Really?

Man, I ended up having to work on Sunday and I missed the big carpet race at Rapid Competition.  I had a blast last week even though I was painfully slow.  Duke tells me that it's a matter of turning laps and paying my dues.  I'm hoping to get started on paying those dues as soon as I get back from Speedweek.

At least I got to do a little racing on Saturday night:


For the third week in a row, my late model was unpredictable, un-tunable, and for the most part un-drivable.  I was ready to pack it in after then second heat until Steve Bahr grabbed my car, started tossing springs out and pulling out his ipod calculator.   I don't even know what setup he put on the car, but it seemed to be a lot easier to drive.

I think I took a step backward on speed, but I may have actually gotten a better reliability in terms of getting through the corners without absolutely being on the edge.  I've got some ideas, however, practice night is Valentines Day this week, so I'm going to have to wait until points night to figure it out.

The Sprint Car was alright, but I think it might be time to make an upgrade there too.  I'm looking for a good short shock sprint car for foam tire racing if anyone knows of anyone selling out there.

BFG announced their Pot Of Gold race for St. Patrick's Day.  The way I understand it is that John is putting up a Battlefront Buck for every entry from now until St. Patrick's Day, which is our next scheduled points race to be placed in a pot that will be won by raffle on race day.

The part I like is that it's not just for the fast guys.  Everybody that comes that day gets a ticket in the raffle, with main winners getting additional tickets as a reward for their performance  Literally, anyone could win.  With 29 entries last night and six race days between now and then, it's possible that there could be almost $200 in prize money on the line.   That's a pretty good deal no matter how John decides to divide that up.  I know that I'm going to show up to try to win it.

Hoping to get some work done on my cars this week.  I'll post pictures if I actually do any of it :)

Ok, I haven't won it yet but I'm planning on it.

3 Tracks in 3 Days

Wow!  That was something else.  Raced at 3 tracks in 3 days and had a great time doing it.

First night:  Monee.   Broke wrenched, wrenched, wrenched and raced a little.

Second night:  BFG.  Wrenched from the night before, wrenched some more, had a late model that couldn't get around the track any faster than I could walk around it, but somehow, got it back to an at least plausible running car by the end of the night.  My car was total junk most of the day/night.  I'm not sure what actually made it better since I threw the house at it going for the home run each time.  The final combination was something close to my original setup with some spring adjustments and moving the nose of my car down to free the car up.    I would much rather have a loose car than a tight one.  Pushing is no fun at all.

Made some headway on my sprint car.  After rebuilding the dammage from Monee and trying some new spring combinations, I finally got it to go around the track halfway decently. Still not a ton of speed though.  If I roll the corners letting off the the throttle about 3/4 of the way down, it seems to carry enough speed to pull decent lap times.  Got to believe that the next step is to put a speedo with some timing in it.  Then again, maybe it will blow the corners.  Going to play with the idea of going down a few teeth to get more pull out of the corner too.

Rapid Competition:

Today, I took a bag of parts and a pan car chasis to Freds.   Duke helped me get a few things sorted out, which I appreciated greatly.  By the end of the day, it was an SST truck that at least got around the track.  It's not fast by any means.  I'm still trying to figure out how to drive around the track in the perfect line.  Consistency is not my specialty and that seems to be what it's all about.

I think I might have gotten around the track well enough to give it another shot next weekend.  They say there's a big race at Rapid Competition.  Might be worth it just to see those open 13.5 cars run.  Man, are they fast!

Aw Man!

Just pulled into Kalamazoo from a long day heading down to Monee to do some foam tire racing.

Everything started out fine, then well, ah, it was fun anyway :)

Monee opens their doors around 5:30 with practice starting around 6:00, racing at about 7:30.  Not much time to dial in a car when you're used to rubber tire racing.

Pulled out the Intimidator figuring that it was probably my best bet for foam tire racing and it seemed to hook going into the corners.  Since there wasn't much time, I pulled out the trusty Rocket and threw it down on the track.  For some reason, it still chatters horribly when the suspension unloads going in.  It's got to be something that I'm not catching.   I need a second set of eyes at the track to see exactly what's happening to it.

With only a little time to get ready for racing, I switched my efforts over to mod sprint.   I dropped a 5.5 in there and it seemed to have plenty of pop, even running my old GTB.   Then the diff went out. No problem, I had considered the possibility of being on the road without time to rebuild a diff, so I pulled out another complete transmission that I had for just such an instance.

Everything was good until 3 laps later, when that transmission failed on me.  With no time to think, I pulled the transmission out of my rocket and strapped it on my Sprint car.  I had moderate success getting that to run.  I was a few laps off the pace to be sure, but at least I was out there running.

About a quarter of the way into the main, I jumped the curb and tore my sprinter up good.  The left front axle was bent completely around and the cage was lifted off of the chasis.

You would think that this would be a total defeat, but I still had  a great time.

Met a guy named Josh who has a little Dougherty in him.  He showed me the car hes' been building, including his own GT transmission case and some custom designed rear arms that allow for toe in adjustments without changing the wheel base of the car.  I've got some of these on the way...

Josh also hooked me up with some of his super-engineered axles.  He started throwing numbers at me of why the stock axles and even the titanium axles weren't good enough.  He gave me a couple of aluminum something something axles.  If they stand up to my abuse, they are definitely strong.

Well, that's it for day one.  Next stop, BFG for Saturday night racing.  I've got some major rebuilding to do so I'm planning to get out there early.

Trifecta

This has the makings of a big RC weekend for me in spite of the fact that my plans to go to the Outlaw Nationals fell through.  

Friday night, I'm headed down to Monee Il for some club racing.  Kind of a long way to go for club racing, but it's the only place I know of running dirt oval on Friday nights within striking distance.  

Monee is an awesome track.  They tell me the classes are 6 second breakout, 13.5 blinky late models and mod sprint.   I soldered in a 5.5 to try sprint and resurrected the Intimidator SE to give 13.5 blinky a try.  

I still think if I can get that SE to work it's going to be the ticket at BFG because it doesn't have all of that chasis roll and has a shorter suspension throw. We'll see.  Would have been nice to get that car in the hands of the guys who designed it so they could explain a few things to me about how it's supposed to be set up.  

They run foams so I trued and grooved up some tires to try down there.   My notes say that 25's and silvers worked last time I was there.   I'm going to start with 25's on the sprint and V2's with a 30 on the right front for Late Model.  We'll see.

Saturday, it's back to BFG to try and pick up another lap to be competitive with the track record runs of the past few weeks.  I think I've got some ideas on how to get there.  My late model has been jacked up for a long time, but it was as fast as anybody out there, so I was hesitant to make major changes to it.  Lots of worn out parts, bent axles, sloppy steering.  I really should pay closer attention :)   There have been some good crowds lately at BFG, hoping that this week will be the same.

Sunday marks the debut of carpet racing over at Fred's.  Bought the damn pan car a long time ago and I've sat on it until now, mainly because I didn't have time to race both and there's been so much great dirt racing this winter.  17.5 truck for me.  I'm kind of looking forward to it.  If I have fun, I may head back next week for their big race.

Finally, I just noticed that Trackside in Milwaukee is having the Midwest Dirt Oval Championships on March 9th.  I'm thinking about going to that.  It's a Friday/Saturday event which means at 5 hours away, it's only a single night stay over in beer town, which is budget friendly and totally doable.  It's supposed to be a really nice, high bite track with some really fast racers as regulars there.   

That's it for today, I plan to send picture updates of my weekend adventure.