Friday was the start of a busy July as we are set to run each weekend this month and we started off with a great run.
Heat race went horrible as I self spun twice and didn’t finish.
Started 11th in the main and felt the car was way better after fixing our issues from the heat. The initial start was rough as we got bunched up coming off of 2 and then a wreck in 3 & 4 taking a couple heavy hitters out early. Sorry again, Kenny!
We were able to pick off spots which has been very hard to do in the past so that felt amazing. Even was able to run up front with some of the best to race at this track. Picked up another spot after 2nd broke and spun in front of me late in the race. Tried running the leader down but just wasn’t consistent enough.
Congrats to Trevor LaBarge on the win (even with his puny crate ) and to everyone for a fantastic night at the track. The fireworks show was amazing and we had a great time hanging out with friends afterwards.
We will be back this next weekend on the 12th running the same night as the late models which should be an amazing show in itself.
Massive thank you to Kenny Kfm Miller for helping us get more consistent throughout the race instead of just the beginning. All of his help this year has made a massive difference. Also a big shoutout to Craig Cassell for helping me get out of my own head after the heat race. Sucks to see the bad luck he’s in but I plan to have to chase him around as well soon!
Been pumped to race for a few weeks and went into the main feeling good about what we had. And we had a winning car.
Let’s rewind a little bit. Heat race was good, finished 2nd. We had a blast with the fans during the break for the meet and greet. Thanks to everyone for coming out and having fun with us. Even got some more signatures on the nose.
Ok, let’s talk about the main event. Track was spot on for me. Car was amazing. Started outside pole and took off at the start. We were diggin and had it if we just stayed green and kept hitting my marks. Entered 1 after 10 laps or so and hit the hole per usual, as I was using it to help gauge where to set the car. I hit that hole wrong, with the car getting unsettled and it was unrecoverable. Self spin.
I won’t lie, I was furious with myself and it led to the following restart trying to get going and when we didn’t go, I ended up into the LR quarter panel of the 32 car who’s out there figuring it out and shouldn’t have even been touched. Sorry Ethan Hannemann.
Ended up crawling our way back to 4th after restarting 11th so we will take it and go on to Friday.
Sorry to the Live feed group for the camera working its way to the roof and killing the view of the race. Going to get new mounts so we hopefully don’t have that happen again.
What a night! We had a great time at kids night and having everyone sign the car. Thank you everyone that came out!
We have been trying to get used to the new way of 4-bar racing and figure out how to get some drive at the same time. We found it . Heat race was loose but we fixed it for the main and had 2nd but made an error around lap traffic into 3-4 and lost a few spots jumping the cushion. I’ll take a mistake over chasing a mishandling car any day.
What that mistake also led to was a .008 difference between 1st and 2nd at the checkered flag. What a finish! Green to checkered was glorious and hopefully we can take this momentum to make the show at the speedweek finale.
We did get a little warm on water temp and realize a water pump gasket failed so hopefully we will fix that and all will be good.
Thanks to my mom and brother for coming out and hanging with us.
That was a rough weekend. We did not hit on any setup changes and it was frustrating. Sunday made no sense and it was impossible to get a handle on it.
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.
Car unloaded fast and loaded way faster. Started 6th in heat and finished 3rd. Went to redraw with possibly the worst pick record imaginable. Drew a 2! Hell yea brother!!
Of course the 2 fastest guys at that track started up front as well and I had to do something. Changed a couple small things and wow, we were flyin at the start. Was able to hold the lead for a bit and race side by side with Greg Walters with Craig Cassell trying to get by behind us. I had a freakin blast. Thanks to those two for the room and running it clean. I struggled in the middle of the corner and any gap I could get was immediately erased. They finally got by clean and we got looser and looser as laps wound down.
One restart I chose the top, and on green the car just got loose coming down and I wheel hopped over the bottom car and landed hard on the LF (sorry Kevin VΓ₯len for the driver error ), bringing out a caution. The steering got super heavy like we lost power steering, and I was worried I hit the oil pan as the pressure dropped. Luckily all checked out and we kept diggin. Had a damn good race with Pamela Graham the last few laps and snuck by coming to the checkers off of 4, finishing 6th.
Overall, a hell of a race, we were fast, and we know we need to work on some things. As per the recent posts, we did have a rearend coming apart and it seemed related to the type of setup I put in the car previously and I was lost, thinking things were just wrong and also thinking I didnt know how certain things worked. Thank you to those that reached out and helped figure out some things to change and put my mind to ease.
Another HUGE thank you to Kenny Kfm Miller for helping me repair the rearend quickly on a moment’s notice last night.
With everyone’s help, hopefully we are past this issue and can worry about the little things.
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.
First of all, huge thanks to Mike Graham at Perfection Automotive for being around for us when we made a last minute decision to run this weekend.
Thursday we looked over everything and got things ready for testing some oil pressure gauges and found the new stepper gauge is faulty, or maybe the sender. We’ll look into it deeper the next few weeks we have off.
Made it to the track and was very hopeful the track would stay heavy as it was in hot laps; however, it did not. Made some changes and just couldn’t get it right and sucked big time in the main. Huge apology to Chaz Wilder for getting into him off 4 and damaging the RR quarter panel. Completely messed up and just couldn’t get my head right after.
We love running against all the guys that were there and even though we didn’t take anyone out, getting into his panel was just dumb. Went back and watched our replay and confirmed I just flat out sucked.
As we can’t get to the track for a month or so, we plan to go through everything and try some different things to get this thing going back in the right direction.
Had fun during the fan appreciation period of the night, and we have some glorious ideas for the next one. Shoutout to Alanna Day-Wood for making those goodie bags on the fly.