We got to the track about 12:15am today and were getting ready to get some sleep when Bryan's girlfriend called to say that someone had broken into her house and ransacked the place. It looked like we would have to head back into SoCal to help get things back together. They talked for a while while she was waiting for the police to arrive and then decided that she could handle the situation and Bryan can continue racing. I woke up about 7:00am and the gates were not open yet at WSIR. Some kind of mix up had delayed their normal opening so there was a long line of race cars, RVs, etc. all waiting to get in. I spent some time talking with Doug Hayashi while he was eating his Apple Jacks (Apple Jacks and Fruit Loops are the official breakfast cereals of OTC) and he seemed a bit upset that we almost put him into second place at Las Vegas. Seems he was too busy watch Dearing in front and not keeping an eye in his mirrors. About 7:30 the gates opened and we setup up next to Doug Hayashi and the Pulp Racing crew. Wayne arrived around 8:00am and spent the next 2 hours peeling the racing stickers off his EVO. He's planning on going back to the dealer on his hands and knees begging to have his engine replaced under warranty - for the second time! Keep peeling boys, no one will ever know it was on a racetrack. Yeah riiight. (Post Script: the dealer denied Wayne's warranty claim - what a surprise!) Bryan and I did some Jethro Bodine engineering and bypassed the heat exchanger in the radiator to see if that would solve out overheating problems. We blocked off the exchanger with some AN fittings and hose and then ran the cooler lines back into themselves. . Come an listen to a story 'bout a man named Jed... Hillbilly engineering. In the first session the coolant temps stayed around 150 on the track and the oil temps climbed and stabilized at 240. Ambient temperature was around 50 degrees. Bryan turned a series of low 1:28s which put us third overall behind Erik Messley in the Flamemobile and John Dearing in his GTS Viper and first in U3 (since no other U3 cars had run yet). Typical Group 3 grid for the entire event - Datsun, RX7, Mustangs, Cobras, WSR, Vipers, NSX, and Corvettes Between sessions we decided to add a little more negative camber to the left rear to help with a gradually increasing oversteer that Bryan had to deal with. We figured it was the Hoosier S04's getting greasy. We figured wrong as we were to find out later. During the second session things started to go wrong. First, Bryan complained that the car was getting looser as the session progressed and then the coolant temps started to climb again after 5 hard laps. Oil temps stayed at 240 but it appeared that our old cooling problem had resurface. This is really starting to suck. Again, between sessions we bled and refilled the cooling system and decided to completely block off the cooling system bypass. The bypass was originally recommended by Jim Thompson to get more system pressure. I had installed a .063" restrictor to minimize its affects but now we wanted to get rid of anything that reduces the cooling system's effectiveness. Yet more Jethro engineeering... The extra camber we added to the left rear didn't seem to help so Bryan jacked the car up and readjusted it back to the original setting. As he was doing this I noticed a bunch of fluid on the inside of the rear wheel which is not a place you would normally see fluid. Fluid where no fluid should be. We pulled the tire and wheel and saw that the Penske shock tube had backed off (unthreaded) from its mount, lost pressure through the o-ring, and dumped out all of it's fluid! Shock's no good and will need to be resealed, refilled, and pressurized again. Red Loctite and lots of torque had failed over a year of racing. Another item to add to the pre-event checklist. All the shiny is very expensive Silkolene. The oversteering issue Bryan had to drive through was a failing shock, not greasy tires. We're done for the day and have to find: 1. Silkolene 2.5 wt shock oil. 2. Nitrogen bottle. 3. A really clean place to disassemble the shock. Randy, one of the crew for Rylan's aborted effort and also crewing for one of the T3 S2000 teams offered us their small Nitrogen bottle. We gladly accepted and loaded it into the trailer. Before we left the Vishnu/Ken Dobson U3 EVO returned to run laps after they spent all night fixing their crank sensor problem. Bryan timed a couple of their laps which were in the 33s, so it looks like we have them covered. When we left at 2:00pm we were still first in class and third overall at WSIR and for the whole event. Now we have to find the Penske West distributor in Lodi California. He's stashed a quart of Silkolene and a special shock tool in the bushes near his front door. We don't expect to get there until 7:00pm, two hours after they close. We'll rebuild the shock in the trailer first thing in the morning at Thunderhill. | Open Track Challenge 2004 | Back to Bench Racing |