I knew we were in trouble as I have my AIM dashboard set to alarm on battery voltage. There are three led lights on the right side, and as the battery get’s lower, first one, then two and finally all three leds come on. The first led came on after only one lap! It was a wet race, and our Goodyear rain tires were performing exceptionally well and I ran away from the entire field. I even lapped the car in 2nd place in GT Lite, all the while wondering when the car would stop. But even with all three led indicators on, it kept on going and going. Finally with one lap to go, the engine stopped while on the front straight, and I safely parked the car at the exit of pit lane. Because I had lapped the 2nd place car, I was still credited with the race win!

You can see from the above graph where I have overlaid laps two, nine and fourteen that the battery voltage fell from 10.9 to 10.3 and finally 7.7 volts. The output from the TDC30 remained relatively constant at over 13 volts for almost the entire race, only dropping off in the last couple of laps. The car stopped when the TDC voltage reached 11.2 volts – still higher than the actual battery voltage on lap 2! So without the TDC, the car would not have finished even a couple of laps, but with it, we won!

Sorry this comes a few days late. I was having email problems.

A number of you emailed me asking what happened. It’s quite a story.

On Thursday we went out for final qualifying. I was pretty quick right away, placing 4^th in the session, and 6^th overall to set my starting position for the race. However, on the 7^th lap I felt the engine tighten up and shut it off. After I was towed back to our paddock, we began looking for the problem. The data was all normal, oil pressure, oil temp, water temp, so no clues there. However when we inspected the scavenge oil filter it was obvious that something had gone wrong inside the engine as it was full of metallic debris. We dropped the oil pan and saw that the no. 4 connecting rod showed signs of overheating, and was loose on the crankshaft. Our first reaction was that this was the end of our 2^nd and final engine and we were done. We contemplated having the engine builder come down from London, ON with enough parts to repair the engine, but that plan was discarded when the only crankshaft for our engine in his shop turned out to be bent.

We removed the cylinder head and removed the piston and connecting rod. There had  been a minor contact between the piston and the head, but other than a visible mark, they both appeared undamaged. We removed the rest of the engine from the car and removed the crankshaft. There was some bearing material welded to the rod journal, but it didn’t look awful. I took it to an engine shop in Topeka (that turned out to build engines for some of the local road racers) and we made a more detailed inspection. The crank was bent 15 thou between the 4^th and 5^th main journals, and the no. 4 rod journal would have to be turned down to at least 10 thou undersize to be useable. Steve Day, the owner of Absolute Automotive made a bunch of phone calls and found some undersize bearings in Kansas City. He needed to go the KC for some other business as well, so he picked up the bearings while there. At the same time, we headed west to Manhattan, KS to a machine shop (Precision Machine) owned by an old-time drag racer by the name of Billy Graham. His machinist was able to straighten the crank and grind the rod journal. However, we weren’t able to re-harden the journal, so that was going to be a risk. We drove back to Topeka and picked up the rest of the engine (including a connecting rod salvaged from the 1^st engine) and went to Absolute Automotive. There Steve resized the rod so we had the correct clearances and helped up reassemble the engine – finished at 10pm Friday. Gord and Morgan had been resting, and when Bruce and I delivered the engine to the car, they (and Bruce) went to work (and I went back to the hotel to get some sleep). By 2am the engine was in the car and they quit for the night.

We all returned to the car at 8am, and by 11am the engine installation was completed, oiling system primed and the engine fired up immediately – no smoke, bad noises or any other issues. We proceeded to complete the normal setup of the car (corner weights, toe-in and camber) and were ready to go for the race with 2 hours to spare.

The start of the race was weird. First the pole sitter came to a standstill on the back straight just before the start. They sent us around again under a full course yellow, and just as we got to pit-in the outside pole sitter pulled off into the pits. We were 4^th before the flag even fell. This engine wasn’t as powerful as some we have had, and I was outpowered into turn one by a number of cars. By the 2^nd lap it was obvious that although I was slower that the 2 cars ahead of me on the straights, I was much faster in some of the corners. I got around Don Christman in his RX7, and then proceeded to battle with Chad Bacon in his Toyota for a number of laps before I got enough of a lead that he couldn’t catch me on the straights. After that things were pretty static until I came up on Lance Stout just pulling back onto the track after spinning out of 2^nd place. After passing him, I was in 3^rd and had a spot on the podium! Then the oil temp started to climb, and coming down the front straight the engine gave up. I think that the rod journal on the crank failed because it wasn’t hardened. I pulled off in a safe location and waited for the race to end, 4 laps later.

I was really proud of our team for the effort it took to get to the starting line. On Thursday, there didn’t appear to be any way to make the race,  but we did it! Then to run as well as we did to get up to 3^rd was my best showing ever. Was I disappointed not to finish? Of course, and today as we travel home (still 846 miles to go as I write) I think if there was anything we could have done differently to make the engine last the whole race. Of course there are no answers.

We will have to analyze all the problems we had during the 9 days at the race track, and make the necessary changes to eliminate them. Mostly I am disappointed about the engine trouble, as I thought we knew how to  build good engines. Both were fresh for this race, dyno tested and ready to run. The first failed after about 140 minutes of running time, and the 2^nd failed after only 14 minutes. This is unacceptable, and we have to work hard to prevent a recurrence. We will, and will be ready to go to Road America next September for our 4^th attempt at a national championship.

The race will be shown on Speed TV on January 14^th, at noon EST (9am Pacific). As last year, we carried in car cameras for Speed, and the camera crew said they got some great shots, so we should get some good exposure during the broadcast. I will send a reminder email a few days before the broadcast.

Thanks everyone for your interest. Looking forward to 2009!

I was very pleased to see that a number of you watched the online qualifying. I was happy to finish 7^th in the session, particularly as the time came on our first full lap, before I was up to speed. The rest of the news wasn’t so good.

Even as we left the pit lane to begin qualifying, water was blowing out of the cooling system overflow (a tube points at the windshield so I can see if this is happening). Otherwise all the gauges read normally, so we decided to continue. On the 3^rd lap, I suffered the biggest engine failure I have ever had, with so much smoke in the car that I was convinced it was on fire and I activated the fire suppression system at the same time pulling off the race track onto the grass (from about 100mph). I was very happy to have recently purchased a new helmet that has a fresh air inlet that we have connected to a NACA duct on the right rear window, so despite all the smoke, I had no trouble breathing. The in-car video is spectacular!!

2008 Runoffs Wednesday Qualifying – Ends with a bang!

After we got the car back into our paddock, the work of changing engines began. By 9pm last night most of the work was done. The oil pan on the new engine doesn’t fit quite right (the fittings to connect to the dry sump pump interfere with the left side half shaft). We are meeting with the guys from Prather Racing at 8am this morning to take to oil pan to their shop right here in Topeka and modify it so it will work. We will also try to repair the damaged oil pan from the other engine so we have a backup.

Well, here we are in Topeka, Kansas again for our third attempt to win a national sports car racing championship. We arrived here last Thursday after 2 ½ days of driving across the country (32 driving hours).

We spent the rest of Thursday and all day Friday getting set up and making final adjustments to the car. Saturday was our first test day, and we got 3 full 35 minute on track sessions through the day. We made a lot of changes and improvements to the car, and went over 2 seconds faster than our best lap time last year. On Sunday we tested again, but didn’t have such good luck. We ran the entire first session, but had a half shaft failure at the end. However, our lap time improved again over Saturday. On the second session, 5^th gear failed on the transmission, and we were forced to make a transmission change. While we were completing the installation of the replacement transmission, we discovered a water leak in the cooling system. This proved more troublesome to fix, and it took until this morning to complete, making us miss our first qualifying session yesterday afternoon. Today we had the day off and did a number of small changes to the car, as well as taking it to the official scales to weigh and measure the track (distance between the front or rear tires) to make sure we were legal in these areas.

Tomorrow we will make our first qualifying attempt at 10am Central time (8am Pacific, 11am Eastern). You can use the link below to watch the session live, or to review the results later. Our class is GTL (GT Lite). Our final qualifying session is on Thursday at 2pm Central Time (Noon Pacific, 3pm Eastern). Our race is on Saturday at 4:15pm Central (2:15pm Pacific, 5:15pm Eastern).

This is the site where I will chronicle the efforts of the RaceEnergy/Analytic Systems race team to win an SCCA National Championship in the GT Lite class. 2008 marks our third attempt.

Jim Hargrove