It has been a really long time since I’ve posted anything.

Through much of March, the race car was home in the garage, with me doing pre-season prep work. All new brakes, change fluids, etc. First weekend of April was the season opener, a double regional at Thunderhill.

I left home Thursday night. About 15 miles from home, in Fremont, the oil pressure gauge on the Suburban dropped down to 0, although I got no warning lights or other indication that anything was wrong. I pulled over and checked the oil. Just slightly low, but not outrageous. Topped it off, started it, oil pressure was fine. That didn’t make much sense but I continued on my way.

15 miles later I was up and over the hill in Pleasanton, when the gauge started dropping again. Within the next 10 minutes it had crept all the way down to 0 again. Again, no idiot lights, no weird sounds, nothing out of the ordinary, but I got off the freeway in Pleasanton and called AAA. It was now about 9:00 at night and I was still in civilization. An hour later it would be in the middle of absolutely nowhere and it would be even later. This seemed smarter.

The guy on the phone was very nice, but even after checking with supervisors and such, just couldn’t do anything for me with the big trailer attached. He made it very clear that he was going to dispatch a truck out to help me with the Suburban, but if the trailer was attached when the driver got to me, that he wouldn’t be able to help me, at least, not on AAA’s dime. He gave me the numbers of some commercial towing companies who could probably help me get the trailer back where it was supposed to be, for who knows how much money.

I asked for a flatbed truck, hoping that a decent one might be able to put the Suburban up on top and still tow the trailer, but … I didn’t have much confidence. At this point it was 9:30 or so and I didn’t really know what to do. It seemed like everyone I knew with a truck capable of towing the big trailer (which probably weighs something like 8,500 or 9,000 lbs) was either already up at Thunderhill ahead of me, or was down in San Diego at the Solo National Tour.

But then I had my epiphany … Gary just sold his race car, and he lives right here in Pleasanton, and he has that nice Chevy dually truck … winner. He got there in 10 minutes or so, we got the trailer hooked up to his truck, and then we waited, and waited, and waited for a tow truck to come for the Suburban.

He finally did show up at about 10:30 or so. Had the Suburban hooked up in no time. He told me that had I asked HIM to take the trailer back (and he could theoretically do it, although we would have had to mount a hitch ball onto the truck), it probably would have cost me about $600.

So the truck headed back to the dealer in Sunnyvale, and Gary and I headed to his house. Unfortunately his truck is an older truck that doesn’t have the now-standard 7-pin trailer wiring connector, he has always used a 6-pin connector. So we didn’t have lights or working brakes on the trailer. And the huge clips on my safety chains wouldn’t fit through the holes in his hitch. So no safety chains either. So rather than go back home with the trailer, we made the quick trip to his house. The whole family was still awake at 11:30pm, I said a quick hi, then I borrowed their Jeep and headed back home.

Friday morning I dug out my 6-pin-to-7-pin trailer wiring adapter out of the garage (I don’t even know why I have one, but there it was), went and bought a couple of clevis pins so that I’d be able to hook up the chains, and headed back to Pleasanton. In 5 minutes I had lights, brakes, and chains on the trailer and I headed home.

Friday afternoon the dealership called and told me that this was a known issue with the GM trucks, that the gauges can misbehave (all of them, usually it’s a tach, speedo, or fuel gauge that acts up first) and that even though the truck is way out of warranty, since it’s within 7/70 they would replace the whole gauge cluster free of charge. So it was just a gauge issue, not an engine issue.

And then Ann and Philip came down to the south bay Friday night, so they picked up the truck. Cool, thanks to the whole Richardson family for making that whole thing a lot less painless than it might have been!

Okay, so I missed rounds 1 and 2. Rounds 3 and 4 were this past weekend at Laguna Seca. This time the towing went flawlessly, I flew down to Laguna Seca in what felt like record time on Thursday night.

Friday morning practice was where the trouble began. After just a few laps, the car started running hot. Crap! That means that this cooling problem I’ve been chasing since my wreck last June STILL isn’t fixed. Quick recap: car overheated at first race back (September at Infineon). Discovered hole in radiator, despite that we pressure-tested it after the repairs were done. Replaced on-site with a brand new one, but still had overheating issues.

Discovered a pinhole leak in the new radiator, replaced it with another brand new radiator. Pressure tested just fine. But then, at the next race weekend, I had the same problem!

Finally, before the season finale, I put the now-repaired all-aluminum radiator back in, and all seemed to be fixed. I tried to put the car on the dyno just to be sure (since it only ever seems to have an issue while racing, not while idling), but couldn’t get the car running because now the electronic throttle body was stuck. With no time before the finale race weekend, I gave up and threw in the towel. Since that weekend I replaced the throttle body and did a test day at Thunderhill, where I had no issues at all.

So now here we are at Laguna Seca, and it’s overheating and still, coolant is mysteriously disappearing. HOPING that I just still had a huge bubble in there, I refilled and bled the system again, and headed out for qualifying early Friday afternoon. We had the outlap and then one hot lap, and then a black-flag-all due to a stuck car. At that point, I had the overall pole, but there was still a lot of time left in the session. But … as I pulled into the pit lane, the temp rose dramatically and I decided to call it a day. My one and only lap held up for 7th place overall, but I decided I was better off just parking the car.

At this point I’m confident that the water I’m losing is going out through the tailpipe, although it’s a little surprising that with the amount of water loss that the vapor isn’t visible. Which would mean that I have either a bad head gasket or a cracked head.

This week I will have the old head from my original engine rebuilt. That one has a bent valve from the May race at Thunderhill last year. That happened in turn 1 on the final lap, when I was leading overall … and I basically haven’t had a good weekend since then. The next race is June 11-13 at Laguna Seca and by then I should have a new cylinder head and new head gasket, and with any luck, these problems will be behind me. Here’s hoping.

BTW, it was not a good weekend at Laguna Seca in general. Rod hit the tire barrier in practice on Friday and wrecked up all of the left-side bodywork, which was sporting brand new Go, Dog. Go! Racing graphics to match my car. He also bent the front control arm but thanks to all of the helpful Miata folks in the paddock, that was replaced in an hour.

Mike Monegan was involved in an awful wreck in the same spot during his Friday qualifying session. Apparently a T3 Mazda RX-8 (driven by Michael Sullivan) was getting passed on the inside by a very fast Porsche. They made minor contact and the Mazda ended up going wide into the dirt. Behind them, Mike, in his EP RX-7, was passing the much slower Lois Leidecker-Ott in her Honda CRX. The RX-8, still fishtailing off in the dirt on the outside, suddenly hooked up and ended up coming straight across the track into the path of both Mike and Lois. It’s actually VERY similar to what happened in my own wreck last year, when an ITA Miata driven by JD Morris did the same thing into my path in T6. I’m getting annoyed with cars that go off the track and then don’t just LOCK EM UP AND STOP. It turns your bad day into someone else’s bad day when you try to regain control and get back on the track.

Anyway, Lois was able to slow and steer enough to just barely catch the RX-8 with her RF corner, and the damage was just cosmetic. But Mike, who was to Lois’ right, T-boned the RX-8 with full force in the passenger door. Mike’s car is SERIOUSLY crumpled in front of the strut towers and the RX-8 was very heavily damaged on the right side. To add insult to injury, the RX-8 then spun around and hit the inside wall with his LR corner, doing some very significant bending of the both the sheet metal and the suspension.

All of the drivers were okay, with only a sore ankle to show for it all (Mike thinks his ankle scraped along his dead pedal or something), but his RX-7 will need a whole new front clip and I can’t see how the RX-8 will live to see another day, despite the fact that it did drive out of impound under its own power … although the wheels were at all kinds of funny angles.

Also paddocked within 100′ of me were Viet-Tam Luu, who had cosmetic damage to three corners of his car this weekend, and James Thomas, who spent ALL DAY Friday just trying to get his ITB car to start … he gave up at beer time and was going to call it a weekend when I saw him last. And Rylan Hazelton blew up his engine during the race on Sunday.

I packed up and left on Friday night, but I’m hearing about a few other damaged cars, including apparently lots of damage in the Spec Racer Ford race which finished out the weekend. What the heck was going on this weekend? Not the prettiest outcome.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 at 11:26 am and is filed under Race Reports, SCCA, Updates.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.