Chronicles of a Lemons Daytona (Page 7 of 9)

Part 20 - Approaching the breaking point.

This race tested me in a big way. I'm used to last minute thrashing, but not to this extent. And it's all thanks to an engine block.

A few weeks ago I finally broke down the engine from October and dropped it off to be cleaned and decked if necessary. I wouldn't have even bothered with decking, except it was fairly evident that water was getting into cylinders 2 and 3 during october. So I left it with an old school shop a mile from my house. Not 3 minutes after I leave I get a call to come back. When I walked back in they said "what you've got here is a big piece of junk." Turns out the block had cracks from the water jackets and oil ports into the head bolt holes in at least 4 locations. Awesome.

The short version of the story is this. I tore apart my spare engine that day and dropped it back off. It wasn't in great shape. Out of flat and the cylinders were bad. And their guy was out for a week. They promised me I'd have it tuesday night before the race. I dropped off two heads to another shop to have decked as well and a very basic valve job done. One head turned out to have dropped valve guides (yay more paperweights). But I got the head on monday and the block tuesday.

Tuesday night Dad came up to help and together we built the engine, installed it, and got a bunch of electrical work done. At midnight we called it a night and went to catch some sleep. At 6am wednesday morning I sat bolt upright in a panic and realized I had installed the main caps from the junk engine into the new block. Son of a Bitch. So by the time Dad got back up to Nashua I had pulled the engine, swapped the caps, and was ready to drop it back in. We managed to get the engine bay about 60% by the time we needed to stop and pack.

Thursday we made the long drive down to the track, purposely getting there early so we'd miss traffic. Once we were let in we set up camp next to 3PM and kept wrenching on the car. We called it quits around 10pm with the engine bay about 90%. Friday we started at 7:30. After buying some last minute parts we set to work finishing the car.

First we found the radiator to be leaking. Awesome. Napa could have one by 3:30. Around 2pm everything was installed and the wiring was finished so we went to hook the car up and try to start it. But when I went to connect the ground it almost welded itself to the battery terminal. What the hell. Turns out the heat shield we put on the starter cables was conductive and shorting the positive cable to the block. Yay. We adjusted it's position, taped off all the connections, and re-installed. Touch the negative cable again and it still tries to short. An hour of searching later we find one fuse that when pulled stops the problem. Ok, leave it out, we'll find the issue later.

Flipping the fuel pump switch brings the sweet sound of silence. What the hell now. Fuel pump is dead. Apparently when I stored it dry some condensation formed inside and rusted. Amazing. No stores in the area carry walbro pumps and no one has a spare (That they know of). This is where i owe a huge thank you to a team I can't remember. They tell me that in their BMW they've used an inline pump from a 1989 Ford E350 Econoline Van, and it's mostly the same form factor. Auto Zone has one in stock for $80. It even has threaded ends on one side that the -8AN fitting we had been using will just thread on to.

Finally with a new radiator and fuel pump we hit the engine start buttons and listened to the reassuring sound of a continuously cranking engine. Knowing the timing was nowhere near right I started spinning the distributor until the engine coughed to life and finally settled into a normal idle (I got the timing to within 2 degrees of right just by ear. I was proud). That first firing happened at 7pm. We kept working until 10 getting all the little details sorted out.

Saturday morning we ran the car through tech only to find our brake lights now didn't work. Amazing. With the green fast approaching I managed to bypass the stock wiring and direct power them off an unused switch on my master switch panel (the Hopes and Dreams switch).

I should take a moment to explain my state of mind as I geared up and headed towards the pit entrance. Since I bought the car in 2011 I've never once considered giving up on the daytona, until this race. The amount of work required to get the car running was huge. I left most of it out of this recap for sheer length of the post. So when I drove on track and saw the boost gauge showing a solid zero even while the turbo was audibly spooling, I was ready to just be done. At one point I thought I heard knocking from the engine and was perfectly ok with the car just being dead. I think I even had a very brief fantasy about the car catching fire and watching it burn.

Thankfully a few laps in I remembered why I do this stuff. Yes the car had no boost. Yes it was running like crap. yes it was breaking up under load and wouldn't rev past 4k without massive backfires. But god damn it I was racing a car that I had built, and it's just a hilarious car to drive. I think it all clicked when I threw the car into the chicane without braking and put 20 yards on the BMW that was trying to pass me and wasn't brave enough to enter at the same speed. For all the heartache the car gives me, once it's on track it reminds me what fun is. I spent the rest of my 3.5 hour stint giggling as I pushed the car as fast as it would allow in it's ill running state.

Now we should talk about stepping on our toes. We came in a lot this race. For the first time ever I got a pass under yellow flag. I was watching two cars ahead of me. One was a very slow car (slower than even me!), and the second was a BMW that had been trying to decide if they were going to pass the slow car for a couple corners. I finally grew impatient and went by them both, only to look in my rearview and see the flagger that had a yellow up and I missed. Stupid. I cursed at myself and went right to the penalty box. They let me back out, but two laps later the black flag finally waved for me and I came back in. Turns out they just hadn't relayed the self report back to the flagger in time. No harm, back to racing.

Our second driver went out, and over two hours self reported a couple times for 2 wheels off. No complaints from me there, he's at least aware of his mistakes. On the last self report he makes a comment that he might need a driver change because he's really hot. I said ok, give me a warning if he does so we can get someone suited up. Maybe 15 minutes later I see him stumbling back to our pit area. He manages to say "I couldn't do it anymore, can't feel my legs, got confused where our pit area is, and i'm not sure where i left the car." It would have been funnier that he lost my racecar if he was not clearly in a bad way. I yelled for dad to suit up, found the car, got dad in and out on track, and then made sure my driver cooled off and drank a lot of water/Gatorade.

Some background here. We had the heat running in the car because we thought we were having cooling issues. Turns out we never had the radiator fan wired up (stupid). It was very hot in the car. I felt ok during my stint other than very sweaty, but this driver did not. Heat exhaustion is not something to shrug off. He said that all of a sudden he just forgot how the track went. Thankfully he had the sense left to get off the track immediately. We'll never run the heat again without ducting out a back window, it's not worth the risk to our drivers.

Saturday night we fixed our boost leak (intercooler pipe fell off), checked the car over, and then went back to trying to be useful to other teams who were still fighting with broken cars. Sunday we finally had a car that would move at a decent speed again. With 6psi the car actually can sit mid-pack. During my final hour I was able to enter the straight at 85, and be touching 100 by the start/finish line before the engine would break up completely and force me to coast.

We did step on ourselves a few more times. Dad ran clean. Our other driver did a few self reports, and then came in with the exhaust hanging. 5 minutes and he was back out. He also had a small tangle with the Orange RX7. Thankfully no major harm to either car, just cosmetics.

Somehow during all this we'd managed to bounce between second and third in class all weekend. Sputnik had a decent 10 lap lead over us until they got told to park until they were 2 laps down. Well this is interesting. Unfortunately we did a driver change soon after they went back out. They held a 2 lap lead over us, and the subaru outback was now 1 lap up on us for second. I just kept ignoring the standings. I looked before I jumped in for the final hour and saw that we had overtaken the outback, by only a couple laps, and we were a few down on Sputnik. No way I could catch Sputnik, they were running faster than us, but I could hold second.

With boost the car was now even more hilarious. It had somehow learned to torque steer. A new trick. The brakes were scary, and I was fighting what I thought fade (and turned out to be one of the vacuum booster caps falling off) my whole last hour. But after 10 races I know how to throw that car thought corners. I think I threw a few cars for a loop when they tried to pass on a corner and I just held the inside right with them. I found Sputnik and hung behind them for a while. We finished in second, and couldn't ask for a more deserving team to beat us. Well done to sputnik for running such a consistent fast race. We managed second in class 8 laps down on them.

That last hour in the car was one of the most fun I've ever had. The car was just so hilariously bad, but I was managing to make the best of it. This is why I do Lemons. This is why I'll always have a C-Class car. Yes I want a second car that will probably land in A-Class (even if we don't have the drivers to compliment it), but it's just so much more rewarding to make it green to checked in a car that should by all rights be dead. The daytona is the most entertaining car I've ever driven, and that's surpassing cars like the V10 R8, Jag F-types, Lotus, and others. The daytona is like a family member at this point, and I've never driven it without a huge smile on my face.

But this brings to light a sad thought. The daytona really is dying. It has some structural concerns. Nothing I can't reinforce to get through the year safely, but after seeing 3PM's triumph try to separate it's rear end from the front, I'm being forced to think seriously about where to go. I think I'm going to have to retire the car after this October. I may seriously cry when I'm forced to scrap the shell. But the question is now open. What body desperately needs a Chrysler 2.2 Turbo Engine as it's power plant?

I have some thoughts, and they make me happy.