Friends, I though t I'd share this day that is almost clichi.
Today was the first autocross of the new year for The Arizona Border Region.
Naturally, I took Tiny Tim the race Spit out to strut his
stuff. To put it short, "It was the best of times and it was the worst of
times".
I had mounted new tires lowered it a couple inches and installed a front
spoiler so I didn't know exactly how it would perform.
Taking it off the trailer, I managed to bend my new aluminum spoiler on the
trailer (back to the shop on that one). I pounded it out
and got it looking reasonably well. I was in the 4th run group and was glad of
that because it was pretty cold early on. After the
sun got up a ways in the sky, it warmed up nicely.
When my group started, it didn't take long to find out that not only were the
new tires working extremely well but the lowering caused
my muffler to drag a bit at certain times. The third of 4 runs cut 5 seconds
off my first run and I felt like there was a couple more
seconds that I could shave off. But the real high point was that I was a good
2 seconds ahead of the 59 AH SPrite that has always been
my nemesis.
I pulled up for the last run fully anticipating getting my time under 60
seconds. My 3rd run was 60.145, so that should have been very
doable. I got out of the gate well and power shifted into second and something
went "BANG". Naturally, I got off it and the rear end
sounding like something was flopping around as I applied power. At that point,
I pulled off and called it a day.
In trailering it, I noticed there was no resistance on the hand brake, so
either I broke a U-joint or rotoflex coupler and it took out
the cable, or else the cable somehow came loose and wrapped around the drive
line somehow.
I hung around long enough to discover that the Sprite did not better my time on
his final run. And since he has owned the D Modified
class for several years, he was not a happy camper.
Anyway, I was going to have to pull the rear apart to install the Quaife, so it
won't cause much additional trouble. But for now, Tiny
Tim is cripple again!!
Regards,
Joe
|