So, first, I'll start by saying it looks as though we are gonna make the race this week. But the real story is my the effort put in by my crew, and that's where I really want to start.
After the blown engine ordeal, we got the car back to the shop to start assessing the damage. Needless to say, that engine is a disaster. The #1 connecting rod is sticking out of a hole in the oil pan and the block has a huge chunk of the side broken out from the oil pan all the way up to the head surface. I've never seen one broken like that, you can literally wiggle the chunk of the block and see the piston through the crack. On a good note, all of the spark plugs look good, which means that the heads are most likely in good condition. Small victories, but we'll take them.
As I said in my last blog post, I had a plan to try and salvage this season. I had set some wheels in motion before I even unloaded the car, and I sprung it on the guys once at the shop the day after the race to see if everyone was on board, because I knew it would play out like this. You are basically asking your team to sacrifice their free time for you, so I wanted to make sure everyone agreed before pulling the trigger. Typical of my guys, they were all in, and boy were they.
I'm very thankful that I have such a good friend in Jeff Knight, and I'm equally thankful that he was in a perfect position to help me. I reached out to him asking if he knew of a cheap crate motor that he could point me towards. His response was "Yeah, it's in my racecar, come help me pull it out and you can take it home with you." See, Jeff was planning on putting his crate motor back on the shelf and going back to his big motor. So, it meant that I would drive almost two hours to Jeff's shop and help him pull the engine out of his racecar, then take it to our shop and get it in my racecar. So that's what I did. I seriously can't thank Jeff enough for his generosity, his friendship and his continued mentorship. It may not be totally apparent to him, but I listen to him way more than he thinks I do.
My dad and Les spent their days at the shop during the week working on the car, while I had to be at work. Over the week they got the blown up engine out of the car, got the clutch assembly off of it and all the front pulleys too, basically getting everything prepared to go on the other engine. We had a bit of a dilemma with the flywheel, because our flywheel would not bolt on a crate motor (different bolt pattern) so we had to order a new one. That was a small setback and way more money than we really had to spend (I'm looking at you dad), but we got one. We went to work on the car over the weekend to get the crate motor in it. There's always things that fight you along the way and there's always things that you think would be a simple twenty minute thing, yet somehow turn into a two hour struggle. This was filled with several of those, but at the end of a very long Saturday we had the crate motor in the car and it even fired up. At that point we called it a day and went home to eat dinner and rest.
Back at the shop Sunday we went to work finishing up a few small items and set out to get the car on the scales and set up so it was ready to actually race. To say that we found why the handling was so far off is an understatement. The reality here is that I stuffed the car in the wall and tore up a lot of parts. In an effort to just put the car back on the track we made some sacrifices. I recall several times where my crew asked me "Is this going to be okay?" and my response was "Just get it together, don't worry about fine tuning it." I just put it on me to go out there and drive it, and it was not great but at that point it was what it was. The end result was, we put the car back on the track that day when a lot of guys would have loaded up and went home. So I'll never be upset about that effort. But yeah, looking back at it I'm surprised we did as good as we did. What that meant was that the setup process took a very, very long time because we had to correct all of those issues first, then do the real work.
So, after another very long day on Sunday we ended our day with a car that is just about ready to race. We do still have a couple small items left to finish up, like changing the gears in the rear end now that we have a totally different engine running a totally different rpm range, and we discovered one hub that was leaking and needs to be sealed so we don't burn up a bearing. I'm feeling pretty good about where we are considering where we were. Dad and Les have put in a TON of work over the last week without me (because I had to be at work) to give me a racecar that can return to the track this weekend. I seriously can't thank them enough. I know I say this a lot and the regular readers are probably tired of reading it, but these two guys have literally spent all of their free time fixing something for me to go have fun in. I owe all of this to them and there really aren't enough words to say how much I appreciate them and the effort they have put in. They've gone home sore and hurting every day and I love them for it.
I also want to say thank you to Jeff Knight again for loaning me this engine. I'm sure it will do just fine and it may actually be what we needed in the first place. I'm very grateful and humbled that he would let me borrow this engine and trust me with it. I can't tell you how much it means to me.
The last item on my list of repairs on the shop white board reads "Less Suck". That one is all on me.
We'll see you all at South Sound Speedway this Saturday for race #2!