The smell of burning rubber

Started on my first soon to be rain tire.  There is an art to this, just takes a little practice.  I have a pattern that I made so all I have to do is measure and scribe with a yellow marker.   The tire grooving iron heats the rubber as you carve out the groove.  It does stink.  

Much easier to work with the tire mount on the car.

So far not to bad.

The most difficult part is to cut the correct line, not all get cut.

Should finish this one today.

Slave clutch cylinder

Replaced with a new clutch cylinder, not sure if the old cylinder was damage when the bolt fell out.  Not taken any chances, and this will give me a spare.  Hard to see but the 2 bolts retaining the cylinder are safety wired and loctite was applied.

Paint

Just finished painting the 4 spare rims.  I'll  hold off polishing them, in a week they would be tarnished. 

The art of tire grooving

Started to practice tire grooving.  Not sure how useful the grooving will be, can't go to deep or I hit the cord.  At best, it will produce a intermediate rain tire.  I'll try one tire, then see if it's worth the trouble to make three more.

Lime Rock event schedule

Lime Rock event schedule, our race group is 4.
Historic Festival 30 & Sunday in the Park Concours (click here).

Rim prep

Glass beading and getting ready to paint and polish the spare tire rims I got from Eric.  Oh, speaking of Eric, he did make it to Road America but continued to have engine problems. 

 

Rain tires

Back to the rain tires.  I'm working off of a couple of photos of vintage rain tire patterns.  Transferred it to paper and made a bunch of measurements.  The tire groover is being delivered Wednesday.  I sure hope all this work will make a usable rain tire. 

Once everything gets going , it should go quickly.

It should look like this when it's done.

Another fix

Noticed this problem when the car was at the Pitts-race.  The suspension piece was rubbing on the spring perch(photo below).  When the upright bearings got replaced in early 2011 by Brian.  I placed the cone piece on the wrong side of the upper suspension rod when reinstalling the uprights.  All fixed now.  

Not sure how or if it effected handling. 



This is on the right side.  The cone piece in it's proper place.

Left side, not in the proper place. 

 

Not waisting time

I wasn't really 100% ready for the last event.  Making sure it doesn't happen again.  Already ordered all the replacement parts needed and a few extra items.  Using the same gear ratio for Lime Rock that I used for Pitts.  With the 2nd gear dog replaced and hardly used, no need to remove gearbox.  High on the priority list is to get my spare tire rims ready for use.  Either for drys or rains.

Photos from Pitt-Race

Pitt-race PVGP July 15, 2012

Clutch pedal...my bad

One of the 2 bolts that fastened the slave cylinder to the gearbox fell out.  This caused the cylinder to rotate on one bolt and the piston in the cylinder came out and all the hydraulic fluid behind it leaked out.  No pressure to engage the clutch. 
The reason the bolt fell out was it had been fastened with a lock washer, should have been drilled and safety wired.  This was on the list back in 2010. 

The red arrow is pointing at the missing bolt hole.  The cylinder should be horizontal, not vertical.

Piston on top.

Lime Rock next

Lime Rock will be here before you know it.  As soon as I get the car cleaned up and back in the shop I'll take a look at the clutch pedal system.  I did take a peek, pretty sure it's not big problem. 

Sunday, race day

Sunday morning qualifying race went well until I had trouble with 2nd gear.  It was jumping out of gear.  Still finished on top of the grid.  But that put me back at pulling the gearbox out for the second time this weekend.  I getting fasting at it every time.   The race was not until 1:30 in the afternoon, more than enough time to replace the 2nd gear dog ring. 
The start of the race went fine,  my car can out accelerate the rest of the field with no problem.  On the third lap of 17, my clutch pedal went to the floor and did not come back up.  I up shift without the using the clutch pedal, but I do use it on the down shifts.  I had been working on my heel and toe braking the whole weekend, this made not using the clutch on down shifts and much easier.
I went onto finish the race in first place.  My main competition had car problems the whole weekend and never made more than a couple of laps.
Driving a F5000 car on a short track with many turns really takes a lot of work, I was exhausted after this event. But I got a lot of track time and really feel that my driving has improved.
Much work to do before my next race at Lime Rock in September.

Note, I forget to say that I didn't have to use the mufflers and it never rained the whole weekend.

Saturday, a much better day

Had three sessions today, one qualifying and 2 races.  Finish first in all three, there really isn't anyone in my class, the closest is about 2 seconds a lap slower.  The car is running well, and I'm getting a lot of seat time.  This will be very helpful at Lime Rock.  Sunday will be two session, one qualifying and a race.

Still working to hard

 The  day started out with me knocking off a valve stem on one of the tires while I was making sure it was tight.  Had to drive to town for a new one.  That might I missed the first test session.  On the second session the gearbox wasn't shifting correctly.  Pulled apart the gear box and found that the linkage was set wrong.  That caused me to miss the third session.  To make long story short. I was able to make it out to two more session.  The gearbox is working fine and I'm starting to learn the track.