One less car at Daytona for Silver horse

Hey Marcello David Lera smashed his golf last weekend at Road Atlanta. Pretty good shot to the left front. I don't know what happened all I know was that he and Paul Ronie were sharing the car. We had an up and down weekend. Dad finished third in the Pro-IT, we won the ECR and I qualified 3rd. against a good group of cars to move to second by the first lap and then had a left front tire go down going into turn 6 at Road Atlanta. Turn 6 being a 90 mph right hand turn, boy was that fun. We changed the tire but I was done and I drove around to finish 7th. It is amazing when it does not matter how you slow down.
Marcello, send me your phone numbers in an email I have some questions for you.

Ron [email protected]

David's Golf was hit by a SM at turn 7 at RA causing damage primarily to the left front.Although Daytona is very much up in the air I would never under estimate the ability of Mr Leira to have it ready in time.

Ron, thanks for the info, you've got mail...

Paul, that you? I wouldn't be surprised if you guys had the monster patched up and back on track while you were still at RA!

As to ours, new motor goes in tomorrow afternoon. Darn auto parts stores don't carry freeze plugs anymore, can you believe it? Held me up because I figured I would just drive up the street and pick some up when I was ready to pop it in, no luck there. New tilt column is in, and seat should be lowered in time so I can fit better in the car. Fixed some other minor crap, and am looking forward to shaking it down next weekend with some engine to back it up... old one was a good motor, but 135k street miles and 13 race weekends really take their toll on power output! When you can't even top out 4th gear with a 4.10, you know you need to do some work... Too bad for me Superchips can't get it in to tune it until after Daytona, but that means it should be broken in and tuned by September http://ITForum.ImprovedTouring.com/smile.gif

Ok, off to work, somebody has to put the engine in, and there's no crew here but me!


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-Marcello Canitano
www.SilverHorseRacing.com

David that was what I thought did him in. I can't beleive that a SM would hit anyone, HA HA. Was the car at least running any better? Hope you guys get it going soon. I don't think I will be able to run until Roebling in October. Marcello, I will call you soon I am out of town.

Ron

Thanks Ron , we are working hard to get ready . Good job at the Atlanta ECR. Marcello good luck with the new motor and see you in Daytona I hope.

It's in! Not hooked up, not running, but it's in. You have to love it when your "crew" says they will be over at noon to help, and at 8:30 at night you call the wife out of the house to steady the engine and tranny while you swing it in...

Anyway, lots of work to still do, but I think we will have some fun, even if we're just breaking it in...

Ok, back to work. Sponsors and their friends are coming from Chicago and Tampa for this one, so I'd better have something that at least rolls under it's own power by Saturday!

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-Marcello Canitano
www.SilverHorseRacing.com

Well, everything (almost) went to crap...

Thursday - fired new engine, had a rod noise, well windage tray noise.. fixed by 2:00am Friday morning, after pulling engine back out of car... *Lesson* You can't remove a rear sump pan while the engine is in the car...

Friday morning - had header welded after I noticed it was broke on two of four primary tubes (Ron - that's what killed my power at Savannah, well that and a melted primary coil pack) Didn't notice until I was under car looking at how to get afforementioned oil pan out, the cracks were hard to see.

Saturday - running good, seemed slow on the top end. Had lots of torque at the bottom.... weird... so,

Saturday evening - changed front pads - normal maintenance as I knew the porterfields were getting thin - found that the inner pad was too large for the rotor, it was made incorrectly with too much material vertically! It was dragging inside the rotor... Grabbed the box of backup PF pads I carry, they are V8 pads! Yikes... off to Autozone, who now carries nothing, and of course, they have no PF pads in stock, so I take Duralast pads, how bad could they be?

Bad... but on the plus side, first lap of qualifying Sunday netted a 4~500RPM increase on the front straight, so we're going in the right direction by fixing the dragging front brakes. On the downside, I am so afraid of these crappy pads that I'm braking at around the 200 instead of the 100 where I normally give them a jab.

Qualified like 15 spots ahead of Saturday which is good, then rain starts just before the race Sunday. Primary sponsor, who has not been to any race in 5 years is there, with his wife, and guests from Chicago... all are getting wet, my wife is scrambling to get umbrellas from the garage. Of course we're all on dry tires, but with my overweight pig, the first couple of laps I'm picking off cars because when you weigh as much as a Mack truck, a little water doesn't hurt your traction...

Race is going good.... 5-6 laps in we're well into the top ten, not breaking any lap records but putting on a good show. Track is drying, RX-7 loses it in the dogleg, and cuts back across track at 90 degrees to normal direction. I think I'm clear when *whack* I'm spinning towards the wall... two feet in, I get it collected and miss the wall, get moving again. Next lap, black flag for me.... well Flag me.

Go into the pits, pit marshall says I'm dragging my *muffler* ? I said, my muffler? It's on the passenger side... I got hit on the driver's side! Other pit guy comes to the passenger window, holding my *bumper*, says I'm good to go.

Off I go, but lost a bunch of spots. Still not sure where we finished, since some moron stole the results from tech, so they had to post them at T/S where they could watch them...

Anyway, I had a lot of fun, and the car is definitely on it's way back to being competitive, but now in addition to all the normal crap I have to section in a quarter panel and get a new bumper... oh fun.

Ron, Mike, you're both doing well. Let's see what Superchips can do for my monster now. They have her for the whole week to try and tune the POS. When I'm done and back together, we'll have to play again :)

Sounds like an up and down weekend. Glad the car was running well. Was the windage tray from one of the circle track places? I had one and it never fit right, we ended up making our own. Send me your phone numbers again I last it last time. Ron