|
Daily Blog |
May 6 - Day 4 - No Problem Raceway
This time, it was a warning of plenty of problems
I like No Problem Raceway, I love it's quirkyness, and I love the fact it's in a swamp. There are gators around, and I was ready to attack.
That ended in turn three of run one when I stood on the gas in third gear and the Corvette 4-speed auto decided I needed to be in second. a downshift to peak torque of a 505-hp engine while cornering at the edge of traction means an instant spin. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly backwards.
Run two went better, but I was backing off and going steady, just trying to keep the car from doing its craziness.
After the runs, we got a surprise, Since No Problem has a drag strip, a re-run of the rained-out drag race was going to be held. Something that was good for points, but also was rough because we had a 780-mile trip to South Carolina.
The drag race would consist of two attempts if you wanted it, with the fastest one being scored. Danny Popp went out and ran a 12.28 in his run, and then packed up. "It isn't worth going back out," he said. "It isn't enough points."
I ran a 12.61 in my first run with wheels spinning, I knew I could do better, so I made a couple of drag-race-specific adjustments, and decided to give the car no more than 70% throttle in first and second gear. The result: 11.548 @ 124.8mph. A new fast-time for the car - faster than the Run N' Gun quarter-mile pass at Gateway on Drag Radials. It was good enough for second behind Mark DaVia by 14-thousandths.
The good news would pretty much end there for the day.
Night of the living dead
About 40 miles away while getting gas we discovered a fuel leak at the top of the fuel sending unit. It turns out that if we top off the tank, it leaks. Wonderful. After a 40-min delay to tighten up the bolts on the top of the unit, we were back on the road.
It wouldn't last though, another hour down the road the cockpit was suddenly filled with gas fumes. I backed off and then noticed the car start to stumble, figuring I had some kind of leak on a high-pressure fuel line, I shut the car off and coasted to a stop. In some of the twisting and turning or torquing on the drag strip, it seems a fuel-line clip had been pulled out. After talking to Gary from Mongoose on the phone back at the shop, he walked me through fixing it and we were back on the road. It was an example of good teammwork from home-base support, and hands-on work on the side of the road. We were back on the road an hour later.
At the next gas stop, we discovered that the top of the fuel sending unit was still leaking... this time, instead of risking stripping the bolts out by over-tightening them, we decided we would siphon out some of the gas, and only fill it up so far to stop the leak. The fuel gage was broken, and now we would have to be winging it to figure out how much fuel was in the tank, and how far we could go.
So now we were about two hours behind, and had about 10 hours to go. So much for sleeping in our own bed, something I was looking forward to with CMP being 36 miles from my house.
I still had hopes of at least taking a shower at home when the transmission quit.
This time I was trouble shooting the transmission with Steve and Dean on the phone, who were busy supervising (I hope) a cv-shaft change on the other GTP somewhere else in Mississippi. Three hours and some four or five theories later we got the car working, and at 11 pm we left to do the remaining 650 miles to CMP. So much for that shower, and so much for sleep.
My dad and I, exhausted beyond any point of exhaustion I had been to before, took turns with 40-minute driving shifts the rest of the night, as that's all we could muster the strength for.
|
