Going Faster, Very Slowly

Going Faster, Very Slowly

On June 1st and 2^nd, 2002 I had my second race at Portland International Raceway, the fourth race of the season. The main change I had made to the fugly gold car since the previous race was the addition of a limited slip differential.

The trip down to Portland was stressful – when I stopped at the mid-point rest stop, I discovered that the diff was hemorrhaging lubricant out of the left output flange and the diff cover. I undid the filler plug and Red Line 75W90 diff oil poured out. It would appear I had over filled it when mounting. Did I mention that I’m not a trained professional? Cleaning up a small lake of lubricant in a rest stop gets a lot of funny looks. Not that I cared – I was concerned that my brand-new differential was going to run dry and die.

(Quickly: the differential is a big hunk of metal at the back of a rear wheel drive car. The car’s drive shaft is attached to the diff via an input flange. Lots of metal whirring bits transfer the driving torque to the rear wheels via two output flanges. There are two common kinds of differentials in production cars – open and limited slip. Open diffs aren’t as good for “sporty” driving, or racing, as they route the engine’s power to the tire with the least traction, leading to lurid wheel spin with no practical effect. Limited slip differentials resist this tendency by limiting the difference – or slippage – between the two rear wheels.)

In addition to the leaking differential lubricant, the engine started missing mildly. It was enough to concern me, but I wasn't sure what the problem might be.

These mechanical issues compounded the general discomfort and anxiety of driving a race car on a public highway. Road imperfections were enough to shake my teeth loose, and the car sounded like it was going to rattle apart. Getting followed by Officer Ijustdareya for about 50 miles didn’t help.

Somehow, I made it down to my hotel in Portland alive. I parked my car in the most out of the way place possible, hoping to avoid any more rampaging SUV drivers. After a restless two or three hours of sleep, I stumbled to the track in the morning. The Columbia river overcast was just burning off when Group 2 headed out to scrub the goose goop off the track for the following run groups.

Through the practice sessions my car wasn't running well, related presumably to the missing problem it had experienced on the drive down. I was suspicious of electrical issues, but couldn’t find anything obvious. The problem would manifest with random dead spots in the power band. While blipping the throttle on down shifting, several times I found myself with the accelerator pedal fully depressed and the engine RPMs hovering at about 2000. Not good when you're trying to keep a car balanced with the throttle! It lead to some hairy “rotational moments,” but I managed to keep the car pointed mostly forward.

The weather was beautiful and warm, and I developed a problem with the engine coolant overheating, despite running with the heat full blast. This was yet another problem that I put on my list of things to deal with.

On the other hand, I found that moving from an open to a limited slip differential to be a change for the better. I was able to hustle the car through lower speed corners a little better by being hard on the throttle than previously possible. Before, the unloaded inside wheel would have just spun. Now, from being the slowest car by far on the track, I was only the slowest car by a hair. That was an improvement.

As I've mentioned before, novice races have all different types of cars, irrespective of preparation – everything from fast-as-greased-snot GT 1-prepared Porsches to sssllllooowwww production class cars like my own. PIR is a track that favors higher powered cars, which tends to widen the times between faster and slower cars.

Ahead of me in the novice race was a Honda Civic driven by 83 year-old "Judge" Peneck from La Jolla, California. The car is owned and maintained by his son Jeff. Watching Judge clamber through the cage and into the race seat like a twelve year old made me hope that I'll be half that fit (and good natured!) when I'm half his age. I was faster than him in the corners, but he pulled way ahead of me on the straights and since he was so much faster accelerating out of the corners, I just couldn't get by. I finished last, but had a lot of fun not passing Judge.

The following day my Group 2 race (where I race with other equivalent-ish cars) was similar. I concentrated on getting faster, and staying out of the way of lapping traffic. The problem with the car missing continued, so there was no hope of being fast enough to catch anyone.

One of the things I began experimenting with was "tossing" the car into a corner. Essentially, just before turn-in, I would brake just enough to rotate the car and enter the corner at a speed that completely exceeded the ability of the tires to stick to the track surface, then keep the car balanced by using tiny throttle changes to smoothly transfer weight forward and backward until the car scrubbed off enough speed to "hook up," just before the apex, allowing me to open the throttle all the way and power out of the corner. But since being consistent is more important than anything else to being fast, I had to keep the tires within about a 3 inch spot every lap! It was an absolute blast, and in a light and underpowered car, it seemed faster. From my first session Saturday to my race at the end of Sunday my lap times dropped by five seconds.

Remembering my miserable trip down Friday evening, I set-off for the trip home with nervous expectancy. The trip sucked. The problem with the car missing got worse and worse the further I drove. It was not long before it was hesitating so bad that I didn’t think I’d make it home. It was a terrible experience and I swore that I'd never drive the car long distance again. It was too hard on car and driver both. Admittedly, I’m a big wuss, but the time had come to find a tow vehicle.

Because I wasn't going to do any more racing without a tow vehicle, I missed the race at Mission, BC four weeks later – and since there were no more races until Aug 10, this meant a gap of almost 10 weeks. Must… get… fix… Racing is not a drug! I can quit any time I want! I satisfied “the need” by doing a couple of lapping events. I also began thinking about a tow vehicle.

After a few weeks of looking, I brought a new member into the UnSage family: a nineteen-hundred and seventy-two Ford Motor Company F250 Sport Custom with a 390 cu/inch (6.3 liter, i.e. frickin’ huge) V-8 engine that would be robust enough to tow a race car from Seattle to Hawaii. The big, green-ish, truck set me back $1000. It had working power steering, a working AM radio and mostly working lap belts and a family of small spiders. It also had a strongly worded warning on the dash: “DO NOT REMOVE DOORS.” I think it was aimed at the “Hold ma beer and watch this” one-tooth crowd, but I’d expect pictures to be more effective. The steering was a bit vague (if a complete turn before the truck starts lumbering one way or the other is merely “vague”), but I was able to improve it a bit with some fiddling, and I replaced the water pump for kicks. It was the first time I’d worked on a non-BMW, and I discovered that the basic’s I’d learned from the fugly gold car carried over just fine, although I was a bit short of SAE (i.e. non-metric) tools. In lieu of purchasing a flatbed trailer for about $1500, I planned to borrow a tow dolly.

Don’t ask about the BMW roundel glued to the front of the truck. I have no idea where it came from. BMW-itis must be contagious. Freude am Shleppen.