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.