Greetings all,
I just completed a full race weekend. On Saturday and Sunday, I raced the
GP 1600 at Waterford Hills. On Saturday, the track was dry, and I qualified
over 2 seconds faster than my previous outing, still with old slicks. My
new Avon slicks are in, but the tire guys have been having a hard time
getting the beads to seat due to the stiff sidewall on the tires and the
strange rim design I have. I may be buying new rims before it's all said
and done. My race on Saturday was successfully run, and my lap times were
consistent. Pulling into the pits after the race, I found that I could not
keep the gearbox in first gear anymore. Well, if I held the shift level in
first, and slipped the clutch a lot, I could use 1st. We drained gearbox
oil and didn't seen any fragments in the fluid, so we put fresh fluid in and
decided to run the car on Sunday.
Sunday's races were cold and raining. I was able to get along ok without
1st gear, but the Yoko A032R tires were useless in the rain. So much for
that experiment. I was able to finish both races, and there were lot's of
cars in the race group that didn't finish. The transmission survived.
On Monday I took the street 1600 to an autocross. The car is basically
stock, but with headers I get to run in CSP. With my street tires I was
only 5-6 seconds slower than the really fast guys. I got four runs in, and
had a blast. The weather was beautiful, which made up for a cold and damp
Saturday and Sunday.
I now have some work to do on the race car. I'll be pulling the engine and
transmission to pull apart the middle close ratio 5 speed to fix what is
wrong with 1st gear. I also need to track down a new 3 stud top for the
radiator fill 'stack'. I seems the fitting for the overflow has cracked,
and there doesn't seem to be much material to try brazing it again. I also
need to start working on my carbs, as the engine tends to bog between 3-4k
rpm.
Happy Roadstering,
--
Chris Coker
69 1600 SPL311-24529 <http://members.home.net/cfcoker/roadster.html>
6? 1600 GP Race Car <http://members.home.net/cfcoker/racecar.html>
Royal Oak, MI
|