http://www.sfrscca.org/Results/20030803/
Hello all,
Well my
experience at
After
bringing it in and doing a once over we think we discovered what it was, a
cracked distributor cap. We replaced the cap and rotor. I guess we were now
ready for the qualifying session.
Qualifying turned
out to be a different story. The miss was apparently resolved at least the
heavy miss at high RPM and load. The car though did not feel that stable and I
was feeling that the maybe the hub/axles were going or I was getting overly
paranoid. Either way the nagging feeling or concern brought me in one lap early
and running 1.5 seconds slower than in practice.
Preparation
for Sunday's race included changing the front brake pads and putting
"new" used hub/axles. The pads were shot from the axle problems at
Waterford Hills and several full events on them to boot. The hub/axles were
replaced to give me some sense of sanity regarding the state of the axles.
I drove in
on Saturday to get a "hardship" test lap before the final session of
the day. I managed to get the brakes pretty hot. I hoped it would be enough for
them to work properly on Sunday. We would also lower the tire pressure to
similar pressures we had run in the past. We had a few extra pounds in the
tires and I'm not sure that I liked that.
Sunday was
another day with high hopes to get back to my fast time this year of 1:50.7. Well the
reality was different. I had an okay start but was not able to take advantage
of my usual starts and was following more cars than I liked. A combination of
missing the quick pace of the pole car and being in a very competitive field I
guess. There were 8 ITA cars running together, 1st - 8th, with 16 ITAs overall.
Needless to say nobody was giving up anything in to turn number 2. Ron Carol in
his Integra was fast in the straights but bunched us up in the turns. On the
third lap I tried to go in deep in to turn 2 and the pads I had hoped were
bedded were not. That and my setup, I think I really need to loosen the rear at
LS and down shifting early brought the rear around sharply. I lost more than 11
spots and had to do my best to get back to where I started in 6th spot. I slowly
worked my way up and was running 9th on the 11th lap when I hit something slick
coming out of turn 9, probably oil from John Schmale's car. This put me back 3
cars with only 3 laps to go. I wasn't able to make up any more positions and
finished 10th in class and 19th overall. Results are here: http://www.sfrscca.org/Results/20030803/gr5.htm
http://www.sfrscca.org/Results/20030803/gy5.htm
Well Sunday
wasn't over and there was another race in the afternoon. That second spin had
me thinking something had broken but as it turned out it must have been oil.
There was still a heavy vibration under heavy right hand cornering. Not sure what
it was so we started checking. In checking the left rear hub for any problems
we noticed that the rear suspension was moving up as we pushed up. Now usually
this is not possible. The Koni shocks tend to be difficult to move up and down.
The right side was behaving normally it was only the left side that moved. We
suspect the shock has gone bad and in particular at least has lost it's gas
charge if not more. Maybe this was the cause of the vibration? Well since
everything else in the suspension seemed okay I was going to leave a rear hub
problem out of mind as a possibility. I did however change the ignition control
module since there was still a miss being reported by some of the spectators. I
also so some tach fluctuations so it was something I could change that might
effect this too. Now this almost turned out to be a mistake. The connectors
were all very fragile and I managed to break the tabs on two of them. The coils
resistance readings checked out so I didn't change that this time.
The second
race start went a little better. I was in a group of 6 ITA cars running, 1st
and 2nd were pulling away, in which I was running 4th (6th ITA). We changed
places several times over the next few laps. It was great racing! Matt and
Robert made especially good use of minor mistakes I made. I also was not as
aggressive in passing as I would have liked, but without 110% confidence in the
car. I wasn't interested in making big mistakes. John dropped back because he
ended up stuck in 5th gear on the 6th lap. I had worked up to 5th place but
traffic and nearly overrunning turn 5 let Robert get back past again so I
finished 6th, 11th overall. I didn't get a chance to check the tach to see if
the fluctuations had changed. It was pretty busy out there. :-) Results
for this race are here:
http://www.sfrscca.org/Results/20030803/gr5b.htm
http://www.sfrscca.org/Results/20030803/gy5b.htm