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Day Three -
Buttonwillow Raceway Park (Buttonwillow, CA)
"Seven at 7s"
After a long day and
an even longer drive, we were up early and at the track by 6:45am to
unload the car and drive it over to 7s Only Racing for suspension
work. Tom takes the car right in and Eric sets about checking
the current condition of the suspension before he starts working on
things. It's a good thing we made an appointment because three
other teams show up at the same time.
Eric starts working
on the car and the problems come one after the other. The
suspension setting are way out of line. The right and left are
different and there is more than an inch of toe out. The front
and back don't even come close to lining up. The car was
incorrectly setup for oval racing when it was delivered from Pro
Fabrication and our previous efforts to fix this were obviously
unsuccessful. Eric comments on how difficult the suspension is
to adjust and we can only agree. While checking the car, Eric
notices that many of the heim joints are either loose or binding.
They're all very cheap parts and they'll need to be replaced.
We also discover that the rear is toed out 1/16" on one side meaning
the rear axle is bent. To add insult to injury, both rear axle
seals are leaking copious amounts of gear oil. Aligning the
car takes five hours and a lot of cursing so we miss both morning
sessions.
We found out on the
radio that a U2 NSX had hit the pit wall after going off and trying
to save it on Sunrise (the last turn onto the straight). The
back of the car was all torn up and they brought it by 7s Only to
see if there was anything they could do. It looks like the
engine was spared but there seems to be something broken in the left
rear suspension. Ouch. Someone has either hit that wall
or come very close every time we've run Buttonwillow
counterclockwise.
Eric next put the car
on the scales to be corner balanced and we got even more bad news.
The cross and side to side weights were so far off we had to check
the numbers twice to believe it. It took another two hours of
work and 100 pounds of ballast in the passenger side footwell to
bring the weights in line.
While all this work
was going on, we discovered that our starter never showed up at the
track office. It turns out that FedEx routed the shipment to
the wrong center and couldn't get it anywhere for two more days.
So much for the "World on Time". I'd checked in with the shop
earlier in the day and they located a used starter for around $100
from a place in town. They had picked it up and were going to
FedEx (here we go again) it to Thunderhill for delivery tomorrow.
I told FedEx to reroute the original shipment to Thunderhill as
well, but we wouldn't get it until the next day.
After seven hours in
the shop (and $809), the car was ready for the track. Since I
knew Dave would be faster than me and we would only get one shot for
the day, I gave up my slot and we got him push started and on his
way to pre-grid. I settled up with Eric and Tom, who did an
awesome job on the car, and headed over to our trailer to start
cleaning up and organizing so we could get the car loaded as soon as
the session was finished. Dave went out and ran a 2:21.684 which
isn't bad at all for his first session, not to mention the fact that
the car felt totally different than the day before with the new
suspension setup.
After his run, we
shut down the car and finished cleaning up the trailer. When
we were ready, we tried to push start the car without success.
After a few tries, we noticed that the fuel pressure was low to zero
and the pump sounded funny. When it rains, it pours! We
unhooked the truck from the trailer, got out the tow strap and towed
the car back over to 7s Only. Eric checked the filter and all
the lines but there didn't seem to be anything blocked. He put
it all back together and the car started right up. Eric thinks
we might have uncovered the fuel pickup and sucked a bubble into the
lines. Eric and Tom refused to take any more of our money for
this quick fix and told us to get lost before we broke something
else! We headed back to the trailer, loaded the car and hit
the road. We were the last group out of the track and plenty
tired with a 400 mile plus drive to Thunder Hill ahead of us.
After driving for a
few hours, we stopped for gas and food and a driver change. I
decided to take a look around our rig before we left and discovered
that one of the trailer tires was flat. We put air in and it
didn't seem to have a fast leak so we decided to press on and check
it every so often. We stopped about an hour later and it was
only down ten pounds so we changed drivers and kept rolling.
Dave wasn't feeling well so I ended up driving most of the way with
one more stop for fuel. We rolled into Willows on the heels of
a Touring RX-7 sometime after midnight and went straight to bed.
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