The Cart Before the Horse: Spec 3 Build

[Senor_Taylor]

Before this last event here at VIR, I didn't manage to do much work except install a radiator duct and do a nut and bolt check on the car. The car seemed to be in good enough shape anyway.

Saturday went well, picked up about a second every session I went out. In the race on Saturday, some wires under the dash melted and forced me to retire early. It took a lot of time digging around to find what all had melted, and eventually it became clear that it was nothing I could fix at the track. I'm going to need to pull the whole harness out and get it thinned out properly.

The fix for the time being was to run without a gauge cluster so that the worst wire that was completely melted was not powered. The qualifying session went pretty well and I started the race in 6th of out 9 racers. Driving without any gauges is harder than I thought and I missed quite a few shifts. I went off in T1 after starting to pull away from the folks at the back and dropped to last, but this was a blessing. The rest of the race was a lot of fun trying to get past the guys that got around me, but it was extremely clear to me that my car was down on power by a lot compared to the other folks, which was frustrating.

Near the end of the race, the engine became more and more sickly and eventually started misfiring bad enough for me to pull back into the paddock. I had no gauges at all, so I had no idea if it was running hot, but it has since become clear that the head gasket failed around cylinder 5 and that cylinder 2 has/had bad rings (which explains why I haven't had any power). I cancelled my registration for nationals and will be sourcing a new engine, and thinning my harness properly. I hope to be ready for Hyperfest in October.

New PB of 2:17 @ VIR