First race of the season - career best finish!

[dirtmodwrench]

Haven't had much time to jump on the site lately between work and preparing the race car for the season. Our opening night got rained out on the 29th, so last Saturday was the first night of competition since we ended the season in August 2019. The night did not start out well - we didn't make out of the 2nd turn on the first lap of our heat race! The car in front of us broke a left rear axle going into turn one, and our driver did a great job avoiding him. Unfortunately, two cars ahead of that mess got into each other, and we ended up hard into the wall. Trashed the rim, busted the shock, bent the shock mounts and messed up the tin work. Think we can save a brand new tire. Spent the rest of the night thrashing to get parts pulled off and replaced. Went from initially trying to get it to roll onto the trailer to cobbling it together just to take the green and park it in order to collect last place money to actually getting it solidly repaired and deciding to run the entire 40 lap feature. Ran out of time to try and mount the new RF tire on a different rim, so we threw a very used tire on and crossed our fingers. We started last and ran a steady race to finish 8th at the checkers - a career best for the driver! We were not blinding fast, but ran good enough and avoided 3 different wrecks that happened in front of us to claw our way forward. We'll take everything apart and reset the front end in the shop, scale it and do it all again this Saturday

On the model car front, since the race car was prepped and ready to go during the week, I pulled an old funny car kit off the shelf and am using it as a paint test mule. Trying a bunch of different metallic paints through the airbrush to try and hit on some I can use on a few sprint car and modifieds I have sitting on the bench collecting dust. All are about 25% started. Hope to sneak in some time to get a couple moving forward.

[Dirtman]

Love the story! Been there done that! Never give up! Ran a lot nights like that, some turned out good, some not so much. But, we aren't quitters! Hang in there!

Rett

[Maineboy]

Loved that story also. Been there but seems like a long time ago. Our 56 Chevy got creamed behind the left front wheel, bent the frame and front crossmember bad. My builder friend and I plus the driver were depressed Sunday night, thought our season was over.

Monday afternoon I got and idea and told it to the driver as we worked close to each other and that night we went back to the car, cut off the front piping and took out motor and tranny. Went back the next afternoon, after work with an acetelyene torch. Went up the road a couple miles where there was a junked 57, same frame. Put a chain over the roof and rolled it up on it's side and cut the frame off in under the front floor. Got that back to the shop quite late, that was a pretty massive piece to wrestle into the truck. Next evening we cut off the race car frame and trashed the bent part. Carefully measured and cut the donor frame front end to match ours, got it rolled into place and the two halves lined up. Next night I did all the welding including fish plates inside the frame. By then my other buddy had got his courage back. Friday we pulled an all nighter getting front suspension, motor and trans back and front piping back in place and running again. weren't too many wires to hook up on a 1950's motor.

Showed up at the track Sunday morning and a whole lot of grown men stood around in awe of what a couple of kids had pulled off in a week of spare time. They had figured up that we were finished. Ahh but racers never gave up then and don't give up today either.

MB

[David Bogard]

Any updates on the Season DMW?

[dirtmodwrench]

It's been a bit of a frustrating season. When we have been able to run, we run good and are definitely making progress with our program. I think we have a good handle on the set up now, as we invested in a set of used digital scales over the winter. That has allowed us to be way more precise in setting up the car, and the driver is comfortable and has gained confidence in the car sticking when he drives it hard into a corner. Our problem has been motor issues; we have gotten way too good at pulling the motor . The last thing we do every week after normal maintenance and nut and bolt checking the car is to warm the motor and set the valves. After week two we found one of the rockers in pieces and a bent valve. We pulled the motor and took to our builder, but he does more than circle track race cars (boats, drag cars, street rods etc.) so we had to wait in his queue. We got it back after a month and went out and ran 8th again, so we were feeling pretty good. Unfortunately we had a problem with it two weeks ago and ended up pulling it out again. It's at the builders waiting on his diagnosis, so we are forced to sit out the holiday weekend. We are contemplating putting a second motor together from a short block and parts we have in the shop, but that will be a winter deal if we decide to tackle that project. There are a slew of races this weekend (NASCAR mod tour is running Oswego tomorrow), but I've found I'm not as good with just watching the races as I used to be! Perhaps I'll catch up on the honey-do list then blow the dust off my model table and work on something over the weekend.
Broken Rocker Arm by Mark Shea, on Flickr

[Maineboy]

I remember my racing days enough to know that racing always is going to find a way to upset your best laid plans. Just when you think you have everything working well and are a bit confident fate comes along to bite you in the rear end. Wish I was still around it but it is mostly a young man's game today, at least younger than me. I sure understand your frustrations.

MB