Team Stinking Turd

Well, after a couple of good race weekends, Team Stinking Turd's TR8 finally showed up at Roebling for the Jim Stark double.

Car loaded ready to race and ran flawlessly the test day, of course. Personal best, finally into the 23s. SLIGHT miss in the very last session but I just thought it was bad gas.....wrong-o!

TST swung into action on Saturday. We had a huge field, 23 ITS cars. Qual was ok, spun lap 3, qualled 9th of 23. Miss gets a little worse but still nothing awful.

About 2 hours before race time, DOWNPOUR. I run into the trailer to get out of teh rain. Literally. WHAM...hit head square on tire rack. blood everywhere. Spend rain storm stopping bleeding. Feel ok, so put towels in helmet and off to race.

Start 9th, get up to 8th, just cruising. Drop two tires off in 2 about 4 laps in, spin. Get back on, pass a bunch of cars, do the same thing 5 laps later. Yee-haw! Then, miss comes back terrible, car nearly quits on in lap. Finish 14 of 23! Woohoo!

Start dealing with miss in the paddock. Conclude that Pertronix gee whizbanger ignition module was loose and/or bad. Replace. Car starts runs fin.

Go out for qual Sunday morning. Car runs good on out lap. Get ready for flying lap...on front straight at 110 mph or so WHAM...car shuts off. Thanks Chuck Baader and Russ Boatwright for missing me......

Coast back in. Scratch head.

Decide to check timing. Get light hooked up. Timing is a bit off, reach for distributor and POW! Nearly knocked me on my ass! Huh????

Crew man Roussel takes insulated screwdriver and runs it over top of distributor...arc from top of coil wire!

MSD wire boot had split, arcing to hood! Nice!

Replace coil wire, start at back --36th! 19th in class!

Decide to treat race like test day. Go out, car runs great, pass 22 cars in 10 laps or so, get up to 7th in class, 6th in site......wham! Loose 3rd gear...ok...use torque and just 4th/ 5th.....wham! lose 4th gear.........

Ride in 5th, maintain 7th place..wham! car cuts off......pull off to the side. Towed in....rotor button broken!

Now THAT is a Team Stinking Turd racing. Many thanks to crewman Jeff Roussel (soon to be ITS 260z) for the help in nearly pulling an ok finish out of the hat on Sunday.

Now that's a hard luck race. I hope you've got a good replacement for your transmission.

James

Funny thing...it wasn't the transmission.....clutch slave cylinder bolts backed out.....

Crazy weekend.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JeffYoung

Funny thing...it wasn't the transmission.....clutch slave cylinder bolts backed out.....

Crazy weekend.

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:p

Nuts and Bolts! Jeff.

Repeat after me, "Locktite Is My Friend!"

Sounds like lots of little things, with nothing too big to fix. Hope you get the Bear next time, instead of the Bear getting you.

James

Not that I am good about this a lot, but it was loctited. The bellhousing is aluminum and it literally destroyed the threads. Too much flex I guess.

:blink:

Sounds like it's heli-coil time. I've seen that sort of thing when I worked on ancient fork-lift trucks at a mushroom plant. The rear axle was held in by four 3/4" bolts into a solid iron casting. They'd be driven, bang-bang-bang, down a broken concrete road 10hrs a day six days a week, untill the threads would litterally fatigue out of the casting. When I think of how I would get under those things, even with it on jack stands, it makes me :eek: In the end it was a loosing battle, after I quit that job they got all new fork trucks and trashed the franken-trucks I'd kept going. I'm glad I no longer wrench for a living, just for fun when I want to.

You might want to make sure the bolts are not bottoming out, if the bolts have stretched or the washers weren't in place it might explain the flexing. If there's flex it will fatigue, especially aluminum which hasn't a finite fatigue life.

James

Yup. We do most of our own work, but with a short turn around time to the next race, and because I thought we needed to swap trannies (i.e. lift would be nice), I had a local shop owned by a racer buddy do it for me. Just like you said, too much stress and fatigue on it. Hope the coils hold cause bellhousings for this car ain't cheap.

Put in a Spec clutch race clutch and pressure plate. Take up is.....different.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Z3_GoCar

...when I worked on ancient fork-lift trucks at a mushroom plant.

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:lol:

Yeah, I missed that.

So you did mushrooms at an ancient forklift temple? Groovy dude.

I would say that weekend experience is about par for a proper British racecar.

Keep at it!

Jeff, in case you had not heard, your weekend was better than the Doyles up here in Indy - the hardtop TR got stuffed nose first into the T15 wall - hard.

Damn, that is not good to hear for any race car, but especially not good for TR8s as they are not so easily obtained. Driver is ok I hope?

TST gets on a roll some weekends, and other weekends not so much....Roebling was a not so much weekend.

Dang, really sorry to hear that. That car actually had a lot of history (It was Morey's?). Was a Showroom Stock car back in the day -- bought off the lot to be one by Morey.

Is it fixable?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Racerlinn

Jeff, in case you had not heard, your weekend was better than the Doyles up here in Indy - the hardtop TR got stuffed nose first into the T15 wall - hard.

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Jeff, your car ran fine at many points during the weekend, which means you are better than par for the green monster! Sorry about the bogeys. And your head. Wrap that rack with foam dude! none of us are smart enough to lose that much brainpower and blood!

Did the wrecked TR8 run at Nelson ledges back in the 80s? if so, it was our arch rival on our RX-7 2 car 24 hour team!

I think that was actually Ted Schumacher's car, which is rusting away in a field in SC, but Morey Doyle (the driver of the yellow car that wrecked this weekend) co-drove that event with him.

They told me one time that they had an agreement between the two of them on how many times they could use the woefully inadequate brakes.......

Have you been racing that long Jake?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JeffYoung

Yeah, I missed that.

So you did mushrooms at an ancient forklift temple? Groovy dude.

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It's actually grovvier than that. half the buildings there were built by the Japanese. It was an internment camp during WW-2. You know most things grow with seeds, mushrooms are spawned. I second what Jake said about the tire rack. I saw where at the Air-Force academy they hung foam nerf jets from the ceiling to remind the newb's to duck.

James

Jeff, I think you have a legitimate reason for a special request to ITAC. You should be allowed to run a fiberglass hood to prevent the coil wire arcing to the steel hood. Obviously there is a design flaw in the car that you should be allow to fix.:rolleyes:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JeffYoung

Dang, really sorry to hear that. That car actually had a lot of history (It was Morey's?). Was a Showroom Stock car back in the day -- bought off the lot to be one by Morey.

Is it fixable?

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I don't know if it was Morey, Morey Jr, or Andy. All three were there and jumping between the two TR's and their "new" SSC Neon (which also got some light rear bumper damage) between the two days. Right front tire was pretty well pushed back. They had a hell of a time getting it loaded on the trailer. Ended up lifting the whole car up with the wrecker and dropping it on the trailer.
Driver was fine (whichever one it was - I saw all three helping load it)

Jeff, thankfully, NO, I haven't been racing that long. i was just out of college and crewed for a team that ran the 24hrs. On the second year i was in charge of chassis and tactics. We beat those British bastards :D by streamlining our service stops from 2 stops, (1 for brakes at 12 hrs and 1 for bearings at 18 hrs to one stop at 12 hours where we replaced the entire strut assembly. we practiced it and got it done in about or less time than the brake change.)

Strangely, they went further on a tank of gas, because the RX-7 pick up starved at just under half a tank at nelson. What a dump that place was, but winning was very fun.

I'll never forget being pitted next to Car and Driver, and it was Jean Lindamoods first race. She was a hoot.

I ran 5 or 6 races in '93 before moving west to study design at the Art Center in Pasadena, then started up again when I moved back east just before 2000.


Oh....and Jeff, I you had cross treaded that bugger Young style, you never would have had the problem!

I have seen your electrical gremlins before. Do yourself a favor if you have not and run a good large ground cable between the battery and the cylinder head. You would think the headstuds etc would be enough of a ground, but I saw a spitfire go through a similar scenario and grounding the cylinder head solved it. We also fixed a VW IT car that had a high rpm miss by grounding the cylinder head. I read this in Circle track years ago. On V8's they ground both cylinder heads. The ignition system depends on good grounds. Electricity seeks the easiest path to ground. Insure it has that path. It won't hurt and if anything it may help. :eclipsee_steering:

Jeff,
I think we can fix the car, really feel bad about hammering Dad's car, any other just re-tub but not this one i'll spend what it takes to fix the 'Old 8":bash_1_:

Morey C

Man that is good to hear. That car had some history behind it...hope it is fixable.

Driver(s) ok as well?

yea i'm fine, thank God for the 'HANS' otherwise i would not be in so good of shape:blink:

normaly i'd say build a new car, but not only does it have history its really a part of our family, so id rather spend the extra money to keep 'her' around, better for may Dad as well, even if he dosnt act like it matters. My brother is really pissed at me:mad:, so i'd rather fix the car, i told him anything can be done with $$$$$$

Was it solo or did you have help?

little help, but really my own fault:eek: