After the Win

After the Win

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After winning at Portland two weeks before, I had high-hopes for the first Pacific Raceways race of 2004. After all, it was my home track. I knew every nook and cranny, every jounce and ripple. I had done well there in the past, including a 3rd place finish against a tough field the previous August. However, there was work that needed to be done first.

I did general maintenance with the help of Ian Goepferd. Ian had been a novice student of mine at Pacific Raceways a few months earlier. Somehow, and I am not responsible, I swear, he had developed an interest in racing. Despite a significant other who was biological-moments from bearing their first child, Ian came over to help turn wrenches. While I wrestled with the drum brakes, I set him to work fabricating some fancy ducting from the front parking light-hole in the bumper to the engine air intake.

In about half the time it would have taken me, he did a job that was about twice as good. Rather than some sort of ratty duct glued loosely in place (my usual methodology), he neatly measured and trimmed a plastic duct into shape and bolted it into place, making use of two already present studs. Ian then taped a bit of ducting to it, and ran it up into the engine bay so that it exhaled right next to the engine intake. The theory was that it would lower the intake air temperature slightly. When you're hoping for tenths of seconds per lap, the little things really add up!

About this time I had finished wrestling my drum brake drums off, and carefully cleaning out the dust with isopropyl alcohol and paper towels. I was careful to get as little dust as possible into the air, I wore a mask as well. I had last done my drums about 2 years previously and my chest had hurt for weeks from the irritation of the fine dust (no Steve McQueen jokes, please). The shoes that I removed were thin, badly worn, and cracked. They looked ready to delaminate from the backing plate in about two or three laps. I had some nifty, custom made Porterfield R4 race compound shoes to put in their place.

Ian came in handy. Drum brakes were created by the same smacktards who invented highway roundabouts, the IRS, Jenson Interceptors, mumus and teenagers. Like teenagers (and the IRS), they are cranky, prone to falling apart if you look at them funny, and don't do any real work anyway. They are designed to crush your spirit, in that even as you think you've successfully reassembled them, some fiendishly clever mechanism with laser-tight tolerances will suddenly explode in a mess of washers, clips, springs, widgets and bad taste. They require three small, strong hands to re-assemble. Never, ever, ever utter the words, "this is so much easier than it was last time..." in the vicinity of drum brakes. They will take it as a challenge, and they will prevail. Only someone who has never worked on drum brakes will think that I am speaking in hyperbole or exaggerating.

While I was cursing at my drum brakes and threatening genocide against their kind, Ian ignored me and found a nifty way to take my door-windows in and out. This would save about 10 pounds (hey, that could be .05 seconds per lap!). It was also a safety improvement, in that if I were to be t-boned by another car going very quickly, it would keep the glass from flying around inside the race car's cockpit. It was important to have an easy way to put them back in, however, so that the car would be reasonably water tight when I towed it on my open trailer. I hate sitting down in a wet racing seat!

After another hour or three of fiddling, we had the drum brakes put back together. I loosened the two cable-length adjusting nuts for the handbrake. Now, from being totally useless, my hope was that my rear brakes would improve to mostly useless. It would be at least a small improvement, and the new R4 shoes would easily last the rest of the year.

Three things to remember when working on drum brakes:

1) You need an extra pair of hands.

2) Clean thoroughly and don't inhale or vacuum that damn dust.

3) Mostly good enough isn't good enough.

4) Do one at a time and use the other for reference.

5) Do not hope. You will only be disappointed.

With a few other odds and ends out of the way, I was ready to race at Pacific Raceways.

Or not.

I showed up at Friday's test and tune ready to go. The goal of my first session was to heat cycle my brakes and refamiliarize myself with the track. I started nice and slow. I immediately spun in 8. Not "had a bit of oversteer" but, "pointed backwards lickity-split." This is not usual for me. I slowly started to bring up the speed again, and BAM! was suddenly backwards in 2. White smoke drifted away as a I pulled back onto the track.

Both were benign spins (i.e. I didn't smack into anything). They were atypical, however. As a rule, I don't spin my race car, unless I mean to, even when I push pretty hard.

I wondered if perhaps my newly installed drum brakes were dragging. But that would lead to corner-entry oversteer. Once I was on the gas, any rear-wheel decelerating tendency of the drum brakes would be counteracted by liberal usage of the right pedal. All the same, I jacked the rear of the car and played around with the drums, but didn't find any problems. They spun freely without the parking brake engaged, and wouldn't spin at all with it engaged.

I decided the issue was driving style, and went out to test and tune the driver. Through the rest of the day, the car was twitchy. Maybe the issue was driving style, but damn it if the car wasn't exhibiting unusual orneriness, rather than its usual predictability. I wasn't quick, but at least I wasn't spinning anymore.

Saturday morning practice went well, as I slowly brought the speeds up. On a whim, I decided to play with my front shock settings. I dialed them to full stiff. When I went out for afternoon qualifying the car was hairy. It would drift sideways 5 - 10 feet at a time at high-speed; essentially the shocks were too stiff to let the springs work. I also spun in turn 8, again. More embarrassing white smoke and that not-so-fast feeling as I watched folks drive by.

When I got going again, the car was vibrating, bad. Vibrating as in blurry-vision-teeth-falling-out-car-shaking-to-bits kind of vibration. When I got off I discovered that I had in fact flat spotted both of my front tires. Whoops. They were both fresh rubber. Damn! I decided to drive with them anyway – sometimes minor flat spots will round themselves out a bit. In theory.

I wasn't fast, either – I did a 1.50.1. I had been faster the year before, and I knew I could be faster this year.

I dialed the front shocks one complete turn softer.

Sunday morning qualifying was better, but the car still tended to drift unpredictably from side to side. It did this in the very brief braking zone for 5a; I clipped a cone and ended up entering 5a without braking at all. It was all very exciting. I gained about five car lengths on Mark Wilson’s red G-P 510 behind me, but I got the car slowed down and turned-in to 5b and 6. That was the lap I got a 1:49.6. Good – that was both a record lap for me and bumped me up a place in the G-P class qualifying. I was still behind both of the 510s and the blue MINI, however. I dialed the shocks half-a-turn softer.

The vibration hadn't gotten any better. Ken Hill suggested I move the flat spotted tires from the front to the rear. As Girlchief and I did this, it hit me. Both of my front tires were fresh, new tires. Both of my rears had been heat cycled many times, were over a year old and far past their prime. Duh. Sticky fronts. Crappy rears. Sudden oversteer. It made sense – and I should have known better.

I swapped the fronts to the rears, tweaked the pressure a bit and prepared myself for a race. I wasn't happy that I was not going to get a chance to drive the car with the new setup – something as trivial as swapping the tires like that can make a enormous difference when driving at the edge of adhesion. But I hoped it would be for the better. As I drove down to pre-grid I was more nervous than usual.