Got some work to do before it gets going again, probably make it to next Perris race, but we’ll have to wait to try orange show another time.
In-car video from the first outing in the new car. Have some stuff to fix. It has an overheating issue after just 6 laps and when i took the lower hose off yesterday at the motor it was bone dry. Got some water in and pressure tested to find a leak at the water pump weep hole and the thermostat gasket. Then I ran something over with only halfa lap to go and wiped the belts off the front of the motor, and put a hole in the fuel tank.
Well, last race was another big scramble to get things done in time. Here’s another recap of pictures and story time.
After finishing second last race the car wouldn’t refire to even drive off track. We had to get pushed to the pits and then got a group of folks to help push it on the trailer. After getting back to the house I took the radiator cap off and didn’t see any water, I have suspected a bad head gasket for a while now so I started tearing the head off. While it was apart it was pretty obvious the valves weren’t sealing good so I ordered some lapping compound and got to work. That did not go according to plan at all, I got only one cylinder good after 3 days of trying and surrendered to just leaving the others as they were. Bolted the cylinder head back on and then the real trouble started.
The engine would crank but not fire. I had compression, 190 across all cylinders, the engine was in time, I finally got it to run but only after helping it to life with brake clean. This meant we had spark and just had to figure out a fuel problem right? Good pump, good pressure, good voltage to injectors, good grounds away from the injectors to ecm, good power to ecm, good ground to ecm, good signal from crank sensor, every wire you can think of that would affect fuel I checked. With no luck.
At 1pm on race day after 3 weeks of working on this thing we finally figured out a ritual to make it start that involved unplugging the main relay, running a jumper wire, cycling the ignition 2 times and reinstalling the main relay. I have absolutely no Idea why this worked but it was reliable enough we could race.
Race day went pretty smooth all things considered. It felt like the engine was laying over at the top of first, best we could do at the track was cut the cat out thinking it had clogged with the failed head gasket. That did the trick and after an eventful main event we got out with 5th. Big shout out to the yellow 03 Fret Vasquez we race with, he was right up with the fast guys all race and the only reason he lost time was a flat tire.
The track updated points and it looks like we’re in 3rd for now only 6 points off a tie for the lead. Next race is June 14th, and in between we have cars and coffee to drag the car to and show off this Saturday.
A whole album full of ugly welds and trying to rebuild an structure in the front end of the old #37 Wreckless Racing Honda. The front end had been hit so many times it was too soft to recover, so I decided it was finally time to start from scratch. Was able to get it buttoned up just in time to run Night of Destruction at Perris Auto Speedway this last weekend. What a wild day.
Radio didn’t work in wheel pack, and Shelly was able to help out with a fix. I Ran over a bumper on lap two of the heat race and thought I made it out ok, until I got back to the pits and had a pool of oil building under the car. Huge thank you to Joshua Hansen, David Day, William Peterson, and Shelly again for helping to fix that. Josh grabbed a welder and was able to spotweld and massage the pan enough that some steel stick JB weld fixed the rest. We shoved some WAY too heavy 20w-50 in the car and went out for the main with maybe 15 minutes to spare.
After it was all said and done, wound up with 2nd place out of 16 cars thanks to some carnage I managed to avoid this time. Then after everything the engine gave up driving to the front stretch to grab a trophy, and had to get pushed off track by atv. I have in car video from the entire night that I will have to get chopped up and uploaded some time this week.
That was an absolutely killer weekend and now it’s time to rebuild and start again.
In-Car video from Night of destruction last night at Perris Auto Speedway. The track was watered right before the heat race so there was absolutely no grip. Poor Honda was spinning tires through 2nd gear! Pretty good main even overall, but hard to catch the tuned cars. There were a couple of times I could catch their group through the infield, but they were gone once we hit the front stretch. Only damage on the car is a flat right rear, not quite sure when it even happened, but I’m going to blame that for the spin into turn 1! Fun night for the first time out this year and easy fix to head out again soon.
Battery came loose around lap 3 and started rolling all over the passenger floorboard, pulling wires and terminals the whole time. Eventually without a fan the radiator gave up and let out every bit of water the car had.
Had a pretty good view of the 97 flip in the infield! Wild to come around the corner and only see the bottom of a car. That’s at 5:50 in the video.
Thanks Andrew for the help between hot laps and heats, Dave for savin us a party spot, and everyone else that came by after the main. Always cool to see everybody.
Think we just need a radiator and back again in 2 weeks
