Project Yellow Racing: An experiment in sleep deprivation (oh and there was some racing involved too!)

Final Preparations and Packing:  Race week began with making some minor fixes to the car. You know like removing the transmission because you think your slipping clutch is due to the fact that you might have put it on backwards.... (Turns out I am not that  bad of a mechanic and can read the lettering "Flywheel Side" that is stamped on the clutch friction plate.

       One week prior to the race PYR finally got the car off the jack stands and did some testing at our private test track. This is also known as running at our home base's apartment complex's parking lot. The speed bumps really do limit what how fast you are willing to go, especially with 22 year old control and tie rods.  During this limited testing our tester thought something didn't feel right. It seemed that there was just not much forward bite when the motor was bogged down. (Signs pointing to a slipping clutch) Also heard was some sort of grinding when the clutch was engaged on down shifts. Both of these problems and a check to the fourms resulted in turning up a post that had noticed the same symptoms, the problem: a clutch disc installed backwards. Thinking the clutch change was bad this led to the removal of the transmission for the second time. As the pressure plate was removed all eyes turned to the captain, aka dead man if he did in fact put the clutch in wrong. It turns out the clutch was installed correctly. So everything was put back together and a night was called. This ends tuesday night, two... scratch that at 2:30 in the am it makes it one day before the car is on the trailer and headed to Houston.  

      Wednsday afternoon was spent doing minor things like putting the numbers on the car and trying to decorate it to our plan. The problem was that its Colorado and you know what spray paint does not like cold. So when the sun sets and it drops 30 degrees it takes a while for paint to dry. (However it did give a cool efect on our one sponsor's logo. (Thanks for letting us use that welder again!) After everyone got the decorations to the point that made it look like we put some effort into it we called it a night. This is also technically Thursday morning ~1 am. After we packed all the tools and spares we thought we would need for the race weekend.

     Thursday at 5 am we meet up and loaded the truck with the gear, put the car on the trailer, and headed out. PYR is based in Colorado Springs, Colorado so the trip is about 1000 miles and about 17 hours on the road. Towing a car adds to this. We arrived in Houston arround 1 am Friday morning. As for the travel here is one note for all those following along at home: DON"T SPEED THROUGH TEXAS! Out support vehical found this out the hard way. After folowing Sandeep for about 5 hours Ben and I had this conversation:

Justin: (Following Sandeep through Dalhart, TX) You know he speeds at wierd times.

Ben: Yea I kinda noticed that too.

Justin: These cops here don't have too much to.....

Ben and Justin: Cop!

This story ends with a sherriff speeding past us to give Sandeep a ticket from the man. This was the second person that was pulled over directly in front of us on the dive to Houston, the other just some random guy in a silver Eclipse.

     Other than proving that some of us are scofflaws we arrived with no other incidents.