Spring Time in Monterey

Skip to the "Race report" section if you don't want to read about the wagon saga.

Well it was a very long week that led up to the race weekend. The Friday the week before the race I had the tranny blow up on me, lost all forward gears. I called the tranny guy on Saturday and since this had been the third problem with this rebuilt tranny he said he'd build another one and it would be ready Thursday.

Since I had scheduled to have a 3.73 rear-end put in the car last Monday and since the car wasn't going anywhere until Thursday I figured I'd take the diff out and take it down to the shop to have them put it together for me. Well the old ratio was 2.56 and the differential case wouldn't work with the new gears. Since I was already going to save on the installation and I was going to get a new case anyway I figured I go ahead and get a limited slip (posi) while I was at it. Now Mike at the shop hands me the parts in a bunch of boxes. Figuring that I knew what I was doing he sends me on my way. Instead of asking him to assemble everything I took it home figuring how hard could it be? I hadn't ever done this before so how was I supposed to know.

Well it turns out that it's not the easiest thing to do. First I had to order the bearings. The bearings arrived Tuesday. Then I had to press on the bearings which meant running around to have them pressed on. Then I had to get everything back in to the housing and adjusted correctly. The pinion has a crush sleeve that is supposed to crush to get the right tension on the bearings. It wouldn't crush so I thought that maybe I should have put in the spacers that I had forgotten to install. So I had the bearing pressed off of the pinion. I had the bearing pressed back on with the spacers this time. The crush sleeve still would not crush so it was a problem of running out of threads. Since I had the old crush sleeve and I had added an extra I reused the crush sleeve. This time I was able to snug up the pinion shaft on the bearings.

Next was to get the diff case in to the housing. Now I don't know how many of you have maneuvered a diff around, there heavy! So there I am on my back under the car trying to fit the diff case in. This also requires shims to set things up correctly. Well after some maneuvering I was able to get it installed. It was now time to put the axles in. Guess what? The posi had the wrong axle splines 28 instead of 30. So I had to take the posi out and take it to the shop the next day. On Thursday I picked up the new Auburn limited slip. By the way I had them put the bearings and ring gear on it this time. I had everything back in that night, I had to work didn't I, ready to have the car towed over Friday morning.

The tranny was finally installed by 5pm. They called after their road test and said the gearing was confusing the computer. I had expected speedometer problem but not much more. The way the described the problem it sounded like I was going to have to get an alternate tow rig for the weekend. First we tried to find someone to recalibrate the computer for the new gears. No luck. Next we called half a dozen truck rental places to find something to rent. We found one and reserved for the morning. Next I arranged to have the wagon parked out in the lot where I could check it out and possible take home. I drove it around the block and didn't notice anything majorly wrong. The speedo was off by 50%. So 97 mph on speedo was actual 65 mph on the road. When under heavy load or hard acceleration it didn't shift well. In most cases it shifted fine even while towing.

Race report:

I packed Friday night and was all ready to go to Laguna Seca. Tow down to Laguna went well. I even remembered to cancel the truck reservation. I managed steady pace around 90 mph, oops I mean 60 mph. ;-) The paddock was not very crowded and I was able to find a spot near some of the ITA folks. Practice was at 10:40 Saturday morning and I was on the grid with plenty of time to spare. I was really hoping for some good times at Laguna since we had not run it since before the new headers. Also with the times that I had at Sears I was expecting to break in to 1:40s. Well they let us out on track and warmed up the tires for a lap. I then started pushing speed up, 1:54, 1:52, 1:52, ..., 1:51. I was not able to break in to the 1:40s. I still had the engine stutter problem and I also was locking the left rear wheel going in to turn 2, a hard left hander at the end of the straight. Another problem was the rear was steering itself again. At the end of the session I talked it over with my crew and we would check the rear suspension links first. Then we would check the brakes. Leaving the stutter for last.

He was not able to remove the trailing arm rear link bolt. I got out the breaker bars and was finally able to get the nut off of the bolt. The nut had bottomed on the threads. It turns out that I had put the wrong bolt on and it was to long. I was able to find the correct bolt and we were able to get the right amount of torque on the bolt this time. Previously the bolt was loose and could be turned by hand in it's slot. Don't ask me how I missed it but I did. One thing fixed two more to go.

The brake pads looked okay but Gary thought the caliper was a bit wobbly, worn sliders maybe. I didn't think that would cause the lockup but maybe it could. I thought the one caliper wasn't moving freely on the sliders so I took both calipers off and cleaned and lubed the sliders. The other factor that could cause a problem with braking was the age of the tires. These tires were from last August with 7 race events on them. We put everything back together for Sunday's qualifying. We would leave the stutter for tomorrow.

Another thing that Gary wanted to do was check the weight. We have not checked the weight of this new car and with the red car being under we could be at risk at having a weight problem. The car weighed in at 2460 pounds which was 140 pounds too light, well actually 112 pounds since I way 28 pounds more than the driver add SCCA speced. We put back the passenger seat which weighs 30 pounds. Filled the car with 10 gallons of additional gasoline which is 60 pounds. That still leaves us 22 pounds to add. I have 60 pounds of weights to bolt in. I'll probably bolt in only 35 pounds and run with at least 1/2 a tank of fuel. Still 22 pounds light. We will probably add a stay rod in front and a heavy tow cable. At least with this being a quasi mid engine car adding weight in the front can be a good thing and will help make up the 22 pounds. I can always add more weights to get it just right.

Qualifying was at 9:40 on Sunday. I arrived at 8 and had planned to tackle the stutter. I changed the fuel filter as a first step. I then went to grid and waited for the qualifying session. They released us on to the track and off I went. The car was still a little twitchy but it wasn't steering it's self. The car still seemed to have a stutter during the first lap but it went away so maybe there had been a problem with the filter or it was do to a full tank. I was running in the 1:52s and an occasional 1:51. There was an ITS car in front of me that was holding me up. Although he was able to get in to the 1:50s I wasn't. The braking problem occurred again. Right after I passed him I came in to turn 2 and locked it up again. This time I had severely flat spotted the tire. I wasn't able to get any better time than a 1:51.1. Last year I had 1:50.8 during practice and a 1:51.5 during the race. These times without the headers. I had ended up qualifying 6th in class and 13th overall. Here is the link to the qualifying times:

http://www.sfrscca.org/Results/20030427/gq5.htm

The race was at 2pm which gave us some time to get the spare tires on the car. Stupid me, I had not packed the lug nuts for the spare wheels. So we had to have the tires dismounted and remounted on the correct wheels. No biggy and we were good to go with plenty of time. My family should up around this time and we were able to watch the Spec Miata race together. They had split the SM class from our group and created new group for them. The results for SM are here:

http://www.sfrscca.org/Results/20030427/gq8.htm

http://www.sfrscca.org/Results/20030427/gr8.htm

Well it was time to get suited up and get to the grid. They let us on track and we lined up for our pace lap. As we came around the final turn it felt like we were going to fast for a start and sure enough they made us go around one more time. I had a pretty good start I was able to move from 13th to 10th and put Tachi behind me. Tachi and John were fighting for 6th which I hoped they would continue to do. By the 6th lap the ITS car that I had passed on the first lap got passed me. My tires were starting to go and Tachi was finally able to catch up. I tried to hold on to 5th but on the 9th lap I had to let him by or risk running out of tires and off of the track. I half hoped that I would be able to stay with him and look for an opportunity to catch him towards the end. Unfortunately I was not able to although I could still see at the end there was no way to catch him. I ended up 10th overall and 6th in class. 10th because an ITS car had spun and lost his position. My fastest lap was a 1:51.5 and Tachi had a 1:51.2. The fastest ITA car had turned a 1:49.4 during the race. Here are the results from the website:

http://www.sfrscca.org/Results/20030427/gr5.htm

http://www.sfrscca.org/Results/20030427/gy5.htm

Some final thoughts on this weekend's results. On the braking problem:

1) It could be that I'm overdriving the car. In the two places that I'm having trouble I'm going in to a turn at over 100 mph and in turn 2 probably 108-112 mph. I may not have learned how to properly setup for those turns carrying that much speed in.

2) It could be the brake calipers or brake bias. We'll have to test that out during the next event.

The next event is on May 17-18 at Thunderhill. I plan to bring two rebuilt calipers and brake lines to the track. I've also ordered new tires for the event. If I still have a braking problem we'll put the replacement calipers and brake lines on. If I still have a problem after the calipers I'll have to consider putting in a bias adjuster. Thunderhill will also give us a chance to see what the car can do at that track with the new headers. In preparation for the next event we'll also have come up with a way to bring the car's weight in to spec.

Spring Time in Monterey - 04/26/03