Friday (Practice, Tech Inspection, and BS Inspection)

Friday morning was spent making some final preparations and installing our new toy borrowed from work: a new Traqmate Data Acquisition System. Now we can be just like the pros and have our own personal engineers and Data Acquisition Guys to get all technical and stuff. Being a group of engineers and wanna-be engineers this could be the coolest thing to be added to the car. This system has a gps unit that is equipped with accelerometers inside a box that you mount to the car that when used together can give you car position on track and show things like entry speed, cornering speed, line, and exit speed. The collected data can be very useful when trying to get the most out of a group of drivers. After wrapping up the installation of the Traqmate we then loaded the car and gear up and headed out to the race track. 30 min later we had the car unloaded warmed up and headed out for our first laps. This is where the trouble starts. I took the car around for 5 laps and came in with the car hot and down on power. About just as I got my race suit off it had cooled enough to start looking for issues. A few minutes later we checked the spark plug wires and noticed that the #1 wire was not connected, I suppose that is why we had a few loud backfires and couldn’t pull more than 60 down the straight. I then went out for 3 more laps and then noticed the temp was rather high as well as a turtle (the actual animal not a slow driver) who decided to wander out on the track between the tire chicane and right hander over the hill. He was drivers left when I came through the first time and what do you know, the little guy actually made it! However one team hit two turtles during the weekend and a PETA rep was reported to be looking into turtle slaughter charges, while some of the more “rural” teams were wondering if there was a chance for some turtle stew.

 So anyway let’s get back on track and get back to the overheating problems.  We started thinking it was more air in the system and filled the radiator again after letting it cool for a while. We added water back to the radiator and the catch can and sent Ben out for his laps. Ben ran for 3-4 laps and the car got hot again and started to boil over again. Now we know there is some sort of cooling issue. We sent Tim and Sandeep to the parts store for some supplies, a new thermostat, some silicone rtv, for making seals, and a new radiator cap to replace our dry rotted one. After losing a hour waiting for the parts we were filling the radiatior back up with water and trying to remove the air once again. We then sent Ian and Tim out for their laps. The new radiator cap kept the car from violently boiling over so this gave us some hope for a fix before the race starts tomorrow. Since we knew we had cooling issues it was time to attempt our tech and BS inspections.

Last year this proved to be harder than we thought, with it taking a few attempts to get through tech ( we had too much antifreeze in the system and a loose seat mount) not to mention the 20 lap penalty we incurred during BS. This year with all the flushing and filling of the radiator to get air out there was no chance that we had any coolant remaining, and we took care of the seat back at the shop before we left so there should be no major problems with tech this time! We passed tech on the first try with no issues at all. Now the only thing keeping us from making it to the track with no penalty laps was the BS inspection. Last year I got railed for not having receipts for the work I did, as well as not having a bill of sale. This resulted in a 20 lap (unjustified) penalty.  With the wheels of justice able to be bought in this race, (and after only having $3 last time)  I made sure to have both a craft pack of beer, as well as cash if things turned ugly. I also had prepared for the value question this time by keeping every receipt for the car wadded up in a ball and stuffed into my “briefcase” as evidence if the need should arrive. Unlike the first time, the entire team was there this time to back Ben and me up. The first question asked to us was who is the best liar, we all told him Sandeep. The judge then asked him to stand away from us. The judge took one look at the car and asked for the story, I told him about the survival of last year and of the residual value. This time instead of fighting with me, I think a little sympathy was shown since we brought a real $500 car to race. The Breckenridge Brewery Craft Pack we had in the trunk of the car may have helped grease the wheels a bit and did earn us a “Bribed” mark, but the insurance was worth it. End result was that we now have officially been accepted to race for the second time. After packing up the car and heading back to Sandeep’s place we tore into the car once again. This time we removed the thermostat and took it inside to test. After about 15 minutes in boiling water the new thermostat had opened, while the old one was barely open another 15 minutes after the new thermostat. So we now had a reason that we might be overheating so it felt good when we repaired it. We then filled and purged the cooling system of air once again and called it a night. At 8:30 this was a new feeling for us on a race weekend! Some dinner was had, and it was evening and it was morning the second day.

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