the alpine garage

Rust Be Gone

2012-01-27T09:32:00.000-08:00

While the bimmer is off at the shop and I'm waiting for my engine rebuild kit, I'd thought I devote some attention to accessory bits, like the header.

Before the motor drop, header at bottom

As you can see it's solidly rusted and a nice color if you're a guardrail in a scenic national park. I can't afford to pop for one of the Ireland Engineering stainless steel headers, so let's see if we can resurrect this one.

Perusing the Eastwood catalog for restoration supplies I came across their Rust Dissolver product.

The product picture is a rusty header being cleaned. Reviews have generally been positive so I decided to give it a try.

A closer view of what we are working with.

After a night in a bucket in the garage. The garage isn't heated, so I'm working at the bottom end of the recommended temp range. It's more of a thin gel instead of a liquid at this point which since I don't have a large narrow and long tub to soak in is a plus. Just takes longer. And time is free.

Not too bad. This stuff really works. Mild smell, non-toxic, doesn't burn the hands. Good stuff.

A couple of nights later it's looking pretty good. The only physical labor is scrubbing it off in the tub. No power tools, no hand sanding. Better living through chemistry.

And the final result after several coats of high temp satin black paint. This should look good in the engine compartment when done.

Tools

2012-01-21T15:51:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make: I'm a tool user. And possibly a tool geek.

It's not something you would admit in public, like at a cocktail party, or at a PTA meeting. But if you're reading this, chances are you have the same "inclination".

So what is a tool? From Wikipedia we find: "A tool is a device that can be used to produce an item or achieve a task, but that is not consumed in the process. ...Tools are the most important items that the ancient humans used to climb to the top of the food chain; by inventing tools, they were able to accomplish tasks that human bodies could not, such as using a spear or bow and arrow to kill prey, since their teeth were not sharp enough to pierce many animals' skins."

I got to thinking about tools the other day when, due to the lack of a proper one, I was frustrated in "achieving my task". Luckily technology has advanced so that I generally don't need to create my own tools, I can just zip down to my local Harbor Freight or Sears Hardware and purchase one.

So big deal, everybody uses tools. A car is a tool that transports humans from one place to another. A bowl and spoon are tools for eating Grape-nuts in the morning. My racecar is a tool to (hopefully) win races or catch on fire. If you're human and alive, you're using tools. What slides this normal process toward the beginnings of geekness is the derivation of pleasure in viewing and most of all, in the use of a well designed tool. For most people, the tool is secondary to their task. Assembling an IKEA bookshelf they grab the cheap phillips screwdriver they keep in a drawer that they received when they bought 25 gallons of gas one day, or the pliers that came as a 14.99 auto repair kit Xmas gift. This often leads to an unsatisfactory experience, rounding the head of the screws, etc.

But for a true tool geek, using a good tool is a sublime experience, that not only "achieves the task", but enhances it. A good tool typically is dedicated to one purpose. While a Leatherman multi-tool can be useful and functional in many situations, it's very nature compromises and dilutes the tool experience. I admit I own multi-tools, such as screwdrivers with multiple bits stored in the handles and the like. And they are useful in normal day to day activities. But when it comes to an important mechanical task, I also own several full sets of screwdrivers, each one dedicated to one particular task. The selection of the proper tool for a job, involves an endless set of factors, of which is outside of scope for this. But when the right tool is selected, and bought to bear on the problem, a well designed tool melds the user and the activity together. It's subtle, but definitely there.

The Wiki article on tools got me to pondering the evolution of a another set of tools I have been using for many years, my ice axes. This is, after all, the "Alpine" Garage.

1970's ice axe technology

I started climbing back in the 70's. Just like everything else, technology was starting to touch this area of human activity. Unlike Rock climbing, where the tools (harness, rope, carabiners, chocks) are secondary, used for safety and backup only, in Ice climbing, tools are an essential component of the sport and play a huge role. As ice climbs become steeper, approaching and exceeding vertical, tools are necessary. No ice axes == staying on the ground. This focus on tools as part of the sport was one that attracted me.

In the picture above is state of the art technology for the 1970's. The bottom tool is a Mountain Technology ice axe from Scotland. This is a general purpose tool, patterned on the same technology all the way back to the 1800's. Edward Whymper climbing the Matterhorn in 1865 would have immediately recognized it. But even here we are seeing stirrings of technology creeping in. The tool is much shorter than a typical ice axe, allowing it to be swung above the head like a hammer, allowing steeper terrain to be attacked. The shaft is no longer wood, but metal, and coated with rubber, affording a better grip.

The top tool is a Lowe Hummingbird hammer. One side is a hammer head for banging in screws to vertical ice. The other side carries a drooping pick for lodging into the ice. Compare the tool to the Mountain Tech below. It's shorter more compact, no spike in the bottom handle, the pick is straight and sharply angled down. This is a specialist tool, useless for tromping along a glacier, but superb for attacking frozen waterfalls.

While the Hummingbird is relegated to the back of the closet, the Mountain Tech axe is a timeless design, like a good vintage car, and is still brought out to occasionally play in the mountains.

The Reagan era, the 1980's

Here's my tools from the 1980's, a pair of Chouinard X ice axes. Technology is fully in play here now. Both axes are much shorter, thus becoming less useful in general mountaineering, only useful on nearly vertical terrain. The heads are forged, not cast and feature a locking system for mounting different picks depending on the ice conditions. The shafts are hollow steel and lighter. The leashes are designed to lock the hands on the shafts giving better grip, but also release to slide up the shaft for flexibility. These were good designed tools that I used successfully for many years.

The Internet arrives, the 1990's

Now we move into the realm of totally specialist tools. These are Charlet Moser Quasars, the hot tool of the 90's. The first time I swung these tools into steep ice I was in love. The perfect example of all the components for human/tool unity. Light weight to reduce fatigue, but still heavy enough in the head to penetrate the ice. Notice the curved shaft which allowed full swings over edges without bashing your knuckles, a common occurrence on straight shafted tools. The head was fully modular to accept different picks, hammer heads, aze heads and the like. Grippy rubber at the bottom of the tool with a slight bump to settle the little finger of your hand on. They were a delight to use. After a few whacks into the ice, they disappeared as separate objects and became extensions of my body, manifestations of my desire to ascend upward. No greater compliment can be given to a tool than to become so invisible that they become expressions of your will.

My tool of choice today - Black Diamond Cobras

While the Quasars were the perfect tool for me and great technology, ice climbing is a sport, and just as the tools evolved, the sport itself evolved. As the tools got better, the challenges became diminished. Feats that were impossible years ago, become commonplace. Once the limit was a 50 degree snow slope, today vertical and even overhanging ice is considered routine and accessible by any reasonably fit athlete. Up until the mid 2000's, climbing ice meant attaching yourself to your tools with some sort of leash. The leashes were used to hang from your tools so you didn't have depend on having death grip on the handle. Often during a ice climb you needed to remove your hands from the leash to place ice screws and other protection, so elaborate locking and caming systems were devised for the leashes. One day somebody thought, Why don't we just get rid of the leashes?

And so a new chapter was born in the sport. My current tools, the BD Cobras, are very similar to my Quasars, but adapted for the new world of leashless climbing. When you have a good tool design, stick with it. Once again this is a highly focused, specialized tool design. Crafted with carbon fiber shaft and forged heads, they are immediately recognizable by a tool geek. Even if you have no desire to set a pick into a frozen waterfall, the visual appeal, the craftmanship, the purposefulness, the feel as you pick up the tool, all bring a smile to a discerning tool user. And that's another mark of well crafted tool, the purity of its design will come through.

Off to Paint Land

2012-01-19T17:30:00.000-08:00

Doesn't look so pretty now, does it?

Finished up the final prep work before the trip to the paint shop. Rear quarter windows were pulled and the trim's rivets drilled out to remove the window trim. The shop will pull the windshield before painting.

Rear windows and most of the interior removed

Rear flares off. The original install was pretty nice with welded flares underneath.

Some minor rust but generally quite solid

The driveshaft under the car was suspended from my seatbelt brackets so I could roll the car around. The bungee cord is a specially built motorsports version only available to licensed racers.

The final touches to the engine compartment: Fuse box pulled, along with wiring and relays. Master cylinder and brake booster removed. Fuel lines, water hoses, washer hoses and nozzles gone. The battery box in the lower right will be cut out since the battery was relocated to the trunk.

Pretty greasy and dirty now, but just wait

Finally it's ready for the shop. I delivered my 944 down to Behe's shop in Maryland for some work and when I came back, my neighbor and Edward Moore helped push the roller into the trailer. An hour later it was at its new home, Northeast Auto Body, for the next several weeks. Hopefully we have some pics of progress to come.

Bimmer Motor Finally Out

2012-01-19T06:12:00.000-08:00

Well, that was a pain. All told, about 2 days of work. Of course the first time you do any of this car stuff, it always takes forever. It will take 1/2 the time the next time - not that there is going to be a next time!

Glad to have a lift!

Most of it was pretty straight forward, disconnect everything. Major time sinks were the removal of the clutch slave from the transmission - I left the tranny attached to the motor. This should have taken 5 mins but ended up taking 2 hours, which included a run to the Sears hardware to buy a new snap-ring plier as mine when expanded was about 1/4 inch too short to pull the ring off. I persevered mightily for about a half hour before giving up. Once I had the proper tool, it took 5 minutes. Just goes to show you, proper tools make all the difference.

Motor and tranny hanging from the engine hoist after being plucked from the suspension

The next major hangup was the header. The plan was to drop the subframe with the motor and suspension attached through the bottom. I had pulled everything, removed the subframe bolts and was slowly lowering the assembly when it bound up tight between the frame rails. Argghh!

"The headers need to be removed. "

Just 6 words but it lead to a couple of hours work. An engine hoist, vehicle lift, several jacks, liberally applied verbal lubrication, hand tools and a small amount of beer were all involved according to witnesses. But the deed was done and no small animals were harmed in the process. Once out, the motor was attached to a engine hoist and yanked off the subframe and suspension to be ignored until later.

Naked subframe - a whole nother restoration area for the future.

The subframe and suspension were bolted back into the car, wheels added and we had a roller. Almost ready for the paint shop.

Still more work to do, but the end (of this phase) is in sight.

Time for a change of pace

2012-01-10T18:08:00.000-08:00

As 2011 came to a close, I had a bit of a setback with the 944. I had buttoned the new motor into the car and was ready to move onto the host of other items I planned for the coming season. I ran the motor for a half hour to bring it up to temp and bleed the coolant. As the temps came up, the oil pressure started dropping. Not usually a concern. As the oil heats up, it starts to thin out a bit. Idling at 1000 rpm, it was showing 3 bars. Then 2 bars. Blipping the throttle to 4K would bounce the pressure back up to 4.5 bars and life was good. But I wasn't getting off that easy.

Soon it dropped to 1.5 bars at idle, and blipping the throttle would only go to 3, then 2 and then no effect. Shit! Shut it down and regroup.

Thinking and talking to some engine folks, and the consensus was either OPR value or still some shavings from the rod bearing failure clogging up the oil system. Draining the oil I found some small metal flakes on the drain plug magnet. So the only course of action was to to, of course, pull the motor. Man I'm glad I'm being paid by the hour for this crap!

Out again, hopefully for the last time in 2011.

I found some rod bearing flakes on the oil pickup. I pulled the bottom end and the oil cooler off. Threw the oil cooler in the trash and found a slug of flakes blocking the OPRV. Replaced that too. To play it safe I pulled the main cradle and checked the main and rod bearings and clearance. The mains looked fine, but one of the rod bearing was lightly scored, so replaced all of them again. Checked all the passages with compressed air and a magnet, and it looked good, so I put it back together again.

Crankshaft and mains exposed.

Adding the high dollar Locktite sealant to the crank cradle

With the lump back in the car, fluids topped off, DME relay pulled and coil disconnected - a short sentence, but 4 hours of work - I cranked the starter, and within a few seconds, I had 5 bars of oil pressure. Excellent, first time that has ever happened to me without having to fire the motor. I connected the ignition bits and it fired right up. 40 minutes later, the coolant was bled, and I still had great oil pressure. I think I turned the corner.

Of course, for the next week, I would sneak out to the garage at night and start the motor and let it run for a bit, "just to take a look". So far so good, I'm starting to believe. So now its buttoned up in the trailer, ready to go to John Behe's shop, for a break-in on the dyno and a tuning session.

So with that behind me it was time for something else on my garage to do list.

First up was a new radiator for the Subie. With the 944 taking up my lift, I had farmed out a new clutch job to the local Subaru dealer.It was gone and I just didn't have the time or lift for it. While it was there, the Service Rep called me up and told me my radiator was leaking and needed replacement. Also said in an accusatory tone: Somebody put a "aftermarket" radiator in the car. I let this sink in for a bit, and then said that "Somebody" was you, the dealer. You replaced it about 2 years ago! Oh, she said, and then, but that doesn't matter, it's out of warranty anyway. I declined the extra $600 to be added to my bill.

I ended up finding the best price on Amazon of all places and one afternoon went to work.

A true Aftermarket radiator. Pretty nice aluminum piece, much better than stock.

Rad and new hoses in place.

For good measure, I added a set of silicon hoses. A couple of easy hours work and I saved $300 bucks from the dealer price and have a much better product. I should be good for another 120K miles.

Which brings us to the project pictured at the top of this entry. After owning the 1970 BMW 2002 for several years, and generally restoring the mechanical bits, it was time to make it purdy.

Last weekend I started on the disassembly and engine removal. Pulling motors is what I do!

I'm having the car repainted. Along with the painting, there some minor rust repair, shaving of the US markers, the lower side trim and I want the engine compartment painted too. So all the trim and the motor need to come off or out.

To have a hope in hell of putting it all back together again, I'm taking lots and lots of pictures.

typical photo, this is the throttle rod assembly.

Motor about ready to come out.

I'll be pulling the motor from the bottom, disconnecting all the misc bits, and then dropping the suspension with the motor and tranny still attached. Slide the assembly out from front of the car, pick the motor off and put it on the stand, reattach the suspension and done. Same process I used to do with my 944 motors. I ran out of time last weekend, but am close. I'll wait until the weekend and daylight hours to finish it up. Meanwhile I am pulling all the trim off. That's enough to keep me busy after work.

Bumper, lights and rear trim all gone.

Rear seats and interior panels had to go to get to bolts holding side trim.

Front turbo spoiler, grilles and headlights gone. hood trim also.

Notes to the body shop. This is the front fender where there was US reflectors attached when the car was imported. They are going and the holes welded over.

Living In the Land of ...

2011-12-03T13:38:00.001-08:00

... well since you're already there, now would be a good time to ....

We've all been there. Especially if you like to fix, fiddle, engineer and restore. You start a simple project, like fixing a bad heater fan, and the next thing you know, you have become a metallurgy expert and have built a small scale smelter in your back yard - yes dear, I promise I'll take it down once I'm done - to create the perfect blend of alloys to replicate the motor windings of the 40 year old fan.

In this case, now that I have pulled the old motor so I can replace it with the new built motor ...

Old motor up and out

With that empty tub staring at me, I think to myself. Now that motor is out, why don't I ....

And so it starts.

First up is fabbing a little plate to cover the hole in the firewall where the heater hoses and bits used to go. Since none of that stuff is in the car anymore, there was a nice big hole there. A couple of winters ago, I welded a sheet of steel on the inside of the firewall. But it was up under the dash behind the roll cage and I had to do all cramped and lying on my back, it wasn't a perfect seal. Later that year at the next race weekend my motor blew up and caught on fire. I was plenty glad that plate was there but it could be improved on. Now was the time.

That's the plate in the upper right. There's a padded notch where my fire suppression lines feed through. That will make the firewall nice and tight.

And since I'm there...

why don't I add some hi-tech heat reflecting foil to the firewall. I remember seeing it on Bill Comat's car and thinking that was great idea. Well, now's the time ...

Of course, that means detaching all the lines, cables, fiddley bits and cleaning everything.

And since I'm there ...

Let's replace that beat up old heat shielding on the right side frame rail with one from the parts car.
Of course it's pretty dirty and will look pretty crappy next to the new gold heat foil, so lets spend an 1/2 hour cleaning it up.

Okay that's installed. But now the frame rail and side of the engine compartment looks pretty crappy now.

And since I'm there ...

Might as well repaint the engine compartment. It will be only a couple more hours ...

Finally, the foil wrap of the firewall is done. Most of the engine compartment has been scrubbed, washed, degreased and paint bombed. Done right? Well..

since I'm there ...

Let's remove what's left of the emissions stuff in the upper right corner next to the brake booster. That will mean I also will need to cut the vent line going back to the tank and put a filter on it later. Can't get to it physically right now.

And look at that brake booster. All the paint's come off of it from brake fluid being spilled over the years. It could stand a little rustoleum paint on it .

And since I'm there ...

A tale of two motors

2011-11-26T16:11:00.001-08:00

So finally finished up the motor today. It just needs to be stuffed into the car and all that entails. But meanwhile I thought you would like to enjoy some moto porn. Who doesn't like naked motor pics?

First we have some down and dirty - and when I say dirty, I mean *filthy* - pics of the street motor that got me through the season. New rod bearings, and two head gaskets and about 1/2 lb of red gasket sealer was all the love it got this year.

Greasy, oil seeping out of every seal, rusty bits everywhere. Maybe I should have bought a couple more tubes of gasket sealant. But I can't be too harsh. It did bring me 2nd in the championship this year.

Now here's a face only a mother could love. It makes me want to wash my hands just looking at it.

Finally a side that doesn't look like it's sponsored by Exxon or Shell. After a couple of beers, and last call coming up, you might take it out racing. But you wouldn't bring it home to meet Mom.

And just in case you thought it might be a Pinto or tractor engine, here's the photo evidence buried under the corrosion.

Okay, everybody back from scrubbing their eyes with Lysol? Good, here's the good stuff.

Purdy, isn't she? Block clean and painted. New bearings, seals, etc everywhere. Ceramic coated MSDS headers, tarted up camtower in CFM red.

Driver's side, a nice tasteful mix of different silver textures.

And finally the nose, just before I button the front up and hide those anodized balance shaft pulley covers.

Once this gets plugged into the car and is up and running, I'll take the other motor and give it the same treatment. Down to the bare block, rebuild it from scratch and put it up in the attic. The way it works in racing, if you have a spare <insert part here>, you'll never need it.The only things that break are the things you don't have a spare. So this should be the last motor I'll need for the car...

If you're a racer you probably just blew beer all over your keyboard after reading that statement. Sorry about that, but I can dream. Right now it's the 2012 pre-season, and anything is possible.

November Progress

2011-11-21T13:07:00.001-08:00

The 2011 Racing season is over, but just like in Formula 1, the preparation for the 2012 season has already started.

Most of the new motor is done. Bottom end done, water pump, oil pump, head attached, oil cooler and balance shafts done. Just need the camtower, flywheel and clutch and wiring harness. The clutch, intake manifold and alternator with a/c delete bracket are on the street motor in the car. So I need to pull that lump before finishing it off.

And the unstuffing of the street motor is well underway, hopefully I'll have it pulled by tomorrow.

I ran into a couple of slight snags with the new motor. I was attaching the oil pan since the bottom is done. The proper method to tighten the pan is a spiral tightening sequence that starts in the middle and moves out in a clockwise spiral to draw in all 22 bolts in a nice even fashion. There are 3 spiral seqences: finger tight, to 4 newton meters (nm), then finish with 8 nm. I was working on step 2, when I heard a nice sharp crack! Close examination revealed a nice crack splitting my case at the bolt hole. Off to the machine shop, where they sprayed the crack with a penetrating dye, finding the end of the crack, drilling a hole at the end to relieve stress and then tig welding it all back together.

A couple of days later I had it back from the shop and back to attaching it. This time I made it to step 3 when another crack was heard. Another hole split. I torqued all the bolts but didn't hear any more cracking. Back to the machine shop where Jim will inspect all the other areas and touch up if needed.

Look closely, you can see the split where the red mark is.

While the 944 work is progressing, my rear spacers for the 2002 showed up and I couldn't wait to fit my new wheels. The rub in the front at full lock is gone - a BFH took care of that. There still is a little rubbing in the rear, on some bumps and on turns. That tells me there's a bit of flex in the rear and the rear suspension bits probably need a good refreshing. Plus the front looks a bit high, need to lower it. I'll be looking at that and the rear in a little bit, but here's some pics.

I went up today and met with my body shop guy and talked paint. The plan is to pull the motor and all trim and deliver it as a roller. There's some minor rust work, bottom of the door and few other spots, but nothing major. His major comment was he couldn't believe in what good shape it was. I plan on having the lower trim deleted and the "american federalized" marker lights removed. The body and engine compartment will remain the original Chamonix white, while the hood, trunk and sidelines above the beltline to be painted either dark blue or black - ala Alpina style.

But that's in the future, right now it's looking sweet!

Driving by Braile

2011-11-12T10:23:00.001-08:00

Thought you might enjoy a pic of my windshield at the end of the Nationals Race. Now imagine driving straight into the sun at 100 mph with a bunch of other crazies out there ...

That's the outside, here's a view from inside the cockpit.

If you thought "That's Frigging Crazy!", don't worry, you're normal. But if you thought "Cool!", you might be a racer ...

'02 Love

2011-11-11T08:07:00.001-08:00

The racing season got a bit hectic in the last couple of months and the poor old 2002 has been neglected. In fact it refused to start back in Aug/Sept and I just haven't had the chance to look at it. It's been fixed now - a new distributor cap took care of it - and I've been blasting around the back roads this fall, reminding me of why I love this car. Just a sweet little car that's so much fun to toss around. With minimal sound deadening and a blistering 105 hp, it feels like you're really going a lot faster than you are. A speedo in KPH doesn't hurt either.

But it's time to show it some love.

First up is a Elefant front strut brace. I put in a rear strut brace and combo battery box a couple of years ago, but neglected the front.

This is a nice piece, powder coated in black, and should tighten up the front end considerably. A 1970's car stiffness is a bit lacking shall we say.

Strut bar installed

Next step is to install the "Appearance Package". Time for some wheel and tire upgrades. The car came with 13" E30 BMW wheels which was a popular style. I hope to end up with a what an enthusiast would do back in the 70's. Bigger wheels and brakes, upgraded suspension, a bunch of Alpina upgrades, etc. This isn't a pristine original car when I got it. The turbo flares, front and rear spoilers were added sometime in its earlier life. So while I won't be turning it into a Restro-Rod, I don't have to worry about the purity of originality either.

Panasports and MinLites were the hot ticket for race cars and race car wanna-be's back then. So let go with some 15" Rota RB's in gunmetal. Some nice sticky Kumho Esta 225x45's will replace the wimpy US Generals junk currently on. Of course, that will mean I will actually go around corners with some grip instead of tortured squealing.

Nationals 2011

2011-11-09T14:25:00.000-08:00

So how was Nationals?

Well the partying was good ...

Team Comat showing how the Canadians drink beer

The results were good.

I placed 2nd in the Region Championships

The Spoiled Boys Racing Team (Joe and Case Crowell) came up from North Carolina and dominated the field, breaking the stranglehold the Canadian's had on the 944 Cup championship the last several years. And when I say dominated, on Friday on the test day, at a track they never had seen before, they were putting in 1:36 laps. Now I've done 1:36's before there, but this time, we were using the turn 3 chicane, which adds another 2+ seconds at least. I'd hate to see their times when they actually get some experience at this track!

But getting to the end of the weekend was a challenge for me and many others.

Friday

Friday started out well. Most of all the 44 guys were here for the test & tune day. Skies were clear and sunny, temps in the upper 50's,lower 60's. Just a nice day to be at the track. There were reports that a wicked snow storm was coming - several inches of snow was predicted - but that was hard to believe with the perfect weather we were having. Plus it's October. Snow? Really?

Dyno testing of cars was done throughout the weekend by John Behe

We ran the course with the turn 3 chicane in, this is the first time I have done that configuration. I like the course much better without it. It hurts our momentum too much. First session was just a get acquainted with the chicane laps. 2nd test session after 3 laps I started to hear a clunking noise out back. I started to come into the pits and on the entry the rear started to lock up. I coasted to a stop and took a look under the car. Nothing obvious, axles still looked good. I tried to move forward under power and get about 3 feet and then hear this nasty clunk and the rear would lock. I had to be towed back to my spot with the rear lifted off the ground. Diagnosis: Broken Transmission. Welcome to my Nationals weekend.

Looking down the garage bays - mostly 944 cup racers

The left side of the garages were mostly 944's also. Here is Rob Provost's SP1 car in the foreground.

However, I did have some luck. I don't have a backup tranny, as all the parts cars I've bought over the years have been automatics. That has been something on my shopping list. Now it was time to go shopping. Big Joe Boschulte had a spare 89 tranny with factory LSD in his trailer and was willing to part with it for some cold hard cash. I had also sprung this weekend for a garage which I usually don't, so we had a nice dry workspace. Gerald Sweetwine from John Behe's shop, and Bernie, Steve Randolph's mechanic gave me a hand throughout the day and we swapped the trannys in and out.

Working tranny going in, dead tranny on right. DD supervising

I missed all the rest of the track sessions for the day, but a spin around the paddock showed that at least I had 6 gears, 5 forward and 1 reverse. I was back in business.

Alan (red/white suit) Cohen's #144 going on the dyno.

My garage mate, John Torgensen from South Carolina

Next door garage neighbors: some of the fast guys from Canada: Gary Loudsbury, chief mechanic for driver Randy Smith (#78)

Saturday

On Saturday we woke up to the sound of rain. Unbelievably the Weather channel was predicting 4 inches of snow in Baltimore and Washington, and 12-18 inches in New York. It's still freaking October! The day was the perfect definition of miserable conditions. The track was wet with poor drainage, streams and puddles everywhere. Which is the norm for Thunderbolt. Lightning, the companion circuit, drains pretty well, and racing in the rain there isn't too bad. Not the case for Thunderbolt. And it was cold, upper 30's and lower 40's. Grip was a theoretical concept at best.

Today was qualifying, and the qualifying race which would set the grid for the Nationals race on Sunday. It also counted as the final regional race for the chapters. For me, this was the focus of my weekend. Finishing well meant clinching 2nd in the North chapter. Regional championships are a season long affair unlike National which is a one shot deal. With the miserable conditions my goal was to stay out of trouble and cruise home to take 2nd. I qualified mid pack and took the green in light rain. By the 1st corner, the rain had intensified and coming sideways. Visibility and grip were horrible. I thought I saw some snow flurries mixed in with the rain. This was going to be a long day.

Surprisingly the race was clean with cars spinning off the track every now and then (including me) but no metal to metal contact. I brought the car home in 18th overall, 15th in class and took 2nd in the region. Mission accomplished.

Maggie, my official photographer, spent her time in the garage or the cab of the truck and declined to take any pics, not that I blamed her. With the racing done, I retired to the hotel room for a long hot shower and then to the Cup Annual banquet and awards dinner.

Congrats to Steve Randolph who took 1st in the North Region.

Steve wins a Million Cup Dollars.

The Crowell brothers display the latest in tasteful raceware.

Sunday

Sunday brought us clear skies and a drying track. It was still cold, but a 180 degrees turnaround from the conditions the day before.

For the rain racing, the chicane was taken out. But for today, the chicane was back on the table. A short practice session gave me some more time to work on my line though it and then it was time to go racing.

Heading to grid for the main race

The track was still cold, but at least it was dry. There was still a river running across the track through the braking and turn in zone for the chicane, and other wet spots around the track. And you definitely don't want to go off, as where it wasn't mud it was sodden grass.

I finished 18th overall in the qualifying race on Saturday, so that's where I started, in mid pack.

Green Flag!

Well, the start was wild and woolly for sure! 3 or 4 wide into turn one, offs, contacts and more. Here's the start from John Torgensen who was towards the back of the field.

And Yan Tremblay's view. You can see me tap Chris Lubinski (red car) going into the chicane.

And here's mine, but my video is pretty crappy.

Going into turn 1, a whole bunch of us were showered with mud. My windshield became totally opaque. I tried my wipers just before going into the chicane and that just made matters worse.

My video died when Chris L and I hit. I continued on but could barely see out the front. This seems to be my season for driving blind. From turn 2 on, through the entry into the Jersey Devil, the sun was shining directly in front, making the mud impossible to see through. I needed another car to follow to make the turn in to the chicane. Once I passed a car and had nobody to follow I would miss the turn in and go careening over the curbs and grass. Despite driving by braile, my lap times were competitive and I was able to hunt down and pass some folks. I started 18th overall and ended up 8th overall, 7th in class. However, I paid for my misdeeds, receiving a 13 for contact with Chris.

Tyler Comat, who had to start at the back due to a Team mistake, came up on me later in the race. I held him off for several laps until I blew the entry (and probably the exit) of the chicane and got by me. Tyler went on to take 3rd. But way at the front were the two Crowell brothers, Joe and Case. It was like watching Seb Vettel. Those two just checked out at the front and nobody could touch them. The were 3 seconds a lap faster than the rest of the field. Joeboy went on to take the win, beating his brother to the checker.

2011 Nationals Cup podium (photo 44Cup.com)

And so ends the 2011 Season. Considering all the challenges, 2nd place in the standings wasn't too bad. I had some bad luck and some good luck. Almost every race was a podium finish and I had several poles plus the track record for the Lightning course. And while it took a lot of work for that result, most importantly, it was a lot of fun. But it could be even better of course. So it's now officially the "off season" which means time to start working on the car for next season. My partially built motor in the garage is calling my name....

Summit Point PCA race - part 2

2011-10-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

So where were we? Ah yes, strapped into the car, rain pouring down and ready to start another race at Summit Point. The skies teased us with some lightening of the deluge, but no love for race 2. 10 miles away in Winchester it was dark and gloomy, but not raining. Looking at the radar, Summit Point seems to be stuck in a Groundhog Day loop, a giant rotating green splash that seems stuck on us. All totally irrelevant of course, 944 Cup racers are made of stern stuff, we race in the snow after all (February @ VIR). While I wasn't on pole, I was on the outside of pole but with a transparent windshield this time. A tradeoff I would glady do again.

Bob Page (blue 76) and Chris Derecola (yellow 24) at Nationals 2010

Bob Page in the blue #76 was lined up next to me on the inside on pole. Right behind me is Steve Randolph (#3). We're in about row 4 or 5 of the race group. We round turn 10, eyes straining for the green flag. Revs build and hearts are beating 180 bpm and then Green Flag!

Bob and I pedal neck and neck down the straightaway. I decide to stick with the outside lane and not do anything stupid since it was still pouring. I tuck behind another car and follow them in the braking zone. Now I'm usually a good latebraker. I'm even better in the rain since my car has ABS ... As I'm diving on the brakes, I'm watching some cars skid off in front of me into the gravel trap or run off road. I'm also thinking. Man, Bob's waiting awfully late to brake ... I bet he's going to not going to make the corner, I better do something about this. I check up and go wide in the corner figuring he would go flying past the front of me. And here's come a flying splash of blue 944 on my right side. Unfortunately Bob didn't miss me, but nailed me pretty good in the wheel and front fender. Just like a banked pool shot he goes flying off at an angle and into the outside gravel trap.

Other than a slight deviation in my course, it didn't do a whole lot to me. I continued on at full tilt and into the class lead.

Bob Page's car at Nationals 2010

Now Bob is breathing down my neck in the championship. With his win in race 1, he's only 2 points behind. With him in the gravel, now's my time to make some points. With cars spinning off everywhere at the start I guess the corner workers were busy. I watch the black flag stations (I could see them this race!) as I go by but don't see any call to come in. A couple of laps later they close the pits as Bob was able to make it to pit lane but broke down and blocked it. He needed to be towed in to clear it.

Eventually Steve Randolph (#3) is parked on my bumper. This should be a fun race, we should be evenly matched in the rain. Entering the carousel (turn 6) my car just doesn't have any power. Normally, I downshift into 3rd gear at the bottom of the Chute (turn 5), accelerate on the short straight, a light left foot brake, turn in and back on the gas. This time nothing much happens. WTF? I glance at the Data System and it says I'm in 3rd gear. I don't believe it, it feels like I'm in 5th. I reshift and back into 3rd. Still no power. Steve just dives into the inside and motors on past.

The car feels slow. I'm keeping my foot to the floor through the rest of the carousel - normal proceedure for a 944 anyway - but not much drama. Rolling through turn 9, it's like my turbo spooled up and came on boost as the power came back online. The middle of turn 9 was not an auspicious location for this to happen and the rear stepped out on me. Some quick hands and we were back on course. With Steve disappearing in front of me of course.

Halfway down the straight, the power goes away again, then reappears halfway around turn 10. And so it goes the rest of the race, power, no power, power - holy shit not here! - no power ... I'm in 2nd but not destined to stay there long. Dave Gibson comes rolling up and after some token resistance by me, goes on by. Into 3rd now. Crap.

And now here come Robert Provost in his SP1 car filling my mirrors. Here's a couple of laps from his viewpoint.

My car is at least consistent. Power, no power, power, no power. But as the race winds down the on power cycle is getting longer. I figure something got wet (duh!) and is finally drying out a bit. I manage to keep Robert behind me and bring the car home in 3rd. Another podium finish and some breathing room from Bob. With the finish I now need to just finish 14th or higher to get a lock on 2nd in the championship.

The turn 1 hit resulted in a dented fender, easily fixed at home with a mallet and some krylon paint, and a cut tire. It was time to get another set of wets anyway.

Tomorrow is another sprint and a 60 minute enduro, both non-point races. Still more challenges ahead, the weekend is definitely not over. However, it was time to head off for beer and the bar-b-que track dinner.

Delaware PCA DE @ NJMP

2011-10-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

After the Summit Point club race - which I'll get back to shortly - I had to quickly fix up the car for the annual Delaware PCA region DE event, which is held at Thunderbolt the next weekend. This is our 4th year doing this, and for the past several years I've been the registrar. We only do one DE a year, but we try to make it one of the best for everybody.

First item to address was to replace the radiator fan that was given me so much problems. Pulling it out I was surprised to see that it wasn't a thrown balance weight, but that a whole fan blade had broken off.

Well, in my defense, it was pouring rain, wet, dark and gloomy at the race, and the fans black, so hard to see. I had my choice of fan assemblies from my pile of parts and bolted another one right in. A quick wash of the car outside, when it finally stopped raining for a bit, and it was off to the track.

Friday was our "open track" day where we run alternating 30 min sessions and in theory, get 4 hours of track time. I had a blast, running on my Toyo RA1's that look like Hoosiers now, with god knows how many heat cycle on them. On Saturday my on-track time came to an end during the 2nd session in the morning when I blew a hole in my headers. Not wanting to risk a burnt valve, I parked the car. After all, all I have to do is one more race where I finish better than 14th and I grab 2nd in the 944 Cup North Region championship. I finished out the weekend doing my registrar duties and the occasional instructing stints.

Back home I pulled the header and unwrapped the heat tape and found the damage was greater than I though.

The top area is the one I was able to see at the track. The bottom crack was invisible.

Even worse, the crack went all the way around the pipe. This header is done. I'll keep it around and try my modest welding skills on it. If it survives I'll keep it as a backup. But for now, I went and ordered a new MSDS Header that was ceramic coated from Lindsey Racing.

Looking Sweet!

The car was running warm at the DE and using water somewhere, so I'll also take the opportunity to tear down the top end to see if I can find out what's up with that. Most of its already off the car and I'll finish up this weekend.

Summit Point PCA race - part 1

2011-10-05T15:46:00.000-07:00

For the twitter nation, here's the short version of the weekend: dry, warm, beer, cold, rain, fogged up, 2nd, more rain, bang, miss, 3rd, beer, ribs, trophies,tires, more beer, dry, cold, still missing, 2nd, cup car, mud, 1st, pit, cup car, spin, overheat, dnf, home, beer.

You can leave now, the grownups will stay.....

Friday was dry and warm. With my old 12 heat cycle tires I was able to get down into the 1:27's. Which was nice as I haven't been to Summit Point in years after the thousands of laps I've done there. The track felt good and I remembered where all the turns where. We had 3 practice sessions and then the rookies had their practice starts and fun races and it was time for some beer. We ended up at Winchester Thai (recommended) for dinner in the pedestrian mall in Old Winchester.

944 Cup Head Honcho Dave Derecola has moved to South Carolina from the Maryland area, and so has joined the ranks of the Gentlemen racers, doing arrive and drive, letting his crew, in this case, Gerald from John Behe's shop, drive the truck and trailer and wrench on the car.

Gerald working on DD's car

David Mann and Dave Derecola.Steve's Randolph's car in the background.

By Saturday morning, the clouds had moved in and it was threatening rain. Soon it was time for qualifying and the track was damp enough the decision was made to go to Hoosier Wet tires. And they stayed on the car for the rest of the day. Our group was a mix of 944 Cup cars, Spec Boxsters and misc 911's. It was a bit crowded and I never got a clean lap and qualified 4th, within a second of the rest of guys on a wet track.

Steve Randolph #3 - North Region Champion 2011 -
I was mathematically eliminated over the weekend. when Steve finished
only 1 position behind me. Still in the hunt for 2nd.

Bernie, Steve Randolph's crew and mechanic

Sitting on the grid for race #1, the rain was coming down pretty good. I was feeling pretty good myself, I enjoy rain races. It seems though, that is a minority opinion, as the run group size was only 50% or less from the day before. The call comes, and we head out for the pace lap, taking my position on the outside (left). Just them my windshield starts fogging up. WTF? I use shaving cream on the inside to defog since I don't have any defrosters. The qualifying session was just as wet and visibility was great.

That wasn't the case now, it was seriously fogging up. I could wipe about a 1 foot square circle just in front of me, I couldn't reach any more. We come onto the front straight and there must have been a green flag, not that I could see it, but we all went. Huge waves of spray coming off the cars in front of me. I assume it was coming off the cars, as even if they were 5 feet in front of me, I couldn't see them.

'Well this sucks' I'm thinking. I head to the inside hoping to get out of the spray so I can maybe see turn one and brake for it. The spray lessens and I run down the inside with all the other 944's stacked behind a slow Boxster and take the class lead.

Some of the SuperCups - Noel Hall's turbo

Meanwhile in the car, the fogging is getting worse. Pretty soon my windshield is solidly opaque with just the little porthole in front that I can reach with my glove. The rear hatch was mostly fogged up also, so visibility to the rear was mostly from my left side drivers mirror. Anything out the right side of my windshield is just not there. Since there is only 3 left hand turns with all the rest right-handers, that made driving a bit challenging. I started playing the game "Guess where the ... (brake marker/apex/track-out) ... is". I started taking mental snapshots of the turns ahead and when I thought I was in the vicinity, I would turn in.

Overall, I sucked at this new game. I think I may have hit 3 apexes and maybe a couple of braking points in the entire race. I would brake way too late, get all crossed up and squirelly - remember it's a wet track and slippery. But I was still in the lead!

About lap 7 I caught a 911 that was getting stacked up in turn one behind a Spec Boxster, slowing us both down. Bob Page, who I had been keeping a consistent gap behind me even with my driving by braile style, was able to catch up and parked himself on my bumper.

Heading into Wagon Bend (turn 3) I totally missed the braking point (my marker is on the right side ...) and got the car very much out of shape. With arms windmilling, I gather it back up, but Bob got by. With Bob actually able to see out his windshield, I was never able to get past him and brought the car home in 2nd place. With Bob taking the win, he was now only 2 points behind me. I must finish in front of him in the next race. Steve Randolph rounded out the top 3. Since he finished only 1 position behind me, I was told that mathematically eliminates me from the championship - ala Formula One! But I still have a good shot at 2nd as long as I can keep Bob behind me.

More SuperCups - Steve Wilson's turbo

Check out that wing on Wilson's 951

944 Cup dinning at Joe's aka The Racing Chef'
(from left) Bob Page, Steve Randolph, DD

After a nice lunch prepared by our own 'Racing Chef', Joe Boschulte, it was time to strap back into the car for Race #2. Still raining, but I had redone the shaving gel treatment to my windshield and I was expecting to at least see this time. And that was the result, good visibility throughout the race. With that problem solved, Mr Murphy wasn't done with me yet. More drama was in store.

Stealth Car Recognition

2011-10-04T05:09:00.000-07:00

Interesting weekend at the Summit Point PCA race. Drama, rain, contact, flat tows and podiums all mixed together. Race report to follow.

But first, at the Saturday dinner, my car was voted by the corner workers to be the most colorful, or unique, or "interesting" design. I'm still not quite sure exactly what the criteria was, but I ended up with the "Andy Warhol Paint" award. And the trophy was much bigger than the podium awards. I'm surprised they were actually able to see in the car in the pouring rain. It's flat black with no lights after all. Anyway, pretty cool indeed.

Cool Mosport video

2011-09-27T08:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a cool short video of all the 944's drifting through Turn 3 at the Mosport races earlier this year. #88 is in the middle of the group.

Nuts and Bolts revisited

2011-09-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

The Summit PCA club race is shortly in the future. The car is safely tucked away in the trailer so I'm turning my attention back to the motor rebuild. Since I'm not in any hurry to finish the motor - I'm keeping the street motor in the car for the rest of the season - it's time to get back into my electroplating adventure.

When I last left it, I had done several batches of nuts and bolts, but the results really didn't meet my standards. Time for some serious attention. I upgraded some of my equipment, got a big heavy duty controllable power supply and built a workstation. Last week and weekend I spent time varying parts of the plating process to see if I can come up with a repeatable process with good results.

First step is getting a good working surface suitable for good plating. Like painting, surface prep is probably 50-80 % of the real work. No fancy glass-beading process here, just me and my bench grinder with a wire brush. Since the cadmium surface that was left of some of the bolts was highly toxic, I choose to wear a respirator while grinding the crap off.

Bolts, nuts and washers in their original glory

After wire brushing

Wire them up to conduct electricity. This is a pain in the ass if you have 20 washers and nuts.

Dunk in a bucket of diluted muriatic acid to remove any rust for about 2 minutes

Degreaser step

I dunk the parts for 10 minutes in a degreasing solution at 180 degrees. I use a crock pot I bought for $10 new at the local Walgreens.

30A constant current power supply

Finally, hook up the parts to the power supply and off to the plating bucket for about 20 minutes.

V1 of the plating bucket

The plating bucket has a special solution to facilitate the transfer of zinc ions to the parts. You can see the zinc plate at the bottom right. It gets hooked to the positive lead of the power supply. I hang parts from a copper tube that's connected to the negative terminal of the power supply. That elongated round tube is a heater which keeps the temp about 105-110 degrees. The square box is an aquarium pump which agitates the solution. As the zinc migrates from the anode plate to the parts, the parts give off a little hydrogen gas. The pump keeps fresh solution flowing over the parts to keep the plating going.

I plate for about 10 mins at 1.5 amps, and then flip the parts around and go for another 10 mins. The flow of zinc is directional, only the parts that can "see" the anode get plated. The backside doesn't, thus the flip.

When the parts come out of the plating solution, they should be nice and shiny. Next a 15 second dip in my yellow chromating solution - nasty toxic stuff, must wear my respirator - and a quick rinse in distilled water and here's the result.

Oil pan bolts

Here's a comparison between some original bolts and the final result.

Just like me, they clean up pretty good!

So, how's the process working out? When I started out, maybe 10% of the time would I get something ok or reasonable. After this weekend, I'm about at 50-60% of the time I get great results, and the rest just ok. So I'm making progress, but there's more work to do.

Here's some timing rollers hardware. This is an example of when it goes right. The original plate was dull and oxidized, slight surface rust, the bolt head rusty. Look at it now.

Latest news

2011-09-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's been a while since I updated here, so let's get with it.

When I last left, I had a great series of 3 races at NJMP, but ended up pushing the car into the trailer since it was not working at the end of the weekend. Pouring more water into the system just resulted into a large puddle of water under the car so obviously, some work was needed.

Further investigation revealed that the big polehole bang resulted in my radiator fans to flex at the same time my radiator did, resulting in the big pointy screws on the fan mounts putting a nice hole in the radiator: the source of my overheating woes.

A new turbo radiator and hoses from Lindsey Racing took care of that issue. But the car didn't start and didn't sound healthy. My guess is the head gasket went, and what the EMT crew thought was fire as I coasted into the hot pits was really steam escaping. Since I was watching the gauges and immediately killed the motor, there was no signature massive cloud of steam that usually occurs.

A few hours of work, and while the head gasket may be gone, the true reason was revealed. I had wildlife living in my motor. Not squirrels or snakes this time, but cranes.

I didn't think cranes were native to Pennsylvania

Pretty fertile conditions for waterfowl

Normally I'd have this fixed in no time, I can do the top end without looking at the shop manual anymore. But it became crunch time at work and the car sat idle for a couple of weeks. Just no time to work on it. I missed the PCA race at NJMP Thunderbolt,but with hurricane Irene blasting the track, I didn't feel too bad.

Last weekend I finally had some spare time and headed back into the garage.

Pretty, shiny head back from the machine shop.

The machine shop worked my head, new valve guides, and needed to slightly shave it to get it back into spec. It was just a tiny bit warped from the heat. They also dunked it into their parts washer for 24 hours to remove all the fine quality leaking street motor sludge.

Since the head gasket was most likely the original, I can't be too unhappy that it let go. The motor has over 120K miles and the odometer didn't work. So I guess we got our money out of it. Time for a new one.

A few more hours of work and it was time to fire it up, which it did immediately. Note the traditional smoke offering to the car gods from the spilled oil cooking off the headers.

NJMP - Lightning Course with EMRA

2011-08-02T16:43:00.000-07:00

After baking in a heat and humidity sauna for the last week on the East Coast. opening the door of my trailer on Saturday morning was a treat. Low humidity, a gentle breeze, actually nice for a July morning. And while it was hot in the car, out of the sun it wasn't too bad. A great change from the weekend before when NJMP held the PCA/Grand Am race with temps in the 100's and 99% humidity.

The car was working fine. I put the car on pole with a 1:18.7, breaking the Cup class record of 1:19.5, previously set by Vito Valentino. The race was good, I led from pole for 21 1/2 laps. Unfortunately, it was a 22 lap race. After having a good gap most of the race back to Alan Cohen in 2nd, a pack of EV tow vehicles were sent out, catching me in a narrow space around turns 2-3. This bunched up the field and allowed Steve Randolph who was further back in 4th to get a good run to the front. Steve got past me on the last corner and held on for the win. As they say, it's only the last lap you need to lead.

Here's the video from Alan's camera who was just behind me most of the race.

BTW, your eyes aren't deceiving you. That's a vintage Volvo station wagon, complete with baby seat, top speed of 25 mph, as the pace car. Possibly the least sexiest pace car to ever lead a pack of racers around.

EMRA Sat race from ross Cohen on Vimeo.

After the race we had a Wings, Pizza and Martini party to celebrate the life of one of our own 944 Cup racers that we recently lost. Joe Hrymack, aka Jersey Joe, passed away the week before. Joe was a tough competitor, a National Champion, a good companion off the track. Jersey was the big dog when I started racing Cup and I had plenty of epic battles racing with him. He will be missed.

Here's Joe with his original Rothman's car at Mid Ohio after winning the Cup Championship.

Sunday started off with a Qualifying race. How you finished determined where you started for the official Race later that morning. To spice it up, we inverted the field and Steven and I started in the back. Within a couple of laps we both had made it to the front where I parked myself just off of Steve's bumper. I was faster in the turn 2-5 section, but he could pull me out of the Lightbulb. Steve took 1st with me closely behind him.

Here's the Qual Race from Alan's car. Alan made it to the front first, but Steve and I got by him.

EMRA Sun Q from ross Cohen on Vimeo.

The Sun points race followed quickly. I started 2nd with Alan next to me on the outside. Steve was on pole and directly ahead of me was Frank Celenza running SuperCup (not our class). On the start, Alan got by me into one and followed Steve through, while Frank disappeared. At the end of lap one, I took Alan on the inside going into turn one and hooked myself to Steve's bumper once again. Same scenario, faster in the turns 2-6 section, get pulled in the Lightbulb. I had several opportunities to stick a pass, but often it's better to be behind someone than running up front. As Steve remarked after the race, it was very stressful knowing I was always just there, ready to pounce, likely to be next to him at any moment. While my battle was going on with Steve, Vito Valentino and Alan were duking it out behind me.

It was hot in the car, I didn't have a cool suit for the weekend, and I could've used one that race. I made a few small errors and the gap between me and Steve increased a few car lengths. Finally I went a bit wide coming through the left hander after the bridge (turn 6) and drifted just off the gators and hit a huge hole with the rear right tire. Bang! As I came back on track I had a good vibration. I slowed down a bit and let Steve get away. Eventually the vibration stopped, but scanning my gauges I notice my temps were starting to climb. WTF? The temperature stopped just short of the red zone. There's nothing in the rear of the car that should have been affected by that pothole. I kept going, but at a reduced pace and kept an eye on the gauge. There were about 4 laps to go and I decided to just cruise and finish.

Coming up and over the hill at turn 5, the car just had no grip and drifted right off the left side of the track. I corralled it back and re-entered the track. Vito and Alan came up on me and I let them through, losing 2 spots, but it was survival time. Cruising out of the Lightbulb turn my temps spiked into the red zone and the big ! light on the dash lit up. No hesitation, I reached out and killed the motor and cruised on down the hill and into the hot pits. I could smell steam. As I came to the stop the fire trucks came running up and they popped the hood. No fire, but definitely some steam coming there. I was flat towed back to my paddock ending the weekend a few laps early.

Adding water just flowed out somewhere, so the diagnosis was put off and we just pushed it in the trailer. My guess is the off-track excursion broke the plastic radiator drain plug, but won't know until I put the car up on the lift.

Here's the race from Alan perspective again - mostly an upclose view of Vito's car.

EMRA Sun Race from ross Cohen on Vimeo.

The end result was a 10th place finish. But the good news is I crushed the lap record again. This time with a 1:18.003 in the race. Almost into the 17's. Yessir, that was over 1.5 seconds faster than the track record set earlier this year. Not too bad for a totally stock street motor that came out of a junker car with 120K miles. That was awesome and a good way to end the weekend.

Next month I'll be back at NJMP, but this time at the Thunderbolt circuit for the 1st time this year.

Mosport Race 2 Video

2011-07-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a video of Race 2 on Sunday. The driver is Sebastien Turcot in #944. At the start I'm on the inside going into turn 1. Pretty soon I'm on the bumper of Steve Randolph. We go nose to tail for a couple of laps.

Part 2 picks up where a car spins in front of Steve Randolph as I was dogging him. Steve was balked less than me and got a good launch onto the back straight and I never caught him again.

Later I'm slow exiting onto the front straight and Sebastien gets a run on me and passes me into turn 1. Eventually he overcooks turn 5 and I'm able to pass him on the back straight since his exit speed was compromised. He stays with me to the end, but I prevail. It was fun racing. Enjoy!

It was pretty cool seeing my car from another perspective.

I didn't have any video working that weekend, so thanks Sebastien!

I also need to adjust my brake light switch. I'm not really braking as much as it looks. I left foot brake everywhere and its so busy that I keep my foot above the brake pedal, but it must have a hair trigger. On second thought, maybe I'll leave it alone and keep my competitors guessing ...

Mosport 2011

2011-07-05T14:17:00.000-07:00

So maybe old dogs *can* learn new tricks. After being absent from Mosport for 7 years, my best time of the weekend was a 1:42.4 - still slow compared to the local 44 guys turning 1:38's (yikes!) - but only 9 tenths a second off my best time before. The previous time was done in a 73 911 RS (above), running 450 lbs lighter and with 75 more horsepower. So a slower, porkier, less aerodynamic car was within a second compared to a much more nimble and powerful car. I can only mark it up to my, ahem, modest skills increase. Or in easy to understand terms, I now suck less than I did before.

So that must mean I made it to Mosport, even after smashing the clutch slave cylinder while putting the street motor in. Luckily for me, Fairwinds had one on the shelf and I nabbed it. Installation and bleeding took about an hour. Unfortunately, there was a good 8 hours of work to go before the car was ready. Thursday night around 9 pm the motor fired up for the first time. A spin around the neighborhood and nothing fell off. Of course we don't have any streetlights and no headlights on the car, so even if it did, I doubt if I would noticed. And to make a long day even longer, as I pulled out the trailer to start loading, the skies started pouring.

By 11:30, the car and trailer was loaded and ready to go. Totally soaked and with an alarm set for 4:30am I went to bed.

The track day with Schattenbaum PCA was blessedly uneventful. The car ran fine other than a little oil consumption. The pre-race inspection revealed no issues, and the car was buttoned up back in the trailer ready for the 11 hour tow to Canada.

944 Paddock with Cup HQ in the big tent

Inside of the tent

Other than there being a state trooper running radar every 2 miles in NY on I-81 forcing me to drive the speed limit, the trip was boring. No flats, no excitement, other than the price of diesel fuel and my credit card company deactivating my gas card in the middle of the trip. Crossing the track at turn 10 and into the main paddock I went, where I spied the giant tent signifying 944 Cup HQ for the weekend. The last time I was here, that paddock didn't exist. So there have been changes at Mosport.

Friday was a test & tune day. I spent the 4 sessions on my Toyo RA1s, sussing out the line and becoming reacquainted with the special place that Mosport is. I gotta tell ya, my testicles remembered turn 2 right off, retracting to somewhere in the vicinity of my heart.

Turn 5a/b I believe, though there's tons of ups & downs everywhere, so who knows?

Saturday was the start of the race weekend. We would have a practice, a qualifying session and a race. On Sunday, we would have 2 races in the morning, finishing up around 12:15. That would leave us about 40 mins to fully pack and load and head out across the track during the lunch break. Otherwise we would be stuck there for the rest of the afternoon, instead of motoring down I-81. Since if everything went as planned I would get home around midnight, missing the track opening was not going to happen.

Qualifying was an interesting session. It had rained the night before, and it kept on lightly drizzling and then clearing up. About 20 mins before the session we got a good soaking and the ground stayed wet. Decision made, on with the Hoosier wets, off with the Hoosier slicks.

Another flat black 44 with orange wheels!
Yannick Tremblay - another racer with excellent taste.

Line up on grid and we get the go signal. Heading out onto the track I start hearing some out of the normal noises coming from the left rear corner. Left turns and bumps I hear a nasty vibration. I weave a bit on the out lap but its not going away. I pull into the pits and jump out of the car. Nothing to see, the wheel is tight. I'm baffled. A pit guy comes by and says one of the onlookers says my wheel isn't centered when I put it on and that's my issue. I head back to my paddock spot, cursing a blue streak. Great this is going to kill my qualifying session. I'll start at the back for race 1. That sucks.

Still in my nomex and helmet, I jack the car and redo the wheel. Looks fine to me. Bernie, Steve's mechanic wanders over and takes a look. He doesn't see anything either. He tells me I got lucky, there's a red flag. Somebody spun off the track in the wet and everybody is waiting in the hotpits with the time stopped. I rush back and get in line again. A minute later we go back out and immediately somebody spins at the bottom of turn 2 just in front of me as I come down the hill. Which way are they going? Get on the brakes buddy! Luckily I avoid collecting them and the folks behind me spare me also. Red flag again and back to the pits.

This time as we head to the pits I weave about again. The noise is still there, but not as much. I decide to stay out. A few minutes later we get the go sign and back at it. I figure we'll get 2 or 3 laps and then they will call the session. While the track is wet, it stopped raining and starts to dry a bit. The times start coming down. I figure it's now or never and push on my last lap. The wet tires will burn up on a dry track. I get a 1:58 and and call it quits, searching for wet spots on the cool down lap. Surprisingly that's good enough for 4th in class, 5th overall. I love wet and damp tracks!

On the cool down lap I'm still puzzling over the noise in the rear, when enlightenment occurs. This year with the big wheels on the rear (15 x 9) I run big spacers to clear. When I go back to the Toyo's I put the smaller spacers on. It occurs to me that I have never run my Hoosier wet tires before with the spacers. Could it be tire rub?

And the answer is you bet. Just on the left side, which has been pranged before I'll admit, the tire is rubbing at the top. Not a lot and it didn't damage the tire. But now I know.

By racetime late afternoon, the track had dried and it was time for dry tires. On the formation lap my main American competition Steve Randolph was waaaaay back there, next to Tyler Comat. Steve didn't get a great time in the wet, going for preservation not lap times and bringing the car home instead. I got a good start and hung with the lead group for several laps. Eventually their lap times start dropping and they start gapping me. That's ok, I just need to keep up the pace and shit! here's Steve in my mirrors. How did you get here so fast? Steve is faster than me and gets past me. I try to follow but he gaps me. Mostly I learned where to pass people in the race by being the sitting duck passee for the home town Canadian racers. But it was fun and I brought the car home in 12th out of 20, dropping my best lap time by a couple of seconds.

Steve Randolph in front (b/w) followed by Tyler Comat (blue), me in the back

Sunday we had two races with the first off at 9:40, followed by the 2nd at 11:15. Track was cool but dry and the expectation was a beautiful sunny day with temps in the 70's. Our finish in the 1st race set the grid for race 2. Again I had a good start and kept up the pace. Getting in the groove, I noticed up ahead the black and white #3 of Steve Randolph and I was gaining on him. Pretty soon I was parked just off his bumper. He could pull me on the long back straight, but I was much faster through the 8,9,10 turns and would be back on his tail again. It was just a matter of time before I got him. We went nose to tail like this for several laps when going into turn 5, a blind uphill/downhill, triple apex corner, a car spun just in front of us. Steve managed to dodge but I got balked, as I had to come to an almost stop waiting to see how if would shake out, as the spinning car was still moving. Steve's momentum wasn't too badly checked and he wailed down the back straight, gapping me by a good distance. Once he gapped me, he was able to slow down and cool off his tires and maintain the gap without any pressure from me. Yanick Tremblay in the other flat black car got past me and I ended up 10th.

Race 3 came quickly after. I had a great start and was running about 6th or 7th. Eventually John Bruce #126 and Yanick Tremblay #67 caught up, being a little bit faster and got past me. I was able to hang with them. All three of us would be nose to tail going into the turn 5 complex, and they would pull out a few car lengths at the end of the straight on me. I'd be back on them by turn 9 and would stick my nose in, forcing them to defend. At the same time they were battling fiercely among each other, pushing each other to the max, including what looked like a little contact in turn 9. After a couple pass/re-pass scenarios involving all 3 of us, I sat back, figuring sooner or later one of them would make a mistake and give me an opportunity to take both of them. But no, they played it hard all the way to the finish with less than 7/10ths of a second separating all of us at the finish. Once again I improved, finishing 9th and had my best time of the weekend, doing a 1:42.4.

John Bruce's 944

I pulled the car directly into the trailer and tied it down. A quick goodbye to friends and fellow racers and I made it out the track before the gate closed and headed home. What a great track! I can't wait to come back again. There's a couple more seconds for me to find there and I'm looking forward to searching for them.

Mosport pics

2011-07-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

944 Cup group photo

Well, the Mosport weekend went fine, lots of good racing from my junkyard motor. Race report to follow. But here's a couple of pics from the weekend.

Going through turn 5a and 5b

The Canadian idea of refreshments. There's beer, champagne and more in there.

Home for the weekend

We were a guest race group for the Vortex 200, a Canadian NASCAR stock car race.

Here's a link to the gallery for the weekend --> Mosport Pics

Mosport Bound ?

2011-06-21T15:42:00.000-07:00

Since I haven't been attacked by the pit viper of death yet, let's update the recent garage activities. Following the Watkins Glen debacle, the motor was pulled, disassembled and sent out to the machines shop. Since the crank took a hit when the #2 rod bearing failed, I sent another crank to have that one cross-drilled. Otherwise I would have to have the old one turned and move to oversize bearings. Luckily the precious valves were only lightly zinged and the shop was able to straighten them. The plan is to get the parts back and rebuild the motor again.

Meanwhile, to keep the moss from growing in the garage, I embarked on a plan to turn dross into gold, ie spare parts car motor into the race car. Some of the trials and tribulations have been discussed in recent posts. By working nights after the day job, and all weekend I was closing in. My goal was to be ready by Thursday, so I could do a track day with Schattenbaum at NJMP on Friday. I wasn't going to tow 11+ hours to the frozen north with an untested car and motor.

A mild rebuild was done on the bottom end. Nothing was done to the head or camtower. Belts were fine and didn't need adjusting. New rod bearings were inserted. About 10 lbs of crud, mud and grease were removed. The balance shaft plugs got gooped up since they were leaking badly and I didn't have time to redo the seals. If it looked like it might leak, it got gooped. All the rest of the good parts from my race motor were installed: clutch and bell housing, exhaust headers, intake, a/c delete kit, alternator, AFM, vacuum lines, fuel rail, injectors, ignition wires, distributor cap, water hoses, etc.

The week was filled with challenges: a clutch pilot bearing that needed replacement on Tuesday - Fairwinds Porsche was able to get delivery from the distributor by lunchtime and the motor was done and ready to insert at the end of Tuesday evening.

Wed evening, the race car was rolled into the garage - it helps to have a garage at the bottom of a steep driveway: Pull it out of the trailer and launch it down the hill. The cross-member was dropped, and the motor lifted into the engine cavity.

Those who work on 944's know that the tricky part is the mating of the torque tube (drivetrain) with the motor. If you live an exemplary life; kind to kids and small animals, turn off your cell phone in the movies, etc, this will take about 10-15 minutes. On the other hand, if you're like me, this step was still in progress 2 hours later.

The pit awaits ...

Up with the lift, down with lift, up with the engine crane, down with the crane, up on the load leveler, down with the load leveler. Under the car and pushing with my feet while pulling down on something. All for naught.

Finally around midnight, the gods took pity on me and it slid in part way. Far enough, that I could start the 4 bolts and draw it in. Battered, bloody and tired, I sprawled underneath the car, but it was in. Time to quit for the night. I took one last look around and saw ... my clutch slave cylinder. Somehow it didn't look right. A closer look and, oh no, all that banging and thrashing had broken it. It must have gotten caught in one of the pushes and shoves. I was doomed, but too tired to think about it. Only one day left to finish, otherwise Mosport was a no go. I went to bed.

Got Power?

2011-06-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

The last time I visited NJMP I bought electricity for the weekend. I camp in the trailer AKA the Red Motel. I've got A/C or heat, a cot and flat screen TV. If I have WiFi, I have Netflix, so it isn't exactly roughing it, but neither is it the Four Seasons. Typically it's around $25-35 for camping and the power hookup for the weekend. This day however, they wanted $75 Ouch! I know they are under bankruptcy proceedings, but come on...

The next race weekend I visited Watkins Glen. We stayed at a hotel, but one of the reasons is power is hard to find there. Coming up is Mosport, which has one sorry outlet for the entire paddock. Usually with 15 power cords hooked up. Since my visit to Mosport is last minute, its looks like I'm camping out. So time to do something.

Something became a Yamaha 2400iSHC generator. This is one of those ultra quiet generators, like the Honda eu2000i. 20 feet way you can barely hear it. The cool thing about this one is the power surge capacity. When a big appliance, like my A/C compressor starts, it draws a big load to start the motor. Usually this is the killer for small generators. They can run them once they are going, but can't get them started. I have one of the standard 13,500 BTU RV a/c units mounted in my trailer. This Yamaha baby is designed to handled that start-up surge and then throttle back. Yamaha claims it can run about 95% of those RV A/C units out there. All I know, is it works with mine. Mosport, here we come!

Can't a girl get some privacy?

2011-06-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

So I'm under the parts car, unbolting this, unscrewing that, in preparation for dropping the motor. Since this isn't a repair, but a removal I'm just cutting the old a/c and power steering belts to get them out of the way. So I have a wrench on a bound up bolt on the power steering assembly and I shift my position towards over to the left side, backing up against the driver's side tire to get some leverage. I can see the A/C belt dangling in my peripheral vision as I'm applying pressure on the wrench.

Loose belts or something more sinister?

All of a sudden, the A/C belt starts wiggling. WTF? I'm distracted, concentrating on my bolt removal job, don't want to smash my knuckles when it lets go. Next I hear "hissssssssss......ssssssss". What? I turn my head and 6 inches away, staring right at me is a 10 foot long black pit viper of death! Holy shit! I jerk back, smacking my head of course and scramble from underneath the car.

After a few seconds I reconsider my original impressions. It might not be a black viper of death, or even 10 feet long. But it definitely is a snake and not an a/c belt.

In theory, I'm a fan of snakes. They eat lots of bugs, and small varmints and provide amusement for my huskies in the yard. That said, I don't know any snakes on a first name basis. So I went to the kitchen for my bar-q-que grill tongs and removed Ms. Snake from where she was coiled up in the brake rotor. It wasn't a happy removal, she questioned my ancestry and my mechanic skills, but I persevered. I released her in the driveway and pointed her toward the bushes where I'm sure she will be lurking in the future.

Afterwards I realized why she was so upset. Rude person that I am, I had barged into her dressing room. She was changing into her new summer clothes. My bad.

I Hate Working on Street Cars

2011-06-09T18:25:00.000-07:00

So with the current lump off at the machine shop/beauty salon where it's being shampooed and rinsed of all the rod bearing confetti, my attention turns to the parts car that's been sleeping under a car cover for the last several months. This is the wrecked 89 I bought in February with a working 2.7 motor.

I went into the Watkins Glen weekend tied for 2nd in 944 Cup North with Alan Cohen, and Bob Page in 1st. Not racing that weekend dropped me like a rock down to 8th. Mosport is at the end of June, with 3 points races. Missing Mosport would put a major hurting on my championship run. So, while I'm rebuilding the motor again, why not drop in the motor from the parts car and go racing. The original plan was to pull the motor, and rebuild it over the off-season, and then put it on the shelf. Don't have time for that now, so lets pull it, do the rod bearings, bolt on my good auxillary parts, and drop it into the racecar. Mosport is in 2 weeks, lets see if I make it.

There's been some preliminary parts stripping so far, but nothing major. I rolled the car into the garage Tuesday, and today was the first chance to start working on it.

First order of business is to drop the exhaust. Piece of cake right? On my race car, takes me about 5 minutes once it's up on the lift.

But this isn't my race car is it? It's a street car that has sat for the last year after it got crunched. The exhaust is probably original. And nothing, I mean nothing, has ever had anti-seize applied to it.

An hour and half later, it's finally off the car. 3 snapped bolts - which were a good thing, saved me from more trouble; gnarly, rusted, rounded off bolts and more, the full gauntlet was encountered.

A short list of tools used:

multiple wrenches
multiple sockets and extensions
wobble sockets and extensions
vise grips
propane torch
PB Blaster
hammers, multiple
a very large crowbar
air powered cutting wheel
beer
bandaids

And since I'm drinking heavily now, probably more that I've forgotten.

But perseverance and a lowering of IQ points from the PB Blaster fumes resulted in another man over machine triumph in the end.

Here's what awaits me ...

The rest of the car looks pristine right? I can't wait for more fun later. But first, beer, sleep, work and then back to this.

The autopsy

2011-06-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

Back in the garage, I drained my oil in preparation in yanking the lump. This is what was sticking to the magnet in the oil drain plug.

Not a good sign - cue the ominous organ music

A long, hot and sweaty afternoon - we're in a heat wave here, no a/c in the garage - had the motor out and ready for examination.

I think I've done this before

Fast forward to all settled on the engine stand, flip it upside down and pull the oil pan. Let take a look!

Nasty. Looks like somebody dropped a bunch of metal confetti into my oil pan to be sucked up into the oil pickup tube.

Further investigation reveals the culprit, the dreaded #2 spun rod bearing. Despite the oil pan modifications, despite the cross-drilled crank, here's what's left:

This is what it should look like:

And since the bearing failed, the piston wasn't tightly held to the crank anymore, so it was free to flop around and bang against my values. That was probably the rattling sound we heard in the car. By then it was too late to save the motor.

Note the two shiny new dents in the piston. The valves are probably bent also. Cha-ching!

So Doctor, what's the medical report? Can the patient be saved?

Hmmm, caressing his goatee (or soul-patch for the kids) "I think we need to strip the block bare, pressure clean all the confetti bits out, do a head job, and reassemble from scratch and maybe, ... maybe it will live again. BTW, cash only, I don't do Medicare"

Glen 2011

2011-06-01T06:59:00.000-07:00

So, the Glen weekend is over and I had a coach. What did I learn?

Well, I learned that 1) as a driver, I don't suck 2) as an engine builder, the jury is still out.

After an uneventful tow to Watkins Glen, I showed up at the track bright and early Thursday morning, got registered and teched, and met Dave Scott of Racecoach.net. Dave would be coaching me and Tyler Comat, another 944 Cup driver. Dave would be riding in car with Tyler and I on Thursday in the Metro NY Drivers Education, and then do data analysis on Friday when the race weekend starts.

Tyler Comat (left) and Dave Scott

As a old guy I know I won't be fast right out of the gate, I need to sneak up on my speed. Plus I haven't been to the Glen since last year, so I left my 14 heat cycle Hoosiers on the car, planning to swap them out for good rubber the next session. Dave was charitable on my driving: "I can tell you were just knocking off the rust" ... but he had some good observations and a plan for the next session.

The plan was based around two action points: a) smooth the transitions from brake to throttle and vice versa; less porpoising of the car and more a gentle squatting and having it take a set - not that my car is pogo'ing up & down like a lowrider, we're talking refinements here. b) adjusting the attitude of the car entering turns by a few degrees and trail braking to the apex. I already trail brake on some corners of some tracks, but not really much at the Glen. Starting with session 2 that was going to change.

The pedal transitions I picked up fairly quickly, as I was already smooth, and once I had my attention directed to it I was able to make changes. Now the trail braking part was a bit challenging. I had no problems jumping right in and trying but it totally screwed up my timing for the corners, usually resulting in arriving early. Which stands to reason, since I'm carrying more braking into the corner, I need to brake later than I normally would. Occasionally I got it right, and Dave seemed happy with the improvement in the car's altitude in the corners.

Since this was a Drivers Education day, I was running in the Black run group where the region dumped all the club racers. So it was plenty busy with tons of 911 Cup cars blowing by me everywhere. So with lots of traffic, Dave yammering in my headset, trying new techniques, trying to critically analyze my driving and, oh yeah, manage the task of driving a race car at 100 mph around a track with blue armco just off the track surface, it was a busy time in the car. As Keith Code would put it, I was spending my full budget of $1 worth of my attention.

Coming into the Toe of the Boot (turn 7), in the back of my mind I could hear an unusual noise in the car. At the same time I had 3 very fast Cup cars on my tail and I was busy letting them by as I pushed off the apex. They put the hammer down and blew past me. They were LOUD! and the last car was really loud. I remember thinking that car definitely has an off note on his exhaust. Dave asks me "you hear that rattling?" and as he does, I realize it's not the cup car but me! I vary the throttle and the noise varies, just then Dave shouts "oil pressure" I scan my gauges and see my giant ! light all lit up and my oil pressure is zero. I kill the motor and steer to the side of the track next to the armco.

It's quiet in the country, just crickets and the occasional 911 GT3 Cup car passing by.

Finally the tow truck arrives. My tow hook is attached to my lightened bumper that had the heavy shock mounts removed and replace with some lightweight steel tubing. The bumper is solid in the horizontal plane, but the mounts are a little smaller than the original so there is some play in the vertical. The tow truck guys are concerned that my bumper is going to come flying off when they pull. I reassure them but they don't look convinced. The tow strap tightens as it loads up, everybody is staring intently at my bumper when suddenly the strap goes flying! Everybody ducks. But its not my bumper, it was the part attached to the tow truck. The guys forgot to tie off the tow truck... After some sheepish grins, they reattach the strap and tow me back to the paddock where my weekend was done before it got started.

944 Cup paddock at the Glen

Race 1 - NJMP Lightning Course

2011-05-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

With a new fresh motor in the car it made sense to do the test & tune day on Friday before the race weekend. It was mid April and a cold front had moved in. It got into the 50's but with a stiff wind all day. Made me glad I was wearing my bulky nomex suit. Wasn't great for socializing, most folks huddled in their trailers. Car ran like a champ on my old Hoosiers with no issues, I was looking forward to the race weekend.

Saturday dawned cool and overcast, and very breezy. The forecast was for torrential rain right about our race time of 2pm and continuing all night. They even cancelled the after race cookout. The typical NASA schedule is a practice session, a short qualifying session and then the sprint race. Repeat on Sunday. I went out for the practice session and the car started stumbling and would die with full throttle. I limped back to the pits and started diagnostics. I couldn't find anything wrong and neither did any of the paddock pros. John Behe was visiting and I found him. Of course in the presence of a master, the car wouldn't misbehave, it ran perfectly. I understand, it's just like when my wife has computer problems, it always works perfectly when I sit down. Somewhere the gods are laughing ....

So I drove around the track complex, back and forth on the access road, and no issues. I went out for qualifying and the car was perfect. I put the car on pole by a second which was great since it meant I still knew how to drive. After last year I was beginning to worry a bit.

The day got darker and darker with slight rain showers on and off as our racetime approached. The other race group had a dry track for their race, but the forecast and radar was looking dodgy for us. A common strategy was to have 2 wets and 2 dry tires on the car. That way you only need to change 2 tires no matter what way the weather goes. At an half hour before race time I made a decision, time for dry tires and I set to work putting the Hoosiers on. Just before I got ready to roll out, the heavens opened up and it became obvious running dry tires would be a bad call. The car went back up in the air and the crack Alpine Motorsports pit crew (me) went to work. Halfway through the tire change my battery died on my impact wrench and I needed to do all lugs with a socket wrench. It was now pouring rain and I was getting soaked. To add to the fun I had put new extra long wheel studs for the bigger tires and it took forever to tighten down all the lug nuts. I made it to the grid with about 30 seconds to spare.

It poured buckets in the race. I had a good dice with Vito Valentino and Bob Page. I got passed and passed back many times. We had a couple of full course yellows as cars went flying off the track and got stuck in the mud. On the 1st one I did well, went back into lead. On the 2nd full course, I got caught napping, off the torque curve and wasn't able to improve. I ended up 3rd., with Bob Page taking the win.

The rain continued all evening and into the night. The winds and the rain picked up and was crazy loud. I was staying in my trailer at the track and tried watching a video. I had to turn it off because even with the sound cranked up I couldn't hear it over the noise of the storm. All night long the trailer rocked from the wind gusts with me wondering if it was going to blow over. We even had short, intense hailstorm around 1am.

Sunday was bright, a little warmer and no rain (yay!). No practice session today, just qualifying and the race. In qualifying I never got a clean lap and gridded 2nd, an tenth back from first place. This time we had a dry race with lots of action. Up to first at one point, down in 5th at another. Ended up 3rd like the day before. The car rolled into the trailer with no issues or bumps. My pair of 3rds was good enough to win me about $500 worth of tires, so that was all good.

I was back home by 5pm enjoying a nice beer and gyro platter. It was a good start to the season.

Next up is the annual PCA race at Watkins Glen. At the last count there was going to be 30 944 Cup cars racing. That should be exciting. For me, to keep up with all the young fast guys, I've hired a pro coach to run with me at the DE just before the race. He's also going to help train me on the use of my data analysis software. Basically, his mission is to find out where I suck and help me move my skills into the not-suck category. Reports to follow.

Lead up to NJMP

2011-05-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's the end of May and the Glen PCA race is rapidly approaching, so I guess I need to fill in what happened earlier. Right after the NJMP weekend, I had enough time to race prep for the Glen and then immediately left for a week and a half in India for work. (pics in Flickr if interested) Once back in the US, right back into the grind without a letup. Enough with the prologue, on with the race report.

When we last left the car needed a few last minute items: new belts and window net. In fact all my safety gear needed updating except for my suit. New helmet, gloves, shoes, belts, it was a very expensive winter getting ready. I put new Schroth 6 point harnesses with the smaller HANS shoulder belts. The next prep item was getting the fresh motor dynoed. I took the car to John Behe at Behe Performance just outside of Baltimore. John is a friend of the 944Cup series and an experienced tuner. His shop is doing the certification of DME's for the cup series. John took the 44 and ran the motor in on the dyno for about an 1/2 hour, tuned the car and burned my chip. The car was running lean as presented, and after fattening up the fuel ratio we picked up almost 20 hp. Now thats tuning!

Once back from John's shop I had one more update for the car. I had bought a Lindsey Racing oil breather kit. This takes the oil vapor from the air/oil separator (AOS) and routes it to a catch tank instead of dumping it back into the intake. That's all well and good for pollution control on a street car, but that oil doesn't do my motor and its power output any good.

To get to the oil separator, the intake (and plugs, and fuel rail, etc) had to come off. By now I can do this in my sleep, and must have done so, since I don't remember doing it. The top of the oil separator gets drilled out and a new higher flow connector is added.

Once that is done, all that crap gets put back together again. You can see the top of the AOS just under the light.

All that crap is an appropriate term. After I put it all back together the car ran like crap. It felt like it was dropping a cylinder. After trying a bunch of items, including the application of Dominion Oak Barrel Stout to the chief mechanic, I gave up and went to bed.

Catch tank on the right, with fat silicon hose to the AOS

The next morning I took a fresh look and eventually discovered that an intake gasket had slipped out of place while reassembling the bits. I put a dab of grease to hold the gaskets in place while reassembling since you need 4 hands and the dexterity (not the looks) of a monkey to get it all assembled correctly. Once the errant gasket was warned - a note was placed in its permanent file - and positioned correctly, it all went back together and we had a happy motor again. A few strategic applications of flat black spray paint completed the preparation and it was rolled into the trailer.

A new racing season was dawning, 2011 and NJMP here we come.

In the Garage

2011-03-28T17:49:00.000-07:00

Since this is nominally titled 'the alpine garage', let's visit some garage modifications recently done. The racecar went off to Bodymotion in NJ for a general looking over before the start of the season. It's back and in the trailer for now. I'm just waiting for my new belts and other safety gear to show up and I'll be ready.

I've started working on the parts car, pulling bits off for sale or storage. Until the season is underway I'm going to leave it mobile, that is, keep the motor in the car. Once I pull the lump I'm committed to pulling it apart and hauling it away. I'm keeping my options open for a bit.

But meanwhile, what happened here?

Looks like a disaster befell the parts car. Looking skyward we spy this.

Yikes! A giant hole in the ceiling

And now it's gone (and nicely framed in too)

Time to gain some altitude to see what's going on.

Observation confirmed, it's definitely a hole. So that brings to mind the question, why did the Siberian Huskies dig a hole in my garage ceiling? It had to be the dogs, they specialize in creating holes of all sizes, shapes and depths.

Ah, it seems the Sibes have located the nearest Harbor Freight and bought themselves a toy.

I see their plan now. They are going to store their stash of bones, small logs, and de-stuffed toy animals in the attic above the garage. Right above my nose! They're sneaky, little furry bastards.

Right now they're out down at the bottom of the hill, busy disemboweling a deer, or the neighbor's poodle or something. So I'm going to turn the tables on them and store MY stuff up there.

Let's start with a 944 motor. I can use the floor space in the garage, since there will be another 2.7L motor joining it shortly.

Mission accomplished, one 2.5L motor tucked away. Close the hatch and they'll never know ...

Compare and Contrast

2011-03-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

The racecar is just about ready for the season. Next up for it is a corner balance and alignment. I can do the corner balancing, but alignment of 944's is an art, aka pain in the ass. That's one of the few things I'm happy to farm out to somebody else. I'm going to take it up to Bodymotion in Northern New Jersey. Mike, the owner, is a racer for many years, and it's a great race shop. They did a great job in pulling my bent frame back into spec a couple of years ago. To take it to the shop, I need to load it into my trailer. One small detail though. Remember that parts car I bought earlier. Its sleeping in the trailer.

Not a pretty sight

As long as I revved the motor up to about 4500 rpm, I was able to get the automatic tranny engage, so I could drive it out of the trailer and into the garage, where it's days are numbered.

A pair of 89's

The title of this post is Compare and Contrast. Let's take a look under the hood of a stock, street driven 89 NA with about 120K on the clock.

Bone Stock 2.7L motor

Not too bad, hoses look fresh, most of the rubber looks good, recent distributor cap. Pretty filthy though. All the motor parts are all oxidized and corroded. But all in all, not that bad. I'm sure a bunch of those fittings, screws and nuts will be a pain to work on.

Now let's look under the hood of my racecar.

A little happier 2.7L motor

Ahhh, much nicer. I like the look of a clean motor installation. Its a nice contrast to the flat black exterior.

Bring on the Fat Boys

2011-03-04T15:49:00.000-08:00

An hour or so of detective work led me to the cause of the dropped cylinder. One of the fuel injectors was bad. The interesting thing about this, the injector was one of the batch I had sent out to be refurbished and tested. It tested as good. Luckily I didn't let that influence my working of the problem or I'll still be in the garage. Lesson to learn here is trust your own judgement or as Ronald Reagan put it, "Trust but Verify".

So with the motor now running smoothly, its time to start getting ready for the upcoming racing season. I have a good sized punch list and need to start ticking things off.

Last year I planned on moving up on my rear tire sizes. I had sent out my phone dials and got them widened to 9 inches. The fast guys in Cup are running Hoosier 275/35/15's on 9 inch rims and I needed to do the same to keep up. Well the 2010 season didn't go as I planned so I never got the chance to try the wider wheels. It's time to rectify that.

With the wider tires and wheels, the first order of business was replacing the wheel studs with longer ones. On the fronts that was pretty easy. Detach the brake caliper, pull off the rotor, and bang on the studs with a 2 lb sledge. They are a press-fit on the hub and they pound right out. Insert the new ones, add an amount of giant washers and screw on an open ended lug nut. As it tightens, it will draw the lug nice and snug. Easy, peasy.

The rear ones were more of a challenge. Up front its just naked hub on display. In the rear, the trailing arm and parking brakes were in the way. Well, more like parking brake assembly - single - in the way. When I crashed at the Glen 2 years ago, I mangled the parking brake on the right rear. To get the car ready for the next race in an hour, I just pulled the whole assembly and threw it in the trash. Who needs a parking brake on a race car!

Rear corner tastefully modified by the guardrail. Car is lighter with no parking brake!

So on that side, I just treated it like the fronts: suspended the caliper with a bungie cord, pulled the rotor. And with no brake assembly in the way, had just enough room to pound out the studs. The other side added the additional step of removing the parking brake shoes and assembly and then repeat. Put everything back together again and we were styling.

new wheel studs, sponsored by Viagra

A look from the rear:

Here's the difference between the 245's I have been running and the 275's.

Can't wait to try these fat boys out!

Its Alive!

2011-02-20T17:02:00.000-08:00

The ole spinning the starter without plugs and DME relay procedure once again produced absolutely nothing. But starting the motor .... Within 5 seconds I had a wonderful 5 bars of pressure. Life is finally good.

Now it feels like one of the cylinders is missing. Bad plug, bad plug wire or bad injector, but that can be tracked down and fixed. The good news is I have spark, fuel, water flow and oil pressure. After all that work we're moving forward again. Yeah Team Alpine!

The culprit revealed

2011-02-18T16:36:00.000-08:00

Into the shop. I have the engine back on the stand after pulling the bellhousing and clutch. Of course the oil pump is one of the first things you attach to the block when building it, so understandably a large number of items need to come off before we can get to it. Pretty much everything on the front and the bottom.

While engaged in this process I made the discovery that my giant oil drip pan, seen here below the motor, must have slid over and rested against my air compressor motor housing when stored, burning a nice hole in the bottom. This was made evident while wrenching on the motor and finding myself standing in a every widening pool of oil. A quart of oil on the loose can cover an amazing amount of garage floor. The remnants of that spill, plus the coolant that been seeping from the water pump, makes retrieving a beer from the cooler in the garage an interesting experience.

Eventually I got the oil pump off and onto the bench. And quickly the oil pressure problem was found. The oil pump would only rotate about 20 degrees before it would bind. 20 degrees in the other direction and thump. Something was either jammed or broken in there, but in either case, it wasn't doing it's job. Eventually I'll do an autopsy, but for now the task is getting the motor working. I'm already a month behind.

I find a spare oil pump. Running it through my parts washer it pushes fluid back and forth when rotated, so I just need to clean it up and bolt it on.

Several hours later, the front of the motor is back in shape. Belts attached and adjusted, oil pan back on, exhaust hung, clutch and bellhousing snug. Time to put this puppy back in the car.

Deja Vu? Weren't we just here a little while ago?

Winter of Discontent

2011-02-12T16:23:00.000-08:00

This January, while outside seemed the very image of a bucolic, folksy wintertime scene - truck and trailer slumbering peacefully, dreaming of races to come, siberian huskies frolicking through the woods - inside the garage was a much different picture. Much gnashing of teeth and pitiful wailing, the rendering of garments (overalls) and loud beseeching of the car gods, why have you foresaken me!?

And it all came down to one simple thing, pressure. Or more accurately, the lack of.

Let me explain. The beginning of January saw the new rebuilt motor all buttoned into the car. Fluids topped off, electrical connections all in place, new fuel lines installed. Life was looking good. And then it all went to shite, and my January with it.

The first thing a new rebuilt motor needs is a nice healthy supply of oil. Lovely liquid deceased dinosaurs to smooth the pistons as they journey up & down in their cylinders. Oil to coat the bearings as they spin at 6000 revolutions a minute. Without oil to provide a nice slippery surface, all those metal surfaces would soon revolt, leading to what is known as the Big Bang - see last April.

The motor when built was nice, clean and dry. I used a light grease called assembly lube when putting it together. This provides the initial lubrication when the motor is started, and is dissolved as oil courses through the system. So the first order of business is to get that oil flowing through everywhere. 6 quarts of oil was added. The external oil cooler was left off for now until the motor is happy. So lets put that oil to work.

Now the recommended way for new 944 motors to build initial pressure is to disconnect the coil wires, so there is no spark; pull the DME relay so no fuel is pumped into the cylinders and then just crank the starter in 30 seconds bursts until the oil pressure gauge jumps to 5 bars. Now while this is the recommended way, it has never worked for me, and if you read the forums, it doesn't for lots of others either. But each time, I'm willing to try.

And as expected, it doesn't work for me.

And thus began my own personal brick wall for the rest of month. No matter what the technique, and there were plenty, no oil pressure was ever produced. By the beginning of February there was no more advice coming from anybody, it's all been said and done. All tried, and all with the same result, zip.

The oil pump - aka The Slacker - on the front of the motor

So one option is now left on the table. Yank the motor and put it back on the engine stand. You don't know how much I really don't want to do that. But since my ice climbing partners always seem to be washing their hair on these winter weekends, I guess I'll drag my butt back to the garage and get back to work - and work is what its feeling like. Sigh...

Tonight it's out and tomorrow I'll start playing detective, but for now, it's time for beer.

Sealed DME's

2011-01-19T05:10:00.000-08:00

One of the new rules for 944 Cup for the 2011 season, is the requirement for a sealed DME or electronic brain for the motor. The DME contains a chip which has a program, called mappings, that determine how the motor should work. For example, at a certain RPM, with a certain throttle position, set the fuel mixture to x, the amount of fuel injected to y, and trigger the spark plug at z. These days when you tune cars, you use a computer to program the chip instead of twiddling the carbs as of old. The thing is, the mappings are pretty small, and the chip's storage is pretty large, so there can be multiple maps on one chip. In theory, if you wanted to cheat, there could be one mapping for running on the dyno and putting out legal power and another mapping with greater horsepower when running out on the track.

To make a level playing field for the competitors, and if you want to win points and tires in the series, you need to submit your DME to a service provider, who will burn your single chosen map to a chip and then seal the box. I sent my 2 boxes off to Behe Performance to have this done. John was unable to duplicate my box with the AutoAuthority chip, since they encrypted the mapping, but the stock box was fine. And after a discussion with John, it's likely that the stock box would be making as much if not more power than the chipped one. That is because the AutoAuthority programming was done back in the 90's when gasoline wasn't tainted by ethanol. John told me he's finding levels of up to 16% ethanol in sampled fuel on the east coast. And the stock mapping would be a better fit until I get a custom tune.

Here's the stock DME with the seals.

Origins

2011-01-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

So there's probably a whole 2 or 3 people out there in the universe who wondered why this blog and my racing comedies are tagged with 'Alpine'. Well since it's my blog and the cost of reading isn't very high, I'm going to tell you, due to something I found this weekend.

Long ago, in a universe where there was no internet, I was a passionate climber of mountains, cliffs, rocks, ice, boulders and buildings. I still get out occasionally to the crags and ice climbs after all these years. But back then, when a day at the cliffs didn't mean a handful of Ibuprofen along with the beer afterwards, I wanted to climb all the time. One of my passions was a sub-genre of climbing, called alpine climbing. Alpine climbing is the face of climbing where multiple climbing disciplines intersect: Rock; Ice; Snow; Glacier Travel and sometimes all four at once! Usually practiced in the high mountain areas of the world, a typical alpine climb involves hiking into the snow region; traversing over glaciers (watch out for those crevasses!) to the base of a rock wall or ridge; onto the ridge to the summit, climbing rock, ice and occasionally the hanging glacier. Sometimes the route is mainly snow and ice; other times a short walk on snow and the rest is rock. Whatever the combination, its always challenging and fun.

At that time I was also starting my business as a computer consultant. The world of computers was pretty new back then and the opportunities were large. So the plan was made, very simple with just 2 parts: 1) work for 6 months and make large amounts of money, and 2) spend the other six months traveling around the world climbing. Simple yes? So it was a no-brainer to label my company Alpine Enterprise, which begat Alpine Management Services (condo mgmt), Alpine Software (design and consulting) and eventually Alpine Motorsports, the current non-profit endeavor.

And while I didn't quite meet the 6 months on, 6 months off goal, I did get about the world and visit a lot of cool mountain areas. While cleaning my office this weekend, I found this pic from my travels, buried in some old files. This is from 1982, deep in the mountains of Tibet on a glacier at about 18,000 feet. Behind me is one of the sacred mountains of the Buddhist faith, Mt. Amne Machin, kinda like being in Jerusalem at the Wailing Wall for the Jewish faith. Tibet was closed by the Chinese after they invaded it in the 50's and the Dali Lama fled. We were only the 2nd group of Westerners to visit Tibet when it was reopened again in 1981. It was a pretty cool trip.

So that's where the "Alpine" comes from.

What Parts Car?

2011-01-11T05:11:00.000-08:00

I've tried to convince Maggie that there's room in the back yard for another Alternative Canine Relaxation Structure, but I'm not sure she's buying it.

A brief interlude

2011-01-10T18:00:00.000-08:00

Edward stopped by a few evening back and with his help I was able to achieve a successful docking of the motor with the torque tube. That was the last major mechanical task. I try to spend about a 1/2 hour each night after work on the finishing up tasks. Last week I put in the clutch slave cylinder, starter, radiator and fans. Ran the water hoses and hooked up all the electric connections. One small setup back was I routed the alternator cable to the wrong side of the oil separator when building the motor and the connector wouldn't make it to the matching one on the firewall. This necessitated removing the fuel rail and intake manifold and re-routing it and putting it all back again. A minor bump. A slightly bigger bump was I forgot its always easier to set and adjust the reference sensors before you put the motor in. The bottom bolt is a bitch to get to, and took the whole of one of my evenings to do.

At this point I'm real close to finding out if it will all work, but I had to take short break. An Ebay alert popped into my email inbox on Friday. An 89 944 with a "running" 2.7L engine was being auctioned off. Located in Northern NJ the current bid was $325 with a buy it now for $750.

Car was rear-ended, you can see the broken hatch in the back photo. But I'm thinking, hmmm, only $750, and the engine is working. Let's see from the photos, I can probably sell the wheels, keep the doors, the hood , left side fender and air dam.

It has a new A/C compressor, receipts for $2k of recent engine work - I bet the timing belt went and it had a head job. So after thinking for about 10 minutes, this is what convinced me to pull the trigger.

A 2.7L running motor that's probably in decent shape. Hell, the head alone is worth $1000. I can pull the motor, keep the bits that get used in a race car like doors, fenders, hood, etc. and sell just about everything else and end up with a free (rare as hen's teeth 2.7L) motor. Sounds like a plan!

Hit Buy it Now and sent a note to the seller, that as long as the engine was good we had a deal. So Sunday pulled the trailer up to Northern NJ and brought it home. Now it's living in the trailer for now - out of (Maggie's) sight, and out of mind. We'll get back to it after the racecar is alive.

And speaking of the race car, another 1/2 hour in the garage tonight.

I have had a set of braided steel fuel lines from Lindsey Racing hanging around in the garage for the last 2 years. Just haven't had the time to install them. Well now's the time I reckon.

Here's the install in progress. One of the fuel lines (the return) has been cut and new line attached. All the other lines are misc ABS brake lines.

Install in progress. Looks pretty sweet.

And even though they look pretty cool as it, functionality is what drives a race car, so they get wrapped with an fiberglass heat sleeve. And I believe those sleeves helped with the car fire last April, keeping the fuel lines cool and keep from creating a bigger inferno.

Next steps are to add spark (battery), oil and water and see the result. Stay tuned.

In with the New

2011-01-02T15:51:00.000-08:00

"If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out" or translated in racer talk, if that 2.5 Liter early 944 motor is a turd, pull it and replace with a new (bigger) one. And as the Christmas holidays arrived, I did just that.

Out with the Old! In with the New!

Here's the new 2.7L motor, almost ready for it's new home.

Fuel rail attached, vacuum lines run, just need to pop it off the engine stand and attach the clutch. The clutch on the 2.5 is only a year old so I'm going to just swap it to the 2.7.

I know I said I was going to put the motor in from the bottom after using up my four letter vocabulary pulling the 2.5 from the top. But I woke up in the middle of the night with some ideas and you know, no good deed goes unpunished. Actually that metaphor doesn't apply here, but since the only cost is my time, it's free. So lets see if my ideas work.

What I really need is a load-leveling device for my engine crane. Something to adjust the angle of the suspended motor.While I don't have one of those, I do have plenty of tie downs and straps and an overly active imagination. So let's McGuyer it.

45 minutes later with the help of my shop jack, the lift, multiple straps and my wife at the engine crane controls, we were closing in on the docking. I had to drop the cross member, but generally we had smooth sailing.

Anybody who's attempted to put a 44 motor back knows the torque tube connection aka drivetrain, is the sticking point. The planets need to be aligned, six chickens sacrificed, copious quantities of beer offered to the gods before it will slide in and connect to the torque tube. Any transgressions against the Porsche water-cooled gods, like casting lustful glances at a early 911 will be punished. Well I must have had some impure thoughts because after an hour, I still haven't achieved full bonding. I put out a call to my Porsche buddies and Edward will be by tomorrow evening to lend a hand. Perhaps his karma is better than mine.

But we're close!

Out with the old

2010-12-24T17:11:00.000-08:00

Closing down to the end of the year here, so it's time for a progress update.

New rollers and belts added. Balance belt and Timing belt adjusted and set up.

Wiring harness and vacuum lines in progress.

Can't completely finish up the motor yet as I plan to use various bits from the 2.5 currently in the car. Like the 1 year old clutch, fuel rail, headers, reference sensors and the like. They were on the original 2.7 motor and got moved to the 2.5 as they are new or relatively new.

So here's the motor as it stands. The next phase is pulling the 2.5 out of the race car.

The last motor I pulled came out of the top. That was the 89 with auto tranny with the scored block walls. That went reasonably well, so I thought I'd try coming out the top this time.

The advantage of coming out the top means I don't have to do a bunch of work dropping the cross frame, disconnecting the shocks and brake calipers. Off with the hood and start disconnecting everything.

And through the magic of internet time, the end result.

Well that was not so much fun. I can tell you that the new motor is going in from the bottom this time.

The next few days I'll move parts from the 2.5 to the new motor and prepare it for installation. But for now, it's time for ibuprofen and beer. Happy holidays!

Build Progress

2010-12-19T15:22:00.000-08:00

Time for another update.

A fair amount of progress has been done in the last couple of weeks even though I've been taking it slowly. Let's review.

Here's a look at the Lindsey Racing oil pan modification. The hinged door prevents the oil from sloshing all to one side of the pan during hard cornering, leaving the oil pickup tube uncovered and sucking air. This, the cross drilling of the crankshaft and 3 sacrificed squirrels in the back yard are to guard against the dreaded 944 #2 spun bearing issue. When that happens, a frequent outcome is a connecting rod and piston thru the block if you don't catch it in time. My last big boom was something completely different, but you do what you can.

Now the bottom end of the engine is done, so add the oil pan and seal it up.

Oil cooler and engine mounts now attached.

Head with the priceless 2.7 valves now securely bolted down. The bolting sequence is kind of unique. Instead of bolting to a specified torque value, you use degrees. The bolting sequence is in 3 steps. All steps are done using a specific pattern. The first step is a light torque to settle everything. Wait 15 minutes, then turn the nut 60 degrees. Wait another 15 minutes and then again turn each nut 60 degrees. Sounds weird but that's what the factory manual calls for.

Bolted various bits to the front of motor. Attached the balance shaft pulleys, making sure they were aligned correctly using the obscure Porsche marks as they need to be 180 degrees out of phase with each other when running. Added the spring tensioner device which will be used to tension the timing belt later. The main crank pulley was added. The bit of red tape is to remind me I need to torque the bolt to 150 ft/lbs later. With it on the engine stand there's nothing to stop it from spinning when I start to tighten it down. I'll get to it later.

Later came today. I had to use my engine hoist and pull the motor off the stand so I could add the rear main seal and attach the flywheel. The spot of yellow paint allows me to see the timing mark through a little inspection hole when the motor is all buttoned back up in the car.

Once that was done, I hoisted it back into the air and back onto the engine stand. With the flywheel attached I could use my little homemade tool and lock the motor and keep it from spinning. I made short work of torquing down the crank bolt and that red tape is now gone.

But just because I threw that red tape into the trash doesn't mean we are done with the color red. Meet Ms. Camtower, all prettied up in her holiday fashion.

Getting close to the end of the mechanical work now. It's starting to look like a real motor now.

2.7 Build starts

2010-12-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

Well the motor in the car I bought thru ebay turned out to be toast, head warped, cylinders scored, etc. But at least there were a good full set of the unobtainium 2.7 valves, so I got most of my money's worth out of it. A fellow racer, Big Joe (aka Chef Joe of 944 Cup) sold me a good block. I had already taken the various bits from multiple dead engines to my machine shop guy, so he could pick out the best of the lot, plus do some other tasks. A call to the shop revealed that, of course, they weren't done yet.

I've learned that machine shops, like mechanics, need to be lied to when they ask the question "When do you want/need it?" If it's anything other than 2 or 3 days, all they hear is "Sometime in the future". So if you say, my first race is on X, they hear "Oh, I can start working on it on 2 weeks before X". It's not really their fault, they can't help it. So just lie. Need it for Road Atlanta in April, tell them "my first race is Sebring in February". Chances are you'll get it done in March. Everybody happy. But I digress.

The machine shop hears "by Thursday" and by Friday, I have my bits back and it's time to start.

First order of business is to clean up the block and paint it. My pal Joel gives me grief about it, says it retains heat, but I believe the benefits outweigh any downside. The only time my car came close to overheating in the last 5 years is when I had to bypass the external oil cooler and race in the high 90s temperature. A clean engine not only looks good, but makes it easy to spot minor leaks and other issues before they become major. Plus I like the juxtaposition of the flat black stealth car and having a nicely detailed motor hidden inside.

I bought some engine paint from Eastwood and got to work. This is a race motor not a concours queen so I applied it with a foam brush. It makes the block, smooth and clean and much nicer looking than that mottled, oxided aluminum.

Cross-drilled crank and crank girdle attached. Oil pickup has the Lindsey Racing adapter welded to it.

Pistons going in ...

Upper Balance shaft mounted using the high dollar Locktite orange goop. All new bearings of course.

Oil pump and new water pump

Lower balance shaft, and power steering mount attached. If you look real close you'll notice a helping of Hi-Temp permatex gasket sealer on the end seal. Porsche just put a rubber donut around the plug and after a few seasons, this shinks and you get a good leak from back there. This is a huge pain in the ass to fix in the car due to it's position. So a little dab right now will nip that right in the bud.

The Lower balance shaft covered was the first minor bump in the road. When I got the block it was missing the cover. These blocks are aluminum and cast as one piece. The covers to the balance shafts are then sawn off, so the covers are unique and matched to the block. When I went back to get the cover from Joe, he handed me a box of covers, and said try these, these are all I got from Steve. "Don't worry, just goop it up good". I've been down this road before so I was dubious. And I proved prescient.

I picked what I thought was the best and possible match for the missing cover. After torquing the approximately 135 bolts in the approved pattern for the 1st step, the balance shaft is binding. Not good.

Take it all apart and redo. Still binding, this isn't going to work. Pull it all apart and clean all the hi-dollar orange locktite I just wasted, plus the permatex sealer. I sort through my collection of balance shaft covers and try them until eventually I was able to find one that worked. It was a long process, but I trimphed in the end.

Goodbye 2010, Onward to 2011

2010-12-02T17:14:00.000-08:00

I gave the 2.5 motor a final spin at the NASA NJMP Thunderbolt track on Halloween weekend. I just went for Saturday. The goal for the day was to just have some fun at the track. I was reasonably quick a couple weekends ago at the Delaware PCA DE but as we shall see, a DE is not a race. I headed to the track nice and early with the temps a frosty 38 degrees when I got there. My battery wasn't holding a charge so I had to jump start the racecar to get it out of the trailer, and for every session after that. We had about 5 or so who showed up in 944Cup, and a couple more in SuperCup so there was somebody to race with. Practice session I was surprisenly on top in class, probably because I had just been there. Qualifying I was 3rd I believe - I'm too lazy to look it up. By the afternoon, the temps were moderate and it was time to go racing. There was a split start with the slower cars like us, in the 2nd group. Got a good start, held my own for a bit. After a few laps the faster GTS cars from the first group started coming through the pack and lapping cars.

Here's where the weekend starting sucking for me. I didn't contest those cars, would give them the inside, wouldn't block them. But just because they were fast doesn't mean they were good drivers. Since my car was still way down on power, it dyno'd at a blistering 120 hp at the rear wheels before the event, and I was still running 2.7 sized weight - a 150 lb handicap, my only way to a good lap was making time thru the corners. If I lifted I was dead, there was no "go" when I pressed the go pedal. So anyhow, bombing down into turn 1 or 2, I'd courteously give the inside corner to the much faster cars. And courteously in return they should do the pass, tuck to the inside and let me be on my way. But lap after lap, they would dive in, not hold the line and drift out up against me pushing me wide, or making me lift to avoid hitting them. Dickheads!

After the 3rd time of being pushed off the track and onto the outside nasty rumble strips in turn 2, which really, really vibrate the car, my inside Wink mirror mount cracked and broke. And since I could not longer see shit it was time to call it a day. I came in, rolled into the trailer and turned off the motor. As I stepped out of the trailer, I noticed the track had gone full course yellow, with a pile up in turn 1. The pack circled the track for several laps and finished under yellow.

But I was happy, car in the trailer, no body work to do, got as much racing there was to get, it was a brilliant fall day, and I was home and munching on pizza and beer by 5pm. Time to build the 2.7L motor for 2011.

Nuts & Bolts

2010-10-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

The racing season is drawing to a close here in the Northeast. This weekend will be the last 944 Cup race for the NE region over at NJMP. Since my car, dyno'd a couple of weeks with a blistering 120 hp at the wheel, did ok at the Delaware Porsche region DE - ie, actually posted some respectable times - I'm going to take the car out to race for one day. Win, lose or just mosey around the track, it should be a nice fall day at the track. Once back, the gutless 2.5 motor is coming out of the car and a 2.7L is going in. But first, I have to actually build the motor....

And as part of that process, I cranked up my new home plating kit. I plan to re-plate most of the hardware that come off the various broken 2.7 motors in the stockpile. Porsche engineers go their own way and specify exactly what bolt they need: "Ze bolt here should be 42 mm, not 40mm or 45 mm, but exactly 42mm and nothing else." So that 8x40 or 8x45 standard metric hardware bolt that costs 29 cents? No can use, you must use the special OEM bolt, available at your favorite Porsche parts store for $8.45. And you need how many? 20? Yikes! So the plan to re-use the hardware, but tart it up a bit.

Here's part of my plating process, the main zinc plating bucket.

A two gallon bucket with a heater (approx 90 degrees), pump/agitator and that big flat sheet of metal is the zinc anode. Zinc atoms will migrate to my items suspended in the solution when I apply an electrical charge to the system.

More buckets galore: Water rinse, and a degreaser solution heated to 190 degrees.

The reason I'm doing this is to match the yellow cadmium finish you see on fancy bolts. Why bolts are coated with cadmium is because it is a soft metal and it's job is gracefully sacrifice itself and keep the underlying hardware from rusting. Well unfortunately the cadmium is quite hazardous (carcinogenic) and not really something to play around with. It's something only professional plating shops should be messing around with. In fact if you clean your bolts (doesn't everybody?) with a wire wheel, you should be wearing a respirator while doing so. But don't dispare folks, Caswell has this cool kit.It will plate the hardware with a nice zinc finish and then I can apply a yellow zinc dichromate finish which matches the cadmium finish and it can be done safely in the garage. So lets get to work.

Test Subject 1: a pile of rusted, tarnished, corroded bolts and nuts from an oil pump on the 944 engine block

First step is off to the wire wheel - or blast cabinet if you got one, I don't.

They cleaned up nice. Now if you were refinishing nice visible pieces, you probably want to bead blast them, followed by a touch up with the wire wheel. Like most jobs, the better the starting point, the better the end result. But in this case, this is for a race motor, and it's only nuts and bolts, so we're good here.

Now we need to wire them up so we can juice them. I'm using brass wire here.

The parts get suspended in the plating bucket from copper pipe, aka the cathode, that is connected to the negative side of the power supply.

Here's the power source, a constant voltage, constant current lab power supply. For these nuts and bolts we only need about 1.5-2 Volts at about 1/2 amp. The power supply is turned on and the parts are in the solution for about 20-30 minutes. The zinc atoms from the positive anode plate migrate through the solution to the negative charged bolts and stick.

Here's the power supply, bought off Ebay.

After 30 mins being plated, here's the result. Everything coated in zinc. If I wanted bright shiny zinc, I could have added a brightener to my plating solution, but we have another step.

A quick water rinse, and then a 30 second dip in my yellow chromate solution - the only really toxic part of this process, gloves, shields and respirator for this step - and the final result.

Not bad for the first time. I'm sure I can get them shinier with more practice. Only 3 hours for 6 bolts, 4 nuts and 6 washers. I think I can improve on that time in the future... Motor Bling, here we come!

944 Cup Nationals - some pics

2010-09-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

Just got my CD of pics from the Nationals. Here's some that I like. (I'm in the pink car if you couldn't guess).

944 Cup Nationals - continued

2010-09-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

The cute stewardess handed me a drink as I thundered along at 50,000 feet in the Alpine Motorsports private jet. "We should be landing at Danville in a couple hours. Do you want your usual sushi lunch?" As I stretched and started to drift off to sleep in the comfortable leather seats I thought I could really get used to this. As I sleep, the flight started to get a bit bumpy, with several sharp jolts.

"Hey Wake Up!" Bam! Wha? What? "Aren't you leaving for VIR?" asked my wife as she leaned over me in the driveway. "I thought you wanted to get there early for registration. Isn't it a 6+ hour drive?" So maybe Arrive & Drive racing came in several flavors, and I can only afford vanilla. But even so, for the first time in about 10 years I was heading to the track without my giant safety blanket, my trailer. Tools, spare parts, even A/C, all abandoned as I hustled down I-95.

I make good time and am at the track, through registration and wandering the paddock by 4 pm. No big pink trailer. Well, it's nothing that I can control, so I grab myself a beer and start visiting.

Spoiled Boys Racing - The Crowell Brothers

Mid Atlantic racer Glen Evans

Early next morning, the pink trailer is waiting in the paddock and starts disgorging it's cargo of racecars.

#356 - My race car for the weekend

First up is the driver's meeting. The SCCA Pro Racing representative welcomes us to the event and goes over some of the weekend's rules. Next is chief 944 honcho Dave Derecola (DD).

After the meeting was the first practice session. This was to be my first time in the rental pink car. We got the seat, belts and mirrors adjusted. A quick lesson on the controls and I headed out onto the track. The session was basically a throw-away. The car was a handful to drive with the rear stepping out under braking and impossible to trail brake. I had no confidence at all in the car. After debrief with Nick, we concluded the used tires on the car were dead and we would put on fresh Hoosiers for the next session. The front shocks were firmed up to put some more weight on the rear to help with the stability.

Bill Repass - Mid Atlantic racer

Second session saw the car totally transformed, it became predictable and I settled down and started to relearn the track. I don't know about you, but as I get older, it's getting harder to just jump in a car and go fast. I need to sneak up on it. I wasn't a threat for the title but I was improving. After the session, it was time for drinking beer and some dinner from our 944 Racing Chef Joe

The Real Racing Chef - Joe Boschulte's #08

Joe's Tools of the Trade

Tomorrow morning started off with our Qualifying session. I continued to improve, knocking a few more seconds off my time and ended up mid-pack. The last Saturday session was the Qualifying race. This would set the grid for the Championship race on Sunday. I started ok, gained a bunch of spots on the start, then slowly over the 45 min race lost those spots . I wasn't as aggressive with somebody else's car as I would have been with mine. I was self insured so any dings/bang/booms were at my cost. Discretion is the better part of a lower MasterCard bill.

My "teammates", sharing the other 2 pink cars were Karl Troy, a 944 SuperCup champion from South Carolina, and Nick Esayian, a pro driver on the Realtime Acura World Challenge team. Karl is a very fast driver and once the car was setup for him, quickly left me in the dust by a couple of seconds. Nick on the other hand, was handicapped by jumping from his front wheel drive Acura with sequential shifter into a (new to him) rear-wheel drive Porsche 944 with a manual H pattern. For a couple of sessions, we ran nose to tail, swapping leads with equal times. However by the Qualifying Race, Nick started to figure out the car and started going fast. I guess that's why he's a Pro driver and I write code.

Nick Esayian being interviewed on TV in front of the Pink Porsches

Nick was very friendly and personable and I enjoyed meeting him. The two Nicks (Esayian and Riefer) were interviewed by SpeedTv announcer Greg Creamer about the Pink Porsches. Another interviewee was our own DD about the 944Cup series, it's history and future. Coming to a TV screen near you!

Dave Derecola - have we created a media monster?

Sunday was for all the marbles. One session, the Championship race. Instead of our usual rolling starts, we were doing it World Challenge/Formula One style: a standing start and when the red lights go out, off we go. All very exciting but in actuality, a bit confusing. We were supposed to go onto the main straight into our assigned grid spots. Hang out for about 5 minutes and then do a sighting lap of the track and then back to our spots and wait for the red lights. However all of a sudden the red lights come on. Wait a minute, we haven't done our outlap! Everybody's tires are stone cold at 9:30 in the morning with paddock gravel bits still on them. Oh shit, the lights go out. Along with everybody else, it's time to go!

Sunday's race was more of the same. Gained some spots, lost some spots, ended up about where I started. Had some good battles. It was all good. Car made it back to the paddock with no damage to it or my MasterCard.

Battling with Canadian Rod Herrera

Canadian Chris Green took the win and Championship trophy. That's the 3rd year in a row the Canadians have taken the Cup. Must be something about those donuts, eh?

It was nice being a pretend pro driver, having wet towels and bottles of chilled water handed to me before getting out of the car, not working on the car, having lunch prepared, etc. All I had to do was just drive. Nick and his family were great, the cars were well prepared. If you are in the south east, you can't go wrong with the Pink Porsches. Economically it makes sense if you don't already have the infrastructure to go racing. However, I already have the trailer, the tools, the lift, the F250, the spare parts cars and all the rest. So I climbed back into the Subie and pointed it north, back to where the stealth car awaited me on the lift. But it was a fun weekend.

2010 944 Cup Nationals

2010-09-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

Time for a break. All summer long I've been working in the garage and not racing. Now's it's September and that means it's time for the 44Cup National Championships. Once again it's at the great track VIR just outside of Danville Virginia. This year, there's a change to the structure of the event. The weekend is a Pro Racing event, the SCCA Pro Racing World Challenge. If you watch any racing at all on the US telly, World Challenge - formally known as SpeedVision World Challenge - was one of the most exciting racing series around. It featured real production cars such as Porsche 911s, Corvettes, Vipers and the like in the GT class and Mazda, Acura and other small bore machines in the Touring Class. Cars that look and are pretty much close to what you can buy down at the car stores. The series, like most racing series over the last several years has lagged abit, but seem to be in the rise again with great car battles.

This year 944 Cup was invited to be part of the weekend to run as a support race. I was psyched to be part of the event. I always love to go to Nationals - I've done badly and also done very well - but it's great to be with all the top 944 drivers battling it out on the track. I've been preparing since spring, I got my car inspected and got a SCCA log book at the Glen event. I joined SCCA and applied for my Pro license. I was ready, all except for one minor detail:

You can't go racing if you don't have a race car that works.

Now my car works, but as we saw at the Glen, not really. The dyno told the tale after the Glen, a blistering 126 hp at the rear wheels. Bringing the Stealth machine to VIR was just taking a knife to a gun fight. Just wasn't going to do it. But a ray of (pink) sunshine is peaking over the horizon. Nick Reifer of N-Tech Racing was bringing his rental posse of pink 944's to Nationals.

A call to Nick revealed that 2 of the 3 cars were being held for some of the WC pros to race with us, but one was available. However, last years Nat's Champion Bill Comat had dibs on the ride. After some gentle baderging of Bill, he decided he needed to not divert his energies from supporting his son's bid for the Championship and passed. So after a signed contract and a few checks, I became an Arrive & Drive racer. Time to see how the other 10% live.

Glen PCA race - May/June (continued)

2010-09-01T16:01:00.000-07:00

1st practice session was uneventful. This was the first time the car has gone faster than 25 mph since the engine blew up in April. The lap times seemed pretty slow, but I chalked that up to lack of grip on the early damp track and my general rustiness.

2nd and 3rd practice sessions didn't see much improvement, my laptimes were still pretty slow. The car felt kidda gutless. Granted I was running a 2.5L motor instead of the 2.7 I was used to. And I was running at my 2.7 weight - 2750 lbs - which is 150 over what the 2.5 guys are running. That's the equivalent of having a passenger. So I didn't expect to running up front this weekend, but still, 4 seconds off the pace?

Sitting on the grid to take part in the fun race, I idlely played with my quick-release steering wheel. I like to check and double-check that it's locked in place. I remember an incident at Lime Rock years ago when a racer coming thru the downhill turn onto the front straight turned right, but the wheel came off instead and he augered into the wall.

Hmmm, feels like more that the normal play. There's usually a bit of slop but this feels weird. Since having the wheel come off could make a bad day worse, I bailed off the grid and headed back to the paddock. Some mechanical sleuthing revealed the bolts that connected to the quick-release to the hub were too short, only gripping by several threads. And the several years of wear had stripped one of them to the point where it was barely gripping. So a good catch, always listen to that voice in your head: "Check out that loose fit ... Drink more beer ... Kill them all " Well, maybe don't listen always ...

The nice quys at AtSpeed Motorsports (Thanks Bob!) found me some longer metric screws and I was back in business. I finished in time to head out for dinner and beer with the gang.

Our 3rd practice session served as our qualifying times, so Saturday was 2 sprint races with me starting at the back of the field. In the first race the car was a dog. Absolutely no power. At the starts when everybody was all bunched I moved toward the front, but once the race settled down all that work went down the drain. I could go through the corner with the best of them, but once on the power the hamsters were out to lunch. Everybody would just motor away from me and wave. A couple of laps into the race Tyler Comat and John Bilikas came together in turn 1-2 with John ending up on his roof. Scary stuff. Several laps under yellow kept me in contention but soon it was time for the restart and I assumed my lonely role at the back.

Race 2 was a reply of race 1. One lap of fun at the start, and then a boring drive to the end. I didn't even bother to fight anybody for a position, there was no point. They could just drive by my Yugo with their Cadillac. This royally sucked. The only exciting part of the race was when I was going up the hill from the toe of the Boot when my right side mount of my Wink mirror broke and swung down and hit me in the helmet. I proceeded to drive up the hill with my right hand supporting the mirror, the left frantically trying to unscrew the left bracket while steering with my knees. That was exciting! Of course I kept my foot to the floor, after all, I drive "Flat Out" :)

Sunday was the 90 minute enduro. 1 minute of exciting start. 5 minutes in the pit. 84 minutes of trying not to be a rolling chicane. I didn't give up trying, I worked my ass off in the car, trying for a perfect lines, but the car gave up trying. I was running 10 seconds off the pace. A consistent 10 seconds off, but even so. Nuff said.

So at the end of the day I rolled the car onto the trailer in one piece. Much better than last year when I got a 13/13. That's the good news. Actually that's not true. There's more. I appreciate how fortunate I am to go racing at all. That's not something available to a lot of folks. I got to hang out with friends and enjoy their company. And not that I mind rain, it was a beautiful weekend at the track. All very good things.

However, I'm just too competitive and if I can't race with a competitive car, there's no point to expending all that time, money and energy. So no more racing until I find out what's wrong with the car. It just wasn't fun.

And for a final perfect touch of the weekend, I had another trailer flat on the way home. This one happend about 5 miles from the flat on the way up. Must be some sort of trailer black hole in Harrisburg.

Time for a nice home brew. A Tower English Dark Ale is calling my name ...

Glen PCA race - May/June

2010-08-30T15:13:00.000-07:00

The deadline for the cancellation of my registration was come and gone. So now I was committed - or as my wife say, I should be, but I digress. I was going to make the race or else. After working all day I'd make it down to the garage around 7pm and work until 11:30 or midnight. The clock was ticking with under a week and many tasks to go. Finally the car was buttoned up and the motor fired on the first crank. Success! Now it's off to my local shop as the front end was off the car, so it needs to be aligned - something I haven't learned to do yet. Plus after all the work that was done under stress, it's nice to have a set of professional eyes to check everything out.

So alignment, and a general look-over. I delivered it to the shop on Monday. Should be plenty of time to leave early Thursday morning right?

Of course not, this is racing and nothing ever goes smoothly. A few last minute panics but finally the car was ready, but not until Thursday at noon. So much for the easy 10 am start and the nice relaxing drive through the New York and Pennsylvania mountains. Registration closes at the Glen at 5pm exactly and if you don't get registered, they won't let you in. Period. We finally got off around 1pm and headed North. Zipping along Rt 322 outside of Harrisburg and the famous Mr. Murphy shows up: Trailer Flat! Luckily I could be on a NASCAR pit crew and had that bad boy off and a new one mounted and was back on the road in under 15 mins. At exactly 5:05 I pulled up to the - now closed - registration bldg at the Glen. Arghh, thanks Mr. Murphy. So now instead of dropping the trailer, unloading the car, getting my credentials, going thru tech, and kicking back drinking some beer, it's all going to be done in a rush tomorrow morning, as we're the first group on track. Well, maybe I could work on that drinking beer part now...

Morning comes and the tasks are swiftly dispatched. All too soon I'm finally sitting in the car on the false grid, ready to go out. The weekend is about to begin. I'm excited, it's great to be back in a race car again.

And that was the high point of the weekend, so lets end on that note.

Countdown to the Glen Race - May

2010-08-29T13:39:00.000-07:00

Ever since my motor blew up I've been slaving away in the garage, trying to get the car ready for the PCA Watkins Glen race. This is the 2nd round in the Northeast Region of 944 Cup. 2 sprint races and a 90 min enduro are worth 4 races in the championship, and with my non-start in the 1st round, I can't afford to miss this. That would be too big a hole to climb out if I want to be competitive this year.

Finally with less than 2 weeks to go before I leave, the new motor is lifted into the car.

Just so you know it isn't a photoshop photo ...

See, it really is attached to the car.

Well I'm bushed, another 4 hours in garage after work. And this after my normal 10-12 day at work.

Now, need to attach the slave cylinder, starter and connections, main wiring harness, install radiator and hoses, battery, exhaust, add fluids, and probably more stuff I'm forgetting and then I can try starting it.

And remember, this is the pallet motor. I've never seen it run. Who knows what will happen.

This is cutting it way close. I think Friday is my cancellation date for the race. Right now I can get 1/2 my reg fees, after Fri nothing. It was almost $600 just for registration.

Time for sleep. The garage will still be there in the morning.

2 steps forward, 1.5 steps back - May

2010-08-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

Once I had the block stripped, the work was pretty straight forward. Since the motor was on a stand I took the opportunity to do some work which is a pain to do while in the car. I replaced the rod bearings for example. A lot of the little pieces like oil pressure senders, water temp sensors, etc came from the blown motor since they had limited miles on them and weren't compromised by the explosion.

Put my nice yellow water pump from the 2.7 and did the belts and rollers.

I had most of the bits on, but for some unknown reason, decided to spin the water pump. Hmmmn, seems to be stuck. A bit of puzzling, scratching of head, prayers to the engine gods ensued, but all proved futile.

For those who don't know, the water pump is practially the 1st thing attached to a block. So, to replace it, the entire front of the motor needs to come off. All those newly adjusted belts and rollers, the tensioners, all of it. Arghh!

But better now than in the car. So it all came off and it turns out the 2.7L water pump fits, but the impeller, the little round thingie that spins the water thru the system, is actually a bit bigger than the 2.5 pump and hangs up. A new one was $350, almost the cost of the whole motor. Cha-Ching!

Eveything off the front, new water pump on - it spins! - everything back on, rollers and belts. timing belt adjusted and just about ready to go into the car. Lets hang the power steering pump - yes I'm a wuss, and still have my PS on the racecar.

Rummage through the boxes, here's the pump, here's the bolts, ok off to the motor .... and wait. Hey guys, where's the bracket for the pump? It's supposed to be on the right side of the motor and it's nowhere in sight. Oh crap, this is a motor that's set up for a manual rack. Hey Joel! How come you didn't notice that?

Me, I have an excuse - of course I have an excuse, I'm a racer, it's part of the job description. While I'm pretty good at building/rebuilding my car, this is the only 944 I've worked on, so my knowlegebase is limited to 1989 944 2.7 NA with 5 speed and were originally red. Show me a 2.5L motor, there are enough similarities that I can say, yup that piece looks familiar, but more importantly I couldn't tell you what is not stock, or even missing. Just don't know.

But the important thing here, in keeping with the title of the post, it's another large setback. The power steering mount is actually the nose piece of the lower balance shaft cover. And to replace it, yup, you guess it, everythihng on the front of the motor must come off again.

Luckily I was able to salvage the one off the blown 2.7 motor. And several hours later, I was back to my original starting point, ready (I hope) to bolt it into the car.

Just for grins and giggles, here's the balance shaft from the blown motor. Just like a politician, just a little bent.

Pallet motor freshing - May

2010-08-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

Remember that 2.5L motor I bought? Well the Glen is coming up, so we need to freshen it up and pop it in the racecar. Let's put in on the engine stand and go to work.

What is it with used 944 motors and squirells? Every motor I've pulled has peanuts stashed away somewhere on the block.

Once again, it's time for a heavy dose of Engine Gunk and a wash in the driveway. While I'm not going to do a full rebuild, a motor needs at least to be clean so you can see any leaks.

Oh, I just love working on 140,000 mile neglected street motors. Case in point, here one of the bolts holding a water hose adaptor to the block, just flat out snapped when some torque was applied to it. Luckily, a stub was left so we didn't have to go visit heli-coil land, which is just past the house of "Drill out the snapped bolt and don't f* it up"

None of my gentle and not-so-gentle ministrations helped. So off to a local mechanic's shop. Bruce works on cars, big diesel trucks, school buses and builds honking big motors for vintage tractor pulls. Definitely an old school mechanic with lots of tools and techniques for solving problems. An aceltylene torch and vice grips was just the ticket here. The loud bangs when some lingering gas/oil vapors cooked off was just an extra treat.

Totally cool dead motor pics

2010-08-29T05:01:00.000-07:00

More pics from the autopsy
Even cracked the back of the block.

This is the left side which was hidden in the earlier pics.

Valve springs look good, a couple of retainers are cracked, but that could be post explosion.

Pop the head and lookie, lookie ... Isn't that totally cool?

A closer view of that piston

And how did that happen he thinks? Lets go look at the head. Oh look, a factory Stubbie Valve.

Why that valve dropped I don't know. The valve spring for that valve is still good. Stupid cheap $200 valve!

Ah, what we do so we can go racing

2010-08-28T17:08:00.000-07:00

Here we're rescuing Mark's 911 after his newly rebuilt motor dies while breaking it in out on Rt 1. What you don't see is my trailer just 2 inches from the guardrail and the other side on the white line. And even with big orange cones, 4-way flashers going and an empty right lane, idiot motorists still insisted on running by us at 60 mph just 6 inches away. Wish I had a paint gun.

If only it had died about 200 yards earlier where there was ample room to safely load it but noooo.... Race cars are evil!

That's how Mark & I spent Friday evening, bonding over broken race cars and hauling his back to his shop in Elsmere. Sat morning was my turn to do something about my broken race car and I headed to NY and after a 350 mile round trip came back with this, an 83 2.5L motor.

Not exactly a "crate" motor, more like a "pallet" motor. Which means just enough crap was cut or unscrewed to drop it onto a pallet. Bunch of work needs to be done before it goes into my car.

Oh the joys of working on old, rusty, oily, crappy motors.
I've gotten used to working on my car, where most of the bolts are new, had anti-seized applied to, most of the parts, hoses, etc are all reasonably new or at least clean.

Here the exhaust studs and nuts were rusted together with the rusty exhaust headers. The 5 min removal of the headers took 30 mins.

Lot of useless crap still attached, like the A/C compressor and brackets. Gotta pull the clutch and put my new one on. In fact I'll be using a lot of parts from the busted motor since they are much newer than what's here. And every thing needs a good rinsing and cleaning. Lots of oil, gunk and dirt everywhere. I can't stand that. I'll do belts and rollers and probably add some paint while I'm at it.

Got a month till the Glen. Should make it. It's not like I gotta rebuild the thing. Just a little nip & tuck and maybe some Botox. I'm good.

motor autopsy continued - May

2010-08-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

Looks like #3 cylinder, not the "infamous" #2.

Here's the remains of the connecting rod

And another view of that shameless con rod. just a little twisted.

you can see the damage it wrot on the side of the block and pan

you can see the piston is twisted in the cylinder

that's it for the bottom, no smoking gun yet.

Next up is the top side. Maybe we'll see a broken valve spring as the culprit.

The post mortem - pulling the lump - April

2010-08-28T16:49:00.000-07:00

Pulling the paperweight

Lump extracted

Left side of block. If you look closely you can see all the way through to the floor on the other side. Now that's what I call ventilation!

the other side. Looks like a connecting rod playing peek-a-boo ...

Not that it makes any difference, but the oil pan is also split on the bottom. When you're going to go, go big.

NJMP aftermath - April

2010-08-28T16:37:00.000-07:00

My formally white hood

I ventilated the motor on at least two sides and the bottom. Here's the oil pan.

Here's the firewall. A bunch of my wires got crisped. Luckily one of the tasks I did when doing the dash was to weld some sheet steel over the openings from the heater core. It wasn't completely sealed but it kept the fire out of the driver compartment. Most of the fire was concentrated right about that location.

Here's a pic of the passenger side of the motor. You can see the balance shaft (black round) sticking out, below that the oil pan gasket with no oil pan to seal to, and below that you can see the conn rods of the motor. The other side of the motor is just as good.

A wider shot where you can see the smoke and melted wiring.

So instead of racing this weekend I'm in my garage pulling the motor. Its junk and I need to find another one. Have a couple of leads. Probably have to put in a 2.5 instead of a 2.7 because of their scarcity and cost.

That's the news from NJMP.

2010 Racing Season begins - April

2010-08-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

I was excited to be heading to NJMP this April. All that hard work in the garage in getting the weight off the car, and now I'll be able to see the results. I held the lap record at the track and that was with a cracked frame. A hundred lbs lighter and a stiff chassis should make that record history.

I had a less than desired outcome for the weekend.

First session was damp, car felt fine, nothing fell off. Second session was dry, track had grip, started to go fast, got within 3/10ths of my best lap ever and there was a a good 1-1.5 seconds still left in the car. Was feeling good about the weekend.

About 4 or 5 laps in the 2nd session I was going thru turn 3 when I heard a thump and the motor lost power. Looking in the mirror showed a giant smoke cloud behind meand then soon lots of smoke started seeping from under the hood. The motor had grenaded. dumping oil on the tires and I spun a little, pointed the car off the track and toward the flag station. Smoke kept pouring out and then I saw the fire under the hood. I pulled the fire system and then calmly got out of the car. The fire trucks showed up a minute later, the car was still smoking and there was still some fire from the oil under the hood. They spent the next 5 minutes spraying the car down including the interior and all electronics (thanks guys). Well at least the fire system worked well enough to still have a car left.

Here's the in-car video Fire in the Hole