June 09, 2008

Another one down the drain


We only came to practice. But after the spot where our truck and trailer was parked literally turned into a running stream we decided to white knuckle it through the night and try leaving in the morning.

We just can't seem to catch a break here in Wisconsin. What first appeared to be a winter that was never going to let go quickly turned into the Great Lakes Tsunami season. Saturday we only managed to get in two practice sessions before the skies began to threaten. Weather reports were coming in fast of impending storms packing high winds, hail, and in some areas tornadoes. This got the attention of my youngest who is absolutely horrified of even hearing the word much less being in the middle of one. We noticed several members of the club heading for shelter in the registration building and it didn't take much coercing for the girls to leave the trailer and head there themselves. Sam and I, as stupid as it sounds, decided to ride it out in the trailer until it got too bad. And although the "women and children first" line echoed in my ears the fact that I had a refrigerator, a pizza in the oven, and a television at my disposal made it hard for us to make haste with our departure.

We survived the night and the morning brought more grey skies with the forecast of rain all day. In grand fashion the registration windows opened and we were led to them like the Pied Piper leading rats through the streets of Hamelin. Everyone plunked their hard earned cash down in hopes of getting in what we could in what little time we had when just as if Mother Nature and registration were in cahoots with one another, the rains came and they cancelled the day. One hour and a thorough drenching later we were on our way home.

Our next stop was going to be the Dunlop Super Nationals at Road America but we're seriously re-thinking our approach to the rest of the season. Rising fuel costs as well as our inability to run strong on race gas is forcing us to contemplate removing key events from our schedule and just focus on Badger. We started the season very optimistic in our chances at competing in the regional and national events but given the fact that it takes hundreds of dollars in just diesel fuel to get to these venues leaves us no choice but to cancel a select few. We are still committed to competing in the BKC Points race #13 scheduled for the end of August at Road America but outside of that we are unsure about anything else. Check our schedule frequently for updates.

June 02, 2008

Record broken and palms burned


Congratulations to us is due in the fact that we've broken yet another record in our illustrious career in karting. We've managed to spend more money at this past weekend's Midwest Sprint Series Race at Badger than we have in any race to date and with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Round two of the MWSS headed to Badger Kart Club this past weekend and we felt confident that we could run not only with our club competitors but with the talent showing up from outside of our area as well. People from as far away as New York and Montana were on hand with all of the big names that you read about in any of the trade magazines. But this was our track and no matter how talented they may be, we were going to finally have our day in the sun. Or partly to mostly cloudy skies with rain. Or so we believed.

Half of the obscene amount of money we spent went on rain gear for the kart and the driver. MWSS races are held rain or shine and with the forecast calling for some strong rains on Friday and Saturday, we knew that if we ever were going to become acclimated to racing in the wet stuff it was going to happen this weekend. So with a new rain suit, booties, and rain rubber all around, we headed to the track.

Friday morning was wet indeed when we woke up at the track. Engines started at around 10am but no one really took to the track until about noon. The problem was that although it wasn't raining, the track was wet in areas but not enough to sustain life in a rain tire and bit too dangerous for race rubber. For those who are not familiar with racing tires the "slicks" that are used on a normal race day have no tread and can become quite unstable in even the lightest of showers. Rain tires on the other hand are usually a softer compound and sport large deep grooves to force water away in the event of a storm. Kind of like your all season street radials on your personal car. Where it really gets tricky is during these bouts where no real rain is falling or standing water is on the track. Only the smoothest most experienced drivers can pilot a vehicle at speed in this environment on race tires. And if you opt for rain tires with no standing water, they "chunk", or come apart quite rapidly from the heat generated in them. We, like many others, decided to watch the skies and wait.

The skies eventually cleared and stayed that way for the better portion of the day. We tested for several hours struggling to break that forty second mark but didn't find any more speed. That was until I realized that I bolted the cylinder head on his engine backwards. Just so everyone is aware, there is no right or wrong way to bolt an HPV head to the block. Yes, the cooling fins that are angled slightly do face forward and the portion that's more square faces the rear. I have been told though that there is no advantage or deficit in having it mounted one way or the other. We told Sam that now it was going to be more aerodynamic and he would see a definite improvement. There was obviously no way this statement could hold water but as wrong as we were in telling him this, a 39.70 was predominantly displayed on his dash after that session. Something can be said for playing with your driver's head now can't it? The day remained dry and we wore through a set of racing tires in no time so before we could call it quits I had to drive down to the local shop and have another set mounted for Saturday. Ka-ching! more money we didn't plan on spending.

If only our good luck could have followed us into Saturday! We started out in our practice session with hopes of bettering our time from Friday but with an apparent fuel problem we didn't even finish the six minutes that were given to us. We couldn't make the kart go down the straight over 13,000 rpm and with an engine like this that just begins to live and breathe at about fourteen-five, we were leaving a lot of power on the table. We decided to pull the plug on the session, rebuild the carb, and take another stab at it during our qualifier.

No such luck would be had during qualifying either. It didn't even matter that we rebuilt the entire carburetor. It was acting the same way it did before and we were left perplexed to say the least. Our obvious inability to perform put us dead last on the grid for the pre-final and our streak of bad luck didn't stop there. After the green flag flew on our race, Sam went into turn one and appeared to immediately lose power. It had to be the fuel I was thinking, there could be no other excuse for it. Either way he signaled that he was coming off the track and with not even one lap completed our race was over. I grabbed my gear and headed for the scales to meet him when I realized that his loss of power wasn't contributed to our ongoing carb issue but a total loss of brakes! The rod connecting our brake pedal to the master cylinder broke and rendered his brakes useless. Once he came down pit road he had to slow the kart to a stop with his hands on the tires and the ensuing friction wore holes in his gloves and embedded rubber in the palms of his hands. Poor kid, talk about taking one for the team. He did mention that before he came in to the pits that the kart felt strong and he believed our problems with the carb were gone. Outside of my initial settings I couldn't understand how but I was optimistic in our chances in the upcoming final.

Of course not finishing in the previous race put us dead last again for the final. No worries though, as we believed our problems were behind us and all we could look forward to now is a good, clean, hard race. If it was only that simple. It ended up being good for others, clean for the most part, but hard for the two of us. Hard for him to drive and hard for me to watch. It turned out that the kart never really did miraculously fix itself, and shame on us for even thinking that. Within two laps the engine was up to its old tricks again and Sam used everything in his power to just keep the kart running. Towards the end of the race there were moments when he would be driving the kart for complete laps with one hand on the wheel and the other adjusting the carb just to keep it alive. Perseverance prevailed as he managed a twelfth place spot out of sixteen drivers. But the really sad part about it all was that his fastest time he recorded was the same speed we were stuck at the day before. We can only imagine how fast he could have been had the engine been on key.

Out of all the frustration and anguish we went through I have to say that I've never been more proud of him. It could have been much easier to throw in the towel and head for the pits but he stuck in there and did what he had to do to finish the job. It had to be tough to watch the field pull away with no chance of joining them but he focused on the task at hand and made best with what he had. And in the end we finished on the lead lap. Hard to imagine if you seen first hand how poorly the kart performed.

So now its back to Badger for Points Race #6 and a reevaluation of our remaining schedule for this year. It's hard to make this assumption but I feel that it was the fuel that caused this debacle. History has shown that when we race in events that use race fuel compared to pump gas we end up with problems like this. The odd thing is the front runners never missed a beat so why us and only a few others? You can't really blame the engine builder or tuner since we had a different builder last year when we experienced the exact same problem. So if it's me and something that I and only a few other fathers are doing wrong, I then owe it to all of us to stay away from these events until I get it straight. Our pride could sure use it, not to mention my pocketbook.