Amici - Who says racing is all serious business when in reality a good
chuckle, especially post race is always remembered. In the context of
Clark's note below I offer the following example.
The scene is at last year's Indy Car race here in Edmonton where I was
participating with 60 other competitors in the support race on a 2.2 mile
temporary road course on the downtown airport. It was on Saturday in our 45
minute qualifying race, the temperature was 90+, when within 3 laps after
the green flag the oil temperature soared to over 300 degrees and as I was
leading my class at the time which would have meant a great starting
position for the feature race in front of 50,000 people the next day, the
thought of backing off didn't have a bunch of appeal, logic notwithstanding.
Racing luck intervened on lap 5 with a full course yellow which lasted 8
laps (seems that the Starter collapsed in his stand - heat prostration).
This respite presented the opportunity to reassess the situation - even with
the reduced speed under yellow and pulling the car into clean air the oil
temperature wouldn't go below 300. There wasn't much I could do short of
pulling in and that wasn't going to happen - you know it's amazing what goes
through your mind in situations like that - here's what went through mine. I
can't do anything about it short of quitting, the gauge was driving me crazy
and at that point I remembered a short passage from one of Kas's books,
something about removing his oil temperature gauge, obviously I couldn't do
that so I did the next best thing. Because of the heat I had added a
hydration system with the hose running over my shoulder and into my helmet,
the hose was secured to my shoulder with a piece of duct tape - you can see
where this is going can't you - I loosened my belts, reached over and
removed the duct tape from my shoulder, and completely covered the gauge
with it, tightened the belts back up and when the green dropped went back at
it. With the gauge distraction removed I did short shift by a 1000, really
beat the car up trying to maintain momentum in the corners and only lost a
couple of positions. When I returned to the paddock my crew chief, while
helping me extract myself, gave me this puzzled look as his saw the duct
tape covering the gauge, to which my comment was "don't even ask, Kas made
me do it....."
Barry.
-----Original Message-----
From: fot-bounces@autox.team.net [mailto:fot-bounces@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of Clark W. Nicholls
Sent: November-15-10 6:32 AM
To: 'Joe Curry'; 'Kas Kastner'; 'Bill Babcock'; 'Mike Mehl'
Cc: 'Triumph Friends of'
Subject: Re: [Fot] Oil Cooler cleaning
Reminds me of the 1979 SCCA Runoffs at Road Atlanta. Steve Johnson showed up
on the FP race grid in his Spitfire with all the gauges covered with duct
tape. He went on to win the race and the championship. I seem to remember
his engine was put together from a collection of parts from several engines
that week. I don't remember if I took a photo or if the image is burned into
my memory! His victory lap photo was used in a British Leyland magazine
advertisement. Last I knew Steve is retired in the Caribbean somewhere.
Clark
Clark W. Nicholls
1972 Stag (LE7931E), 1974 Spitfire (FM14571U) and 1 rusty GT6 needing new
owner
"Reality, it's not what you think."
-----Original Message-----
Kas,
I guess in this case, "Ignorance really is BLISS"! :)
Joe C.
-----Original Message-----
I've said before, oil at 225 makes more power by far than at 180 or so. When
in the old days and my TR-3 in about 5-7 laps the oil got to 300 and as we
were not allowed to have oil coolers, I did the next best thing, I took out
the gauge. Never made a bit of difference in longevity, and gave me peace
of mind.
Kas
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