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"Spare Parts"
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My Office
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Staged
Driver's Seat
Season Opener with a bang
- Details
I apologize for not posting sooner, but as you will read we have been quite busy. With high hopes of competing for a championship in the Sportsman class this year, and seat time during non-points nights in the Pro Sportsman class, we went to the test-n-tune session on Friday to knock the winter off of the car and work on slowing it down a little bit. Using the brakes at 115 MPH to stay at or under 12.0 seconds was getting sketchy last year. With a few of the changes we made to the car during the off season, we expected it to be a little faster (a couple of hundredths) but on our first pass down the track, cold, with winter still clinging to the car and the tires, we ran an 11.88. From there, the car just kept getting faster so we starting burping the throttle and other tricks to try and consistently slow the car down to the 11.90 range where I could then use the brakes.
During our last pass, the car launched perfectly and it was on what felt like an 11.7 run so I lifted and then got back into the gas. As soon as the engine came back to life, there was a boom and ...... silence! Fearing the worst I gently applied the brakes and moved to the side of the track. Once I pulled off the track and out of the way, I got out and looked under the car, expecting a huge puddle of oil or water but found nothing. Hmmmm. Tried cranking the motor over and the starter spun but just didn't seem to have any compression. Maybe I got lucky and broke the flexplate. Once we got back our pits we started looking around and noticed that the crank flange where the flexplate bolts to spins, but the harmonic balancer on the other end of the crank didn't spin. Ok, so we snapped a crankshaft. Since nothing came out of the block and the pan looked fine, maybe we got lucky.
So we packed the car up on Saturday and help crew for Dana in her '63 Split-Window Corvette. She did very well considering she has been out of the seat for a year, but didn't get past first round of eliminations. Sunday morning came and it was time to start tearing into the car. After unhooking everything, we got the motor pulled and onto an engine stand. We pulled the heads and found one cylinder had two large cracks in it and rusty residue on the cylinder wall. Knowing that couldn't be good, we flipped it over and pulled the pan. That is where it got really painful! Not only did we crack the cylinder wall, but the main caps and webbing on either side of the #5 & #6 cylinders were ripped out of the block. Also, the crank was sitting sideways in the block and both connecting rods were destroyed in the middle of the rods.
The only thing we could salvage from the motor was the cam, lifters, and valve train. Nothing in the short block can be saved unless someone was to make art or furniture out of it. Needless to say, we are out of commission until we can get the new motor together and broken in. The first wave of parts has already arrived and as soon as we can get the next two shipments in, we will be able to send it off to Oahu for the machine work and back for assembly. This was a very expensive hit we were not ready for, but it is racing and things happen. It could have been a lot worse and I dumped oil on the track and lost control of the car. I would then be fixing more than just a motor as it happened while I was going 110mph on a 12.01 pass. (Which by the way, was our target for that pass!!! Go Figure)
So, for the good news! The man above was looking down on us, and we over-estimated our spending on another project and just so happened to have done so by, you guessed it, the cost to get all of the parts! If all goes well, and again the man above is looking favorably on us, we should only miss the March race and be back in April. We will be at the track though, either helping Greg and Dana, or doing my work day that night at the track. Who knows, I may even spend a little time on the microphone interviewing drivers and fans. We are also expecting the new motor to be as stout as the old motor and quite possibly even faster. It was a good thing that we put in the roll bar and other safety item upgrades just in case we do make it to the 11.5 or faster ETs. At least we will be legal to run at those speeds.
If we get time, and can get some pictures together, we will post them here. We need to get back to prepping our new block and waiting for the delivery guy to bring the next batches of parts. Now if the rotating assembly could just hurry up, we will be even happier campers. Until next time, may your trees be green and you go A to B in one piece.