a little story about how i got to the autocross sunday.
id had some misfire problems after the 11 november autocross, so i spent a
great deal of effort tracking down the cause and fixing it. got it all set,
testing the day before the autocross. finally go out to start the car one
more time to pull it into the garage.
the car wont start, 5:30 PM the night before the last autocross of the
season with trophies at stake, and i run over to a friend's house to borrow
a starter. get it hooked up, finally wired right (it was different than mine
and required a second wire) and it wont engage the flywheel. :P now all the
stores are closed. im thinking of what to do and finally in desparation
call another cobra friend at 12:30AM. he offers to bring up another starter
early in the morning all the way from fremont to berkeley at 6AM, providing
i had coffee ready for him when he arrives. :)
we hook up the starter, nothing. mike tries jumping the starter, nothing. we
pull it out and check it. dead.
so now i have three starters, two are dead, one is the wrong size and wont
engage the flywheel and time is running short. and to boot, my battery was
hosed and leaking and the spare i had was too tall for my hold downs.
so i pull the battery out of my street car and wire it in there. we are
going to push start the car but the computer requires at least 8 volts.
mike pushes me out onto the busy two lane road in from of my house. even at
8AM there is enough traffic i am waving to them as we block the road and
mike struggles to push my car up the steep crown of the hill.
finally we get it headed downhill and i pop the clutch. BANG it springs to
life and blows one of the CC inserts out onto the street. no time to worry
about that- i head off to oakland and make it just in time to walk the
course and find sherry wearing a sign around her neck looking for an OSP
co-drive :P i had slept about 4 hours and had eaten and drunk nothing since
the starter fried itself the evening before. eat one of the candy canes for
breakfast and drive. whew, the car performs flawlessly and none of my
co-drivers stalls the car on course (requiring an embarassing push start).
special thanks to mike easton without whose help i never would have made it!
-james c
OSP #74
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