A few weekends ago, Jeff and I signed up for a lapping event for the morning of October 18th through Midnight Runs, and then for one in the afternoon through KPlayground. Both these events were at Shannonville Motorsports Park, using their long track (4 km) and we were extremely excited. Jeff had never been lapping, and I couldn’t wait to get back on the track!
I decided to put a few touches on the car before heading out – I reinstalled the 12 volt adapter so that we could use a portable air compressor, and I jimmy-rigged a power window connector for it so that we could roll the windows up and down from inside the car (as opposed to using an external battery like we used to). Both worked great and the weather forecast said it was going to be a nice day, so our spirits were up!
Once again, we had to leave extremely early as we needed to be there for 8:45am. So we hit the road at 6am to make the 2.5 hour drive. Everything went smooth, and we even ment up with some fellow racers on the 401. I took the first lapping session to try and get Jeff used to the idea and to show him what the car can do at higher speeds. The car was hanlding awesome, and I could really feel the traction improvements that the camber was giving us. We played with the tire pressures a bit and we found the sweet spot for the car in no time. The second session went to Jeff, and he quickly got the hang of – he learned the lines, and was able to maintain a pretty good pace throughout the whole track. In fact, in the first right corner coming out of the first straight, he was feeling gutsier than I was and shifted to fifth to take the corner, whereas I was only taking it in fourth (he didn’t realize at the time that he was going faster than I was)! It was turning out to be an awesome day.
Unfortunately, during the next session, I came out of that same first corner and tried to shift to 5th, but the gear selector was jammed. I couldn’t move it at all, even with both hands. I finished the lap and pulled off the track to tell Jeff the bad news. We missed out on the last hour of the morning session, and we were able to get credited for our afternoon session. Trying to get the car on the trailer was exciting though – as soon as I touched the ramps, the clutch started slipping and then smoking! With the help of some friends we were able to get it up anyways. We were pretty dissppointed, but it really could have been a lot worse. We had picked up a used transmission this summer and were planning on swapping it anyways this winter, so this just added a bit of fuel to the fire. We were also considering replacing the clutch, so now we have even more reason to do that too. All in all, we still had a blast, and nothing “serious” happened.
A photographer got some really great shots of us in action, and Jeff should be uploading some soon as well! Unfortunately we didn’t get any in car video, as we wanted to wait for the afternoon… so much for that!
Shawn
Real bummer guys, but as you say, you have spares!
Exactly! Of all the things that could have gone wrong, this is one of the better things. Its still going to be a BIG job to fix, but we finished the season, and we’ve got the most expensive parts already. It gives us a winter project too ;)