Return to the scene of the crime

 We left Torrington on the way back to New Hampshire for the Paul Faford Memorial/Racing against Leukemia (RAL) weekend

Justin had his new truck and my old trailer and we were off.

In the meantime I had fixed the bad block stud on his car, as well as a bunch of other things, and put a new steering box on mine.  

Getting to the track we got his car through tech, and prepared for the next day.  I was worried about his car being untested, but little did I know.

The first session out was qualifying - I made it 2 turns before I knew something was wrong.  After almost taking out a competitor, I pulled into the pits not having done even one lap.  Checking the car, the steering box had come loose due to a manufacturing defect.  This was actually a blessing in disguise as after I changed the steering box, I found a split oil cooler that was dumping oil on the ground!

Now I have to change a hot oil cooler also!  

In the afternoon here we go with Justin starting in the top 10 (his car was running well) and me starting from dead last.....   When the green flag fell I passed 5 cars and headed into the first turn, and this was also the first time I had been at speed.  The new tires still had part of their stickers on them.  But it struck and I worked my way to a respectable 15th  place finish.  BTW - Justin finished 8th.

The next day Team z was ready to go

This time I started middle of the field, got a great start and was passing cars until.... I developed a miss going over the top of the hill.  It was sporadic, but enough to take away my primary passing zone.  I soldiered on and finished 15th again, but more work to do.  I found a loose wire and sure that that was the problem and tuned the car for the last race of the weekend,  BTW - Justin finished 7th and went a second faster than he ever did before.

The last race was another hot one.  The temperature all weekend was over 100 degrees.  Even  brief downpour did not cool us off, just made it more humid.  I again got a good jump and was looking at a top ten finish when - the misfire cam back.  Knowing it was not a electrical problem, I played with shifting and throttle to see if I could work with it.  This let 3 cars slip by me and I finished 12th.  BTW - Justin finished 6th.  

So the weekend was over - the car I thought would give me problems ran like a clock - we just added fuel and check the tires.  My car was the one that gave me all the aggravation.   But both cars finished and went back on the respective trailers in one piece.  Back home we are going to skip the night race to work out the kinks and get ready for Palmer in September.  Time to take a summer break, just like F1 and come back for the 2nd half of the season.

Up to Speed

 Well, it has been a busy summer so far.

Justin had his incident at New Hampshire, we purchased a project car to get him back on the track,  missed Lime Rock (but I got help announce the race with Greg Rickes) and then came Thompson.

We decided to do the test day as a shakedown of Justin's car.

The problem was, he would do about 3 or 4 laps and the oil light would flicker due to low oil.  The first time he went out there was no sign of a leak.  The second time, we showed some leaks.  So we took a couple of sessions off to attack them.  The last time we went out, he did two laps and saw his own line of oil being dropped.  Back at the pits we were lucky to have our engine builder, Dave Carr, show up.  After close inspection, it turned out that the lower rear stud on the left hand side of the engine was slowly pulling out of the block.  Thus on right hand turns, under acceleration only, we were dropping oil out if the engine.  

But in the little the car ran, it went straight, stopped well and on old tires the handling showed promise.

The next day I ran my car in the Majors.  The first day was practice, qualifying and a race.  Only the third time out for the car and the first with the rebuilt engine.  I was not looking to set the world on fire, just to break in the car - on old tires.  It was  decent finish and we put the car away for the night.  Next day I switched tires on one side for some newer ones and went out for the practice and found out I had no clutch!  It would not disengage.  It was either clutch failing or the clutch slave so we went about changing the slave with about an hour before the race.  Got it done with about a half hour to relax and then off to the races.  It was a fun race with some other drivers until I made a pass and carried a little too much speed into turn one.  I spent the rest of the race playing catchup, but the good thing was I turned a lap 1 second faster than the car had gone before.  So we were making progress.

On to New Hampshire.