A bad day in daytona for the ITR Celica

[pimpm3]

Well I had a rather auspicious 1st race in my new ITR car. We were very happy with the cars power and with some adjustments I think we can get the car to handle like it should. But....

On the 4th lap of the race I grenaded my transmission, and more then likely my new engine

The shifter on the earlier Celicas is very close and on saturdays qualifying session me and my co driver stuck the car in the wrong gear (higher) twice each in our 4 lap sessions. During the race I was coming out of the banking onto the front straight and I put the car in 4th instead of 6th gear and as you can imagine the resulting noises were not good. The tranny gave out in a big way and the engine turned off. I was able to coast into my pit and had to have the car flat towed to our garage. The bell housing is cracked all the way around and there is now a large hole which allows the sheared off pressure plate to be visible from out side. I am not sure yet if the motor is a total loss but the transmission is definitely done. I should know more on Wednesday when I get a chance to take it apart. Who ever was behind me in the Black B13 ITA Sentra SE-R should have some pretty good video footage of me blowing up, he was right behind me when it happened.

Here is the car before the misshift.

[JeffYoung]

That is a really cool ITR car. Glad to see it out, and sorry about the mishap....keep us posted.

[Andy Bettencourt]

That is a really cool ITR car. Glad to see it out, and sorry about the mishap....keep us posted.

+1

Freakin awesome. Can't wait to see the ITR cars born over the next couple years. Were is my E30 M3????

[NORRIS]

Sorry to hear about your misshap. In BMW land we call that the "moneyshift"

[benspeed]

Hang in there - the first time my GT1 stock car made it to the track I demolished it - $12K for the fix.

[lateapex911]

Cool looking car! GREAT to see it out. Sorry about the shift. I've done it. (But my choice of cars...a rotary...means I got away with it. Sometimes you get lucky.)

keep at it!

[77ITA]

the car looks great... sorry to hear of your mishap though.

I have some original SAE papers on the engine from the car. They were design tested by running 8,400 RPM for periods of 24 hours with no problems. I've read that the oil pump is pretty fragile though and over-rev situations lead to something like this:

[Xian]

Ouch. Sorry to hear about the car.. that sucks.

Good luck getting it back to the track!

Christian