There is a really cool Java’script’ countdown timer that isn’t working as part of this post, so you’ll just have to imagine it in your head.
Edit – okay that wouldn’t work so this one is ghetto but does work. You get what you pay for. and wow that is super ghetto!
Anyway the punchline of this joke is there are roughly 4 days left in Craig’s racing career. After that he becomes a full time manny / daddy and like our old racing buddy TJ who has fallen off the face of the earth. But ironically just bought a set of tires from Craig, why? Who knows since by the time he is racing again we’ll be using solar powered hovercraft and he only has one set of wheels for his car (that doesn’t start anyway).
Craig ‘hard’ at work.
Craig isn’t the only one that is going to have some life changes to deal with.
[I really really tried to keep this one short, since general feedback from the peanut gallery = ‘brevity is the sole of wit’. I guess I need an editor since I failed miserably again. Look at it this way – DTOMRacing gives you a lot of words for your entertainment dollar].
Shark week footage in progress. Dog update – Indy went in for surgery on Monday to fix his ear and get another biopsy on his leg. We are waiting for test results they take 10-14 days. He is wearing his mummy headdress while his ear heals nicely, but he is angry since it is very un-cool.
I didn’t want to race at Road Atlanta on Friday. I didn’t have the time to go over the car the way I like (read “need to” – I don’t really like it), and didn’t have the money to pay someone to do it for me. We went out for team trivia on Wed. to celebrate my wife’s few remaining days of summer vacation. That meant we got home late and that combined with work meant I was tired whaa whaa whaa whaaa whaa. Sometimes this hobby feels a lot like a job, but we wear the chains we forge in life.
My co-driver Dave White wasn’t coming down so I was faced with driving 2 hours in the hottest part of the day. The most dangerous thing I think we face driving on track is dehydration. Racing a car requires tremendous concentration, and nothing goes out the window quicker when you’re hot and your body is lacking what it needs to work properly than your higher cognitive processes. That sounds fancy but what does it mean? For me it means instead of thinking “brake here, watch for the shift light, check mirrors, etc” (or at least their instinctive counterparts) I’m thinking “man I’m hot, this sucks, what is that over there in the trees” or in other words your mind wanders and you’re not paying attention. So it makes driving and concentrating that much harder. It also means you have to strike a balance between drinking enough Gatorade to stay hydrated but not so much that you have to pee the minute you’re in the car. Believe it or not “Big Time” endurance drivers (or Al) pee in their seats a lot. I’m not sure how much money would have to be on the line for me to consider this…..
My race preparations consisted of putting the dash back together from my ill-fated attempt to diagnosis an electrical problem I was having (I stood as much chance of figuring this out as a monkey does of doing calculus, but at least I tried). That and packing the truck took the little free time I had left to devote to preparations. As I was getting ready to put the car on the trailer, I turned the key and nothing happened. Battery was dead. Now normally this is as much trouble as a cloudy day. Not sure if you’ve ever noticed but when you’re tired and grumpy the littlest things rub you wrong and everything seems to take twice as long. It was now 9pm on Thursday night and the last thing I wanted to do is screw with a non-starting car. My low maintenance plan was to roll it down the driveway and drop the clutch (known as ‘bump starting’ and one of the many awesome features of a manual transmission car). For some reason that didn’t work and now I was faced with a non running car that was at a 45 degree angle blocking our road outside in the dark. Run and find my jumper cables, bring the other car down to jump it since the truck was hooked to the trailer, etc. Get it running. Sounds loud and ‘racey’ too loud / too racey. Like I have an exhaust leak. M#@## F#@$%.
Wake up bright and early; convince Craig to move his 911 off the lift and into its proper home in his museum of non-running 1980’s cars. Amazingly the car still won’t start on the trailer. Jump again and send the battery off to Brendan to put on the charger. Shockingly the exhaust leak is a simple fix. Brake pads and tires aren’t up to Dave White spec, but more than adequate for Jim Robinson. Battery goes back in, and we’re off to the races. I thank God for small miracles.
Now each one of these posts are filled to the brim with my b!tching and moaning but to put it in perspective – I have little ankle biting bad days. Our buddy Ted was able to come up and help out on Friday. Usually Ted has to work, but it seems that earlier in the week Federal Agents raided his company’s headquarters and shut them down. The 5000 or so employees got an email around lunch time telling them – good luck finding a job. That is a legit bad day.
We got up to Road Atlanta secured our pitstop and got ready to go. One of the many things to fall by the wayside in terms of race prep was charging (or even finding) the batteries for the radio. We’d do this race in radio silence as a result. We’re in first place overall which meant I’d be in pole position for the start. Green flag flies and I get a good jump, the high horsepower cars get passed and I’m in fourth or fifth with a Vette right in front and a 944 in back. As we go into turn 5 the Vette checks up hard. I get on the brakes but the 944 behind me is too little too late and he hits me from behind. I feel the hit and then I’m 180 and facing traffic coming up the hill and waiting to feel the crunch of the wall. Miraculously I come to a stop about 8 inches from concrete. I watch as everyone drives past and then pull out on track. Car feels fine and I do a lap but Race Control black flags me so I have to pull into the pits. The rear bumper was loose so Ted and Brendan rip it off and out I go.
I’m surprisingly calm and ‘un-angry’. I decide to use this ‘alone time’ to focus on consistency and making lemonade. I’m clicking off decent 90% laps and turn the wick up as needed to make up time. A little after ½ way and I’m catching up to cars. I pull in for our mandatory 5 gallon fuel stop and that goes off without a hitch. Few more laps and I’ve passed class traffic and can see two guys I assume are in the top-5. They’re racing and therefore going slow. I catch up quick and make a good move going into turn 1 to get past both Jim Leive’s Spec E30 and another Spec Miata. Going into turn 3 – I’m suddenly sideways again and then crunch as the wheel is yanked from my hands. I sit for a second trying to figure out what the F just happened. I see the miata and Jim driving off and figure that the miata must have just punted me from behind and then hit me somehow again. I pull back on track and smoke is filling the cabin. I stop at the bottom of the hill not knowing the extent of the damage. Turns out sheet metal was crumpled on the rear wheel and the tire was getting cheese grated against it enough that the little Spec E30 that could – couldn’t finish the race. At the time we figured I had come from last place to a 2nd in class, only to get wrecked out with about 10 min. left to go.
Moral of the story – NEVER get a race car painted.
Street view of where it went pear shaped.
Clay showing how its done in a car. Not sure how you can get ‘inside’ on this line?
Aerial view. Green = good / Red = bad. I’ve seen some people try to pass here none have ended particularly well…
So now what. I get questions from non-racers about this so I’ll lay out what happens. Basically I’m SOL. No insurance on track, if you get broke you fix it, your dime, regardless of whose fault, why it happened, etc. The first guy that punted me came up and apologized he felt bad, of course me not being there allowed him to win so he probably didn’t feel ‘too bad’. But at least he made the gesture, we were in pretty heavy traffic and sh!t happens. I’m cool with a little rubbing since if you’re an amateur egg juggler from time to time you’ll have omelets. The Spec Miata guy I filed a contact form on with NASA. What does that mean? Roughly the equivalent of a complaint letter, with probably as much getting done. At the end of the day NASA is a business, so if they ban a racer from racing they just lost a huge chunk of change. So they have to balance the perception of caring (enough to mollify me) with not making the other guy mad so that he keeps coming back, but balance that with – is this A$$hat so dangerous that he will eventually kill someone and get us sued. IF this guy has been a source of constant problems NASA will tell him to sit the bench for awhile or pull his license and tell him to play somewhere else. Why did I complain in one case and not the other. Well Jim Levie witnessed the incident and said the guy basically just drove in the back of me. Also this guy didn’t come and look for me. I wandered a bit to see if I could find him to see what his story was, but nothing. He didn’t show up for the awards ceremony and people are parked over a 5 mile square parking lot. I had Ted and Brendan by my car in case anyone stopped by (like the 944) guy. So we’ll see what happens, I’m guessing nothing. In the meantime I’m looking for a discount bodyshop.
Another ‘to put it in perspective’, ironically (sad irony not funny irony) poor Jim Levie got victimized by a Miata during the sprint races in roughly the same place. Unfortunately he didn’t get off as light, and his car looks like a wadded up pop can. Thankfully he was all right.
I’d love to start this out by gloating and in general taunting everyone with my numerous victories from our Road Atlanta race, but due to sheer cowardice (my assumption) a lot of people didn’t show up. Steve DeVinney (which I think is French for dirty cheater, and he used to drive a miata – might as well wear a dress) and Robert Patton did their best to spoil my party, but after two years of racing the fates had finally run out of creative ways to cut the legs out from under me (foreshadowing). The worst thing that happened this weekend was stepping on my sunglasses.
Dog Update – thanks to everyone for their well wishing and asking about Indy. It will be awhile before we know for sure, but his leg seems to be much improved, and he had another minor surgery on his ear to remove stitches, and to drain another portion of the ear that had fluid but we’re hopeful he is now on the road to recovery. He was quite depressed for a few weeks, but got to go to the park last night so that and his short memory restored his optimistic view on life.
The racing administrators reviewed the timing and scoring records from our Barber “enduro” and ended up giving us the victory so despite the start mix up we managed to win. This was surprising and awesome since we’ve now won 3 out of the 4 races, however one of our JV team members got the call to attend the Varsity team match at Summit Point. It was a 12 hour event and my normal partner Dave White had committed to it before realizing he was double booked. Thankfully BimmerWorld World Challenge driver Seth Thomas has a flexible work schedule on Friday’s and was more than happy to lend a hand so losing Dave ended up being addition by subtraction. Since this was a double points race it was important to make a strong showing.
We were in our racer’s meeting around lunch when Seth made his grand entrance. Short of arriving in a helicopter I can safely say – if you want people to notice you, drive up in a bright red Ferrari.
One of these things is not like the other….
Seth determined that buying a Ferrari 430 was a good way to reward his recent World Challenge Sebring victory. Seth is one of 3 absolutely nice and polite people that I know (and that will associate with me), if you look up “Southern Gentleman” in the dictionary there is probably a picture of Seth next to Colonel Sanders.
[Interesting aside – During the VIR club race the BMW Club shares the track with a Vintage Group. Vintage racing is part racing, part renaissance fair / star trek convention. So you see some people ‘dressed up’ in weird costumes. This April we saw a man in a full tuxedo, with top hat and cane (alas no spats) and his wife was wearing a flapper-esque dress with some type of fox / rodent shawl. We also saw a crew chief wearing what appeared to be a doctor’s lab coat with some fancy embroidery. That night after several beers I suggested to Clay that in an attempt to make things at BW more professional he might want to get a lab coat for Jason Marks to help portray that level of cool efficiency and knowledge. We explored the idea further coming up with some compelling additions like piping and fringe tassels for the sleeves. Clay, however, remained unconvinced something about the tassels getting caught in a fan belt and workman’s comp. Knowing that he isn’t the man of vision that I am, I figured he just needed to see a prototype.
Craig was a child model for the JCPenny's catalog.
Paging Dr. Marks (BW Crew Chief) - notice the attention to details and quality!
Thanks to the power of the internet I was able to easily procure a bright yellow lab coat, and after interesting trips to a fabric store and an alteration shop this masterpiece was created. The Asian woman that spoke very broken English (and the entire shop) looked at Craig and me as if we had 3 heads as I explained the piping and fringe, but did stellar work. As you can see the coat is certainly reminiscent of Colonel Sanders with the piping. The deal was made that Clay would present this to Mark’s if they managed to win the 12 hour race at Summit. They did, I informed Jason it was dry clean only and to be brought out only for formal occassions.]
So I had Seth as my ringer, the usual suspects showed up and we adjusted our strategy to take advantage of Seth’s additional speed and ability. Using a tried and true Koni Challenge approach of one pro (Thomas) and one slow (Robinson) we decided to keep me out of the car as long as possible. Brendan and I also tried a new approach by thinking kind thoughts and not being angry to hopefully build up good karma. Thanks to my new 16 gallon fuel cell and two Full Course Cautions; Seth was able to stay out for 2 hours and 10 min. of a 3 hour race. Thus limiting the damage I could do to our position and allowing us to take a minimum amount of gas to get across the line. Our short pit stop and my workmanlike speed enabled us to cruise to victory and to a 3rd place overall finish. This kept us solidly in the E2 class lead, and leading the Series Overall Championship points as well.
Since victory, however satisfying and welcome, is somewhat boring, I’ll just hit the highlights. I was able to qualify on pole Saturday, and despite poor traffic management that led to Steve D. and Laura Patton getting closer to me than I would have liked I managed to not cr@p the bed and went onto my first sprint race win. I informed Steve D of our Spec E30 custom of not looking the champion in the eye and addressing him (or her oddly enough) as “Sir”. Laura managed to sneak by Steve after aforementioned traffic balked us both and she kept him behind for her best finish (I think?) ever. She was quite excited and since everyone likes Laura it was a good result and finish for her to celebrate!
How much did those trophies cost? Really?
NASA decided to try a format shift out on our Sunday race and instead of normal qualifying actually hold a qualifying race vs. just going off fast lap. We were to go out at 9:30am and the race finishing order would determine the grid for the afternoon race. This sounded awesome in theory and Christine and her mom (who is in town for a visit) came up to watch the day’s activities. I’m super paranoid since Barber about getting to grid extra early so I was parked in my spot and ready to go around 9:05. Then, what I call the ‘snowsuit effect’ kicked in. Roughly translated as, having to pee when bundled up in a bunch of stuff that will take you 10 minutes to get in and out of. Figuring that once we rolled on track I’d be able to focus on other things I bravely ignored my bladder’s cry for help. At 9:28am I notice yellow flags and our Medical flag waving from the turn 1 corner workers. I think immediately “well there goes our 9:30am start”, and despite my need to relieve myself I’m content since in this case a shorter race gives me the advantage – being on pole already. The starters say 5 min., then 3 min., then 5 min., then something about a car on fire. I am looking at our watch and it is 9:40am. I start to contemplate wetting my pants. With the luck that never deserted me this weekend at 9:45am they call our race due to extended clean up efforts and we drive back to our parking spots.
I call Christine to see where they are, “We’re at turn 10a we saw a ‘vette catch on fire and burn to the ground.” Probably not what you want to expose loved one’s to on one of their infrequent visits to the track. Apparently when a newer corvette senses an electrical issue it defaults to locking the doors. This made getting out of the car a bit trickier for the driver than usual, but he got out of the window fine. It did mean that the hood remained latched tight and the fire guys had their hands full trying to pry it open to put the fire out. Class Action lawyers should save that little nugget for the future now that Obama is running GM its deep pockets are backed with sweet sweet tax dollars.
Since we lost our first race NASA decides to add 10 minutes onto our afternoon race, thanks? Its 90 degrees and my little cool shirt thing isn’t working. Clay and ‘pros’ mock these things but I hate being hot and since I’d gone to the trouble of hooking it up I would have liked it to work. Oh well what is 40 minutes of hard racing in the blistering heat. I started on pole, Robert Patton came from 4th(?) and eventually got around me as I waited for the tires to come up to temp. He thankfully had used up his brakes getting past me the first time so I was able to sneak by under braking into 10a and then put my head down and started to crank out fast laps. Traffic mgmt is always important and we saw plenty of it, I ‘think’ I was able to stick Robert behind a few slower cars at optimal times that helped my get away. Taking the checkered flag for the 3rd time (and win) of the weekend.
Obligatory thanks / commercials. I’m not really sponsored by anyone but myself, but I’m lucky to have some really good friends that do their best to help me out and while I’m a jerk it would be churlish beyond belief to not mention a few people that have helped me and to whom I owe (in no small part) these victories (and really any victories).
Special DTOMRacing thanks to:
Brendan Digel – German Car Mechanic, crew chief, and race fan extraordinaire
Ted McMahan – retired Mechanic, good sport, and awesome helper
Craig Geiger – car storage, on site trailer repair / cat nanny, and soon to be ex-racer
James Clay – BimmerWorld owner, parts supplier, advice giver
(Editorial note: this is pretty half a$$ed in terms of narrative, it is more a stream of consciousness’ rendition of events, but hey it’s a start)
First off to put things in perspective, I have my health, a decent job, all four limbs. So this isn’t the type of story that is going to make Extreme Home Makeovers there are people much worse off than I am – go see Slumdog Millionaire or something if you like that stuff. Also this isn’t some type of desperate plead for sympathy either, if anything it is more of an excuse on my p!ss poor updates lately. At one point on our way from Virginia to Atlanta Craig stated “God hates you.” He isn’t the first to chalk most of my bad luck up to karma, but really at this point I’m not sure even that can account for the ankle biting madness that surrounds me since I’m just thoughtless and insulting vs. actually a serial killer – maybe in a previous life.
Strangely though I have a soft spot for dogs, I’ve never met one I didn’t like. And I can’t watch any movie that even remotely pertains to dogs dying. Like 8 below, it was a Disney picture not really hard core drama, couldn’t make even 15 min. in, pretty soft I know. One of my good friends recently had to put his dog to sleep (we miss you Norm) right before a lot of this happened and I can’t say that didn’t weigh on my mind as we continue(d) our struggles with our dog Indy. IF you have a pet and haven’t already, please look into getting pet insurance. We’re lucky enough to have the means to afford (so far) all the various surgeries and medicines however I’d hate to ever be in a position where my financial condition dictates how I care for my pets. We didn’t know it was an option when we got our dogs and I can safely say we’ve managed to spend more on our dogs than on my racecar and that is saying something. Our one vet who has become a friend was kind enough to point out that I could have gone to vet school for what we’ve spent surgery. Anyway enough about that.
I’ll try and condense the past 3 months into a few quick pictures and captions:
March – motor breaks unexplainably thus negating 3-4 months of work and putting the car back to where we started in December.
April – car goes to BimmerWorld for what, I had planned to be, “finishing touches” like safety stuff, paint, and fancy decals. They get it ½ done and I go up for a race and test drive at VIR, we confirm “Yep motor’s still broke”. Everyone inexplicitly shakes their head and says never heard anything like that before.
A rare site – an E30 coming off a pro team stacker transport!
An awesome track and fun time, especially since I got to drive Brendan’s car (we made some progress dropping nearly 5 seconds off his previously fastest time there). I’m second in the B-mod national championship hunt!
Fancy decal place semi-goes out of business. Engine comes out of the car stalling progress on fancy data / gauge solution, also means windows are stuck in permanent ‘down’ position. My truck overheats the day before a planned trip up to BW to pick the car up requiring a shuffling of plans. Mechanic states that this water pump failure is “uncommon”.
Craig and I make a pilgrimage up to BimmerWorld HQ the next weekend to see just how a pro racing team lives (the answer is they live much like I did in college). On the way home it is raining so hard that people are stopping on the highway and visibility is about zero. Since the windows are stuck down it is now raining inside of my ‘new’ car, complete with awesome new seat, and fancy new electronic dash. I’m imagining my car looking like an aquarium. It is here that Craig made his theological observations.
My wife takes our dogs to spring break 2009 and our one dog develops an odd sore on his leg. She goes to the vet and finds after 8 months his body appears to be rejecting a plate from his previous knee surgery.
Spring Break 2009 – Who let the dogs out!
He goes to the vet, who sends us to the surgeon. They take x-rays, plate needs to come out, bone might have a tumor. Surgeon says that less than 5% of dogs have this problem. Surgery goes well, biopsies go to the lab. We wait, I carry 90 lbs dog out into the yard every time he needs to pee, we don’t sleep much. Dog hates wearing goofy collar manages to take out stitches while we’re somehow not looking, new vet lectures me.
The big dog rolls in the grass after being carried outside.
May – car resumes its (rightful?) position in Craig’s garage. We do bare minimum to the engine to get it ready to go back in. Craig loans Dave White and I his car for CMP enduro race. We win and eat Mexican food. Brendan and Ted prep my old engine to go back in the car, I get sick with some type of mini-swine flu (despite first ever flu shot).
Dave White, the very pregnant trophy girl, and I, all hoping that black is as slimming as they say it is.
Dog results come back kind of, he has some type of crazy staph infection that requires 7 days of injections with an antibiotic that can cause kidney failure and hearing loss, also might have a fungal infection in the bone, but not cancer – still might have to cut leg off though. Surgeon and regular vet tell us the rarity of these types of things, especially the fungus. Christine becomes really good at collecting urine samples with those disposable Tupperware containers.
The Barber enduro is cancelled and we all sigh with relief since that gives us more time to finish things up. Barber enduro is back on, and we spend Memorial Day weekend pulling 8 hour days while Craig tries not to get divorced from his pregnant wife who is tired of us ‘visiting’ their house. Second lab result comes back, fungus isn’t in bone, but is present and needs anti-fungal medication that is very expensive 2 months worth, oh yeah by the way this will hurt his liver so we need to monitor that. Good news is full recovery expected, we sigh relief. Few days later dogs ear swells up with a hematoma (basically a huge fluid filled bruise, like wrestler’s cauliflower ear). They can’t fix it since his liver is stressed from the medicine so he walks around with a painful water balloon thing hanging from his head. He is miserable, oddly this is a common condition in Weims and the first time he has been ‘typical’ – regretfully so.
Is that a sausage in your ear or are you just happy to see me?
We get the car running, Brendan is now sick, I leave the car at RWL for him to finish a few things at work to make sure we’re ready for Barber. Since I felt that running the full weekend at Barber would be pressing my luck on a car that is almost 80% new and untested parts, I plan to just show up for the “enduro” race on Saturday. The “enduro” is now just an hour long, meaning it is a total joke, and a transparent ploy to get more money for NASA on what is a money losing event. Since I hate Barber and short enduro’s I complain a lot about this to no avail. See my feelings and description of Barber Motorsport’s Park here.
I pick up the car, and Brendan, bright and early Saturday morning. It is warm already and looks to be getting hotter, but at least no rain. We fiddle faddle with a few last minute things and load the car up for the trip to scenic Leeds, AL. The trip is 2 hours door to door and since we gain an hour with the Central time zone we’re there around 9am. We go to the gate to register and are told the entry fee is $30 a piece. Incredulously I inform them I’m racing in the event. The lady tells us it is $30 each, and please sign the waiver. This is kind of like your local county fair charging a $100 to get in; I’m $60 lighter just to entertain the ‘fans’. That spoils my good mood and brings back my “I hate Barber mindset”. I go to register with the NASA folks and they’re nice enough to refund me at least $30 for my entrance fee.
We still need to put stickers on the car, I had deliberately waited on this since I knew that Scott Mc MiniMe would be on hand. He is a true graphic artist (not like Craig who simply pretends). He is also really good at putting stickers on, however the festivities from last night have dampened his enthusiasm for working on my car gratis. I cajole him into the bigger harder stickers, but am left to fend for myself on the remaining. See the picture and see if you can guess who did what.
Don’t worry it isn’t finished this is just the ‘interim’ step.
Since we’re in first place overall (which defies explanation since there are much faster cars in the series) I should be starting on pole – meaning first guy in line. NASA, in a further attempt to stop the monetary bleeding, has let another group share the track with us, and they drive “Radicals”. (Really fast go-kart type cars with some flimsy bodywork on them.) They are a) very fast and b) incredibly hard to see in your mirrors due to being so low to the ground.
What is really radical about these cars is how bad the drivers are!
The race directors determine for safety to start them first. That means I’m now starting 16th. No problem, since these guys aren’t technically racing anyway. We manage to get most everything buttoned up and I go to the ‘gird’ where cars are parked in their starting order before proceeding out on track. There are numerous volunteers that work with the officials to get people in the right spots. The first girl confirms I’m looking for spot 16, I pull forward and the next guy motions me to the left row, I can’t see the numbers at this point so I follow his directions. As I pull forward I see that I’m not in the correct row and I need to be one over. The grid isn’t designed for parking lot maneuvers and you have a lot of people and cars moving around. I yell for help and a guy comes over. I mention the dilemma and he acknowledges and goes to talk to the head starter person. They chat for awhile and he goes back to staring at the sky. I yell again, he remembers me but doesn’t seem to have the answer for getting me to my spot. He walks off again. I holler one more time and he motions me into a blank spot #35. I’m thinking he is going to use this as a ‘conduit’ to the next row so I pull up. He is looking both ways to make sure I’m clear to advance. That is when the cars start to pull off the grid to begin the race. I’ve dropped from 1 to 19 before the first lap. I express my frustration on the radio and to the gentleman as I drive past.
“The Grid” imagine full of cars with me at the back instead of the front. I learned what Craig has felt like all this time..
Thankfully the race is uneventful despite being very crowded with fast cars / slow drivers that you can’t see in your mirrors and I manage to get past all of our serious competition and avoid manslaughter charges for killing any go-kart racers. Official results have me in third place, but we’ve lodged a protest since it appears that the top 2 finishers in our class didn’t do the mandatory 5 gallon fuel pitstop. So we may actually have won, we’ll see. I don’t have my hopes set very high since ‘unorganized mess’ is the best description I can come up with on how things are being run lately.
Is this the karma they’re speaking of?
We’re home by 6pm. Sunday rolls around and it seems warm upstairs in the house. I check the upstairs Air Conditioner and it clearly isn’t working. I try the AC repair tricks I know (very few) and nothing works. Monday and I call the AC guy to come out and check. He says “Well here is your problem — Good thing the house didn’t burn down, I’ve never seen anything like this before.” Well at least the car starts now.
CAUTION – Lots of Words ahead. 40 degrees and rain is bare minimum weather (no photos or videos). Let my scintillating prose craft the images in your mind.
In Spec E30 terms I’m like the New York Yankees you either love me or you can’t wait to see me fall on my sword. Either way is entertaining I guess. (ed – for the record this is just my perception, in fact most people may be and probably are indifferent).
I meant to type something up after we got the engine installed since a lot of people put forth a ton of effort to help me out but I got lazy and in the end there wasn’t much to talk about just a lot of hours. For the install we had over 100 years of pro mechanic experience so that left little opportunity for me to screw something up and/or hurt myself. So before I go into the Road Atlanta race weekend, let me give my sincere thanks to the following folks:
Craig – for the nearly unlimited use of his awesome garage Brendan – DTOM crew chief Jason Mascow – the cobra Chris Thurman – who handled most of the ‘heavy lifting’ for the install Ted McMahan – retired mechanic and insurance specialist My friends at RWL German Imports and BimmerWorld for parts and moral support.
***Just a quick note. Being a mechanic is a hard job, people that don’t understand cars always assume that they’re being cheated, people that do understand cars are always thinking they can do it quicker and cheaper (but won’t). Mechanics are paid on ‘book’ time meaning when you come in and say “I hear a clunk in the trunk”, the mechanic gets paid only for the time the factory thinks it should take to fix the problem, not for deciphering what that means and the actual time they take to fix it. So not only do they have to know and be able to pinpoint the problem, they then have to work against the clock and ‘beat’ whatever time it ‘should’ take them in order to do more work and make a decent wage. It would be very difficult for a mechanic (or service technician) to make a living on 40 hours a week of pay. Some of the best can get paid for 100 hours per week and maybe only in fact put in 50-60. It is still hard physical work and anyone that thinks mechanics are dumb manual laborers should try it for a day and see how quickly they change their mind. And oh by the way, they own all their own tools, in fact most techs that have done this for any length of time may have up to $50k in tools, which they have to pay for on their own. Now for an example, during this endeavor Craig’s starter went bad. We decided to change it out in our spare time. This is a hard job on our cars but one that we’re completely familiar with. The factory (or ‘book’) says it’s a 2 hour job. It took us 4 hours, we pointed that out to Brendan and he said “Not bad, but there were two of you, so that is really like 8 hours”. In other words Craig and I would be poor and hungry if we had to pay our bills this way.***
So after 3-4 months of weekends and making the project much larger than it needed to be, in the end all that went wrong is the junk yard transmission I had bought turned out to be from an early 5-series car meaning it was the right ‘type’ of transmission but the shift linkage wasn’t correct so it wouldn’t work without extensive inventing of parts. Of course somehow no one realized that until it was installed. That cost us probably an hour or so and we got to lift heavy transmissions into place twice, which is good for the pecs.
The goal, ironically (foreshadowing) of all this hard labor was twofold – One, to build a car with a bunch of new parts so that nothing could break without a freakish coincidence and Two, combine my amazing driving talent with amazing horsepower to unleash an unstoppable Spec E30 force on the SouthEast NASA Region. I would dominate all of the remaining races and then look to retire undefeated at the end of the year. I kindly kept the car out of the first CMP race as payment to Craig so that he could win the first two races in return for his garage.
To ensure that this would be the end result I cajoled my loving wife into letting me instruct at a DE the previous weekend so that I could test and tune the car in order to make sure that all systems were go. The motor felt good, everything was in place, I had a minor electrical glitch in the tach and with some of the gauges that we traced back to a loose ground wire, but overall nothing serious.
So I went into the Friday enduro with new tires, new brakes, a mostly new car and feeling pretty good about our chances. My illustrious teammate BMWCCR 2008 JP Champion Dave White was scheduled to take the start, I’d come in during the middle and depending on circumstances we’d see who would finish. At least that was the plan. Dave took off well and was comfortably in the lead after about 40 min. he radioed in to say the coolant temp was rising and he smelled coolant. He came into the pits and a hose had blown off the front of the motor spilling water. We refilled and fixed and sent him back out with a full tank of gas. After an hour he came back in to swap drivers and get a full tank of gas. I went to start the car and noticed the oil pressure light had come on, it flickered a bit and then went out, I shut the motor off. Brendan poked around a bit, I restarted and everything looked / sounded fine. I got on the radio and confidently stated that it was the old electrical gauge gremlin showing back up and that I’d do a lap or two and watch it.
I went out and ran two easy laps, the car felt fine, no lights or anything out of the ordinary. After about 20 minutes the temp started climbing up again on the back straight. I brought it back to the pits. The bleeder screw on the thermostat (another part of the cooling system) had come off and disappeared. We replaced with one from Craig’s car, but at this point with all the pit stops we were out of the race. I figured I’d go out and finish for points and to make sure the car was okay. It was and we finished in maybe 8th place.
Steve Foushee – spec E30 competitor – assuming he had the victory in the enduro stayed out after the checker for some celebratory donuts and burnouts on the front straight. Unlike TV and NASCAR no one at NASA thought that was cool. He was promptly DQ’d for his enthusiasm and forever earned the moniker “Donut King of Augusta” in the SE30 paddock.
Saturday came and it was cold and rainy. Standing in a parking lot with limited shelter and amenities while trying to work on your car in the cold and rain is about as fun as you would think. Like a dumba$$ I wore tennis shoes that were quickly soaked, I spent most of the day worrying about legionnaire’s disease or trench foot. By the time we went to qualify it was a full scale downpour and the track was like roller-skating on an ice rink with a blindfold on. You know how a semi-truck throws off mist on the highway multiply that by 5 and then do 120 mph with a stop sign somewhere up ahead. With 60 cars and 15 minutes you have to be quick and aggressive to get a clean lap, I was neither and earned an awesome 7th spot for my efforts. The race conditions didn’t improve and for some reason the NASA officials thought that combining all the different classes together would be a great idea. So typically I would have been 7 out of 20 because of this I was 20 out of 60. I would usually be racing people I know for points and cars that are about as exactly the same as rules and man can make them. Instead I got to race a bunch of dip sh!ts in 944 cup cars. Specifically Scott Campbell #82. I went to offer him some advice after the race but couldn’t find him unfortunately all racing people out of your class does is slow both of you down for no apparent purpose. (ed – as I pointed this out in my general b!tching and moaning that I’m famous for, an anonymous bystander pointed out WWSCD. To which I replied – Huh? He said, “You know What Would Scott Campbell Do?” To which I replied – Huh? The anonymous bystander explained “The sticker on the back of your car WWSCD, that is the dude, you didn’t know that?” To which I replied – Uh, no?. The anonymous bystander went on, “Yeah the 944 dudes printed those stickers up for him but I think it is an inside joke.”) Well Scott the secret is out of the bag, apparently a bunch of people think you’re a tool – I agree with them OSB – other sports beckon. Someone had put that sticker on my car (like most of my stickers) without my knowledge or understanding what it meant. I was too lazy to remove it, and now I’m glad I didn’t!! Hopefully he saw it when I finally got around him 2 or 3 laps from the end. (ed – A further editorial comment, I’ve had the most problems with stunts like this with the 944’s. Spec Miatas, despite being hairdressers of questionable sexual orientation, are generally good and considerate drivers. It could also be it is really easy just to stay close and overwhelm them with our awesome 150 hp down the straightaway. I don’t think the 944 guys have the car counts so they are always looking for a ‘friend’ to race with instead of realizing that we view them as rolling obstacles vs. a good time. In this specific example I was, generally speaking, 2 seconds a lap faster and when I went to make a pass through turn 12 (in the rain not cool) he came in on me and did even worse and more aggressive things to one of the Lasko / Walsh cars.)
We were scheduled to qualify Sunday morning early. I spent the entire night stewing over the race and my own p!ss poor performance. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well and even more than usual since a lot of people had put a lot of time into giving me my best shot. I fully intended to be one of the first people on the qualifying grid, and any out of class cars that got in the way were getting the chrome horn. I went to start the car and get it warmed up while I changed into my monkey suit. When it turned over I heard a strange ‘clunking’ noise that I recognized all too well. I went and solicited several independent opinions on what that noise may signify and they all came back terminal – rod knock. I’ll have to save the suspenseful conclusion to this adventure for the future since at this time I don’t really know what happened. Our particular motor is notorious for having this problem with the number 6 cylinder. A piston is connected to a crankshaft by a rod, that rod is ‘suspended’ in oil. So when the car is running this oil provides a cushion that keeps actual metal to metal contact from happening (at least limits it). The number 6 rod may have been deprived of that cushion and then bad stuff happens. Of course I’m not an expert and I have thought things were “A” when they turned out to be “B”. So I have my fingers crossed that I didn’t screw things up too badly and I’ll wait for experts to weigh in with their opinions and judgment.
Of course stuff like this makes you sick to your stomach when it happens, more for the effort and help of friends that is seemingly ‘wasted’, unfortunately disappointment and general suckiness is a large part of racing. I think that is what makes this so addictive when you actually can succeed and triumph. You have to make your peace with these things or you’re in the wrong sport, but it is days like this that make it sometimes feel like a full time job (and not a good one) vs. a fun hobby. Of course it can always be worse, there were several cars that wrecked in the rain and one driver that was rumored to have broken an ankle when a wheel broke through the cage and got into the pedal box. I also thought a lot about when Clay and the BW team wrecked all three of their cars. They managed to put things back together and ended up winning the next race, so while this is a pretty big bump in the road and drastically alters how I envisioned this season working, DTOM will be back and better than ever.
