Well, I suspect many of you are packing up for the Wendover trip - Be Safe - Go Fast - Have Fun.
I sent off my WOS entry, so I'm about 5 weeks out on my road trip. Hope to see many of you there. I understand the appeal of Speedweek, but big crowds are not my thing, and I really like the vibe of the USFRA event.
I almost soiled myself last week. I wrapped the header and hung an exhaust pipe on the Midget and started it up. My experience with header wrap is that you tend to get some smoke off of it before it cures in place, so the smoke coming from the outside of the header was to be expected.
What WASN'T to have been expected is blue-white smoke coming from the TAILPIPE.
My heart sank.
Whisky Tango Foxtrot?
We had pulled the engine off the dyno in a solid state of tune, I'd started the car in situ once everything was hooked up, and now I can't see to the other side of the garage?
Called Mark and made arrangements to borrow his leakdown checker and picked it up Thursday. I had stuck a camera with a periscope mirror down the holes, and there appeared to be a minor scratch in the # 2 cylinder, but leakdown was right where it had been when we pulled it off the dyno. The concensus was that it was nothing abnormal or extreme enough to have caused this.
The only thing different was that when I fired up the engine in the car, I hit the Accusump to prelube the engine - which dumped about an extra quart-and-a-half of oil into the crankcase and left it there - something one does not want to to, especially with low tension ring packs and idling at the lower end of the oil pressure range. And that appears to have been the problem. New plugs, and all is well, but I have to confess - for a few days, I thought the whole thing was tanked.
I did an alignment job on it today. Kind of proud of figuring this one out -
I took two pairs of welding magnets and laid a 30" x 1" piece of CRS across it . . .
DSCN0154 by
Chris Conrad, on Flickr
and set up my laser-level toward the back, aligning it with the side of the tire - and double checking against the wheel.
DSCN0146 by
Chris Conrad, on Flickr
Go to the front and measure the back of the tire -
DSCN0148 by
Chris Conrad, on Flickr
and then the front of the front tire-
DSCN0149 by
Chris Conrad, on Flickr
calculate the difference, and you've got a fairly accurate assessment of your toe-in. And if it needs adjusting, just take 2 pairs of scrap metal and sandwich some lithium grease between them, and the steering preload and resistance evaporates -
DSCN0152 by
Chris Conrad, on Flickr
Factory toe-in is 1/8" - I'm at 1/4" and I'm fine with that. If it had stock 145 80R 13s on it, it would probably be closer than when it rolled off the line at Abington on Thames.
Also got the new fire bottles installed -
DSCN0151 by
Chris Conrad, on Flickr
I'd want to run down a checklist, but I think I can say with a degree of confidence that if I really
REALLY wanted to push it, it could be ready to race next week. But that's not the plan, and if I've learned anything over the years, it's STICK TO THE PLAN . . . unless the plan sticks it to you.