-off film stuck to it. Oops. We really wanted to try and make the car more aerodynamic, as our top speed in the last CMS event wasn't competitive. The combination of
- running without a hood
- no headlight covers
- no quarter panel windows
- no rear hatch
was in theory really killing our top end.
On Friday, the day when we needed to get the car through tech/safety inspection, we were a few minutes later than planned in getting the car on the trailer and getting our gear loaded, but it was nothing like the exhausting, nerve-wracking thrash before the last race.
We had a bit of a hiccup once we got to the track and realized the race car's brake lights weren't working. We had packed several totes and boxes of parts into the car for transport to the track, and our assumption was a wiring harness was damaged by doing that. Sure enough, one of the guys found a ground that had ripped out, and we quickly patched it up. We had ordered a new CHTS plug, and it was scheduled to land at the local Nissan dealership at 11am. While one of the guys went to pick it up, a few of us worked on spacing the new headlight covers upward to fit closer to flush with the hood.
The line for tech inspection was fairly short, but it still seemed to take awhile. With no real surprises or disagreements, we made it through tech and spent a few minutes checking the fit of a spare tire and looking over the car one last time. With little left that we could do, we all headed home to get some sleep for a 6:30am driver's meeting and a 7:00am race start time.
To be continued...
Zip6Racing had a good bit of work to do in preparation for the event, but it was an order of magnitude less than for the previous event. The car had a few issues at the last race, and we wanted to fix those as well as make a few improvements. A portion of the list:
Flush engine/radiator
Diagnose charging system
Trace MAF issue
Remount bumper
Plug header hole
Fix melted wire loom
Put pins in window net bar
Fix hole/replace tire
Check front brakes
Check rear brakes
investigate low oil pressure
fix camera system
fabricate headlight covers
better temp gauge
Head lights
Mount side windows
Replace rear window
Adjust pass. side windshield wiper
fix cylinder head temp sensor
check compression
The intermittent miss seemed to go away once we soldered in a new connector for the mass air flow sensor along with putting a jumper in the cylinder head temp sensor harness. With the engine running better, that left us with 2 main things to worry over.
1) We had a tire that somehow suffered a puncture at the very end of the last race (possibly when loading it on the trailer). We patched and plugged it, and it seemed to hold air. We would have preferred to replace it, but every retailer seemed to have this tire in our size on backorder. So we were crossing our fingers we wouldn't have an issue with the plugged tire.
2) Our venerable vg30 engine, as tough as it is, had been through a lot. When we changed the oil, it looked ok, but we noticed it was smoking at good bit at idle. A compression test confirmed our suspicions:
 |
| Compression test - not so good |
cyl #1 200psi
cyl #2 165psi
cyl #3 187psi
cyl #4 170psi
cyl #5 200psi
cyl #6 185psi
so even then we were flunking the max differential requirement. And as you can see, the numbers had fallen dramatically after Race #1. The engine was not healthy. Our spare engine was in Columbia SC, and we really didn't want to go through the trouble of retrieving and installing it. So... engine health was a worry.
We actually installed plexiglass in the rear hatch frame twice. The first time, it looked cloudy, and it was removed only to discover an additional layer of peel-off film stuck to it. Oops. We really wanted to try and make the car more aerodynamic, as our top speed in the last CMS event wasn't competitive. The combination of
- running without a hood
- no headlight covers
- no quarter panel windows
- no rear hatch
was in theory really killing our top end.
On Friday, the day when we needed to get the car through tech/safety inspection, we were a few minutes later than planned in getting the car on the trailer and getting our gear loaded, but it was nothing like the exhausting, nerve-wracking thrash before the last race.
We had a bit of a hiccup once we got to the track and realized the race car's brake lights weren't working. We had packed several totes and boxes of parts into the car for transport to the track, and our assumption was a wiring harness was damaged by doing that. Sure enough, one of the guys found a ground that had ripped out, and we quickly patched it up. We had ordered a new CHTS plug, and it was scheduled to land at the local Nissan dealership at 11am. While one of the guys went to pick it up, a few of us worked on spacing the new headlight covers upward to fit closer to flush with the hood.
The line for tech inspection was fairly short, but it still seemed to take awhile. With no real surprises or disagreements, we made it through tech and spent a few minutes checking the fit of a spare tire and looking over the car one last time. With little left that we could do, we all headed home to get some sleep for a 6:30am driver's meeting and a 7:00am race start time.
 |
| Ready to race and lookin' better than ever! |
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Yawning
Here's a secret that a lot of people know about ChumpCar but few people will tell you. Gather in close now, you may not hear this anywhere else...
ChumpCar will take years off your life. It's not from high-speed accidents, although those do happen. It's not from exposure to various chemicals and exhaust fumes from every possible type of (poorly running) internal combustion engine. It's not from stress and excitement, or even from unintentional exercise running back to cold pit to get your gloves and oh yeah the voltmeter (and hey has anybody seen the fire extinguisher).
It's from sleep deprivation.
You will lose hours and maybe days prepping the car. You will lose more hours actually racing. Even if you are less adventurous, and prefer to see where you're going, so you sign up for a daytime event, the ol' switcheroo may take place and you'll find your race starting a 8pm instead of 8am. And you'll got to bed at 3 or 4am. And you'll want to do it again.
First thing's first, mucho thanks to our awesome sponsor Husqvarna. They even loaned us their super-nice pickup and trailer, which were rock solid and fantastic. Here's a picture of our paint scheme/theme. It's Husqvarna blue with a white hood. If you've seen the Husqvarna fast tractor sold at Lowe's - the one that Jimmie Johnson has been riding in all those cool TV commercials - that's the look.
Due to the messed up schedule, the race really didn't get started until about 9pm. A couple of guys spun out on the first green-flag lap right in front of Eric, and he narrowly missed piling into them. He hadn't been out long before he radioed in the car was overheating. We brought him in and pulled the bumper cover and the hood off hoping the extra airflow would help. It didn't do much.
We also had a charging problem. The voltage kept dropping, and it was apparent the alternator wasn't working. Jason found a blown fuse, and replacing it seemed to help. But this was a persistent issue.
We spent an hour or two in the pits flushing the radiator, which seemed to fix the overheating problem. The VG engine Nissan made seems to be pretty tough. We ran this one a few hard laps with the temp gauge maxed out, and it hung in there.
We also had an intermittent miss that kept popping up again and again. This pretty much ruined Duncan's entire stint. But Travis was able to get maybe 45 mins in where the car ran flawlessly. But when he came in for the driver change and cut the motor off, it never ran right again.
We just weren't able to conquer the intermittent miss. We finally threw in the towel around 1:45am. I think we were able to run approximately 55 laps. I hope to find an official lap count and placement in the next few days. Also, I'm sure some more photos will surface and we'll post 'em up.
We went through some grief due to the shower of sparks from the front brakes. With a night race, the sparks were very apparent, and the tower kept radioing the pit bosses who came and argued with us a bit. They insisted this was indicative of metal on metal, and we were out of pad material. But we had put on fresh Hawk DTC-60 or -70 pads before the race, and we were confident they were ok. Driver's insisted the brakes felt awesome. And in the hot pit, after borrowing Nic's iphone to use as a flashlight (oops, somebody forget the flashlight?) I could see what looked like plenty of pad material and abused but not scarred rotors. We will investigate more and report back, but we are thinking the brakes are ok.
After everyone recovers, I'm sure we'll get the Z rehabilitated and ready for the Chump race in Nov. Or possibly a track event or two before then?
ChumpCar will take years off your life. It's not from high-speed accidents, although those do happen. It's not from exposure to various chemicals and exhaust fumes from every possible type of (poorly running) internal combustion engine. It's not from stress and excitement, or even from unintentional exercise running back to cold pit to get your gloves and oh yeah the voltmeter (and hey has anybody seen the fire extinguisher).
It's from sleep deprivation.
You will lose hours and maybe days prepping the car. You will lose more hours actually racing. Even if you are less adventurous, and prefer to see where you're going, so you sign up for a daytime event, the ol' switcheroo may take place and you'll find your race starting a 8pm instead of 8am. And you'll got to bed at 3 or 4am. And you'll want to do it again.
First thing's first, mucho thanks to our awesome sponsor Husqvarna. They even loaned us their super-nice pickup and trailer, which were rock solid and fantastic. Here's a picture of our paint scheme/theme. It's Husqvarna blue with a white hood. If you've seen the Husqvarna fast tractor sold at Lowe's - the one that Jimmie Johnson has been riding in all those cool TV commercials - that's the look.
 |
| The paint scheme for the Zip6Racing Husqvarna 300ZX |
We also had a charging problem. The voltage kept dropping, and it was apparent the alternator wasn't working. Jason found a blown fuse, and replacing it seemed to help. But this was a persistent issue.
We spent an hour or two in the pits flushing the radiator, which seemed to fix the overheating problem. The VG engine Nissan made seems to be pretty tough. We ran this one a few hard laps with the temp gauge maxed out, and it hung in there.
We also had an intermittent miss that kept popping up again and again. This pretty much ruined Duncan's entire stint. But Travis was able to get maybe 45 mins in where the car ran flawlessly. But when he came in for the driver change and cut the motor off, it never ran right again.
We just weren't able to conquer the intermittent miss. We finally threw in the towel around 1:45am. I think we were able to run approximately 55 laps. I hope to find an official lap count and placement in the next few days. Also, I'm sure some more photos will surface and we'll post 'em up.
We went through some grief due to the shower of sparks from the front brakes. With a night race, the sparks were very apparent, and the tower kept radioing the pit bosses who came and argued with us a bit. They insisted this was indicative of metal on metal, and we were out of pad material. But we had put on fresh Hawk DTC-60 or -70 pads before the race, and we were confident they were ok. Driver's insisted the brakes felt awesome. And in the hot pit, after borrowing Nic's iphone to use as a flashlight (oops, somebody forget the flashlight?) I could see what looked like plenty of pad material and abused but not scarred rotors. We will investigate more and report back, but we are thinking the brakes are ok.
After everyone recovers, I'm sure we'll get the Z rehabilitated and ready for the Chump race in Nov. Or possibly a track event or two before then?
Saturday, June 22, 2013
The Switch - Changes and Kills
First switch:
a) it will be cooler
b) I'm about to drive a race car under the full lights at CMS
Second switch:
The stinkin' kill switch. As it turns out, our beast of a Z31 is very hard to kill. Getting our car's wiring straightened out has lagged behind some of our other efforts. Chump rules require a kill switch be installed that acts as a master power cutoff for the vehicle. Our team has worked on that a bit the last week, but progress has been painful. A late night Thursday night didn't produce a working kill switch. We need to cut both ignition and car power. Just taking the battery out of the circuit won't kill the car since it continues to run off the alternator.
Friday morning, we showed the car off to Husqvarna's marketing department, and then around noon we went over to Eric's to try to finish off the items needed to pass tech. Gates opened at 11am, and tech was to be open from 12-5p. According to the rules, if the car didn't pass tech by 5pm, our team had to leave to go to the driver's meeting, and we would have to tech Sat morning, taking lap penalties while we waited. So we were very "motivated" to get this stuff wrapped up.
12pm passed by. 1pm passed by. 2pm passed by. 3pm passed by. We were kind of getting a little nervous. Finally, Travis and Duncan and Eric applied their brilliant intellects and powers of deductive reasoning and came up with a crazy solution (that seems to work). Jason, sensing a disturbance in the force, swung by Eric's house on his way up from Columbia and helped electrocute Duncan just before we finished. So we got the car to the track by maybe 3:30 or so.
We tech'd our personal safety gear, then put the car in the (long) line for tech inspection. It immediately sprang a leak from a hose, which we had to tweak. You know you've done a heck of a job on the wiring, when the inspector asks you to open your hood and sees the craziness and says "What happened here?"
Other than the nasty (hilarious) comments, we passed tech without any issues.
Photos and more updates coming later.
The Charlotte Motor Speedway track administrator accidentally
double-booked the track. After several hours of negotiations yesterday, the race series administration announced they were going to change our race around.
Instead of racing from 8a-6p, our race would be moved to 8pm-2am. Since
that's cutting our 10hr race down to 6hr, they've compensated us by
giving us a partial refund, and arranged a 2nd race in November
that's 10hr and will be free for those registered for this race.
Although I'm too old to be staying up until 2-3am, at leastb) I'm about to drive a race car under the full lights at CMS
Second switch:
The stinkin' kill switch. As it turns out, our beast of a Z31 is very hard to kill. Getting our car's wiring straightened out has lagged behind some of our other efforts. Chump rules require a kill switch be installed that acts as a master power cutoff for the vehicle. Our team has worked on that a bit the last week, but progress has been painful. A late night Thursday night didn't produce a working kill switch. We need to cut both ignition and car power. Just taking the battery out of the circuit won't kill the car since it continues to run off the alternator.
Friday morning, we showed the car off to Husqvarna's marketing department, and then around noon we went over to Eric's to try to finish off the items needed to pass tech. Gates opened at 11am, and tech was to be open from 12-5p. According to the rules, if the car didn't pass tech by 5pm, our team had to leave to go to the driver's meeting, and we would have to tech Sat morning, taking lap penalties while we waited. So we were very "motivated" to get this stuff wrapped up.
12pm passed by. 1pm passed by. 2pm passed by. 3pm passed by. We were kind of getting a little nervous. Finally, Travis and Duncan and Eric applied their brilliant intellects and powers of deductive reasoning and came up with a crazy solution (that seems to work). Jason, sensing a disturbance in the force, swung by Eric's house on his way up from Columbia and helped electrocute Duncan just before we finished. So we got the car to the track by maybe 3:30 or so.
We tech'd our personal safety gear, then put the car in the (long) line for tech inspection. It immediately sprang a leak from a hose, which we had to tweak. You know you've done a heck of a job on the wiring, when the inspector asks you to open your hood and sees the craziness and says "What happened here?"
Other than the nasty (hilarious) comments, we passed tech without any issues.
Photos and more updates coming later.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Getting Closer
Okay, let's go through the list...
Wiring - Most of this is finished. Temperature gauge and speedometer are now working. Switch panel is installed, with switches (including fan) mounted. Kill switch was installed but needs to be wired.
Harness brackets were installed. Harnesses were installed, but seat isn't yet mounted. Window net brackets are done.
Inside rear view mirror done.
Race pads were installed, and we finished bleeding with fresh high-temp fluid.
Tires were mounted and balanced. Alignment was done.
Holes (I think all?) in firewall were sealed off.
Roll cage is finished. Padding was installed, but we may still need to zip tie pads to tubes.
Fire extinguisher installed.
Coolsuit cooler and tubing installed. Needs some wiring.
Camera wiring needs to be done.
T-top panels were installed.
Steering column was spaced down a bit, and hub installed for quick-release steering wheel.
Exhaust system was modified (again) to comply with rules.
Coolant was drained and replaced with water.
I think we still need some work on the communications system.
We drew names for driving order. Should be:
1) Eric
2) Travis
3) Duncan
4) Jason
5) Brad
We have been really lucky to land three sponsors for this race. Husqvarna, a company that makes premium outdoor power equipment, has been incredibly generous. A local repair shop ASI-Auto Solutions was nice enough to let us use their equipment to align the car and mount and balance the tires. And NCXGraphics did all our vinyl decals for us. Having sponsors like this make things go much more smoothly.
So given that we have a major sponsor like Husqvarna, we will have a very special theme. Don't want to let the cat out of the bag yet, but here's a teaser pic of the car
Wiring - Most of this is finished. Temperature gauge and speedometer are now working. Switch panel is installed, with switches (including fan) mounted. Kill switch was installed but needs to be wired.
Harness brackets were installed. Harnesses were installed, but seat isn't yet mounted. Window net brackets are done.
Inside rear view mirror done.
Race pads were installed, and we finished bleeding with fresh high-temp fluid.
Tires were mounted and balanced. Alignment was done.
Holes (I think all?) in firewall were sealed off.
Roll cage is finished. Padding was installed, but we may still need to zip tie pads to tubes.
Fire extinguisher installed.
Coolsuit cooler and tubing installed. Needs some wiring.
Camera wiring needs to be done.
T-top panels were installed.
Steering column was spaced down a bit, and hub installed for quick-release steering wheel.
Exhaust system was modified (again) to comply with rules.
Coolant was drained and replaced with water.
I think we still need some work on the communications system.
We drew names for driving order. Should be:
1) Eric
2) Travis
3) Duncan
4) Jason
5) Brad
We have been really lucky to land three sponsors for this race. Husqvarna, a company that makes premium outdoor power equipment, has been incredibly generous. A local repair shop ASI-Auto Solutions was nice enough to let us use their equipment to align the car and mount and balance the tires. And NCXGraphics did all our vinyl decals for us. Having sponsors like this make things go much more smoothly.
So given that we have a major sponsor like Husqvarna, we will have a very special theme. Don't want to let the cat out of the bag yet, but here's a teaser pic of the car
 |
| The Chump Z31 gets prettied up |
Friday, June 14, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)