Well, for some reason the gods conspired against me
this weekend. Apart from the weekend that my CRX was
totaled, this was my worst track weekend ever. The
event was a three day event at Mid Ohio with NASA,
including a Mid West Honda Challenge race.

Since I've never run at Mid Ohio before, I signed up
for the Friday practice day so I could learn my way
around before it counted for a race. I took Thursday
off from work to get a head start on the 7 or so hour
drive out there. Though the weather was terrible,
things were going fine until I was about 80 miles west
of Harrisburg and suddenly the power steering stopped
working. Based on experience from last year my eyes
went straight to the temp gauge which was rapidly
climbing. The damn serpentine belt again.

Fortunately I now carry an extra serpentine belt.
Unfortunately the problem was that the idler pulley
broke, which is why the belt came off, and I don't
have an extra one of those. After ******* around with
the car in the cold rain for a while, we finally towed
the Jeep and trailer to a local shop/NAPA dealer.
They didn't have the pulley though, neither did the
Jeep dealer.

They called a place that said they would ship it, and
that it would arrive between 7pm and 3am. Since they
have somebody on duty 24 hours a day, they claimed
they would fix it as soon as it came in. It ended up
taking over 17 hours to find one and get it there to
install. So right around the time I should have been
going out on the track for my first session, I was
sitting in a hotel room in East Bumblefuck, PA
watching Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Finally I got back underway late on Friday morning, and I
continued on my way. I got to the track at the very
end of the day, with just enough time to roll the car
off the trailer and go out in practice race for the
comp liscense school group. I didn't even get to
check the tire pressures in the Azenises it was
sitting on (which have never seen the track before).
They were on the car when I bought it, and I just use
them to keep the suspension from dragging on the
ground over the winter. We only did 7 laps, and it was still wet out
so I couldn't drive what would have been the right
line. I pulled three massive tankslappers, and saved
all of them, which was entertaining, but that's all I
got from it. So much for learning the track early.

Saturday's weather was MUCH better - mid 50's and
clear. On top of learning a new track, I was also
trying to learn my new suspension and the new Hoosiers
that I've never driven on before. In the first
session I spun twice, but nothing to write home about.
The track is not easy to learn quickly, but I picked
up enough to be within a couple of seconds of the
leaders by the end.

I started the race 7th in Honda Challenge, but was up
to 6th by turn 1, and 5th by turn 2. The car was
making great power, and it was incredibly smooth
throughout the tach. I had a pretty strong challenge
from behind from a Grand Am Cup ITR, and a CRX owned
by a local, but I was able to hold them both off.

After about 10 laps though, the car started shaking
under throttle. It got bad enough that I actually
pitted in to try to find the problem, but couldn't. I
went back out again but only made it halfway around
before the driveshaft let go. In trying to tow my car
back in they not only destroyed my splitter when the
chain slipped off the factory tow hook , but also
managed to break my driver's side rear view mirror
when it didn't stay tied to my roll cage.
Nobody had a replacement driver's side axle that fit
my car, and with snow in the forecast for Sunday I
just gave up and loaded up the car on the trailer. I
drove through the night and got home at 4am (after
dropping off the Civic in Baltimore to get some more
work done).

So a two day trip out, including all the money I had
to spend on fixing the Jeep, was only for less than a
full day on the track. It sucked.

I'm going to have to do an event at Summit in a couple
of weeks just to remind myself why I do this.

So where was Karl this weekend anyway?

MB

 

Weather was actually nice at Beaverun on sat. The only day I was out there. I think it snowed today though. Glad I only signed up for 1 day. I'm sick of this weather!! All it does is rain and snow around here

sorry to here about your weekend and trip to mid ohio, maybe the 2nd NASA event there will go better. I hope so, I'm going to be there for that one.

 

This crappy weekend will only make you appreciate the better weekends of the year (with much better weather) more.

 

hi matt.

sorry to hear about the bad weekend; but mid o is a neato track, eh?

i think your Jeep is cursed! seems like you have had nothing but trouble with that *****!

things will turn around!

todd

ps you could have had an even worse weekend; take mine for example: friday, take three hours (9pm til midnight) to replace wife's car's busted upper control arm balljoints. just wonderful. saturday and sunday, work on upstairs plumbing. somehow, in the space of 3 days, both upstairs sinks started leaking and had to be shut off! one bad drain line (all kind of frozen, corroded, and crumbling pipe. yuck.) and one bad facet valve assemble later they both seem to be behaving!

 

I'm cursed. Today after rehearsal, my 280-Z wouldn't start. That is three different cars in 5 days!!!