At Least the Brakes Were Good (7/4/15) - 7 hours - Laguna Seca:
With our brakes sorted out and some sleep we were ready to hit the track again. Matt had told us he didn't know if he wanted to get back in the car again, but we knew we needed him to get another chance so we figured we would talk him into it later in the day. Dave went out first. And for the first time, we got the lucky drop of the flag and we started in 1st place! Dave was feeling a little more comfortable on track, and pulled off a 1:55.4! There are a lot of fast cars (and drivers) out there however, and Dave drops down to 11th when he is stopped for a red flag. Once he can move, Dave pulls into the pits and the crew dives into action. After a little bit of troubleshooting, we find that the water pressure sensor has failed and is leaking. We engineer a quick plug for it and seal it up. This drops us all the way back to 44th place, not looking good for today.
I take the car out next partway into my stint, I am trying to work my way around a gray 5-series BMW. The car is fast, but the driver is erratic and having issues with oversteer. I find out later that he is an experienced Spec E30 driver (experienced.. not necessarily skilled). I can't keep up on the straights, but can reel him back in again in corners. As I follow him into turn 11 I see him go wide and he is going off course. This is my chance! He will have to back out of it and I will have a chance to sail by. Except... he doesn't back out of it.
Major Mistake #1: Even though he's fully off track, he stays in the throttle... and comes back on the track fully sideways! I aim left trying to miss his car but the gap is closing quickly. There just isn't enough room, and while I manage to miss his car by about one inch.. I am pointed towards the barrier and there is now no avoiding it. I smash the barrier with the front, then the back, then come to a halt. I now have a smashed car, and the guy that needed to just back out of throttle has a perfectly intact car. But he's not done yet.
There is a massive cloud of dust on track now and he is sideways on track on the left side of the track. This is off line, where nobody drives.
Major Mistake #2: For some reason he panics, thinking someone may hit him, so he floors it trying to turn the car around quickly. The cloud of dust is mainly on the left side of the track as well. Mopar 4 Life (Dodge Neon) suddenly sees the BMW reappear out of the dust onto the racing line and turns left to avoid the BMW.
And.. here's where we get to
Major Mistake #3: Thinking he can drift and can execute a quick donut to get going. He over-rotates, and now is coming back LEFT! Mopar 4 Life is trying to dodge, but the BMW driver thinks he is a Mustang leaving a Cars and Coffee and won't stop until there is some destruction.
At this point the BMW driver's insatiable appetite for chaos has been satisfied. The Neon slams into the BMW sending steam, glass and car parts everywhere. The BMW is totalled, and the Neon that has been towed from across the country has a destroyed front right corner and a broken windshield. Three smashed up cars due to one driver's poor choices.
Tech Tip #13: If you go off track, don't try to be a hero and save it. Just back out of it, gather it up, make sure it is safe to enter the track, and get on with your race.
After I get checked out for a concussion (all good) I limp the car back into the garages. Time to fire up some A-team music and get to work! We assess the damage, and aside from all the smashed up sheetmetal, our worst problem is the lower control arm. We don't have any spare arms, and this arm is custom. We had cut and welded extra metal into it to lengthen it for more camber.
This arm is supposed to be straight across the top.. that's pretty bent. On the plus side, the area I had welded up showed now issue.
Even if we can find a stock arm, we would need both arms, and then we would destroy the outer edge of the tire due to lack of camber. Time to try fix it.
We borrow a torch and try getting it hot and putting 1 Lard-Ton of force into it. That doesn't work.
We end up cutting it most of the way through, bending it, then welding it back up. We had reinforcement metal borrowed from Wrecked'em Racing and a welder I believe borrowed from Tubby Butterman. Fellow racers are so awesome!!
We used some chain binders to pull the corner of the car out some and were feeling pretty happy about our progress. It's July 4th, the race is over, and the day is winding down. Wayne from Scrap Attack walks over to see how things are going, and says, "Hey, you guys are using the factory radiator brackets. We never use those anymore as it tends to crack the plastic end tanks if you hit something." I pull off the brackets and sure enough, our radiator is cracked! Thanks for saving us from some more pain Wayne! Unfortunately.. while we have an entire engine with us, we do not have a spare radiator. Time to see if we can fix this one. I had heard of 'plastic welding' using zip ties, so I grab my soldering iron and melt the crack together and use zip ties for filler.
We had hopes of watching some fireworks and hitting Monterey for some nice food, but instead it was a late night finishing up the car. We managed to get the fender straight enough to fit back on the car and were done for the night. I was a little leery of the radiator fix, as I didn't know how well it would hold up to vibration/heat during the race, but we went back to the hotel to get some sleep.
I woke up at 3am and could not stop thinking about the radiator. As I lay in bed I was trying to think of what I could do to make the fix more robust. RTV on it's own wasn't going to help, but if I could cap it to contain the RTV that should hold up. Unfortunately it was at the post on the radiator where the crack was, so I needed cap with a hole in it. I realize if I use a washer I could hold some RTV in. But if I wait until we go to the track in the morning, the RTV won't have time to cure. At around 4am I slip out of the hotel room, and head to the track. It was a little weird arriving in the dark and working on the car in the brightly lit garages with a ton of race cars and me being the only person there. I put together my washer stack and got it all RTV'd together and used zip ties to hold it down. While I didn't get very much sleep, I felt a whole lot better about the robustness of the fix now.
