In the rain at Mosport I was having some difficulty getting 5th gear and spent time between the two race working on the linkage. I also made a new upper stress bar and was looking forward to the large 10 car field with lots of guys in my range to race with.
We paddocked with Chris Kopley and Ned and Linda Beman were in from Oregon to help.
As first race group we were on track early Saturday. Things were working well when I went for 5th on the pit straight and it wasn't there. I finished the lap and came in. Johannes came over to help me check out the linkage and we decided to pull the 5th gear cover off. The oil that came out looked like metallic paint. Opening up the cover a bit it was easy to see that the teeth on 5th gear had been cleaned off and apparently liquified.
We were already half way to getting the tranny out so we thought that there might be a chance to get the spare 4-speed in before the afternoon session. This was only my second transmission change on a VW and things took a little longer than expected. When group one went out, we still had to adjust the linkage and put oil in it, so we took a break for lunch.
Just after the qualifying session the sky got black and the wind picked up. The forecast was for afternoon thundershowers and it was spot on. The rain started coming in sideways from the west and everyone hung on to a canopy pole. In an instant our 10x20 was in the air and tumbling over my trailer. It landed in the road, Theo and I ran over to stop it from lifting up again and damaging someone's car. I undid some joints and we ran back into Chris' trailer completely soaked.
The trailer was dry and in about ten minutes the sky started to lighten up. The rain stopped, the sun came out and the rest of the day turned out to be pretty nice. Good thing because we all had a lot of stuff to dry out.
Ned and I finished up the car and I drove it around the paddock roads. Other than the locked diff trying to snap my wrists, everything seemed OK.
Sunday morning I went out for the warm up to figure out shift points and to remember how to drive the welded diff.
A couple of laps in, I got a big cloud of smoke in the left hander out of the boot. I came into the pits, Ned took one look at the left front and said, in that Ned way, "You got a problem". The tire and left side of the car was covered in gear oil. Back in the paddock I found the drain plug missing. Johannes had suggested filling the tranny from the speedo cable hole so I didn't put a wrench on the drain plug. Stupid, we should have checked it. Theo got to work cleaning up the tire and car. We took a plug from the 5-speed and filled it up again. Time was short for going to the pumps so Chris gave me some fuel to top up the cell.
I was gridded pretty close to the back but there were about 5 HP cars right in front of me. Howard Gerstein was starting his GTL Miata from the back as usual. Howard walked by and I asked him where he wanted to pass me. Ned said that with such a large field that the green will come out while we are still going into the last turn. Howard had a radio and would know the green was out before me, "So just follow him". It's great to have a crew chief with you.
So that's what I did. On Ned's advice, I followed Howard out of the last turn and down the pit straight. I passed Gib Stine's Bugeye, Dave Hammer's Rabbit, Ray Santomo's Golf and was on Chris' Mini bumper going up the esses. The first 5 laps were pretty wild. We were running in a train, Ray was all over the back of my car. He passed me, I drafted and passed him, Dave stuck his nose in and more passes were made back and forth. I was thinking that this is a lot of fun but I don't know if I can do it for the whole race.
Ray got in front and Dave was filling my mirrors. On lap 6 the car just went off song. Nothing big, it just lost 15% power and took longer to rev up. Dave got by and I couldn't do anything about it. I backed off and watched the oil pressure and water temps. They looked OK so I ran for the finish. It was a disappointing way to end the weekend after all that work and good racing on the start.
So now we have all that lovely gear oil to clean up and a 5-speed to fix. I'm a bit more worried about the power loss, it was almost like a switch was pulled, it was that sudden.
I'm not sure where we will race again; The Fun One? Great Pumpkin? Prod Fest? It all depends on how repairs and work go through August and September.
Posts
