This is my first season of fielding (or trying to) a competitive race car, and having the car running for about a month I'm already going nuts. What do you guys use to keep you motivated down the strech? Here's whats happened in my short race cars history: I get the car running with a garrett industrial turbo, to work the kinks out. Takes us a dozen 1/8 mile passes to get the settings down so we don't get vicious tire shake for the first 100 feet. This ends up shaking loose some suspension parts, I need to replace the anti roll bar and go over every nut and bolt in the car. Second weekend out we crank the boost up to 35-36 psi and guess what happens? Intercooler splits apart, takes out water line, soaks my brand new FAST XFI and ruins it. Third weekend the new turbo finally gets here and now the converter is entirely too tight and the car won't run for ****. I end up frying the glide on friday, we pull an all nighter, rebuild it and get ready for more T&T on saturday. We don't even try and make boost off the trans brake, just use it to bring the revs up to around 4500 and leave at wot. Boost his probably 25 feet out, and the front end gets slowly picked up. I let out of it, front end slams down, I get back in it again and it yanks the front end back up , and comes down hard again. Downpipe is basically crushed, K-member and front suspension is all mangled, headers are all cracked at the flange and the motor is almost lunched when the oil pickup is half smashed in. We begrudgingly get this all fixed, and head out to the track again this weekend with the new looser converter in it, finally got the wheelie bars on it, as well as the new wing. This thing STILL wants to ride the bars for the first 300 feet, I run out of gear at about 1000 feet out because now the converter is TOO loose, and to top it off I wiped out all the cam bearings, so I need a new cam, potentially a new RH cylinder head too.

I've spent probably 6K cash and another 10K in loans to fix all the problems I've had with this car, and I still havn't made it to a single event this year. I'm at the point right now where I want to say F it, cut my losses and part out all the race goodies, or sell it hole. I'm not even having fun with it when everything breaks and nothing works. What do you guys use for motivation when you're just slammed with setback after setback? I have 3 friends helping me out with this project and I would feel like letting them down a bit after they made arrangements and commitments based on my race car, but on the other hand it's coming out of MY pocketbook, not theirs. I just don't know anymore, and really needed to vent.

 

I can't speak for a race season, but in general I get frustrated very easily when things just don't seem to work right. And when little things start going wrong, it never turns around that day, so it's best to call the rest of the day "relax time".
Friends are usually more forgiving when things go wrong and when I see/hear them thinking that it's not a big deal that helps.

"All the good times. All the bad times. They all will pass." N. Hexum