Less than a mile from the house an indoor Karting track has opened. Welcome Race Rochester.
Last night I hit the track for the first time and it was fantastic.
These are not your run-of-the-mill go-carts, but rather performance-oriented machines hitting upwards of 25 mph. They take a little getting use to, but after a couple of laps I was powersliding around every corner. It was a blast. At only $15 for 10 minutes, I’ll certainly be back — a lot.
This past weekend I finally got around to some automotive repair.
The flange between the exhaust manifold and the tailpipe on my street car rusted apart several months ago. I put a temporary fix on until I could get parts. Turns out the “front pipe” (see photo and notes) can only be bought from Mazda at a cost of $300. That’s $300 for a 12″ piece of cast iron.
My temporary fix was looking pretty good. (more…)
Speaking of racing, this coming weekend marks the first outing of the year.
After getting the motor back in, the car went off for a little welding. G.T. Fab & Welding did a fantastic job installing a couple of extra door bars for me. Now not only do I meet the updated rules, I feel safer.
All that’s left to do for the weekend is to finish installing the new race harness and gather up supplies. We’re heading out Friday to run the open test-and-tune session at Gingerman in order to break in the new motor without breaking it. It will also give me some much needed extra seat time.
Let’s hope everything goes well.
In just over 5 hours the race motor was reinstalled into the Omni. Everything went into place like we knew what we were doing. With just some minor coaxing, she started right up. The best part — a steady 60 psi of oil pressure.
It is now off to a welding for a little bit of work. Next, the Fury.
The race motor is on its way back to the builder. Let’s hope one of the rod bearings simply slipped out of its journal. We shall see.
We are officially a go for racing next weekend at Mid-Ohio. After getting all of the plumbing worked out — including replacing all of the fuel lines and reworking some of the oil lines — the motor fired up on the first try. Now all I need to do is put all the bits and pieces back on the car, clean it out and pack the track bags.
We had a little delay in getting the race motor back, which meant that instead of racing this past weekend we were putting the motor back in the car. After about four hours, it’s back in place. All that’s left is for me to finish hooking up the plumbing and electrical. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be hitting Mid-Ohio on the 15th.
Not surprisingly, there hasn’t been any racing updates in a while. After taking last year off, we’re ready to get back at it. (more…)
Sarah and I spent the 4th of July racing at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. My good friend Terry came along as crew chief, providing his invaluable mechanical help (he also owns the tow van and trailer).
The car didn’t handle very well Saturday morning. We got it handling a bit better for the race, but it still didn’t turn very well. But the bigger problem for the race was a wicked vibration. There weren’t any broken-mechanical sounds so I chocked it up to an unbalanced wheel or possible flat-spotted tire.
Turns out I had broken the left drive shaft. Of course, I had just put new drive shafts in the car so neither Terry nor I brought spares. Fortunately, a fellow Dodge racer lives not too far from the track and he had spares for us. It only takes about a half hour to change, so we had no problem getting everything ready for Sunday morning.
Sunday went a lot better. We dialed out more and more of the handling problems so that during the race the car was much better. There is still a ways to go, but we’re pointed in the right direction. I was still towards the back half of the field, but I had a great race with another car the entire time. We were literally nose-to-tail and door-to-door for the entire race – without touching once. I was in front of him for most of the race (we traded places several times), but he pushed me hard enough to get me to overheat my front tires. With grip going away, he finally got around me with only a couple of laps left. The really cool thing – he’s got a digital video system in the car. Hopefully I’ll get a copy before too long and I’ll share it with you all.
Both photos in this post are from this past weekend. (Patrick, you asked, I deliver.) The track at Mid-Ohio is a 2.5 mile circuit, and these photos were taken near the spot labeled 16 on the map.
Finally, I thought I’d share this article that was written about me a couple of years ago and published in the Big Idea magazine.
