Gladiators in the Steel Palace

So here’s the “new” car. It’s Eric Connors’ Oswego car that got wadded up in the big wreck at RoC a few years ago (On a side note, Jason Spaulding’s and Jeff Merritt’s cars are also both still wrecked from that crash). It’s been sitting in the weeds since then but fortunately Eric did a nice job of wrapping up the important parts. Since it was a fresh motor when he ran it for RoC, I figured we’d see how it looked and maybe put it in my car to go back to Spencer. I dumped out the antifreeze and pulled the pan and everything looked good so we dropped it in my car last light. It fired right up and sounds decent so we’ll swap the intake and finish setting it up tonight. I’ve reconfigured the pulley system to something that I know works so it should stay cool. Last week I set up the third member with something a little closer to what we should be running and got that put in. And another bonus from Eric’s car was a good throwout bearing so hopefully the gremlins will stay away. With all that done, hopefully instead of bringing a knife to the gunfight we’ll be bringing at least a slingshot.

The bullet in our slingshot this week will be Kelly. I have mixed feelings about it but he’s going to drive. I love driving the car but I really am a little too out of practice and I still can’t tell if it’s the car or me. Kelly’s been driving a Super all summer so if he gets around better than I did I’ll at least know what to work on. Besides, he offered me a pile of motor parts and I need them more than I need a driving fix. And having the help in the shop is going to make a big difference in how we perform at the track. I’m looking forward to seeing how things work out. He’s had a rough time because of equipment this year. Hopefully that won’t be a problem Friday and we’ll come out of the night well.

Dave Fetterly came by last night to get some tires and lent a hand getting the motor in. He filled me in on how Tommy and Mike (the other Ford guys) did at SL2. They both finished in the top 10 and are coming to Spencer Friday. Jason and Matt didn’t do quite so well. Hopefully they’ll get things back together and come back. I’ve heard of a couple people that can’t make it back but more that will be there that missed the last one so the car count should be awesome.

As for Eric’s old car, it’s in dire need of a front clip. I think once I’ve got my car ready for next season, I’ll cut off the one I’ve got out back and get it straightened out. The rest of the chassis is in great shape and Kelly did nice job of placing the weight and bracing the cage. Once it’s cleaned up I’ve got a novel idea for a body I’ve wanted to try for a few years. Keep watching this space for details.

Well, somehow I came up with enough cash to get gears, the clutch parts, and enough gaskets to put my friend’s short block under my heads. With the tires I picked up and some time to mess with the chassis, I might just find a way to keep up with the field. I finally got all my domestic stuff done so I’ll be pulling the car apart tonight and seeing where I stand. I imagine next week will be busy…

In other news, I’ve acquired another old Oswego car still wrecked from RoC a few years ago that I’m going to try to put back together and get someone to drag to Spencer next year.

Well, I think we managed the biggest field of Super Stocks this season. And never turned a lap in competition… On the plus side there’s a rain date and it’s far enough out that I might be able to actually get the car ready to run a whole 50 laps.

I knew I was going to fight with the clutch again but I’d hoped that the overheating problem would be remedied. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen as evidenced by the big cloud of steam that bathed the car after hot laps. I changed a couple of things at the track but never really got a chance to see if they helped because the rains came while the other classes were running heats.

So what now? First off, there’s a new clutch slave en route. That won’t be bothering me again… As far as the motor, I’m going to get a leak down on it and I’m working on coming up with a different one. I’m also considering a set of gears. The trick is coming up with the cash to pay for everything. With any luck I’ll get it back together and be able to get in a practice at the Mills before I head back.

So it turns out that you can’t always trust your tach. After changing the clutch and ruining the throwout bearing, I went back to Spencer Friday night and turned 9000 rpm. Since I’m pretty sure 9k would have left pieces of motor all over the track and it was breaking up and obviously not turning that fast, we went to look for other culprits. After finding some plug, wire, carburetor, and distributor issues and still not fixing it, I ran the heat and had the car shut off entering the pit. After all that it turned out that I hadn’t gotten the positive battery terminal tight enough…

Once that got remedied, the feature went much better. I started off well enough but faded pretty quickly. I think a lot of the problem is my lack of practice and familiarity with the track, I’m getting better but still need to get used to charging the corners and still carrying speed through them. The car seems pretty solid and I need to get more comfortable with it. I’ve also got to fix the cooling issues.

So am I ready for 50 laps with the big boys? I’ve got 980s mounted up for this Friday and I’ll be changing some things to help keep it cool. I’m also going to try beefing up the brakes and making some small changes to the suspension. With any luck it will be enough to survive all 50 laps and stay close to the lead lap.

The car count for Friday looks pretty amazing. We may actually start all 26 cars. Even RoC didn’t pull that many. It’ll be great to see and shows there are cars out there willing to race and maybe with some tweaking of the rules we could pull a few more for regular shows. It’ll be great to be running with Jason and Bri, and Dave again.

Speaking of regular shows, I managed 10th in points at Spencer. It’s a little depressing that you can show up three times and pull that off. I’ll be doing my best to make sure I have to work for it next season.