Ahhh Spridgeteers & Thickos,
One must always remember the Team THicko motto (well... one of them....)
"Better to be here and broke rather than not be here at all..."
Now...does that mean "broke" as in no money?
Yep.
Does that mean "broke" as in ya done did busted somepin?
Yep.
Despite mechanical gremlins that plagued me all weekend, it was a very
enjoyable event. Thanks to many who helped out whether it be food, manual
labor, mechanical, music, organization, moral support, etc.
We fought a repeatable miss all weekend...the fact that the miss occured at
the same section of the track (all of the hard corners) tells me we were
fighting a fuel delivery problem. The ironic thing was i was racing the SOS
Sprite street motor...which was rebuilt and never run about 10 years ago. We
partially disassembled it, put it back together, and dropped it in the car
Thurs, only to find no oil pressure while trying to crank it minus ignition.
Despite every trick in the book (they're always hard to get initial oil
pressure it seems) we had ZERO old pressure. Out came the engine, partial
disassemble, and a different oil pump (bothe were new) solved the problem.
THis engine had the Paul A/MorrisService rear engine seal solution done to
it. Paul informed me it had never been done to a race motor (Yikes)...but
since this was a street motor and would only see 6500 rpm, I kept my fingers
crossed. The only leak on the engine was minor weeping from the filler cap
on the valve cover. The engine was one of the tightest/driest I'd ever done.
So, now for the good news/bad news.
We never solved the fuel delivery problem. We fiddled and tinkered and while
were were at it changed out half the ignition just to insure that wasn't
contributing to the problem. Mike GIgante and Bob Kansa were s'posed to co
drive in the enduro. United Airlines managed to sabotage Mike's chances by
losing half his luggage. Bob got 10 minutes of seat time in practice, and
was due to drive the second half of the enduro, but that didn't work out
well.
The enduro started, and damn it, we didn't solve the miss. The plan was to
try to use it as an hour long tuning session of we hadn't fixed it. But,
heres where the gremlins get evil. COming into 1 I was treated with blue
smoke under the hood. In 2 it got worse and I felt the car get a little
squirrely. In 3 I spun in my own oil. I managed to get it off the track with
permission from the corner workers at the track entrance. Turns out, the
seal blew out/failed on the oil filter. We were running 65 lbs of oil
pressure. Brother Don has installed thousands of oil filters in his day, so,
it wasn't likely an installation issue, just a wonky gasket. So, here were
are, back to ZERO oil pressure. I'm hoping agains hope that the bearings got
wiped without taking out the crank... we'll see.
Thanks again to all.
WST
Flounder
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