Above: The Blitzwagen fends off a BMW 3-series on the right while being chased by the Dale Sale 350 V8 Camaro.
Above: Carolina Motorsports Park is 2.28 miles around. This race was our forth with the BlitzWagen at this track, and the Blitzwagen's 6th time there. RetroRacing's best time there so far is a 2:06.
Fast Times & A Heroic Fix at CMP
It is Saturday morning, May 2nd, the spring sun bright, the clock ticking towards 10 AM. Team Captain and driver Hawkeye is at the wheel.
77 cars in three classes cruise around the track, burning fuel, watching for the green flag. We all have two 7-hour full throttle days ahead of us. Tool boxes are open, gas cans full, throats tight in anticipation, looking for but wishing away trouble.
This is LeMons endurance racing for $500 cars. But you have to look hard for $500 cars here, this field has more than it's share of BMW 3-series contenders, even a 635 CSi. V8's abound. We have a humble Super Bug with a bold name and turbocharged team ego.
Suddenly the green is out, and instantly the engines go from near-idle to roar. We watch our BlitzWagen's "Russian Front" mud and snow camo paint scheme blur in with the others.
We were in for a rough beginning. Just off the trailer yesterday, the pivot bolt on the right rear diagonal arm had literally come loose, the suspension arm had shifted, and the wheel gone into extreme negative camber. Loose pivot bolts are rare. We'd quickly retightened it, but what if that had happened at speed?
Too many things had been loosening recently, and driver/mechanic David Scott bounced on the engine's exhaust and declared the front transmission mount was going soft. We have a stock rubber mount, and it's worsening effectiveness is allowing heavy cyclic engine vibrations to penetrate through the frame. All our Ghias have steel transaxle and engine mounts, but we've never found a steel front mount for the Super Bug.
We watch the race. Most cars are grouping into packs with roughly equal power and lap times. A few are surging ahead. The Blitzwagen is one. But then -- bang -- Hawk misses a shift and shatters the 1-2 cylinder side rocker arm shaft. He has to be towed in but there is a complication. If the engine is spun on the starter, clutch down, from within the bell housing, there is a heavy thunk-thunk that sounds like a loose flywheel or pressure plate.
David, Jamie, and myself quickly pull the engine (we are too highly experienced at this) and David begins the rocker shaft repair as Jamie and I check the flywheel and clutch. I see fresh gouged flywheel teeth marks in the bottom of the transaxle bell housing. The upper engine bolts had been loosening and allowed the engine to droop backwards relative to the bell housing whenever the clutch was pressed.
This was human error (aka driver/mechanic Jamie Chambers). He had installed the engine only three days ago, right off the test stand, apparently got distracted and never finished tightening the upper bolts. In any case, we have the engine reinstalled and Hawk and the Blitzwagen back in the race in just over an hour, but we've lost precious laps.
Above: The BeatRetro Team. Garage Bay #22, right beside us.
Then, bolts tight, Hawkeye picks a dogfight with the BeatRetro team's 1978 350 CID Camaro. This is our friend Dale Sale from Birmingham, who has his son Dale Jr., daughter Cameron, and son-in-law Justin driving the big Chevy. They have a goal. They don't have to beat everybody, just us. To this end, Dale has brought a special trophy that the loser must take home. It reads "You Talk S**t better Than You Race Award."
The Hawkeye-Dale duel has them taking wild near-miss chances and that lasts until they do hit each other, when Hawkeye was passing Dale on the outside of a turn. The impact throws Hawk into the ArmCo on the other side, and gets them both black flagged. Amazingly, damage to both cars is limited to gouges and scrapes.
Above; After the Dale-Hawkeye collison, the Blitzwagen lost a sideskirt to the ArmCo barrier.
LeMons can bar a driver from a race if black-flagged three times, and if the whole team seems to be driving crazy, the expulsion can apply to the team as well. The Camaro is handling poorly with the higher speeds at CMP vs what it could generate at Barber in February. It has only leaf springs at the rear, no axle location at all, and turn-in becomes "spin" very quickly. That quirk was to send the Camaro team in the penalty box a few times over the weekend.
Then, cool, steady Dr. Steve takes the Bug out, making laps. "Cool and steady" is a differential reference to Hawk, who tends to break things and hit people. Hawk had praised the Blitzwagen's power but warned Steve it seemed that the brakes were getting iffy, which no one wanted to hear because we installed a brand new 20.6mm CSP master cylinder in December, and it had worked perfectly at Barber in February.
Dr. Steve quickly adapts to the car and is soon driving beyond his comfort zone even though he is having to pump the brakes more and more. He posts a series of 2:11's, a few seconds faster than his and Hawk's average 2:13 to 2:15 laps at CMP.
Steve hasn't come up a notch, he has come up two notches.
Above; The oil tank as we'd been running it.
Above: The oil tank as modified by Dale Sale's shop.
The weather is dry, sunny, and in the mid 70's (F. scale). Our oil temps are between 220° F. to 240° F. The new dry sump oil baffle system has stopped random zero oil pressure warning light flashes as cornering forces made the oil swirl and surge away from the oil pickup inside the tank. Our oil this race, (same as Barber in February) is Shell diesel Rotella T, 15w40.
Above: On most driver changes, the fresh driver went out willingly. Team spirit!
Dr. Steve races with no one. He focuses on turning laps and hammers them out until his hour + is driven, he brings in the Blitzwagen and says the brakes need work. Jamie bleeds, yelling "Pump! Pump! Hold it!" over and over to Dr. Steve who was complying. All that came out of the rear bleeder valves was sputtering steam. We are using 570 F. Wilwood racing fluid. And it is boiling!
We have four-wheel disk brakes with VW Ghia calipers (dual 40mm pistons) and carbon-kevlar Porterfield pads. Never ever even had brake fade. But today we are boiling our brake fluid.
Then the answer presents itself. We are still on the 60-series Accelera tires from Barber, not our usual 50-series size, and the additional leverage from the contact patch of the tire to the axle center was enough to overwork our brakes. This is a great example of a brake setup working for one car and not working for another -- the difference in tire sidewalls!
We considered changing tires then and there, as we had a stack of 50-series BFG's ready, but felt we'd lost too much time already with the broken rockers and loose engine mounting bolts. Jamie takes the Blitzwagen out, knowing to favor the brakes. But the racing fates were not ready to let us go that easily.
Above: With no car-to-pit radio, no one can hear you scream.
Jamie had not made one lap, and at speed in a hairpin in traffic, the right inner tie rod end nut came off, and the right front wheel was free to point in whatever direction it felt like. After one brief instant of terror, Jamie recovered control (sort of) and incredibly nursed the car back to the garage area, his face as white as his helmet.
We had a new nut installed and Jamie in the race again before he was fully out of hyper ventilating mode.
I stand by the fence in the sun, amazed at our luck, watching Jamie go around. Then I notice he has a red car -- the BMW 635 CSi -- on him. The VW-BMW race goes on for many laps, each car dicing for advantage. The two weave through traffic, sweep through corners, drag race down the straights. This is a sight, the long low Ultimate Driving Machine side by side with the bulbous, upright People's Car ... until the Bimmer breaks something and limps in.
Later, I'd comment on the race-within-a-race to Jamie. "That was great!" I said. "You really held your own out there!"
"He held his own," Jamie said. The humble, low-tech Kadron-powered Blitzwagen was doing great.
And then, having raised our hopes and showed us what can be, the racing fates sucker punched us while we were distracted. The left rear disk brake hub stripped out, the splines simply gone. At first Jamie thought a CV joint had broken or come loose. He had to be towed in. It is midafternoon, well over three hours to the end of the first day's racing.
We do not have a spare rear brake hub. There is no joy in Garage Space #21.
Just when we needed one most, a hero arose. "I think I can fix it," driver/mechanic David Scott said calmly. Many things flash through your mind at such a moment. We are not going to win, but we are not going to quit, either. "Let's do it," I said.
Above: Heroic Fix in progress.
David's plan is to hand-cut new splines in the cast iron hub that align with the steel splines of the axle, and hammer in steel key ways (like a flat nail, but made of hardened steel) for a force fit. Could such a scheme work? Could it hold?
With the hub Vise-Gripped to the Blitzwagen's rear bumper bar, and metal blades in a electric reciprocating hand saw, David began to cut. The hub had to be swapped from the Vice Grips to the axle often, David keeping alignments straight, and slowly, very slowly, the splines emerged like a sculpture from the hands of an artist.
The work went on past sundown and into the night under bright Halogen work lights. A small crowd formed to watch, people coming and going as the Saturday night parties in the garage area progressed. David finished near midnight, using a borrowed 110v welder to bead the axle nut, axle, and hub together. The only way apart now is to be cut.
Above: Hawk dressed for the Saturday night partying.
Sunday Morning, May 3rd.
David gets first shift, to test his own work. We can't just take it easy. This is a race. The green flag whips from the tower and all the Blitzwagen's fury hits the hub repair as David stands on it. The repair holds. Our stomachs are in knots hoping for it to keep holding.
David soon posts our best lap time of the weekend, a 2:06. This equals his best time at the track in May 2013, on Weber 44 IDF's. The Camaro also gets it's best time of 2:05 today on a big 4-bbl Holley. Oddly enough, both of us get about 10 MPG racing.
Above: The Blitzwagen is quick out of the corners. A 3-series Bimmer and a Ricegrinder try to keep up.
During "quiet time" (a break in the racing at noon so as not to disturb any church services that might be in earshot) David and the crew swap out the 60-series tires for 50-series.
Dr. Steve goes back out, driving even harder than yesterday. The brakes are good, no more fluid boiling, proving our conclusion about the tire diameters correct. Dr. Steve is nothing if not a gentleman, but today the BlitzWagen's power and handling got to his dark side and he managed to cut off, block, and run enough interference on enough cars to get one team to come angrily looking for him. And, he cut down his 2:11's to a 2:10.
An hour passes, and Hawk takes over next. While he is lapping with great intensity and concentration, a team of Jamaican racers come looking for David, who on seeing them coming is letting his neurons decide fight or flight. As they approach him, they are laughing. They have a 2001 Dodge Stratus 3.0 V6, and as they embrace David, who had apparently given them a race to remember, they are saying "This mon, he never let up, he never let up!"
Finally, it is Jamie's turn again. He straps in, accelerates out of the pits to the thundering herd of cars, and drives hard and fast. He overtakes several cars at a time in the tighter corners again and again, as the bigger, heavier competition bunches up in traffic.
Above: Jamie gets beer-sprayed on Victory Lane.
Then it is over. He takes the checkered with a scream of stinger exhaust, and on the victory lane approach back to the garages, gets sprayed by showers of beer foam from dancing, celebrating crew from all the team.
End Of Race Recap.
The Blitzwagen finished 54th overall out of 77, with 186 laps. That's 424 racing miles, going flat out. By comparison, the 1st place overall winner, a strong turbocharged Volvo Bertone (1:59 lap), logged 394 laps. The hours we spent in the garage on repairs would have put very close to the top finishers.
Above: The Camaro did beat us, taking 52nd overall with 201 laps. Hawk got the trophy.
The fastest lap of any car there was 1:54, posted by a 305 V8 Chevy Monza, bodied to look like the middle 70's DeKon Monzas, which were very fast indeed.
We made a plastic-cup champagne toast to the Blitzwagen and each other, and started the long drive home at sunset.
FJC
Congrats!!!