MSR Houston Race

[Hood]

Sure do wish I could have made it to the race. I'm sitting here in BF Alabama nursing a steam turbine while watching the Race Monitor app on the phone. Congrats to all the podium finishers and congrats to all that made the effort to be there. I'm not missing the next one (famous last words)! Dang, I even had the car done!

[GlennCMC70]

Come on guys. Lets hear the stories. How was the 1st weekend of 2014?

[Suck fumes]

Pretty good weekend. Little bit of man drama on Saturday with an AI competitor but the sheriff took care of him. The spec iron cars are proving to be a very fast breed. We finally figured out the correct setup that the car likes and I have finally gotten used to the drive by wire. Lot of new faces walking around checking out the cars which will hopefully lead to more builds in the future. Unfortunately there was some crushed metal in a couple races but hopefully they are all repairable. I was right behind the wreck at the start on Saturday. I'll try to post video later.

[ShadowBolt]

Jay will post video soon. He was involved in a wreck that he should have never even been part of. Another incident caused him to be back that far. I'm not happy. I have a tore up race car. Three of the four sides were hit.

Still three seconds and a whatever in R4. Was looking very good for a while!


JJ

[Storm Trooper]

Come on guys. Lets hear the stories. How was the 1st weekend of 2014?

FUN weekend!!!!!
I took 4th in R1 the rest of the races mid pack slacker (some day I WILL be fast as Francis) BUT I HAD FUN!
The car did well dyno@ hp 249 qt 302 passed tech no issues (thanks Ross for keeping me straight)
O yea Ross's car ran all weekend a few bugs But for the it went well! He busted his ass to get it from zero to track in four months.
I got my first trophy LOL (simple pleasures)
Unfortunately........ I got caught in the R4 melee

[Pranav]

Left this event with mixed feelings.

Last week on the dyno I had a run with a high RPM miss on ONE run, incorrectly diagnosed as a spark plug wire issue.

Show up Friday afternoon to practice, miss is back and getting worse. Fiddled with borrowing and ICM and swapping the ECT sensor, thought I fixed it by running up/down the front gate entrance lane that night, only after getting yelled at by the gate guy, oops. Sat during warmup the car falls over and dies on the warmup lap, pull off and sit for a while, flipped the master switch, and started it back up and get the hell off the track.

At this point I borrowed Casey's ICM, coil, and opti, and went to work. Missed qual but the motor ran great in R1. Within the first couple of laps I got brutally stuck behind a couple of slow AI cars and was basically cut off from the rest of the pack, even downshifting into second in some turns because we were running so slow in the turns. Then the torque arm bracket bolt backed out and I lost the outboard bracket, trashing the inboard bracket, and clunked my way thru the rest of the race. Borrowed an inboard from Casey and an epic homemade outboard bracket from Bryan, missed R2 getting it all rigged into place with the help of the guys in the shop.

Sunday I faired better, I woke up and got to the track early, did a pad/rotor swap after finding a cracked rotor, had to miss practice due to the fog shutting down the track, but had a solid qualifying session with no new breakages. Went in to weigh and found out i was sitting at 3340lbs with 65lbs of ballast I didn't need! Weighing the car on my own kept falling off the list all of last year, so all I had to go off of were some sketchy numbers from Cresson last year. Dropped the ballast and had a solid Race 1, actually passed a few people even!

Race 2, I made an accidental downshift to 1st and spun on the first lap, ripping apart Bryan's epic home made outboard bracket in the process, at least the stud/nut I put in it didn't back out this time.

Much thanks to Casey, Bryan, Sean, John Martin, Dulaney, and everyone else that lent a helping hand and let me borrow their stuff.

This event I proved that I can actually keep up with the pack, just need to keep the car together (and know my weights, doh!).

[Fbody383]

It was a season's worth of racing over two days - cliff notes from the CMC mid pack.

Fri-oh no, here we go again. Craig and the Yella Terra had done the practice day (like cheatin' Fords do) and as I remember the conversation, came off with some engine noise. Well noise turned out to be water in a cylinder and a piston turned 30 degrees in the bore - this ain't good. A gouge and what appeared to be two cracks in a cylinder wall was the end of the weekend. Meanwhile, the 11 comes in making noise/down on power as well. It's getting dark but off come the valve covers. Turning the motor over by hand the number 7 exhaust lifter just doesnt... lift. I mean it just doesn't move at all. Mosty goes to cover his NASA licensing responsibilities and John Martin and Craig take over on the pony motor. The lifter retainer had come loose and several of the roller lifter just didnt... lift. And had some new timing in them called flat spots. A quick trip to bustling Angelton netted new lifters and pushrods and the 11 would again breathe fire. Oh, and Dr. Frank. Car looked absolutely beautiful - except for the fuel cell container puncture. Apparently during his dyno an errant strap bent suspension parts, puncturing the container but not the bladder, thankfully. No fix to be made for this at the track so after a "turn your head and cough," the good Dr. was gone.

Sat-warm-up and qual were pretty uneventful. Grid looks fairly normal with Mosty on the pointy end with Jander, and Team Jordan close by. Allford didn't have a transponder signal and would grid at the back - just a little more invert practice. After a minor adjustment getting into starting position (*cough*15*cough*) the green was thrown. As the CMC field passed a stalled/slow moving AI car (remember 2013???) there were more AI cars turned/spinning/parts/etc. in the middle of T1. Race On! From the mid-pack it was great racing all around. R2 was a successful flying start that again provided ample racing opportunity front to back. Coming into the checker, Orange was trying to make a last corner move on the 34 with Jander, Robertson, Martin, and Richardson in hot pursuit. Orange and the 34 park it a little and go to 2nd.... Orange to third with a run... go left or go right???... the 34 to third... go to third... GO TO THIRD!!! There ain't no third... or second... or anything else. We'll call it a "bump" draft for the record. In the right lane it's a broke 34 being pushed by Orange and Jander. In the left lane Robertson and Martin sneak by before the line. Who won? I don't know... not me. Orange good for 5th and 5th (I think) and made weight both races. Team WWR with help from the parts ferry crew of the Robertson's would get a trans installed to make the Sunday racing.

Sun-The day dawned to some pretty heavy fog and a delayed start that included a cancelled warm-up. Now, whether you wanted it or not, you would be out the first time in qual. I think we were a little off the pace on a warming/drying track. Mosty/Jander out front. Jordan close at hand and Allford shaming us all coming in from running the 1/2 marathon just to make the racing look easy. Again, great racing all around. And I just want to add, Allford's Orange is faster so I'll be repainting with that color. R4 was shaping up to be interesting for Orange and went south pretty quickly. I believe it was heading into the bus stop that the car again decided 4th gear was enough. As we piled into there I decided prudence was to drive straight off. As I went off I wanted to go a little left to avoid some cones and there was the 55... no contact BUT - it didn't help the cause of the 55. By the end of R4 there would be too much paperwork being filled out between the 55/34/15/07. Hate to see the weekend end that way. Should be good video all around.

[Rsmith350]

I get to give a race report! Woo hoo! Ok......lets be honest I'm more like the cart that follows the elephant during the parade but here goes...

First thing I had to change an upper coolant hose cause it was old and crusty and I had lost the top two bolts to the map sensor so those got put on.

9:30 dyno, car won't start. Have to dyno with a battery charger hooked up, figured out that I did not put a resistor inline with the "sense" wire on the alternator and fried it. The charging post came completely out. Not sure wether my issue caused it or just bad rebuild. So problem fixed!


First run, super excited! Went out with warm up and got black flagged half way through my first lap for smoking like crazy. Got back to the pit über frustrated and figured out I have a oil leak at the back of the intake. Sean has the genius idea to switch my fresh air line to the vacuum port on the throttle body. Bye bye oil leak.

Made it through all Comp school exercises no problem and in the mock race ran a 2:07. Made a goal for myself of 2:00 flat for the weekend.

Got to finally run with the family the last race of the day. Got lapped by AI but managed to pull out a 1:59.33! Still not happy with it though.

Could not break into the 2:00's at all the next day and was getting very frustrated after the ENTIRE field lapped me. Figured out with Mike Patterson's help that I was trying to go fast. Who knew that was a bad thing?! Worked on corner entry and fast exits and left the day with a 1:59.67.

So in review......I made it into CMC with a running car that did extremely well for not going over 10 mph before hitting the dyno and the track no less. Now to start doing car and driver development. Thank you guys for all the support and encouragement over the years. SO proud to be part of this group officially!!!!

[Bacook]

First, I want to thank all of the racers this weekend for making me feel welcome and for not hitting my car in it's second weekend in 2 years. Hopefully the only chrome in the field will ward off danger as long as possible. That said, I have every intention of fighting through the pack in upcoming races as I learn to push the car closer to its limits. Dave and I were chatting about the engineer-driver dilemma, where the engineer in me wants to preserve the car and the driver wants to push it to 10/10. This weekend taught me that I need to grow bigger balls and bigger shoulder muscles to really get this piece of sixties frankenstein engineering to the top of the field. Mechanicals were perfect and, short of some lightening, all the upcoming work is with the driver at this point. I also learned about my fuel gauge's accuracy, causing me to bail towards the end of R4 with low FP warnings as the pump sucked fumes. My weekend best was 1:50.8 in R3 and I know where I'm weak, so I'm already thinking about the next event I can attend at TWS.

[Dulaney]

Brian, I own a '70 Mustang also, and it was super-fun to see yours out on the track. Thanks for coming out.