SCCA 25^th Annual PCRRC 11/08-9/2002

Well I made it to Willows (ThunderHill) around 3:30 Saturday morning. I had spent the last three nights working 'till early in the morning. It's been raining here for the last several days so my decision to work on the car in the driveway and not in the garage turned out not to be a good decision. Luckily we had the EZ-up so I could keep the car under the shade. :-) It was still pretty wet working on the car this past week.

I little background (go to the bottom for the short version):

I was able to get the car aligned Friday night and had attempted to have them bleed the brakes. The front left caliper didn't have any fluid coming out of the bleeder so we assumed it was the check valve. It turned out to be some other strange problem. Gary and I checked the right caliper when I got back from the shop and it did have fluid coming out of the bleeder so it couldn't be the check valve. I next opened the line going in to the left caliper and it had fluid. So on a lark I opened the bleeder and it now had fluid coming out, go figure. Well anyway that was one more thing out of the way.

We packed up the car trying to make sure that we packed all the correct spares and few parts that still needed to be put on the car. Like the throttle cable bracket, miscellaneous body panels, tail lights, belts, seat. etc. Seeing that it was about midnight and everything was packed it was time to drive up to Willows.

Back at Willows:

After I settled in to the room and I went back to the car to put on the fenders and side skirts. I'd leave the rear lights for later in the morning. I thought about getting the seat ready, I still need to get it to fit with the new cage, I decided to do it later in the morning. I had the belts to install so I took the two lap belts back to the room. Well it was 4:30 so I put off doing the belts too. Well I awoke at about 6:40 in the morning the wake-up call was for 7 so it turns out I didn't need it. :-) I setup the lap belts before going to the track. It looked like the rain had finally stopped and we'd have sun for the day.

Well I got to the track and met up with Gary, my crew, and we got to unloading the car. Now all we had to do was put the belts in, rear lights, seat, roll cage padding, numbers, get teched, get a log book, etc. We needed to have all this done before 9:30 if we wanted to make qualifying or 11:10 if I was going to use ITX group 1 for a shake out.

Well even with the help of my competitors we missed 9:30. Then of course the clouds blew in and it started raining. We hadn't setup the EZ-up because it wasn't going to rain was it? Well it didn't look good for 11:10 but I was gong to try. I finished the seat and then the belts. Gary had the numbers on and had torqued the wheels. We finally put the EZ-up up because it was getting miserable. I finally got the seat in and the belts. We tie wrapped the loose wires and other sundry items like the dash and hood release. We were almost ready to get ready to go to tech. It was around noon now so it was now the race at 2:15 that we had left to push for. On of the last things we found we needed to finish up was the battery tie down. I had the little block that the bolt goes through but not the bolt. Well we spent another 30 minutes getting the darn thing in. It finally was in and I headed down to tech. It was still raining so tech actually went fast. I did all of the teching in their motorhome. I was given a log book and I was going to make the race! Yeah!

We now had to get ready for the race. Rain tires or dry tires, that was the question. We decided to hang rain tires on the corners and wait it out. We went back on forth on whether it was going to rain or not. The sun finally came out and we decided for dry tires. I was already suited up, I had put it on for the 9:50 qualifying that we didn't make. I hopped in the car and went to put on the belts. Of course I hadn't actually checked to make sure that I had set them right, and I hadn't. I needed to jump out and fix the shoulder belts. We were now missing the grid and would be sent out at the very end of the group when the race started, no warm up lap.

I was now waiting in the hot pits for the group to come by. They were not given the green flag and the yellow came out indicating an additional lap before the green. They let me go out with the first part of the split group and follow the Pinto at the tail end. The car was handling horribly I had to "steer" the car straight. Braking was off to but that was expected since we never finished the bleeding. The green flag fell and we were off. I was able to pass the Pinto and several other cars including second place ITB. I picked up some additional ITA positions as my competitors ended up off the track in the mud. So I think at this point I had worked up to 4th or 5th place. The track was drying up but with my handling I didn't have the confidence to take significant advantage of the situation. I was starting to close on the first place ITB with the second place still on my heels. As I followed the ITB in to the turn he slowed more than I would have so I down shifted. As I exited the turn I went sideways. I hit the gas and almost saved it, oops to much saving and I snapped spun the other direction. This let the second place ITB pass. I got back on track and tried to catch up again. At this point some ITC cars and some spin and continues started catching me. The first ITC dived in on me so I let him go passed and off the track. :-) Well I was getting back in to what little groove I had going this day. I even went for 5th gear when I found I couldn't get 5th gear and caught 3rd instead. I probably over revved the car to around 7400 when this happened. Hope I didn't hurt anything. I was still managing catch up when I spun in the same place again. This time I sent two ITCs off course when they tried to avoid hitting me. I was off in the mud. I had kept the motor going so I was on the gas slinging mud as I tried to keep from getting stuck. It worked and I was back on the course. I had now fallen back to 7th in class so the spinning had been costly. When the checkered fell I finished 7th although one ITA was assessed a penalty of 7 laps but for some reason kept 4th place on the results sheet. So I think I should be listed as 6th place and not 7th. I'll look to see if that is corrected.

So as you can see a trying week with an okay weekend result. I wanted to be a better condition to give my friends some true competition but everybody tells me that I should be happy with what we did accomplish. So I guess I'll be happy. :-)

What we found out was going on with the suspension was a bad steering rack. I had swapped about everything else with known parts. This was one of the exceptions. The other thing that we found was a loose upper control arm bolt. During the alignment the front left hadn't needed adjusting so they never checked those bolts. We hadn't torqued them because we thought they would be torqued during the alignment. Never assume by the way. I also had forgotten to torque the cable nuts on the shift cables hence the problem with the 5th gear.

Well that's my story. It looks like that with some more adjusting we'll be able to get the car ready to be competitive again next year. The good news is the transmission worked fine as did the engine.

l8r g8rs

http://racer.net/itafiero/RacingWeb/2002Pictures/Picture%20001.jpg

Short version:

I went to the track. We put a bunch of items on the car, last minute. We missed qualifying and the ITX group for practice. I passed tech and got a log book. Switched tires for rain and then switched back to dries. Adjusted the shoulder belts and missed grid. Waited in the pits for the cars to come by at the start and follow at the very end of the pack. Went out at the end of the first part of the split group on to a damp track under yellow. The car handled horribly. Got a checkered worked my way through some traffic passed a couple of ITBs and some other cars. Managed to work my way up to 4th or 5th. Spun a couple of times and went back 6th or 7th. Finished in 6th I believe the results show me as 7th but I think there was a mistake in the results. The car finished with any scratches so it still looks nice. Spent the night in Willows and drove home on Sunday.

SCCA 25th Annual PCRRC 11/08-9/2002

SCCA 25^th Annual PCRRC 11/08-9/2002