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Old 05-11-2015, 10:58 AM   #30
IROCZman15
10 Second Club / Meet Coordinator
 
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Roxbury, NJ
Posts: 2,100
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what an awesome awesome event!

I TOOK LOTS OF PICTURES BUT NEED A FEW MORE DAYS BEFORE I CAN UPLOAD THEM OFF OF MY CAMERA be patient

I had a great time. we arrived on Thursday around 6pm got our garage area all setup and tents, canopy, etc setup. hungout and drove the car around the paddock a bunch to check for issues. spent some time setting up the go pro cameras to the live-feed and tv monitor system. hungout with a bunch of the other teams that got there Thursday and poked around at some of their cars.

Friday, after we registered, passed the NJMP tech, the driver gear tech, and rules meetings we did some work on the car, took a few test laps on the track and realized the brakes were dragging. pulled off all the wheels and tested the system. ended up buying and replacing the master cylinder, power booster, and shortening the actuator rod to compensate for the bigger, thicker ebc brakes and rotors we run. drove the car around and then noticed we had an oil pressure issue. it was reallly really low. as in 8psi under acceleration! pulled off the oil pan which we knew was damaged by a previous owner who prob thought it was a good place to jack the car up on. however in our weeks of testing the car it never had an oil pressure issue. once the oil pan was off we noticed that the pickup and screen were damaged and that the timing chain guide that was once in the case had been chewed up to a million plastic pieces that were crowded around the entire oil pickup tube. (we had installed a new timing chain guide a few months ago because there was NONE and we did not know why it was missing.... just that it was missing... welp, we found out why on Friday) We pulled the oil pan off the other engine i hauled down (which was actually the original stock engine we yanked out in February) cleaned up the oil pan, ordered a oil pan gasket from NAPA, who DELIVERED it to the track (right to our garage bay) put he oil pan back on and lowered the engine back in the car. it ran fine and oil pressure was proper. there was a rod knock at startup though. the track was closed for the day so we did a few more little projects on the car and tested it on the paddock area (10 mph speed limit) Hungout at various crews garage areas the rest of the night and ate and drank beer.

Saturday morning we went through Lemons tech and the Lemons drivers/crew meetings. We had our theme as the Inspector Gadget mobile and some of the guys had props and costumes.. I just chilled. Since we were all new and this was our first time, along with the theme of the car and our various "bribe" treats for the judges, they gave us ZERO lap penalties. We were put in B class which is for the middle grade cars. (some other teams were assigned CRAZy ridiculous penalties... one team started at -1000 laps...thats negative-one-thousand-laps! ha) The judges wished us luck and gave us the harsh reality that very few "first time" teams do well or survive the two day event.

we got the car on the track around 11ish and on the first lap our driver radioed in that he had a bad rod knock. When he radioed in I could hear the rod knocking very loudly over his voice. We pulled the car into the garage, assessed the situation, and decided we HAD to put in the spare engine. however, we have been robbing parts off this engine since January, so this was a little more complicated. out came the radiator, fans, air intake stuff, strut tower bar, swaybar, lots of electrical wiring etc. at the same time three other guys were starting to get the other engine prepared, cleaning stuff up, checking components, installing various parts of it. it was now around 1:00 when the engine came out of the car and some of its parts (the oil pan of course), the timing chain guide, etc etc were put on the spare engine. we did not yank the engine and transmission together .. and this proved to delay us a bit as we had a hell of a time getting them lined up during the reinstall. once the basics were buttoned up we tried to fire it up but no start. it cranked, had spark, had compression (low on cyl#2 though) but teh timing was way off. we diagnosed it to be 90 deg off , so we jumped links on the timing chain/gear, clocked the distributor and fired it up. it ran! it was like 3:00 then, so we thrashed to get the rest of the stuf (radiator, electronics, hood etc) on, but did not make it in time to get a few laps in before the track was shut down at 4:00pm we were still at 0 laps and in like 114th place

oh, interestingly (and awesomely) the airport that is right next to the racetrack was having a big air show this weekend so the whole afternoon on Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday we were able to watch all sorts of airplanes doing tricks. p52 mustangs, f16 fighter jets, propeller planes, THE THUNDERBIRDS, etc. doing huge loops, spins, dives, stalls, criss-crossing 4 at a time, and my favorite, the f-16 flying inverted/up-side-down probably 200 feet off the ground. broke the sound barrier a few times... man those fighter jets are freaking LOUD.

Sunday, we woke up early, a few final checks on the car, and we hit the starting grid. the car ran great. slow but great. ended up having NO engine issues, and only some steering/suspension issues because our camber is WAY crazy. the go pros were running, the gps tracking setup was recording our laps, we had the live video feed to watch in the garage, changed drivers regularly, fueled up in the hot-pits just fine. We only had an issue with our radio communications not being clear enough but we will fix that. Again, i was not a driver because i didn't put $ into this project... I'd rather put money into my car or house or vacations.

The track waved the checkered flag right at 3:00 pm. We made is ALLLLMOST all day, but on the last 2 laps of the race, the exhaust fell off the car and was dragging and bouncing all over so the driver (who was the least experienced of all of us car/mechanic wise)did not know what the sound was and pulled over to be towed in. he thought it was the transmission or driveshaft, but it was only the exhaust.. all of it. jut dragging like a snake. We did get an award because the judges appreciated our theme, the hard work all Friday and Saturday, the fact that we rebounded from two major engine issues, were a brand new team at our first event, and a few other things they mentioned. The award we got was "for being from new jersey but driving least like a person from new jersey" basically we didn't cause any wrecks, didn't cause a yellow flag, did not get any black flags or penalties, and stayed clear from faster cars passing by. pretty cool.

We had an awesome awesome time. All of us. I met Mario (Wsex) and checked out his car a bit. They ran really well and I saw Mario driving the hell out of the car too. Got some photos for him also. We took a while to pack up all of our stuff, tools, tents, gear, and loaded up the trailers for the long ride home. Got rained on a bit too. Made it back to our home base in Rockaway Twp at 10:30 pm and took about an hour to unpack and unload. Got back to my house at midnight and after a shower and dinner i just collapsed from exhaustion. Awesome event, we will be doing it again probably in Connecticut in August. I doubt there will be a 3 day air-show for us to watch at that one though....
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Last edited by IROCZman15; 05-12-2015 at 07:13 AM.
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