79CamaroDiva
09-05-2006, 11:03 PM
No cliffs.. its a good story.
This weekend I was supposed to go to the final Bill Mitchell series race at atco, but because of the hurricane coming up the coast, dad and I decided to skip it and go somewhere else. We found two different money races within 1000 miles of NYC, one in ohio, and one in alabama. So, we decided to try the 1/8th mile track in alabama because I really enjoy 1/8th mile racing..
So, we make the 900 mile trip down there overnight, after having some complications with our motorhome right from the get go (trans cooler line blew at 5pm, when all shops close but a guy down the street stayed late at work, and made sure we knew it).
Got to the track around 6pm CST in time for their Friday night test and tune. Get through the gate, ask where tech is and they say they don't tech cars in, just bring the card to the tower. From 6-11 pm I made a total of 3 runs, I think there was more breakage in that one night than I've seen in an entire season of racing at all of the tracks up here. The track was all kinds of loose and I actually had to steer the car instead of just pointing it, that was fun, but I made 3 relatively good runs. 2 5.14s in the left lane, an a 5.16 in the right, all .00 lights so we were pretty happy.
Saturday came, and 2nd round the car fell on its face, sounded horrible, but I looked at my oil pres. guage and it was still high so i figured I was ok to limp it off the track (I was honestly scared that if i stopped in the shut down they would send another pair down). Stop it off in the grass, and some one from the pair behind me stopped and asked if i was expecting a tow, i said probably, but to tell the timeslip booth to make an announcement that car 1151 needed a tow. Apparently they announced that Melissa DeMarcky, the Jersey Girl (as they came to know me by) needed a tow back. Dad came down, towed me back to the trailer and we had to figure out wtf was wrong.
Start the car up, it runs, but i can hear a leak somewhere that he couldn't, he said it sounded fine to him. I said no, there's a leak on the right side. So he does a leakdown on it, cyl 4 leaked down to 0%. big problem. a guy that was parked across from us came over to help, and said it was either a blown head gasket or a hole in the piston. Dad says either way we're screwed, cause we'll never be able to find a head gasket for a chrysler 4.5" bore motor, the guy goes over to his trailer and gets one.. Apparently there's a lot of mopar guys down there. So we take the whole thing apart, tear the head off and sure enough the head gasket is ripped between cyl's 4 and 6. We think we're in the clear. Then I see that the ring on 6 is missing, we turn the head over and its stuck in a valve, and it carved a half moon shape in the head. Again, we think we're screwed, because where the hell are we gonna get a head fixed on a saturday night 900 miles from home. The same guy comes over again and sees it and says hold on, he'll make a call and can get it fixed. The guy he called wasnt around, so my dad went up to the tower to see if he could announce that we need an aluminum welder on the off chance that there was one around. Turns out, some people from Huntsville Performance, which is a HUGE shop down there, were racing. My dad brings the guy the head and he said he could get it fixed that night.
Dad goes with him to his shop, which apparently was gigantic and was like walking into a Summit catalog, and the guy welded and milled the head, along with tearing it apart and re facing two valves, gave us a head gasket and some aluminum silicone and did it all for $138 bucks. My dad gave him $150 and said keep it. Then it turns out the guy was entered into the night race and completely missed the race. We offered to pay his entry for it and he said don't worry about it.
So we pull an all nighter, get it fixed, and people kept coming over offering us tools and help. The guy next to us said he was going to bed but would leave his trailer unlocked so we could help ourselves to any tools we would need. The guy across from us said he was going to bed, but if we needed anything, just tap on the back right window of his camper and he'd come out and help.. meanwhile his wife and infant daughter were sleeping there.
We couldn't fire it up til Sunday morning, and when it ran we're all relieved, but have no idea what the car is going to run now that the head is milled .015" more. We find the track operator and offer to pay an extra entry fee to make a time shot because they weren't allowing timeshots in the morning unless you are a new entry to the weekend. The track operator says he can't let us do that, but he will let us make a free shot when they run them out.
So, I do that, the car picks up a little bit, and we're good to go. I won 1st and 2nd round, and ended up going up against the guys partner from the shop 3rd round. I lost by .004 :(
I have to give all these people props. Had this happened up at a northern track we would have been SOL. No one would have opened up a machine shop on a saturday night, let alone miss out on a race where there are no refunds and do it overnight. If we weren't down there I would have been without an engine for about a month.
This weekend I was supposed to go to the final Bill Mitchell series race at atco, but because of the hurricane coming up the coast, dad and I decided to skip it and go somewhere else. We found two different money races within 1000 miles of NYC, one in ohio, and one in alabama. So, we decided to try the 1/8th mile track in alabama because I really enjoy 1/8th mile racing..
So, we make the 900 mile trip down there overnight, after having some complications with our motorhome right from the get go (trans cooler line blew at 5pm, when all shops close but a guy down the street stayed late at work, and made sure we knew it).
Got to the track around 6pm CST in time for their Friday night test and tune. Get through the gate, ask where tech is and they say they don't tech cars in, just bring the card to the tower. From 6-11 pm I made a total of 3 runs, I think there was more breakage in that one night than I've seen in an entire season of racing at all of the tracks up here. The track was all kinds of loose and I actually had to steer the car instead of just pointing it, that was fun, but I made 3 relatively good runs. 2 5.14s in the left lane, an a 5.16 in the right, all .00 lights so we were pretty happy.
Saturday came, and 2nd round the car fell on its face, sounded horrible, but I looked at my oil pres. guage and it was still high so i figured I was ok to limp it off the track (I was honestly scared that if i stopped in the shut down they would send another pair down). Stop it off in the grass, and some one from the pair behind me stopped and asked if i was expecting a tow, i said probably, but to tell the timeslip booth to make an announcement that car 1151 needed a tow. Apparently they announced that Melissa DeMarcky, the Jersey Girl (as they came to know me by) needed a tow back. Dad came down, towed me back to the trailer and we had to figure out wtf was wrong.
Start the car up, it runs, but i can hear a leak somewhere that he couldn't, he said it sounded fine to him. I said no, there's a leak on the right side. So he does a leakdown on it, cyl 4 leaked down to 0%. big problem. a guy that was parked across from us came over to help, and said it was either a blown head gasket or a hole in the piston. Dad says either way we're screwed, cause we'll never be able to find a head gasket for a chrysler 4.5" bore motor, the guy goes over to his trailer and gets one.. Apparently there's a lot of mopar guys down there. So we take the whole thing apart, tear the head off and sure enough the head gasket is ripped between cyl's 4 and 6. We think we're in the clear. Then I see that the ring on 6 is missing, we turn the head over and its stuck in a valve, and it carved a half moon shape in the head. Again, we think we're screwed, because where the hell are we gonna get a head fixed on a saturday night 900 miles from home. The same guy comes over again and sees it and says hold on, he'll make a call and can get it fixed. The guy he called wasnt around, so my dad went up to the tower to see if he could announce that we need an aluminum welder on the off chance that there was one around. Turns out, some people from Huntsville Performance, which is a HUGE shop down there, were racing. My dad brings the guy the head and he said he could get it fixed that night.
Dad goes with him to his shop, which apparently was gigantic and was like walking into a Summit catalog, and the guy welded and milled the head, along with tearing it apart and re facing two valves, gave us a head gasket and some aluminum silicone and did it all for $138 bucks. My dad gave him $150 and said keep it. Then it turns out the guy was entered into the night race and completely missed the race. We offered to pay his entry for it and he said don't worry about it.
So we pull an all nighter, get it fixed, and people kept coming over offering us tools and help. The guy next to us said he was going to bed but would leave his trailer unlocked so we could help ourselves to any tools we would need. The guy across from us said he was going to bed, but if we needed anything, just tap on the back right window of his camper and he'd come out and help.. meanwhile his wife and infant daughter were sleeping there.
We couldn't fire it up til Sunday morning, and when it ran we're all relieved, but have no idea what the car is going to run now that the head is milled .015" more. We find the track operator and offer to pay an extra entry fee to make a time shot because they weren't allowing timeshots in the morning unless you are a new entry to the weekend. The track operator says he can't let us do that, but he will let us make a free shot when they run them out.
So, I do that, the car picks up a little bit, and we're good to go. I won 1st and 2nd round, and ended up going up against the guys partner from the shop 3rd round. I lost by .004 :(
I have to give all these people props. Had this happened up at a northern track we would have been SOL. No one would have opened up a machine shop on a saturday night, let alone miss out on a race where there are no refunds and do it overnight. If we weren't down there I would have been without an engine for about a month.