I sent this to the wrong address (spridgets-owner@autox....) So here goes
again.
Mike
-----Original Message-----
From Mike Gigante [mailto:mikeg at vicnet.net.au]
Sent: Friday, September 20, 2002 12:08 AM
To: Spridgets
Firstly, a correction:
>Roofless racing is one of the 2 teams from the AHSDC (www.ahsdc.org) along
>with "Bitches on Wheels" - the all girl team.
Well, it was "Bitches with Grunt", but that was last year -- this year they
called themselves "The ex-wives club"!!!
OK, so I travel up to Winton early Sat morning, aiming to arrive at 7:15 or
so (5am start). I'm about 15 minutes from Winton when the (tandem) trailer
loses a wheel so after finding and collecting the errant wheel (couldn't
find the brake drum), I limped into Winton with a tripod trailer. Still
on-time, but not a good start... All 5 wheel studs sheared off!!! We think
an idiot with a rattlegun overtightened the wheel nuts at the last tyre
change...
So, scrutineering (tech inspection), and I get caught by a mid-year change
in the harness regs. I haven't competed for a couple of months now, so I
missed the initial inspection window and had to fit a different harness.
Luckily I still had the passenger seat and navigator's harness still in the
car so I switched them over. I hate mid-year rule changes...
Since the car has had a bunch of work done since the last outing, I thought
I'd just take it out for the min number of laps to qualify (6 laps) and then
come in and check for leaks/levels, adjust anything that needed it etc etc.
I went out on my *old* *old* hoosier Street TDs (1997!). Slippery as
anything, and slow to boot, but that didn't matter in this case. The car was
running hot which was a worry. I had fitted an electric water pump, and
instead of being better, it was worse. (The other *big* benefit of the
electric water pump is that you can keep it, along with the thermo fan,
running after you shut the engine down after coming into the pits). There
was also fluid splattered all over the engine bay and it was a mixture of
oil and water (oops). I have a single catch tank for both oil and coolant
and there was a nasty looking mixture in there. However the oil in the
engine was coolant free, and the coolant in the radiator was oil free. So,
OK, we did a compression test just to be sure: 210, 200, 170, 200, not so
good, looking like it might be an incipient gasket failure.
In the meantime, while I was getting ready to do a head gasket change, Mike
Trathen's car came in with clutch problems -- no clutch at all. So postpone
the head gasket change and help with an engine pull on Mike's car. He was
using a "spring type" clutch (not the solid center), and the spring housing
broke and the spring dropped out and fouled the operation. So put in one of
the spares, replaced the throwout bearing which looked very ratty, refit the
engine etc etc. Eventually I get to my gasket change, no obvious gasket
damage, but change it anyhow, reassemble, do tappets, put heat cycle on
engine, retorque head and redo tappets. OK, so the whole of qualifying is
over now, so I don't get to see if the problem is fixed, nor do I get to do
some real laps in anger with my newish Yoko A032Rs.
Mike and Peter Brice had done good practice/qualifying sessions and had set
conistent baseline times. I had 6 or 7 shitty laps, so my baseline had to be
on the last Winton meeting I had done (Oct 2001). I also had to hope that
the problem really was cured...
Why is this important? Well, this race is a handicap race -- each driver
nominates a lap time and based on those times, each team is "gifted" a
certain number of laps over the 6 hrs. If you run slower than your nominated
time, then you have effectively stolen laps from your team. The catch is
that if you run a lap faster than your nominated time, it doesn't count at
all!!! Since we are all mad racers, you can't expect us to try anything less
than 100% so choosing an accurate lower bound for your laps times in heavy
(high speed differential) traffic is important. Since the car was a bit of
an unknown, we decided to run my car first -- that way if the problem still
existed, we had the maximum time to fix it.
So Sunday morning I have a bad case of the flu, I feel sh*thouse. After tech
inspection, wash the car, get car lined up in pitlane for the start etc. I
had a urgent trip to the outhouse and had to rush back to the car (late),
pushed aside while I strapped in. Missed out fitting my drink bottle (sh*t,
it was a hot day too). Got going and joined the back of the grid. I wasn't
totally unhappy with this arrangement -- my car is a lot slower than Peter
and Mike's cars, and while they qualified up near the front, I knew I was
going to be totally overrun by a bunch of much faster cars at the start.
Heck I was surrounded by Porsche GT3s, a race MGB GTV8 on slicks, etc etc.
However, the kindly organisers ponder for a few minutes then decide I should
go back up to my place (6th) on the grid.
A couple of parade laps, then stop for the *standing start* (not these wimpy
rolling starts!). I actually got a good start and placed the car in the
safest position for the tight esses after the start. Held my position in the
bendy bits, kept out of the way on the straight bits until I found my "place
in the crowd". Some good racing, car running hot (105F), avoided t-boning a
MGB that spun, and generally having a racing good time with consistent lap
times.
Did I mention it was hot? And that I had the flu? Instead of doing an 80
minute stint, I am fading after 55 minutes and come in early. Lots of
fluids, a couple of aspirin, and a sit in the shade for 15 minutes before I
look at the car.
Some oil in catchtank, not enough to be concerned about. Coolant level OK.
Compression test -- damn, worse than Saturday! 145psi on #3 now, and low on
#4 as well.. Decide to continue on because of the rules about driving time:
In a N car team, each driver is meant to do (T = 6hrs/N) -- the handicap is
based on this, but any driver can do no more than T + 10 minutes. Not so bad
in a 5 car team, but in a 3 car team it means that we almost always must
have the "right" car available -- we can only cover for a total of 20
minutes out of 6 hrs. So, I have to go out and do a *minimum* of another 45
minutes to avoid putting our team into a losing position.
Peter Brice's stint seemingly went well, as did Mike Trathen's until he
comes
in with only 4th gear: the spare throwout bearing had disintegrated. Another
engine pull for Mike's car. I went back out again for my 2nd stint but had
to
come in early with a severe misfire. Unfortunately there was no car in the
garage to take over!!! Mike's car had the engine out, and Peter had
discovered
a serious oil leak from a cracked oil filter housing. He was in the midst of
working on that and so we had no-one able to go out onto the track!
Most of the helpers were busy with the other cars, so one of our club
members who was acting as an official for the weekend came over to take a
look. After 15 minutes of checking out all sorts of things he spotted the
obvious problem -- the studs holding the weber on the manifold had worked
themselves loose. the car was running lean and misfiring badly. So we
tighten them up and head out -- but we lost 20 minutes or about 12 handicap
laps effectively putting us out of the running (we were climbing through the
field up to that point). Jack, our team manager divided up the remain time
between us and I went out and finished my fair share of laps. Mike went out
but only got 2 laps in before I had to go out again. (Peter wasn't quite
ready yet) I did another 15 minutes or so before Mike rejoined. He didn't
last too long however before his gearbox completely threw in the towel! I
did bring a spare SC/CR box, but they'd had enough engine pulls for the
weekend and there was probably only 1.5 hrs to go now... Peter went out and
should have run through to the finish except that the mounting bracket for
his panhard rod broke and he was black flagged -- so I went out and finished
the race. I had done about 2:35, 25 minutes more than I was allowed (so 15
or 16 laps didn't count), and I was absolutely stuffed. I would have been
stuffed without the flu, but when I stopped it hit me like a ton of
bricks...
We came nowhere (2nd last), but I got lots of tracktime, had some really
good racing. I had been hanging out to get back on the track so this was
welcome. I limped home with a 2 wheel trailer (I took the other wheel off
that axle and redistributed the weight as much as possible).
Now I have to get the car sorted out before the historic festival back at
Winton in a few weeks (there is an all Healey series there).
The girls did much better than us -- in 20th place (we were 33rd), all 3 of
their cars running pretty reliably for the event (apart from a generator
that spat the dummy and a hot gearbox that was hard to shift).
We'll be back next year for one of the really enjoyable events on the
calender!
cheers, Mike
/// unsubscribe/change address requests to majordomo@autox.team.net or try
/// http://www.team.net/mailman/listinfo
/// Archives at http://www.team.net/archive/spridgets
|