Racing at Roebling with VDCA 18-19Sep

#41

I should be there between 5&6pm, traffic permitting.

#42

Roebling adventure. Participants:

Patton
Patton
Fred S
Me
Al K
Jim L
Chuck T

Eric Nissan and his wife in an E30 KP car
Jodi (Corvette guy, “Falcon” at NASA Forums)
A couple E36 guys that ran Saturday only.

A lot of camradry and track time for the dollar. Not enough SpecE30’s tho. There were only about 50 event participants so the paddock was pretty empty. Two races on Saturday and one race on Sunday.

Saturday Qual my clutch started slipping. I’d noticed that the clutch pedal had been pretty easy to push down lately. I thought that my weekend was over. I’ve never had a good racing weekend at Roebling, my home track. Something always happens to turn it into a goatscrew. But Lady Luck shined the good offices of RPatton on me and he had 3, yes 3 clutches and pressure plates with him.

Saturday I qual’d 3rd behind the Pattons. They are fast.

I headed home and put the car on the scissor lift. Getting at the clutch was harder then I thought. It took me 4hrs to get the transmission moved backwards a couple inches. Fred, Jim and Al, showed up soon after. Another 4hrs later we were done. It was 8 hard hours of work.

Scissor lifts have their charms, but clutch installs isn’t one of them. A scissor lift is a bad fit for dropping the drive shaft, and it’s almost impossible to get 2 people under the car working together.

The old clutch disk was fine, and since the pedal felt “light” I assume that the problem was the spring fingers in the pressure plate. It would be nice if you could “see” a weak pressure plate, but the weak pressure plate spring fingers just looks like, well, like, pressure plate spring fingers.

Eric’s KP E30 broke two rocker arms at Saturday Qual.

Sunday I qual’d 2nd behind Robert. At that start I just tried to not do my usual “lose 2-3 places by turn 3”. I managed to keep the others back and tucked in behind Robert. I tried keep up with him but he slowly got away from me as we checked out from the rest of the pack. After 10-15min Robert started dropping back with a hiccuping engine. That put me in the lead.

As the 45min race wore on my tires got more and more slippery. I went from 1:26’s to 1:27’s, and after about 35min it was everything I could do to stay low 1:28’s. Some mystery black car started coming up from behind. I thought that it was Eric in his KP car, so I didn’t worry about it. But as he got closer I decided that it was Al catching up so I starting pushing harder.

The race seemed to be going on forever. I was watching the clock and worrying about the ever approaching black car behind me. But since it was Al, I figured that eventually he’d get the red haze re. beating his buddy and he’d end up in the grass. I kept telling myself “He’ll screw up, he’ll screw up”.

Oh for god’s sakes make this race end. The black E30 was close enough that if I made any mistakes it would be on me. I was riding the thin edge of disaster on my slippery tires trying to keep ahead of Al.

F*****G FINALLY, in my mirror I see Al go off into the dirt at turn 5. I would later find out that it was Chuck Taylor, not Al.

The checker was the next lap.

Laura had to pull out of the race with a broken rocker. 8 E30’s and 2 cars have rocker arm problems. Maybe we should revisit that debate re. aftermarket rockers.

It was a good weekend. In true SpecE30 fashion one guy brought major parts that saved the weekend for another. And then a big SpecE30 crew all jumped in and worked hard to help with the repairs.

#43

Congratulations to new race winner (Sunday) Scott Gress.
Saturday’sraces had Laura Patton as a race winner and Fred Switzer as a race winer. These two have been on the winners stand before, but I think it was Scott’s first win (maybe a BMWCCA race before?).

So, congratulations to all. Lots of wrenchin’ racin’ and camaraderie at this event.

RP

#44

That was one seriously fun weekend. Maybe not so much to those with broken rockers, but that sort of thing just happens every now and then. Those that didn’t come down really missed out.

#45

Patton wrote:

[quote]Congratulations to new race winner (Sunday) Scott Gress.
Saturday’sraces had Laura Patton as a race winner and Fred Switzer as a race winer. These two have been on the winners stand before, but I think it was Scott’s first win (maybe a BMWCCA race before?).

So, congratulations to all. Lots of wrenchin’ racin’ and camaraderie at this event.

RP[/quote]

Scott sez:"heck no, ain’t my first win."
So, just a simple congratulations to the weekend’s race winners.