The UnSage Mechanic and the Mystery of the Sick Motor

(c) 2003 J. Sage Schreiner

www.unsage.com

 

In my experience racing, it’s not so much whether something is going to go wrong it’s what and when. Mostly, I hope that not too much goes wrong at once. On September 5th and 6^th, 2002, I raced at the river-side track in Mission, British Columbia. I had had my first racing experience at Mission in the cold and dark ages of April many moons past.

 

I returned from a two week vacation the Monday before the race weekend. At my race in August, I had had difficulties with the car starting, as the solenoid (starter switch) cut out when the engine got hot – which in a race car means all the time. As I was still "recovering" from vacation, I had Strictly BMW replace the starter. The folks at Strictly saved me a lot of time and effort, and the car now started with no problems.

 

The weather was gray and cool, so I kept a close eye on the weather reports. I only had one set of race tires, and while they had plenty of tread at the beginning of the year, they were bald as a baby's butt after being scrubbed for 1500 track miles. While less tread is great when the track is dry, it's not desirable when wet. The weather report called for clouds all weekend, but no rain until Monday.

 

My crew chief – aka girlfriend – and I towed the car up to Mission on Friday evening. At the Canadian border the guard didn't ask us very many questions. “Sooo, I see you’re ooop here racing, eh?”

 

Saturday morning we showed up too late to get a paddock spot that was paved. I was not looking forward to a weekend on dirt – especially in the rain. Just as I was getting ready to park my tow vehicle an official came over and asked if I wanted a paved spot. Heck yeah! Someone had canceled, and I got lucky. Sort of. Ominously, it was paddock spot number 13. I idly speculated what was going to go wrong.

 

The first thing was that I couldn't get dialed into the track. Mission is a short, very technical track with lots of hairpins and tight corners, and very short straights. It's the perfect track for a low horsepower car – but I couldn't seem to find speed. I was always between gears. I placed 15th out of 23 in the Novice race Saturday evening, which wasn't that good. I had hoped to do significantly better, considering my superior performance at Pacific Raceways in August.

 

After chatting with some of the experienced drivers watching the race, I came to the conclusion that one of my problems was mental. The big, solid, well-marked concrete walls were making me nervous, so I was leaving too much space – but this translated to track that wasn’t being used, which meant slow cornering. I decided to work on this for Sunday.

 

Sunday it rained. Hard. I had originally decided that, if it rained, I wouldn't race. Treadless tires in the wet is a risky proposition. But (and there’s always a “but” in racing) I spoke to various people and decided that I could possibly get away with it. Don’t ask me to detail the train of “logic” it takes to get from “racing on bald tires on a track that doesn’t drain with concrete walls everywhere” to “let me at ‘em.”

 

In order to tune the car for the wet, my girlfr—I mean crew chief – and I did several things. First, we disconnected the rear anti-roll bar links from the trailing arms and strip-tied the links out of the way. This softened the rear of the car, tuning it for understeer. This was important, because my car's neutral to slightly oversteering tendency was hugely exaggerated in the wet. It became almost impossible to put down what little power I have. The next thing we did was put the two slightly better tires on the rear of the car. These two tires at least had a few shallow, longitudal grooves in them. My hope was that the front of the car would hydroplane before the rear, avoiding any sudden high speed rotation. Lastly, we over inflated all of the tires significantly. This gave the tires a slightly convex shape, which helps avoid hydroplaning at the cost of reducing overall traction. Through all of this my girlfriend helped immensely – and it was raining the whole time! (There’s a reason why “Awesome Girlfriend” is always listed as my sponsor).

 

It was with some trepidation that I sat in pre-grid. Linda Heinrich was in front of me in her red #123 car. I was concerned that the changes I had made to my car wouldn't be sufficient. I decided that my number one goal for the race was simply to finish.

 

When the race started, I discovered several things – first, I could almost keep up with Linda Heinrich if I pushed it, as she was held up by a slower driver. Second, as long as I stayed on the slightly-less-wet line, the car didn't hydroplane. Much. The changes I had made seemed to have the effect of making the car transition instantly between terminal understeer and severe oversteer. This at least gave me an alternative to wildly-ridiculous oversteer I would have had otherwise. I also discovered that FIA curbing was dangerous – it really unsettled the car and made things unpredictable and wiggly in mid-corner. After a lap or two, I started to get a feel for the car. I tried vigorously to get by Linda for several laps (thanks, red mist!).  Finally I was able to slip between her and the apex just before the straight. I led for several laps, but Linda bided her time, kept the pressure on and waited for me to make a mistake, which I naturally did. I locked up one tire, came slightly off the line, touched a puddle and hydroplaned off into a run-off area. I was back on the track the instant she went by, but I realized that I didn't have the stuff to keep up, so I backed off before doing my car any serious harm, and concentrated on driving a clean race.

 

Ultimately, it was a lot of fun – the car dynamics were bizarre, and it took a lot to get used to the way the car would resist turning (understeer), and then suddenly rotate (oversteer). The key was anticipating these changes. I was able to pass Bill Shaw in his E Production Miata, for the first and last time, as he was only trying to finish enough laps to get credit for the race.

 

On the last lap, just as I crossed the finish line, I looked down and noticed that my engine coolant temperature was in the red. Uh-oh! As it was a cool, wet day, I was surprised to see this. Since fixing my cooling problems in July, I hadn't had problems even on hot days. I contemplated pulling over right away, but decided to wait and see whether the cool down lap would help. It did – sorta. The coolant temperature began to slowly decrease – even as the oil temperature started to rocket upwards. Yikes! As soon as I got the car off the track, I turned it off, while my crew chief and I pushed it back to paddock space #13.

 

What could have caused the coolant temperature to rise, then fall slowly – even as the oil temperature shot up? What was the secret to the mysterious conundrum?