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 Vålen 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.
Our first race season is officially in the books! Congratulations to Ryan Bleich on his Championship, very well earned and deserved. To say we had fun this season is a massive understatement. We ended our season 2nd overall in points with 3 Fast Qualifiers, 1 Heat win, 10 top 5s and 11 top 10s in 11 starts. These last 6 months have been the experience of a lifetime for me and achieved my lifelong goal of racing at 5 Flags Speedway. This has been an immense learning experience from Day 1 when the build process began. I feel like I’ve grown so much not only on the track but off the track as well as the season has progressed and ended. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs and I’ve made plenty of mistakes that I’ve learned from throughout this season. I’m looking forward to our Crown Stock Snowball Derby and excited for what next season holds at 5 Flags Speedway and Mobile International Speedway
I owe a huge amount of thanks to Caitlin Bray and Gene for all of their support, motivation, and allowing me to chase my dreams. None of this would be possible without you. I love you guys!
There have been countless people that have supported us throughout the season in one way or another. A sincere thank you to all of you:
Got to drive this bad boy tonight and had some fun figuring it out throughout the night.
Car ran a little rough and had some issue with that to stay consistent, but overall was a great night. Car is stupid fast when it can get cleared out and rolling down the track.
Halfway through the main going into turn 3 the engine cut out a little bit and we jumped the cushion that was in the middle and tagged the wall. Pulled er off thinking the deck was destroyed but I guess the thing is built different because it was absolutely fine. Thank God.
YUGE thank you to my brother and Amanda McCullough for taking time out of their lives to get their car and trailer ready the last few days and bring it out so I could run it and get points and keep our streak going for the year. Glad I could shake those cobwebs off and help get some things figured out to hopefully get them out there soon.
. 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.
Hell yea brother!!
), 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 
