Well, that didn't go as planned. We had hoped to use this race as a shake-down for the new car, basically see what falls off. Boy did it!
This is kind of a long story, so bear with me. For those of you with A.D.H.D., the "TL:DR" version is, I'm a crappy welder. For those interested in the full story, here goes!
We noticed in the shop that our right rear tire was flat when we went to load the car. Seemed odd to us because it sat there holding air for a month without any trouble, but was flat the day we went to load it. We joked because the American Racer tires are notorious for going flat in a few days, we just thought "Oh, it's race day so it went flat!" So we aired it up and loaded the car. In the time it took me to drive from our shop to my house the tire was low already. By the time we got to Evergreen Speedway the next morning it was completely flat. We decided we would just drive the car off the trailer and deal with the flat tire once the car was on the ground.
I hopped in, fired it up and stuck it in reverse. As I let the clutch out I felt something move and heard a bang, suddenly the car wouldn't move. I thought the clutch had somehow come apart or the shifter rod had fallen off. What we found out was that the rear spring pockets had broken the welds loose and spun on the axle tubes. See, the rear spring pockets are a multi-use item. They hold the rear trailing arm mount, the shock mount and the spring pocket, all in one. They bolt onto the axle tube. We have learned over the years that once you get them bolted where you want them, you then tack-weld the cap so it doesn't move, because they will. Apparently my tack weld wasn't very good and it broke loose.....on both mounts. When the spring pockets spun, the rear axle shifted back about 6" and pulled the driveline out of the transmission.
So now we had an injured car, hanging off the back of the trailer. We jacked it up right there and went about making repairs. The process of fixing this means taking the rear springs out of the car, taking the rear trailing arms off, rotating the spring pockets back where they go (or as close to where you think they were before as you can get them) and then re-welding them. Luckily another racer at the track had a welder we could use. Once we got everything back together we were able to get the car off the trailer. The driveline was still attached to the rear end, and we couldn't quite get to it to remove it, so we just kind of pushed it over to one side and planned on dealing with it once the car was on the ground and we could get it up on jack stands. When we jack ed the car up the driveline somehow got itself wedged in a weird spot and as the rear end sagged, the driveline managed to bottom out on a crossmember of the frame and put a dent in it. We knew this wasn't good, as it means the driveline is now unbalanced and will vibrate. But we hoped for the best.
It lasted less than 1 lap. We missed all of both practice sessions making repairs and I finally got to take the car out on the track during my qualifying run, this would be the first chance we would have to see what the car would do. Or not. On my warm-up lap I got on the gas coming off turn 2 and the driveline twisted completely in half, one end hanging out of the transmission and the other end still connected to the rear end, spinning wildly and beating the snot out of everything underneath the car. The shock of the driveline coming apart also broke the output housing off of the transmission. So the current damage is this, we need a new transmission and a new driveline. Then we need to completely set the car back up again because everything is off now, the weights are off, the rear end is probably not square in the car, the ride heights are off, everything is a mess.
Our next target race date was the 19th at South Sound Speedway. Luckily we have a spare transmission, so we can make that repair fairly quickly. The driveline we need to order one and wait for it to arrive. This weekend is the annual family camping trip, so we won't be working on racecars at all. That leaves us a single day on the 12th to make all these repairs and get ready to try this again. So we will see how this works out. Stay tuned!
Oh, and if you need something welded, don't call me! 😒
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