OLA Day 4 - Fluids and a fricken bolt.
Well, today was an interesting day. Last night Rob took advantage of being close to Mike's house and burnt a lot of the mid-night oil there replacing spark plugs and continued to try and fix our oil leak problem (as now the series has eyes on our diaper, as they call it).
When we started toward the track in the morning Rob noticed the car was missing very badly.. it sounded sick, and top speed was around 80... One of the new plugs we purchased was bad. So, no rest for the weary as we had to now speed to the track and change the plugs again to race in the morning....
Rob completed the project and I was able to start the morning session. I was doing well (I believe top 10) but recieved a black flag on the 2nd lap, so I had to come in. The race director said three stations reported fluids coming from the car.
He thought it was oil, but realized it was water. He said they wouldn't have called me in if it was just water.... so now I am faced with a DNF because I couldn't complete the three laps... however he said I would not recieve a DNF... I don't know how he'll figure it out, so I am kept in suspense. Right now we have no points for that race... so we'll see.
Meanwhile Rob went back to work on the car to set up a coolent catch can of sort (we have one but it needed to hold about a gallon of water) We really need a high pressure radiator cap, above 16.. if anyone has one and will be at VIR tomorrow?!?!
After that project, Rob also installed another thermostat and wanted to address the oil leak... we had solved this from being a stream to a drip... probobly not something that will get us in trouble, but now the eyes are upon us.
When rob tried to tap a bigger sized hole he had major problems as it seemed he may have just been tearing up the hole. This is a major problem because with out this bolt we can not contain the oil (part of the sump plumbing) It was noon and the second run started at 12:30pm.... We all but figured we would not make the session and may not have a way to move the car!
Rob must have thought of something, because he and Rene(Robs friend from Chicago and part of the DAL crew) had a plan and started finishing it just as one of the WRX guys lost his car and went into the Jersey barriors. This bought us more time and we were able to get the car to in line in time.
The EXP4/DAL Motorsports car was on fire.. I felt it had a lot of pep and and although continuing to fight an understeer problem was getting decent grip. I made it thru the session but was called into tech imeadiately because someone saw some fluid comming from the car again... well this time the car was overheating and we filled a gallon of water thru the overflow of the coolent system. The thermostat he installed an hour before was stuck open, verified when we started to drive to the drag strip and the car overheated on the road. To make things worse.. all the time spent on the oil leak was fruitless as it still has a little drip.
So a lot of time and energy waisted on things that didn't work well... kinda put a damper on the day.
I managed a 6th overall for Summit Point, a track I only have seen once.. so we left there feeling better.
On to the Drag racing.... Rob had the experiance here so he lined up and put a 12.4 in the 1/4mi which was his Low ET for the bracket race. This surprisingly gave us 8th place in the drag event.
Now bracket racing has some strategy to it, so basically you have to beat the other car but you can't beat your Low ET time. Unfortunately Rob had a bad reaction/start, so he tried to make up for it and did it too well at 11.9 in the 1/4th mi... WOW! That's flying... but unfortunately that also meant he lost so the lowest you can score is 7th.
On to VIR tomorrow where we hope to get our Summit #1 straited out with Brock Jr. and try to make a charge in the home stretch. Car seems to be working well, but I feel we have a head gasket issue that is overpresurizing the coolent.. Rob disagrees... so we'll keep our fingers crossed.. we don't have any more chances to prove we can keep the car from putting fluid on the track.
Check out the other newly created thread for current in class and over all points for both NSXs.