congrats Kim on the Win!! Love o see it.

Here is our report, as written by my brother Scott:

Improved Touring Triple Crown Race Recap

Miller Motorsports in partnership with Mo Laps Racing decided to contest a race in the Improved Touring Triple Crown race at Thunderhill the 27th – the first race of the 3 race IT Championship.

To do this we upgraded our venerable #68 Spec Miata with a pile of new parts – New shocks/springs, a new rear end, new tires (the purple goodness), and a stand alone ECU, to mention a few.

Backing up, its been a pain to get this car built. Parts have been delayed, local vendors have taken longer than expected to get things done, some things haven’t worked, some parts broke!... so its been a challenge.

The two weeks prior to the race saw us with a mad dash to get the car on a dyno to tune the stand alone ecu, but all the dynos having booked scheduled. John Pagel was finally able to fit us in on his new dyno, which wasn’t even set up yet!

The rear diff we so badly wanted couldn’t be assembled in time. Despite repeated efforts, John Pagel couldn’t make it work – it appears we need some custom parts machined to fit it all together.

A bit of foreshadowing, while prepping the car I noticed some water stains on the oil filter. We chalked it up to the throttle body change (we’d failed a throttle body in our test event a few weeks prior).

On the dyno just three days before the event, we noticed a few pools of water. I inspected the car and dismissed it as overflow or water leaking out of the chassis. We’d had the cooling system open numerous times fitting the new parts and replacing the throttle body.

So, loaded up, we head off to the event… but I didn’t head out. I ended up stuck at work on Friday until 11pm. Note that I was supposed to have had Friday off entirely so I could go help Marcus at the test day.

Saturday. I rack at 4am after just 4 hours sleep and head out to the track. I arrive to find Marcus has done a masterful job getting the car sorted out and we’re in a great group of folks – forgive me for not knowing everyone’s names, but we were with Juan, Joe, Mike, and two other fellows who’s names I’ve forgotten. Dean had come up early, the night before, and we were looking good.

We’re running two race groups – ITA for the IT Fest Championship and ITX for fun.

We go out for practice and get a meatball. The sound stewards call us at 108db. They proceed to tell us we’re actually blowing 112, but because of the way their meter is located it reads 108.

We call this bs, but have to fix it. I head into town to look for a muffler after asking some of the bigger teams around the paddock. Those guys would get used to seeing us! 7 places in Willows can’t sell me a cheap generic glass pack muffler. Useless.

I return to find Kim Willcox, our main competitor in ITA, has loaned us HIS quiet exist, a whole bunch of parts to install it, and then crawled under the car alongside Dean and Marcus to install it. A quick trip over to see the Hoover guys to have them disassemble our exhaust and we’re on the way. Kim started a train of folks helping us make our weekend.

Also coming out of that first practice were performance problems and handling problems. I adjusted the ECU and Marcus and Dean worked the suspension. Marcus changed the Spark Plugs, and curiously, one of them appeared to be very clean. More foreshadowing here.

Next practice. The kludge exhaust gets us to 94db (anyone want to bet that 108 was bogus?!?!?!?!?). Handling is changed but not optimal, and the ecu is no better.

So, we swap the ECU for the stock computer, borrow a different air meter and make more handling adjustments.

ITA Qualifying goes ok. We take 2nd in class behind Kim Willcox.

A tweak on the air meter and some more suspension components follows. While working on the car, I hear an unusual gurgling in the engine compartment. Its clearly coolant. I start a visual inspection and discover several of the bolts are broken off of the intake manifold. This is the source of the water on the floor at the dyno, the unusual stains on the oil filter and the clean spark plug, as the intake has cooling passing through it. Water is leaking out of the intake (probably while hot or under pressure) and going onto the ground and into the cylinders.

We realize we’re going to need to fix this, and borrow an intake manifold gasket from Kim Henrickson (who Dean, Laura and I went to scca school with), who’s come to hang out and watch.

I wait for the car to cool and refill the cooling system. Not much lost, really, so we feel good about running the ITX qualifying before digging into the intake manifold over night.

I fire the car up to burp the system and discover the alternator case bolts are amiss. Half are missing, the other half are loose! We shut the car off and Dean makes a great suggestion to pull the belt really quick and free spin the alternator to make sure it doesn’t have excess drag and is vibrating or overheating. I attempt to borrow some alternator case bolts, but nobody has any spares (who the hell even checks for tight on these, let alone carry spares!), so we locktite and reinstall the two we still have on opposite sides and call it good. The alternator tests fine and we reinstall the water pump belt. Dean thinks the belt looks funny, but it runs fine and all goes back together ok, so we proceed to qualifying.

(mysteriously, the next morning, several alternator case bolts are taped to the car’s windshield, adding yet another person to the list of people who helped make our race weekend – but I’m not sure who!)

Who can guess what happens iin qualifying?

The computer and suspension changes are good. Dean notices the car is falling down on power after a couple good laps, and figures he’s done enough We know our changes are good and decides on the front half he’ll be coming in. As he works his way around he notices the temp gauge goes to the roof. He shuts it down in turn 10 and camps with some friendly workers who ply him with water. We hear over the PA “.. and our ITX pole sitter, Dean Thomas, is stopped in turn 10 waiting for a tow”, yep, Dean on pole.

The safety crew brings Dean around (adding insult to injury, there was another Miata getting towed and the safety crew on that car PASSES Dean (also under tow) on the back stretch).

We get the car back and discover its throw the water pump belt. Ugh. We refit the belt and attempt to start the car. No go. We wait for it to cool and fill it with water. Still no go.

We decide to compression test. I remove the spark plugs with no ratchet (they’re finger tight!) and discover the front three now are quite clean. A compression test leads us to our worst fears. Motor is dead.

We’re bummed. Tons of people helped with the build of this car. Marcus Dad and I spent hours assembling it. Dean came out more than a few times to help and do alignment and suspension work. Cameron and Bowie from Conover Motorsports supplied data, setup advice and parts. Mike from ISC racing sent us parts. Lee from Koni North America entertained an endless spring of dumb questions from me about shock setup, same with the ECU guys about the ECU config. John Pagel rushed us onto his dyno before he wanted to, and assembled parts for us when I came holding them in hand begging for help.

So, we go to find our 5th crew of Saviours (up to this point we’ve mooched off of John Pagel, Hoover Speed, Kim Willcox and Kim Henrickson) and head over to see Dave MacAnaney and Off Camber to drown our sorrows in some tasty margaritas.

To be continued...