0 and 5

That's right, another disappointing weekend in a long string of DNF's.  Four of them to be exact with a newly earned DNS this past Sunday.  Yep, it's gotten so bad for us that now our days are over before the green flag ever falls on us!  And with three races to go in our season we might be tempted to throw in the towel at this point and just cut our losses.

The problem with that is in quitting itself.  It's nothing I've ever done and nothing I want to teach my kids to do.  But when you've explored every conceivable option to eradicate this problem, and thrown countless amounts of money at it, you have to draw the line somewhere and just accept defeat.

So for now we're more or less in a holding pattern.  I've agreed to travel to St. Charles Illinois to drop the chassis off at a shop that guarantees they'll get to the root of our problem.  We'll most likely miss our next scheduled event at Badger Raceway this Sunday but I think this is a small price to pay for hopefully an answer and our piece of mind.

No end in sight

With a season like the one we're having right now I can't say that I'm disappointed in the fact that this year is winding down on us.  We have been plagued by problems for the past four weeks that are testing our patience and taxing our resources and frankly it's beginning to be darn near unbearable for all of us.

That chain skipping problem that we expected to lose by this weekend, well it ain't gone!  And like many instances in the past it waits until the final to happen to us every time.  One discovery that might shine a light on the subject is that in the half dozen or so times that we lost chains it's happened in the same area of the track.  I have a sneaking suspicion that there's a depression at the edge of the track that we may be catching, and compound that with the suggestion from another individual that we could have too long of a chain length, this could be our problem.

With that said I'm still not placing all my chips on that number.  We'll shorten the chain, but going into next week's event at Road America won't help us figure out everything.  Hopefully we'll make it through each session but the real test will come on the 30th of August when we return to our home track.  And if we finish every session we set out to do, then and only then, will I feel we've accomplished something.

We must have angered the gods

Why is it that I can't even buy a break sometime?  I'm a pretty nice guy for the most part.  I could stand to go to church a bit more than I do but I give back to the community, I help people who are in desperate need of help, and I hold the door for the elderly.  So why in God's name can't we finish a Midwest Sprint Series race?

Turn the calendar back one year ago and you would undoubtedly see and hear me in the same state as I am today.  Same event, different problem.  Unlike this year when I failed to give my son a kart that could hang on to its chain for more than three laps, I was fighting carburetor demons that were making us painfully slow. I actually fired our last engine builder because of this. No power and no support whatsoever makes me a very irritated boy.

So with new engine builder in hand we set off for our second stab at trying to show the competition what the hometown team has.  But this year was not to be it either.  As mentioned earlier we developed a strange problem of throwing chains in every session.  We went through everything- engine plates, sprockets, and alignments with no relief.  Many speculations were made as to what could have been causing it but none of the remedies netted any results.  We finished the weekend with DNF's in both HPV Junior Lite and Heavy.  July 24th through the 26 of the year 2009 will go down in history as one of the most expensive, frustrating, and heartbreaking weekends of our lives.

But wait, there's more!



The weekend of August 2nd had us back at Badger for the 11th round of the Bridgestone Championship series and you guessed it, we had our third DNF in two weeks!  The worst thing about it was that after all of the checking and double checking of each component on that kart, we still managed to throw another chain but it waited until there was two laps left of the final.  With the exception of the sheared kingpin bolt in our first practice session that literally caused the left front to implode on itself, the day went pretty much event free.  We even bested our fast time of the year by two-tenths of a second.  So to say it was disappointing to us would be an understatement.

The funny thing about this whole fiasco is that we never really changed anything from what worked for us in the past.  Some say it's the composite sprockets we use, maybe they're wearing out.  If so, I'm installing aluminum sprockets for our next race.  I've heard that the type of engine mount that we currently use could be causing too much flex.  Well then, we're going back to the old standard.  Whatever it is, I'm expecting it to be gone by the 16th.  I'm running out of reasons why and more importantly, our driver's patience.

Catching you up with our progress

We've been quite busy lately with all things racing and non-racing related, so accept our apologies for our being tardy with our duty to bring you up to speed on our efforts.

Sunday June 21st found us in 6th place at the end of our day.  For the most part the event went well all day until of course the final arrived.  Dueling with another driver for 3rd place, Sam got the short end of the stick when they eventually touched and it relegated him to last place.  A very exciting race by all means.  It again just wasn't the ending we had hoped for.

After a nice break of almost four weeks we returned to Badger Raceway on July 19th.  What had originally looked like a dismal finish quickly turned in our favor as two of the five competitors were disqualified for having the incorrect tire compound on their karts.  It wasn't a washout by any means so the hype that circled around it was really uncalled for in my opinion.  Either way we'll take it.  Now it's off to the Midwest Sprint series which shows up at our home track on the weekend of July 25-26.