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The Last Glorious Weekend of the TR Season

To: triumphs@Autox.Team.Net
Subject: The Last Glorious Weekend of the TR Season
From: Bob Lang <LANG@ISIS.MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 11:54:24 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: fot@Autox.Team.Net
Hi All.

Up here in the Northeast, was were blessed with awesome weather this
weekend past and coincidentally a kind of a wrap-up event held by New
England Region SCCA that actually was for a good cause. 

In short, there was a two day autocross/rallye/Solo I and road race 
ostensibly billed as "The Race Against Luekemia". The AutoX raised 
something like $1600 for a local New Hampshire charity named "The Why Me 
Foundation" - sort of like "Make a Wish". Way to go. Not sure about how 
much money was raised in the other events, but figure another $2k or so.

Triumph turnout was actually pretty low - but there were some notable 
folks that showed up to road race. These included, but were not limited 
to Tony Martin and his GT3 TR6, Doug Fisher and his FP Spitfire as well 
as a really nice GT6 (running GT3) and a few other Spitfires - all FP 
except the GP car of Bob Beaulieu. That was for the road racing.

For the Autocross there were exacly three Triumphs, Bob Totten and his DM 
'64 Spitfire LeMans replica, Randy Clark and his '80 TR7 DHC and yours 
truely in a '74 TR6, D Street Prepared. The original plan was to build a 
team of all Triumphs for Sunday's "team challenge", but Totten had to 
take the day off - the result of having the flu after his journey to Indy 
and the VSCDA event there... something about rain and cold weather. So, 
Randy Clark and I teamed up with two Jaguar E-Types and called ourselves 
the "Coventry 'Crossers". FWIW, Gary Hagopian and Jim Roberge drive thier 
Jags pretty aggressively - Kool Cats.

My event went pretty well. Lots of runs - I presonally donated at least 
$25 to the charity, as all runs cost $3 and the money all went to the 
charity. After driving a front wheel drive car for almost half the 
season, my first couple of runs were pretty "thrilling" and I was able to 
spin the TR6 and plow off course in a few spots - in my own defense, I 
can state that three year old Hoosiers still stick pretty well but not as 
well as the brand new ones I ran at the Solo II Nationals... However, as 
the day went on, the times dropped and pretty soon I was back to my times 
of close to 1 second off the leaders. I _must_ get my Quaiffe or Detroit 
"locker" in that car for next year... maybe a new set of sneakerZ too.

The ride home with the top down was totally great. Maybe like it would 
have been in the old days, but I can only imagine what it might have been 
like to be racing back then. ;-) Not that I'm young or anything - I just 
wasn't racing then. 

Sunday was pretty much the same. But with two differences.

My first runs were pretty darn close to the leaders and I was able to 
keep the times dropping. But only fractionally - one of the front-wheel 
drive cars (ironically the one I drove for the better part of this 
season) was able to get all the elements of the course "right" and create 
a one-second advantage to the rest of the field - and nobody ever 
figured that out so, victory to the Scirocco. With _nine_ runs, I cannot 
say that I didn't have a chance.

However, my last run was to be a defining moment in my TR6 autocross 
season. As soon as I get the November edition of the "New England 
Triumph" out, I can start to do a post-mortem.

As I entered the first "sweeper" turn, the car was running perfectly - 
lots o' power and even a little oversteer. Then there was a tight corner, 
I backed off the throttle, braked slightly and rotated the car right in 
exactly the right spot. When I tromped on the gas, I could tell right 
away that I was down at least one or two cylinders. I tried "back 
pedalling" to see if I could "clear it", but the revs did not drop - 
oh-oh! Stuck throttle??? I managed to drive off course under power by 
modulating my speed with the clutch and brake.

I opened the hood and immediately saw that all the linkages were 
working perfectly but that they did not appear completely closed. While I 
was playing with the linkage, I noticed that the front carb was _waaaaaay 
hot_!

Here's what I know - I had a carb fire in the number one carb. Not too 
bad, but two Aux. venturi's are literally toast. As well as the air 
filter and the gaskets for the carb to intake manifold. The resulting 
temps were hot enough to melt the pot-metal, so I wound up injesting 
several "blobs" of melted metal into cylinder one. Hopefully, there's no 
damage, but I won't be surprised if I pull the head and find a problem 
with a valve seat or something. FWIW, I can see some silvery speckles on 
top of the number one piston, so I think what might have happened is that 
the cylinder went critically lean and burnt a valve enough so that a 
backfire occurred through the carb and subsequently the flame spread over 
to the number two throat and was hot enough to melt that venturi also. I 
cannot see any damage in the number two hole - but I have not yanked the 
head yet.

So, my "lean burn" problem finally became bad enough to screw things up 
in there.

And it happened on the last run of the last event of the season. Colin 
Chapman would be proud - it lasted "just long enough, no longer".

Now I get to do a teardown and try to figure out what happened. Not to 
mention that I also get to send a few more hundred $$$ to Joe Weber et al.

And for the first time in the three seasons that I have autocrossed 
heavily, I had to get the car towed back to the barn. Not bad, really, 
when you consider I've put 20k+ miles on the car and competed in around 
50 or 60 autocrosses - even won a few - in that time. Triple-A-Plus came 
in handy, as it was 73 miles from the race track to my house.

Will it be a trailer queen next year? Probably not. I'll leave the 
trailer thing to Khartu. I like to drive this car. Will I dump the 
Webers? Probably. I'm getting the feeling that the Webers are just not 
suited to the in between type of driving that I do, so I'll probably pick 
up a set of SU HS6's over the winter and get those tweaked up a bit.

... unless I win the lottery. If so, we're talkin' fuel injection.

Later,
rml
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