Something happened at the track yesterday I thought I share with you guys. I borrowed a guy's torque wrench with deep sockets to double check the lugnuts are on tight. I have the Z.Speed lugnuts so they are longer than stock, about 1.5" in length. After I finished torquing i pulled the torque wrench out with out looking and put it back in to the guy's toolbox.

2 sessions later (about 60 mins of track time), I came out, and as I walk around to the passenger side I noticed something shiny on my wheel. The deep socket was on my lugnuts!! I quickly looked around to see if someone is playing a joke on me. Nobody. I put my hands on the socket, it is warm! I can't believe it stayed on the track with me that long. I guess I wasn't driving hard enough.

I got a good chuckle out of it and frankly I was pretty amazed...

 

DUH! Don't you hate it when you do stuff like that? I always forget to buckle my passenger harnesses together when no one is there, clang clang clang...

 

I got you both beat. I left my 10mm box wrench on my bleeder bolt on the caliper one time, and it stayed on for a full run session! D'oh!

Matt

 

If you ever offer to torque my lug nuts, and I look at you like you're crazy, here's why...

About 4 years ago I was doing a PCA school at Road Atlanta. It rained for the morning session, so I ran on the street tires. About 15 minutes before my 2nd session, the rain stopped and the clouds started to break. I had a friend there helping me, so we decided to quickly swap to the R compounds.
We got the swap done, so my friend says something like "you go ahead and get ready while I torque them." Sure... why not? Right?

Wrong.

I got busy fastening belts and such while my friend torqued my lug nuts. I did pay attention to the fact that he visited all four corners, but that's it.

Fast Forward about 4 laps. I turn into turn 1 at about 80 or so and the steering wheel starts shaking so bad it nearly pops out of my hand.
I limp back to the pits to discover that all of my wheels are so loose I can easily wiggle them. One nut had actually come off.

Seems that someone had borrowed my wrench and set it to 20 ft lbs for some reason. That is exactly what my friend torqued the nuts to.

Moral... Torque your own nuts. Always.
If you're not sure you torqued them, torque 'em again.

Scott

PS - The ITB guy that left his hood pins out at Road Atlanta still takes the award in my book. He comes out from under the bridge, down the hill to turn 12, and WHAM!!! His hood opens and bends back over the windshield. Blind into turn 12... lucky to still be in one piece.

 

I saw a three pound spike hammer fall out of an old-school GT Camaro in the middle of a session at a road race at Deer Park, WA, outside of Spokane, back in the mid-'80s. Bounced along for 100 yds or more...

Kirk

 

My stupid moment was at the Akron event this last summer. In a futile attempt while in the grid to keep my motor cool, I pop the hood and shut off the motor. Well, this happened to be a "moving grid" of sorts, because they had a long unused straight to line up cars before they got the green. In between moving my car, I would just shut the hood so when I pushed my car I wouldn't bend the hood rod or worse, having the hood come crashing down unexpectedly.

I pulled up to the flagger, and he gives my car a funny look; briskly walks around to the front of it, opens the hood and shuts it. He then proceeds to give me sh**ty grin and says something along the lines of "That could of been big trouble."

Good flagger. Dumb driver.


[Modified by mojoGSR92, 5:27 PM 12/20/2001]

 

i know a dude who lost his wallet on saturday and found it the next day in the engine bay....after driving on track saturday and then driving back to the motel sat night and then driving back to track and then driving on track again on sunday...i forget who that was....do you remember morgan??? is that how the story goes??

 

My idiotic moment - well *one* of them - was leaving the track. I run 245 rears and 225 fronts (slightly different size diameter). I am on the street and the car is wildly pulling left. I get all POed that the alignment looks off again blah blah blah and have it realigned. On the alignment rack I ask very timidly "hey, if you had say a 245/45 on the front left instead of the rear left, that wouldn't per chance account for my fucked up alignment would it?" So after desparately trying to write if off as a bonehead move made b/c of exhaustion, I was happy to find out that after we put all the wheels in the proper place and leveled the suspension, the alignment was still off - just not nearly as much.

 

Unless of course I am around helping fix a repetatively spongy pedal - then it is ok if you let me torque them.

 

Seems like the mistake of leaving something on the lug nuts
is more common than one would have expected.

Back in mid 1998, after a track event at Laguna Seca, a group
of us had left together in a caravan to drive back to the Los Angeles
area. I was up ahead, Glen K. was behind me, and Paul S. (JunPoweredITR)
was behind Glen. Suddenly, I noticed that both Glen and Paul were pulling
over to the side of the road (almost to the onramp of the US 101 South).

Paul had noticed that there was something hanging on to GK's wheel,
and signaled for Glen to pull over.

Upon inspection, it was the McGaurd wheel lock key, still stuck on
to the lug nut. Had he lost that, changing his wheels might have been
a more troubesome experience involving drill bits and such. Luckily, it was
still there after 5+ miles of driving away from the track.

-Ken

 

I did the same dumbass move at CMP.....thankfully the guy working the pits was paying more attention than me. Maybe I was trying to find a weak excuse for a CF hood?!

 

Oh, ****, I remember hearing about that!!!! HAHAHA!

 

no 2 wheel motion on turn 2A here but... action pix is always better than stills.