WRL Hallett Oct.17/18

[jw33]

http://www.worldracingleague.org/pdfs/RIS-Hallett-Oct.pdf

Anyone from here going? I'm going to be there driving with a buddy who has built a car and this will be the car's first race. I think we are about as ready as can be, but you just never know. This car has done a 4-5 hour test day and we have had a few days to tweak things so there isn't much else to do before the weekend. There are around 30 teams registered and the weather forecast looks outstanding.

[momo]

that's gonna be fun, hallett is a good time, wish i could go.

[90MarkVII]

Hallett is indeed a blast.

[jw33]

Here's a couple of pictures of the car. Should be decent.

[jw33]

Holy shit, it's been almost an entire year...

This race was fun, but the car did have some bad luck some of which was expected since it was so new and has not been driven much at all. Friday afternoon during practice within 15 minutes of being on the track the car had a flat on the passenger side rear. Whatever it was that was run over (more on this later) punched a large hole right in the center of the tread. And since you usually can't just find a 255/40/17 Star Spec on the rack at the local tire store especially around Tulsa, OK. we were forced to put a shit tire in that spot which made the car a little more strange to drive. I say strange to drive as in only compared to driving an under-powered mustang with great brakes that has a normal seating position. This car is very small on the inside and low to the ground. And it has a plenty of power. Enough so that with the Saginaw three speed that didn't shift so great because well, it is a Saginaw and it had a wonky shifter, you could drive the entire course in high gear. Even the bus stop was no issue for the V8. It was a little lazy under 1500RPM, but it did make things easier to deal with not having to shift.

Saturday the owner/fabricator of the car drove and made it about maybe an hour before he came into the pits and the passenger side front tire looked jacked up. The car had a ton of positive camber on that corner and it was obvious something wasn't right. We took the car back to the paddock and figured out pretty quick that the one of the top bolts holding the strut to car had fallen off. It must have been off for several laps because it tore up the strut beyond repair and we have some pictures of the car where that front tire is way out of whack at speed. It's possible the bolt may have fallen off on Friday and that is what we ran over and tore up the rear tire. It's a good thing it didn't break any worse or the car might have caused a wreck. Between tracking down a BMW strut and making the required modifications to make the strut fit the car that basically took the rest of the day on Saturday. But we were able to get it back together before dark and be ready on Sunday morning.

Sunday I drove first and I spent the entire 30-45 minutes just getting used to everything. I had only driven the car for ten minutes during practice the day before with a totally different set of tires. The brake pedal was really stiff to me and the pedals were so close together I accidentally stabbed the accelerator when going for the brakes. The car was mechanically fine the entire time. I think we had the shit light come on at 5500 RPM although it really didn't matter since it stayed in high gear the entire time. We were nervous that the engine would give us issues, but it just kept going with no problem. By the afternoon when I got into the car again I was much more comfortable and the car went all day with just fuel stops. Pretty amazing that the car had as few issues as it did when you see how much work went into the build.

The car was originally an Opel GT and it has suspension and brakes from a combination of E30/36/46 BMW's. The engine is a GM 4.8L from a '06 truck with the LS1 intake and a C5 oil pan. The transmission is/was a Saginaw three speed. There is literally nothing on the car that wasn't modified along the way. And 99% of it was done a by a normal guy in his own garage. The fact that it had so few problems at this race blows me away. Here are some pictures.











Here is when the strut broke. It looks like the car has the reverse short track Bristol setup for the alignment.