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.
Thank you,
Tina Peterson
William Peterson
Stephen Scott
Perris Auto Speedway
Kenny Lonngren (awesome on track photos)
Dave Ausmus
Everybody from the Vasquez group]
