I started out this blog with positive remarks so that no one will forget how amazing of an experience this was, despite the problems I had. Problems, mainly crashing my car on the second run on Saturday, and having issues with the engine the rest of the weekend. The first problem, my crash, was linked mainly to three things. 1. Wanting to go faster (kinda a given, its racing) 2. Forgetting where the big bump was 3. Wacked out suspension geometry. Below is the map of the course, The "straight" I will be talking about is between corners 8 and 11. Here's what happened. After my first run of the day, posting a max speed of 106, like a bone head, I decided that that wasn't enough. So after rounding turn 8 I was going for it, I knew there were a series of pretty bad culvert repairs in the road that had a tendency to upset my car. On my way down the straight I was taking it easy (about 75% throttle) until I hit what I thought was the worst bump. Thinking I was free and clear, I pushed to full throttle. About half way between turn 9 and 10 I hit the really big bump. Looking at the bump later, it was similar to a speed table. The combination of full throttle, high speed, wacky suspension and a locked rear end (spool), instantly kicked the car sideways before I could say boo about it. There was a brief second where I thought I may have been able to save it, but I'm glad I didn't try, as over-correcting would have resulted in my being hurtled down a ski slope at the 85-90mph I was already traveling. I slid pretty much perfectly sideways for quite a ways until the front of my car nosed into the ditch on the uphill side. The front left tire caught the bank and spun the car around. I ended up stopped facing back up the hill in my original direction of travel. I immediately honked my horn twice to let everyone know that I was OK, my wife later thanked me for that, she was working checkpoint 2 just down the hill, and she had heard the whole thing.
At first look I thought I was done for the weekend, front right tire popped, tie rod broken, A arm bent, plus I had bent the right rear rim when it swung around and hit the bank. I was sure I had screwed up my whole weekend and possibly the rest of the season.
Much to my surprise and joy, the ever kind and helpful Hillclimb community came by my side and started looking for ways to get me going again. I barely had time to think about what to do next before Roy Spaulding, an other Modified driver, offered me a new tie rod. We went into his trailer measured what he had, found one the right length and off I went. The bent upper a arm war deemed safe by tech inspector Don Taylor, and Sherman Baumann gave advice on straightening rims and setting the alignment again.
Photos courtesy of Steve Jones.
Thanks to everyone's help and generosity I was back up and running by early afternoon. Turns out that due to the delay I created and a lunch break I never missed a run with my group. I was told that since I didn't miss a run it didn't count as a crash, but it sure felt like one.
The silver lining of this situation is that it highlighted a problem with the car that I suspected but had no idea how to pin point. Upon talking to a few people, and getting help from some of the more experienced racers, we realized that Howie has some geometry problems. The main problem being, that my wheel base is 1 inch longer on the left side than the right (noticed my Sherman). This problem is akin to how a plastic cup rolls in a circle because one side is bigger than the other. It all makes sense too because the car always seemed to turn left better than right. The car would also tail out earlier in a right hand corner and stick longer in a left. It was that misalignment that caused the car to jump sideways so badly whenever I would hit a large bump. So that will be my next project, to replace the A arm and get the suspension square.
The other problem that arose after my incident was with the engine. My first run wasn't too bad but throughout the rest of the weekend I began to have trouble at full throttle for long periods of time. With that being the case all of my Saturday afternoon runs were slow. I suspected the cap and rotor, so I removed them and shined up the terminals and rotor. That made a small improvement but nothing conclusive. I ran the car the rest of the weekend the way it was but had no real idea what was going on. After sitting over night I got one good run Sunday morning with my fastest time of 2:37, which was only 2 seconds faster than the first run of the weekend. All my other runs were plagued with engine trouble. My moultroupracing YouTube Channel will have a video of my last run Sunday. You can hear the engine running rough.
My suspicion is that it is a fuel issue. I have a new filter to put in, and I will be disassembling the pump to see if the inlet screen is plugged or it has a stuck vane. Other than that I ordered new park plugs and I may just order a new fuel pump to eliminate that as the cause. I also need to get a fuel pressure guage to tee in after the regulator to figure out what is going on. Ascutney is only a couple weeks away so I need to get to work to have her ready. I will try my best to update anyone who reads this with more info as I go.
Here is a link top a video compilation with some footage of my car on corners 2 and 3, my car comes in at 1:18, Enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Ty2TzM47tmg#t=78
