Glen PCA race - May/June

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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