Friday night, a 5-7pm lapping event was being held at Calabogie. Of the Eurotrash team, there were Chris, Pat, Naresh, and myself driving, and Jamie came up to watch a bit later. Having never lapped before, he wanted to get a feel for what it was.
To get the bimmer ready, I had taken the day of work. My exhaust had developped a leak between the manifold and the midpipe, so I decided to just weld them together. I realize that this is going to be an issue if I ever need to remove it, but I’ll deal with that issue when it arises. Also, my front brakes were getting low, so I had purchased some new hawk pads to install. Unfortunately, there was a shipping issue so those didn’t arrive in time. Thirdly, the truck manifold had blown out, and that was still in the shop being fixed by our good friends at Canadian Tire on Carling, so I had to borrow a tow vehicle from a coworker.
All signs seemed to be telling me that I wasn’t supposed to be doing that lapping day. Well, there was another one on the track – my brother was the second car to stage, and I was the fourth. He was let in front of the car from him early on, and I was as well. With one car separating us, he was pulling ahead (not that’s its a race or anything, but still fun to try and pace each other). I finally got let by the car, and worked on catching up to Chris. When I did, he let me by right away. A few corners later, I hear a clunk coming from the engine and my battery light comes on. Then I notice that I had lost my power steering. THEN i noticed that my coolant gauge was starting to creep. I quickly put my car in 5th and nursed the car back to the pits. Thankfully I was able to shut the car down before the gauge got into the red zone. However, once the car was off, the coolant temps kept rising, and stayed high for a while. I assumed it was just the serpentine belt that drives the water pump, alternator, and power steering pump that had come off, and that it wasn’t a big deal as they have a part store at the track.
Turns out, the belt was fine! One of the pulleys had seized and tore off the car, which caused the belt to slip. That was the end of my night – 15 minutes in. I was also concerned about engine damage as the temps were through the roof, but as the car wasn’t running, I hope it will be ok. After letting it cool down, I fired it back up to get on the trailer, so at least i know it runs!
I’m hoping that no bolts broke, as that would require me removing the whole front end of the car to be able to extract them. If I can simply replace the two pulleys and the belt, it should be a fairly simple job, and my car will be ready in no time.
Thankfully, no one else on the team experienced any issues and had a blast. The track was damp, but there was no rain and it was a great evening. I stuck around and went for in for a session with Pat and it was lots of fun. Plus, we got more people hooked – Jamie will now be registering for the MCO lapping day in September!
Not sure if anyone took pictures, but if I find some I’ll post them for sure!
Shawn
