The Curse of Mosport

I haven't updated the blog in a bit. I've been busy with Family health issues pretty much the entire month of July, but I have several posts that were in a draft stage that needed finishing off, and this is one of them.

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Fresh from Watkins Glen, ready for the trip North.

I've been back from Mosport about a week now, but I'm still depressed. The car is slumbering unloved in the trailer, and the trailer hasn't been opened since I shoved it into its parking spot in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

So maybe this report will be cathartic (or not).

Now let me start off by saying. I love Mosport the track. It is definitely one of my favorite places in the world to go drive a car fast. An old Euro style racetrack, a former host of Formula 1 races back in the 60's and 70's, it has a wonderful layout. Sweeping fast curves, turns over blind hill crests, pucker-inducing off-camber downhill turns, lots of places to bite you if you do it wrong - but when you do a lap right, it's a joyous experience.

Mosport is now officially Canadian Tire Motorsports Park (CTMP),
but will always be known as 'Mosport' to racing fans.

It's set in rolling farmland and forests about an hour east of Toronto in Ontario province. I was last there 2 years ago with a round of 944 Cup. Since then the track had been bought by a group of investors, among them Ron Fellows aka the Mayor of Mosport, a famous Canadian sports car racer. They have spent several millions of dollars upgrading the facility and I was very interested in seeing the changes.


While I love Mosport, that passion is unrequited. It does not love me back. I feel like that geeky guy in high school or that shy wallflower girl, always hopeful, always showing up at the gate some evening, thinking that, this time it will be different, this time the uber cool Mosport will ask 'me' to dance. What can I say, I'm a hopeless romantic.


When I was there last with 944 Cup I had a great set of races with all the Canadian guys. No problems, no issues, just me, the car and the track and some fun racing with some fast drivers. Of course that was an anomaly in my Mosport experiences. But I was hopeful that all of my previous bad experiences were in a 911 and maybe, just maybe, my stealth black 944 went unrecognized by the racing gods.  (I told you I was an optimist.)

My own personal black cloud, which followed me all the way
from PA, setting in over the paddock Thursday evening

The trip up was horrid, and if I believed in omens, a predictor of the weekend. Within 15 minutes of leaving home, the skies turned dark and the clouds opened up in a torrential downpour. For the next hour, I traveled between 20-30 mph with my 4 way flashers on as sheets of rain flooded the road. The weather forecast was for intense rain storms that were predicted to sweep across the bottom of Pennsylvania and into New Jersey. Once I turned northward on I-81 I expected to move out of the storms and have a trouble free tow to Canada.

Silly me. The next 8 hours was more of the same as the storm cell seemed attached by a wire to my rear bumper. Maximum speeds were only 55 mph through all the tractor trailer sprays. The skies didn't clear until I crossed the border at Thousand Islands. The next 2 and 1/2 hours to the track were clear and dry, but shorty after I rolled into the paddock, the black clouds were rolling back in. Halfway setting up camp the rains came back and I fell asleep listening to the rain on the roof of the trailer.

Home for the weekend

Van showing up just in time to get wet from my rainclouds
You're welcome Van!

Friday morning dawned perfect. Blue skies, temps in 70's, just perfect racing weather. This was the Canadian Vintage Grand Prix weekend. A big spectator event loaded with lots of vintage racing machinery. 944 Cup was the featured marque this weekend. We were celebrating the original Rothmans 944 Challenge Cup series, the first single Porsche marque series. Race stars of the 70's and 80's competed all year long in identical 944's. Drivers like Ron Fellows, Scott Goodyear, Paul Tracy and others took part. Several of those racers were back during the weekend.

Some original Rothman 944's raced with us.

A nice 70's Lotus Cortina race car

Some open wheelers

Friday was practice, qualifying, and racing, with another 4 races on Saturday and Sunday. This should be an awesome weekend.

A gaggle of Alfa's across the way....
or should that be a 'rusting of Alfa's' ...

I lined up for the early morning practice session and we were released on to the track. I took the first lap slow as there have been some changes done to the track since I last been there. The vast grassy field on the outside of famous turn 2 - which has eaten many a race car over the years - was now paved. The turn was still fast and scary, but a mistake hopefully won't have the same disastrous consequences. Van, behind me in his orange Jagermeister car was running in 2 run groups that weekend, and having already had a session, was quickly up to speed and passed me.

Alright, outlap done, the track is still the same, just better. Time to get into the groove. I build up speed on the main straight and dive into turn 1. Some light braking before up and over the crest into the blind fast, downhill (and off camber in the middle) turn 2. Oh yeah! what a rush this track is. Into turn 3 and then full tilt under the Tire bridge - making sure I'm not too far to the right as it will suck you off the track as it goes off camber and downhill.  Down the hill and brake going uphill into Moss Corner, the double turn 5 complex, and back out on to the rear Andretti straight running up through the gears. Yeah baby, me likey! Sweeping through the last set of turns and back onto the main straight. Car's feeling good.

That lap was a 1:47. Now I know I won't be challenging most of the guys as this is their local track. But the last time I was here I got into the 1:42-43's and I'm hoping this weekend to knock a couple of seconds off of that. If I can dip in the 39's I'd be tickled pink.

So around for another lap, practice makes perfect - or more accurately, Perfect Practice make Perfect.

Coming out of Moss corner the tranny, normally loud with the solid rear mount, sounds a bit louder. What's that? The car feels like it's not accelerating. I try downshifting. Gears shift fine, motor's working, but something definitely not working. No power to the wheels. At the end of the straightaway I coast off the track into the paved runnoff area and up against the wall. Putting the car into 1st gear doesn't move it. The gear box is gone.

This is probably the time to tell you that this is the gear box that failed at the Nationals 2 years ago. A new case, another ring and pinon gear and a new short 5th from Germany and a year in the shop and I finally had it back in my garage. Since it also has my trick Guards LSD I really wanted it back in the car. The weekend before I spent 12 hours swapping the old one out for this one. With 2 people it can be done in several hours, but working by myself took quite a bit longer. A couple laps around my development though the gears to validate the install and it was rolled into the trailer.

So lets recap. I sunk a year of waiting for the gearbox rebuild, complete with a several thousand dollar bill; 12 hours of my time to install; 11 hours of the worst tow I've ever done. Only to get 3 laps on the trap. The spare tranny is back in Pennsylvania. No 3 days of racing on one of the worlds best tracks. No racing at the event that I've been looking forward for 6 or more months. My future holds another 11 hour tow back home once I got the dead car back into the trailer. Shop fees wasted. Race fees wasted. Diesel fuel bill wasted. Vacation time wasted. I would have been better off to pile a couple of thousand dollars in my barbeque at home and light it. I was gutted. The Mosport curse has struck again.

I'm sure I'll race again. The hook has been sunk in too deeply, there's no 12 step program for racers. But it's time for a break.

'Traitor Tranny' upper left, 'Ole Faithful' on right

One good thing did come out of this. The duty-free shop at the border had one of my fav beers, Sleeman Fine Porter, only available in Canada. So I bought a couple of cases. When I got home, they were removed and placed into the garage and the trailer doors locked, the car not to be disturbed for a while. But the beer ... that was a different story.

Thanks to Bill Comat for introducing me to Sleeman's

Trailer Updates

My winter time project - working on the trailer - has bled over into the spring, and now into summer. No problem since it was contracted to the lowest bidder (me) and while I do good work, I can't guarantee timely delivery.

So one of the things I always lusted for, was a nice backup camera system for the trailer. Now after over a million miles of driving tractor trailer, school buses, flatbeds, furniture vans and generally anything with 2 or more wheels and a motor, I don't really need one. I can backup like a pro and stuff my trailer anywhere, usually on the first try. But while I don't 'need' it, I did 'want' it. It appealed to my cool geek brain.

I scored a two camera system off ebay from Hong Kong. Only took a week to show up. This was a pretty nice package. Two color cameras with IR, a 4 inch monitor for the cab and a quick disconnect system between the truck and the trailer.

I put the license plate cam on, duh! the license plate of the F250. So I can do those trailer hookups with precision and not the truck/trailer 2 step dance everybody does ... Back up to where you think the trailer is; hop out and check. Nope, another 2 feet. Hop back in the truck, reverse a couple of feet, hop back out, opps too much, etc, etc.
And with the IR lights, I can do in the dark. Wahoo!

Rear trailer cam

With the rear trailer cam I can now see that State Trooper sneaking in my blind spot behind me and be a good boy.

Quick disconnects allow clean and easy trailer hookups

Here's the view from rear camera in the truck.

And while the cams are useful going to and from the track, the next upgrade is for when things don't go so well while at the track.

I've had an old Harbor Freight winch for many years in the trailer. It's been used on occasions but isn't a really a great tool, pretty much a cheap piece of crap, but it was cheap and it has helped in the past. But I wanted something better for the newly upscale trailer.

And recently HF has upgraded their winch line to the Badland winches which have been getting some good reviews from the 4x4 and Jeep crowds. With a sale and a 20% coupon I got a great deal on a 6000 lb winch. And also picked up a cool accessory for it, a wireless remote control. Now I can sit in the (dead) car and winch away while texting and listening to Pandora on my smartphone. Isn't technology wonderful?

Let's put this puppy in.

Well as you can see, this is big (and heavy) and I really didn't want it permanently in the way. So this is my solution. Let's mount it to a pintle (tow) hook so it can be installed when needed.

First order of business is to install a receiver into the trailer floor to accept the pintle.

And since it's going to be doing some work, let's weld the receiver to the trailer frame. No fair criticizing my welds here, as it was done in the dark, while laying on my back under the trailer.

The bottom of the winch gests bolted to some sheet steel and the pintle to that.

And in place and ready for action. Remote control mounted on top with velcro and ready to be grabbed. Wiring is a quick disconnect back to my battery box.

When not working, it's tucked nice and neat in the rear behind my wheel boxes out of the way.

And up front, a rubber cap seals the empty receiver for a low profile.

stealth install

Valentine Hard Mount Install

After opening my WRX's door on a hot summer day and finding (again) my Valentine 1 dangling as the suction cups had failed, it was time to put on my engineering hat. And this is what I came up with.

After thinking about it, I decided to mount it above my mirror - higher is better with radar detectors - in the area in between my visors. There's a small plastic adjustable visor that covers that area. I can use the mounting points for that.

small visor area after removal of said visor

Take one V1 mount, remove the suction cups. Make a template, first with cardboard, then with aluminum, to attach to the headliner area.

Bend, trim, paint and assemble, bolting the mount to the aluminum. Create a locating pin using a screw and locking nut.

Mount in place. The power has been previously done

The final install. Rock solid and not going anywhere.

A simple elegant solution. It took about an hour in the shop and used existing materials so didn't cost anything.