I got back to PA Tues evening. We spent Wed working on the car getting it ready and tuning the shocks. Thank heavens it didn't rain much, only a shower a couple times, so it was mostly dry. Still big puddles and mud holes all over. Thursday morning we did some pre-running on the course.
Thursday afternoon we ran the time trial qualifier for starting position and came in 9th. This was a short mostly rock course with times around 2 minutes. They started us Fri two in a row, one minute apart, so 9th put us in the 5th row. We burped a tire flat around mile 5, filled it up, then later we broke off a Walker Evans wheel on the drivers rear. Broke a couple studs and then pulled the other three through the wheel breaking the wheel. No way to tell how it happened, but the wheel was real chewed up around the lug holes so most likely the lug nuts worked loose.......but they were tightened the night before, so who knows. All five studs (9/16) where gone or destroyed and we had no spare or jack, so we were pretty screwed. We had just finished a pretty long high speed section on county roads (they actually closed a section of road and rerouted the school bus for Fri, pretty cool) and dropped down a long rocky hill, and the wheel came off giving it some power to get over a big rock. Our friends Sean and Pete, who we were sharing pits with, eventually came by and the plan was for them to bring us a tire and wheel lugs. They ended up breaking a shock and had to put on an air shock on the rear in the pits before they came back around to us.
In the mean time another friend Travis came through the pits and agreed to drop us some lug studs and nuts, so they tossed the bag to us as they went by. We got a jack from one of the other competitors who had broken near us, they didn't have a spare tire so they let us take their jack. So we got it jacked up and got the new studs in (with quite a bit of difficulty) and couldn't suck them all the way into the flange. Sean and Pete came by and dropped off the spare and we put it on and were ready to go, but it all took over 3 hours. We took off but stopped a couple times for me to tighten the lug nuts since the studs hadn't sucked all the way in. We got to one of the harder obstacles about a mile before the finish line, gassed it up the very top ledge and smacked a big rock with the drivers front as we came over the top. It bounced us back and the pass rear went in a perfectly tire sized hole between the rocks and we broke a rear shaft. The crowd told us to stop since they saw what happened. It was a 35 spline chromo shaft in a 9" housing and it broke about an inch inside the flange, right at the wheel bearing.
By this time it was after 3:00 and we weren't finished with the first lap yet, so one of the crew got the spare axle and brought it to us. This DQ'd us since we're not allowed any outside help (just from other racers) but we were done anyway. We fixed the shaft and drove on to the finish line. Quite a day, but it was fun. While we were sitting waiting on parts and working on the rig, we got to see the race as the other cars were lapping us. I helped a few other racers who broke or had issues near us. Really, it was a pretty cool race. It would be fun to come out and race it....if it didn't rain. I got covered in muddy water a few times with the puddles and we only did one lap, and it had been pretty dry all week. There were 33 cars in the race, and 17 finished.
I've met some of the guys from back east, and it was fun to get to meet more of them. Saw a number of guys from the NAC chapter. It was a fun race course, about 17 miles and the race did 4 laps. Dirt and rocky sections through the trees, up and down the hills, some wide open dirt sections and some asphalt and gravel roads, as well as steep rocky climbs and plenty of rock gardens. I'm glad I got a chance to go. If it wasn't so far, it would be fun to take mine and race there.
guys.
