Preparing for 1st race

The list of things that need to be finished keeps growing and new surprises keep popping up.

I had a chance to test the car out at the SCCA PDX held on Sunday, September 26th.  (Thank you Matt for the tracktime).  I ran the car for the first time at Summit Point and used street tires to practice and ran without anti-sway bars.

The goal for the day was to do a full sweep of the shock settings and also put a few heat cycles into the car. The first session was with the shocks set full hard.  Car felt fairly responsive but had terminal understeer from turn in to track out.

The second session was with the shocks set at full soft.  The car was much more responsive and a lot of the understeer was gone but it still had understeer from apex to track out.

After the second session, two surprises awaited me.  The drivers side brand new wheel liner was torn out and hanging under the car completely destroyed.  There was also a water leak somewhere under the car and fairly significant.  I parked the car on top of the trailer and got to work removing the undertrays to discover a good sized hole shooting water from one of the hard water lines running down the center of the car.  Got some rescue tape from the OG Racing track store and was ready to try again.

I went out for what was to be my third and final session only to discover that half way through that I was having trouble engaging 3rd gear.  I tried a few more laps at a reduced pace but getting into 3rd gear was hit or miss.   Hoping for the best, I put the car back on the trailer and finished up my instructing obligations for the day.

Fortunately the transmission was fine and the shifter cables had worked themselves loose on the back of the transmission.  The water lead actually turned out to be over 8 leaks on both hard water lines.  Apparently the aluminum lines had corroded from the inside out and needed to be replaced.  I found a replacement set and had them shipped overnight and installed them with Brad on Thursday just before leaving for the PCA Club Race.

We just made it to the track during a torrential downpour and was only a few minutes late for my mandatory Rookie Racer meeting.