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.

The trip to Spencer was a qualified success. I got third. Unfortunately, since there were only 5 cars and 1 didn’t start, that’s not saying much. The fact that I was a lap down is even worse. I’m not sure why the car count is so bad there. It’s a nice place and the track is pretty decent to drive on. The management and officials were awesome and the competitors were helpful. In order to pull some more cars, they’ve pretty much said bring whatever you have within reason. They even let us run 800/890s. The Super Stock class at Spencer has been hit pretty hard by the fates. They had a good field earlier in the season but for various reasons, many of the cars have been kept home. They’re exploring their options for opening the rules to make more cars eligible for next season in hopes that some of the cars sitting will be able to come out.

I had really hoped for a better run. I spent the week changing the car over from Evans Mills, putting in a closer gear and getting the weights and ride heights to where they should be and I figured I’d have something at least race-able. Jason decided he wanted to come down and try the place out so we headed down together. After about 20 minutes of filling out NASCAR forms, we got in and unloaded. I managed to loop it in the first hot lap session and put some wedge in it for the second session. Then I figured out that my corner entry was making me loose so I took the wedge back out… Jason went out and immediately turned competitive laps. Unfortunately, the motor let got at the end of the second session so he was OFN. I spent the heat trying again to find a decent line and got through with no incident other than turning 7200rpm, which seems like a lot with 5.13 gears. The car did get hot again so we filled it back up and put a new cap on it hoping that would help. The feature was also pretty uneventful. I ran what I hoped was a decent line but couldn’t keep up with the leaders and lost about a second and a half a lap for pretty much the entire race. Changing the cap seems to have taken care of the overheating problem but I’m still turning over 7000 rpm. I think I better look at the clutch again…

I think if Jason had run the feature, he and the top two guys would have put on a great race. As it was, the top two were glued together all night. I’m hoping that Jason comes back and I get a better handle on the car so we can be part of of that. Jason was on the phone that night already campaigning to get more Evans Mills cars down for the next two shows. I hope we can convince some people to show up. It’s not a bad haul and if I can get third a lap down, someone with a car that works should do pretty well.

Well after a mediocre but reasonably cost-effective night at Evans Mills, I’m going to take another shot at Spencer Friday night. And since the management there has seen fit to relax some of their rules and requirements, Jason will be tagging along. I’ve got the car pretty much ready to pass tech on the weight and measurements front. And I think the motor is OK and will keep cool this time. I can’t say whether I’ll be any faster this time but it should be fun.

Evans Mills was fun and I think I’m getting the hang of the track (and the car). But if I wanted to run there seriously, I’d have to pretty much rebuild the car. And I’m not ready to do that so if Spencer’s proposed rule changes get a little closer to something reasonable I’ll probably head there for next season.

Also, if you’re reading this and you’re bored, come down Friday night. They’ve pretty much said you can run any 800 series Hoosier on almost any car as long as the height and weight rules are close.

Since I now have gears and had some time off to hang out with the boy, I figured we’d take the car up to Evans Mills for some practice. So I got the car up on stands to fix the clutch (again) and put in the gears. Several hours later, I put it back on the ground. It turns out no amount of adjusting will account for a clutch disk spring stuck in the pressure plate. But it does explain why the throwout bearing o-rings gave up. Fortunately, the flywheel and pressure plate were OK so I threw in an old disk I had laying around and hoped it would hold together. Things to do regarding the gears in a 9″: Get a slide hammer, put in a drain plug, buy a reusable gasket, lift more weights. After that ordeal I was ready to go back to my old 8.5″. Dave Fetterly gave me some pointers to help out next time so I expect I’ll have an easier time of it.

Anyway, after getting the drivetrain back together, I decided to do what I could to get the weights close to legal for Evans Mills. 58% left side. Are they nuts? Who wrote these rules anyway? So I bolted 180# to the left frame rail and got to just over 57% at 3310#. You need a Late Model to get these percentages. No wonder half the field runs them.

By the time I got the weight on, it was getting close to time to leave so we hooked up the trailer and discovered one of the drums had locked up. And that the ramps were too short. It’s a good thing this was only practice. Eventually we got everything straightened out and Griffin and I headed north. Practice was pretty light so we got plenty of time on the track. Dave Fetterly showed up with the Hot Rod Lincoln as I was heading out for my first session to shake it down. I didn’t actually get to see him on the track but Jason says he looked fast. I, on the other hand, did not. I’m a good second away from fast. I’m sure I’ll make up some of that with tires and a little more track time but the car has some issues I need to work on. I think the rear is out of square and there’s a bind somewhere. I’ll be taking a long look at it in the next couple of days and heading back up on Saturday for the race. On the plus side I’m starting get an idea what the preferred line looks like.

Unfortunately, there’s enough to do that I’ll be staying home from Spencer. I was hoping to get down there to get some time on the track in preparation for the 9/7 NYSS show. I’ll take another shot at it next week. It sounds like there will be a decent turnout for that show from the guys up north as well as the southern tier and WNY guys. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a better car count than RoC.

This weekend we had some family business to attend to in Binghamton. So we took the opportunity to go to Shangri-La II. What an awesome venue. The track looks like a blast to drive on, the food was good, it was BYOB, and the ticket price was reasonable. And if you show up early enough, you can watch the drags at Skyview on the same ticket. I’ll be going back and bringing the boy.

The racing was…decent… The car counts weren’t great. 13 Mods, 7 Late Models, and 5 Ministocks. And 17 Street Stocks(I’ll get back to them). My son would have loved the show. I was amazed at how many wrecks you could have with so few cars. On the plus side, I got to see an upset in almost every class.

I keep hearing about how great the Street Stock car count at SL2 is compared to the other local asphalt tracks. And with 17 cars the count certainly isn’t bad. I hear a lot of theories as to why the count is so good. The most popular one is the high purse. However, I think I can sum it up in three words: Sharpsteen, Snell, and Zacharias. These three families accounted for half of the field. I give them kudos for supporting the class and SL2 is lucky to have them but their presence is artificially pads the relative counts. Many of the other tracks in the area have had this kind of thing happen over the years and it happens in other classes all the time. Heck, the Miller boys had something like 6 cars between them at Oswego at one time. So at the moment, SL2 has three dedicated families putting everything they have into their favorite class/track. Kudos to them.

So anyway, despite the draw of running on what looks like an awesome track, I don’t think I’ll be hauling down there. There’s just too much about my car I doubt they’ll let fly. I wandered through the pit after the show and looked at all the (wrecked) cars. They look like glorified pure stocks. From conversations with some of the drivers at RoC I’m sure they’re not but mine doesn’t even pretend to be one. Maybe the Fall Brawl will have looser rules or at least looser tech.

This will be a busy week. I got gears for Evans Mills so I’m going to take it up to practice on Wednesday. If everything goes well, I’ll swap the gears back and go to Spencer on Friday. If that goes well, I’ll swap them again and go to the Mills Saturday. Then I’ll take a nap and decide where I want to go next week.

In his efforts to get to the Mills, Jason brought me a trailer this week. So I decided I’d try to make practice at Oswego. I finished all the little stuff and got the transmission back in, worked up a set of tires, and got a couple hours off of work. Everything looked good. Until I went load the car. It seems I put too big a spacer behind the bell housing and the clutch wouldn’t disengage. I probably had enough time to take it apart and fix it but by that time I was so frustrated I decided to call it a night.

I gave Dave Fetterly a call last night and we talked about the racing scene in CNY and where we might end up. I imagine we’ll talk a bit more tomorrow over some beers at RoC. We pretty much came to the conclusion that racing is expensive. We’re both looking at the 9/7 show at Spencer and maybe a run to Shangri La 2. He hooked me up with some help finding gears to run Evans Mills. Now I just need to scrape up some cash. And a hitch for the van. And a block. And some shocks… No wonder I don’t get on the track as much as I’d like to.

I took a couple of weeks off to see Dad race (and win!) and to take stock of my situation. I had planned to go to RoC but the money’s just not there to pull it off. And my fuel cell is too small to run all 75 laps anyway. The clutch is fixed and I found a few little things to fix that are almost done so I’m going to try to get it to practice on Thursday. But what do I do after that? Jason has been pushing me to come up to Evans Mills. I guess they’re down to 4 cars now. He’s bringing me some gears so I’ll probably make the attempt in the next few weeks. The NYSS guys had a rough week at Lancaster with only 6 cars turning up. I wish I could justify going all that way for $100 but at the moment even gas money is tough to come by. And I did some work on the van and noticed the hitch was about to fall off so I’m not going on any long hauls until I get that fixed.

I made it to, and through, DTRP. I can’t say it was the best experience ever but after much drama, I did come away with a positive feeling about the place.

After Spencer, I had a pretty good feeling about the car and the people in the series. Some of the talk after the show was about the next race and I was encouraged to try and make it. Once I got home and looked over the damage, I made a few comments saying I’d like to go if I could find tires and some extra cash. Amazingly, I immediately got an offer for a set of tires and a couple of donations. So I spent a few days getting the car back together and fixing the clutch, added up what I had to work with, found some help and a place for the boy, and decided to give it a shot.

In case anyone doesn’t know, DTRP is a LONG way from New Haven (not as long a way as Lancaster, PA however). I left at noon on Saturday and got to the track about 3 to find a ton of haulers stacked up in front of the gates. The pit passes were a little higher than Oswego but not as high as Spencer so I wasn’t too surprised at the gate. Something I figured out a little too late is that you have to be assigned a pit there. After a trip back out the gate I got a spot parked next to Billy Gleason, a guy I met after I pinched him up into the fence at Spencer in hot laps. Billy’s a pretty good guy and he and his family were a lot of fun to hang out with.

After unloading the car I chased down Joe Mancuso, who had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse on a set of tires. Then things started to go wrong. Since I was changing them by hand and the track moves things along pretty quickly, I missed the first hot lap session. Fortunately, Kelly showed up in time to get me ready for the second session. Another fun fact about Lancaster: It’s a maze. I headed out to run hot laps and drove past the track entry and had to turn around and come back. Since I wasn’t following anyone I just followed the road and got on the track. Where a different class was practicing… So I got yelled at and got off the track and lined up with the rest of the Super Stocks. Hot laps started off well enough. The car was loose and the track is wicked rough. I was bouncing all over and trying to keep the car pointed straight. Just as I was starting to settle in and see what I had, the car shuts off. That’s when it occurs to me that I have no idea where to get off the track. I stopped next to one of the cornermen and asked and he said turn 3. So the truck pulls up and pushes me around. We go by a spot that looks like a good place to pull off but it’s in turn 2 so I continued on and pulled into the gate I originally come in through. It was obviously the wrong place and I got hung up before I went over the steep hill. The tow truck eventually got me straightened out and told me to go ahead, obviously missing the fact that I needed to be pushed for a reason….

When I got back to the pits we discovered I had run out of gas. So I bought 5 gallons at $10 a gallon. No wonder I run pump gas. We got the car fired up and took out some stagger and made sure everything looked OK for the heat. I started the heat second to last and finished last. It was pretty uneventful and I did what I could to learn the track and figure out how the car was. I learned I was slow and the track was rough. As we pulled off at the end I also learned that the clutch wouldn’t disengage. It turns out that I blew the o-ring in the throwout bearing. Not something I could fix at the track even if I’d had a spare. So I talked to Joe about getting a push for the start of the feature figuring that I’d run a couple of laps and pull off. He said it was OK so we did what we could to tighten the car up and hoped for the best.

It seems that I can bump start the car in first with the starter and synchro through the gears without too much trouble. So I got on the track and let everyone by since I was starting last. Probably not my best decision ever since it got the tires covered with crap. We got lined up and took the green and managed one lap before I braked too hard going into one and looped it. Unfortunately, I ended up facing uphill and couldn’t bump start it. The push truck got me going again and the rest of the race went well enough until lap 20. I was starting to get used to the track and working on a decent line and even managed to hold onto the tail of the field for a bit. And then I got on it too early between 3 and 4 and started to go around. I had it mostly saved but ended up heading for the end of the inside wall. Given the choice between the wall and another spin, I decided discretion was the better part of valor and let it go around. And ended up pointed up hill again. A couple of laps later someone lost a motor and I got pushed off again. The rest of the race actually didn’t go badly. I was starting to almost get a feel for the track and actually passed a car (he did have a flat and pulled off right after that).

So I finished. 9th. Not a stellar showing but I’ve had worse. And after the night I had it felt like a win. I brought home $100 and some bonus money so I only lost about twice what I made. All in all I’m not disappointed. Am I not disappointed enough to head back? We’ll see. I have a busy several weeks coming up.

I have a lot of people to thank for letting play for the last two races. Kelly and Vera for not only putting up with me but driving to both tracks and buying passes to do it. I couldn’t have done it without them. Also Dad for showing up at Spencer to do the same thing. Joe Mancuso went above and beyond to get me there and the wackyracer, Jerry Harding, bought me fuel. Above all, my girlfriend Catherine for not only letting me do this but actively supporting and sometimes indirectly sponsoring me.

I’m not sure yet what the future holds for this season. I’m discovering I need a lot more track time. Sitting out for 3 years has not done me any favors. Especially trying to figure out a new car on unfamiliar tracks. I’d like to go back to DTRP and Spencer but RoC is more of a priority since I’m at least familiar with the track and it’s close. I also want to support the NYSS guys in the hope that I’ll run the whole season next year. Unfortunately, time and money are both a little scarce this summer. We’ll see how things work out over the next few weeks. I have some ideas…