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Had a Chump Car race a couple of weekends ago. Beautiful track especially in the fall with the trees changing color and the facilities were awesome. The track is very new and was still super smooth with plenty of grip. About a 2-mile circuit in the longest configuration and a lot of elevation changes with one high speed area followed by a heavy braking section into T1. The race had 41 cars for the weekend mostly BMW stuff with a few miatas and then a mix of everything else. Randy Pobst was driving on a team with a Volvo. The weather was perfect the entire weekend, cool and mostly sunny.
Saturday was going well and we were running consistent mid-low 1:40's hanging around 12th-14th position. We were running with four drivers and each of us was getting about 100-110 minutes of driving when we would start looking for yellows to fuel do driver changes. Our last driver was in the car for about and hour when he came on the radio and said the car would not move in any gear. We suspected the clutch cable because it is original and has been used a ton in the last several years. With only 30 minutes of racing left we were pretty certain we would be finished until Sunday. After the car was back in the paddock we quickly realized the clutch cable was fine, but something in the clutch was screwed. The car has an SVO turbo clutch so it is kind of odd that a n/a 2.3 would/could do that, but it does have 10-11 races on it and I got it used from Greenbullitt in 2007. We had the tranny out in about an hour and found our problem....
The pressure plate side was just gone. It wouldn't even hold enough to get power to the transmission. Luckily an Autozone about 40-miles away near Atlanta had one in stock and they were even open 24 hours. That along with some stop leak to fix a pin hole in our radiator and some late night wrenching we were back in business for Sunday morning.
Sunday started off about the same way and the car was fine and maybe even a little better. Cooler weather, more rubber on the track, and most likely more seat time resulted in slightly lower lap times. It was across the board though for everyone else too since we were still right around the same 11th-14th spots. Our second driver for the day (Justa4banger) got on the radio that the battery voltage was low and we decided to have a look at it when a full course yellow came out. The sensing wire from the instrument cluster to the alternator has come loose and we crimped it back together while the car was still running. Took about 1-2 minutes total and the voltage gauge was back to normal. Also our water leak had disappeared and everything was back to going great. We switched up the driving order and our last driver from the day before was going to drive third. He was in the car about 30-minutes when the race director who was standing right in front of our pit stall says, "Hey, you guys are broke down again in the exact same spot as yesterday!" And our driver is on the radio saying the car is doing the same thing as the day before.... Well that is fucking marvelous. After it was towed in we went right under the car and could see strands of clutch disc hanging out of the bell housing so we were again done for the day. I think a clutch disc with a solid hub and some type of ceramic material is in our future.
We all had a great time and had at one point three cameras on the car at the same time. I had a Sony Action cam in the cockpit and a very decent R/C camear on the front bumper. Chump put a Replay XD1080 on our rear bumper and we able to get all of their car footage for the weekend. The finish on Sunday was interesting when the 1st and 2nd place E36's got into a sword fight on the fastest part of the track and wrecked each other out right at start/finish with less than 10-minutes to go. I'd love to go back someday, but with Hallett and TWS so much closer it is hard to justify the drive. We will do another far away race, but probably "spread our seed" to other places just to say we got to race there.
Saturday was going well and we were running consistent mid-low 1:40's hanging around 12th-14th position. We were running with four drivers and each of us was getting about 100-110 minutes of driving when we would start looking for yellows to fuel do driver changes. Our last driver was in the car for about and hour when he came on the radio and said the car would not move in any gear. We suspected the clutch cable because it is original and has been used a ton in the last several years. With only 30 minutes of racing left we were pretty certain we would be finished until Sunday. After the car was back in the paddock we quickly realized the clutch cable was fine, but something in the clutch was screwed. The car has an SVO turbo clutch so it is kind of odd that a n/a 2.3 would/could do that, but it does have 10-11 races on it and I got it used from Greenbullitt in 2007. We had the tranny out in about an hour and found our problem....
The pressure plate side was just gone. It wouldn't even hold enough to get power to the transmission. Luckily an Autozone about 40-miles away near Atlanta had one in stock and they were even open 24 hours. That along with some stop leak to fix a pin hole in our radiator and some late night wrenching we were back in business for Sunday morning.
Sunday started off about the same way and the car was fine and maybe even a little better. Cooler weather, more rubber on the track, and most likely more seat time resulted in slightly lower lap times. It was across the board though for everyone else too since we were still right around the same 11th-14th spots. Our second driver for the day (Justa4banger) got on the radio that the battery voltage was low and we decided to have a look at it when a full course yellow came out. The sensing wire from the instrument cluster to the alternator has come loose and we crimped it back together while the car was still running. Took about 1-2 minutes total and the voltage gauge was back to normal. Also our water leak had disappeared and everything was back to going great. We switched up the driving order and our last driver from the day before was going to drive third. He was in the car about 30-minutes when the race director who was standing right in front of our pit stall says, "Hey, you guys are broke down again in the exact same spot as yesterday!" And our driver is on the radio saying the car is doing the same thing as the day before.... Well that is fucking marvelous. After it was towed in we went right under the car and could see strands of clutch disc hanging out of the bell housing so we were again done for the day. I think a clutch disc with a solid hub and some type of ceramic material is in our future.
We all had a great time and had at one point three cameras on the car at the same time. I had a Sony Action cam in the cockpit and a very decent R/C camear on the front bumper. Chump put a Replay XD1080 on our rear bumper and we able to get all of their car footage for the weekend. The finish on Sunday was interesting when the 1st and 2nd place E36's got into a sword fight on the fastest part of the track and wrecked each other out right at start/finish with less than 10-minutes to go. I'd love to go back someday, but with Hallett and TWS so much closer it is hard to justify the drive. We will do another far away race, but probably "spread our seed" to other places just to say we got to race there.
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