The first half of the 7-hour race on Saturday went as well as it could have, with Peter and I finishing our 90-minute stints in great shape. Andrew was running as high as 2nd in class and 10th overall during his stint when he came coasting into the pits with a dead battery. Kevin, the car’s owner and most knowledgeable Swift owner in the world, hadn’t slept the night before because we blew up the clutch disc in testing so he drove the 5-hour round-trip to his house and back to get a spare disc and then swapped it in overnight at the track. The poor guy then did an impressively fast alternator swap, but cut a wire he thought only powered the volt gauge when in fact it also excites the alternator. So it took us a while to sort that whole deal out, and by the time the car was running again, Ken was in the driver’s seat and ready to have some fun without any consideration for our position in class (since we were now way down the order). His road racing cherry was thus popped in a suitably gentle fashion, and he did a fantastic job managing the traffic and bringing the car home in one piece.
We then thrashed pretty hard on the car Saturday evening, since we needed to cook up a better fix on the alternator wiring issue (we just ran it hot without a fuse for the end of the Saturday race, which was pretty risky).
Plus we replaced a bad rear wheel bearing (this chassis is known for weaksauce rear wheel bearings), replaced a failing front sway bar endlink, and changed the transmission fluid since 3rd gear was getting flogged harder than ’50 Shades of Grey’. There was more metal flakes in the trans fluid we drained than in a hot rod’s paint job, so it was going to take a minor miracle for it to survive 7 more hours of abuse on Sunday.
We also rotated the tires, and as you can see, the Falkens still look amazingly fresh given the 3-4 hours of testing they had on them Friday and then the 5 hours or so we piled on them during the Saturday race. Big thanks to Wally’s Wheels in Collingwood who mounted and balanced all 8 of our Falkens for us. For anyone up in the Collingwood area, these guys are total pros with tons of experience taking care of the wheel and tire needs of racers and grocery getters alike.
After the Sunday morning driver’s meeting Andrew jumped in the car for the race start and held nothing back. You’ll see his race start in the video, and I think you’ll agree he did a pretty amazing job using the outside line to his advantage.
After that Kevin finally got to do some driving, and he had an action-packed first door-to-door experience. By the end of his stint settled into a really nice rhythm and turned a bunch of very consistent and fast laps. The dude’s got skills!
Then Ken went out for his second taste of Chumpcar action and appeared to be having a blast as we shot photos and video from the inside of Turn 3. But then he stopped coming around. Which could have meant a few things. He crashed, the car stop running, or he pitted for some unexpected reason. So we ran back to pit lane just in time to see the Swift being towed in by an Ambulance. This was actually a good sign, since the car was straight enough to be flat towed, so as long as Ken was in the car and not the ambulance, things weren’t too bad.
Ken jumped out of the car and told us he lost power coming out of Turn 2 so shut it down and coasted off in Turn 3. Certainly sounded like an engine failure from his description, and sure enough we found a hole in the block from rod #2 failing. In hindsight, we think it starved for oil, since in our rush to do a million other things on the car, we forgot to check the oil level on Sunday morning. The car has an Accusump in it, which no doubt kept it alive much longer than it had any business surviving, but we probably let the oil level get so low that eventually a bearing starved and spun. Not our proudest moment, but on the upside we bought two spare motors for $100 and Kevin has already swapped a fresh one in.
Regardless of the motor failure, I think this video shows you just how much fun we had, plus we learned a lot about the car and how to make it better for the next race (including keeping it full of oil). We also got a pretty good feel for how the Chumpcar rules work and how the organization operates. Having competing at both the grassroots and pro levels for a lot of years in Canada and the States, I was very impressed by Wendy, Sal and their crew. They did a fantastic job and offer what I consider a high quality experience at a bargain basement price. We’ll definitely be back for another taste of Chumpcar action later this year, and our Swift and whole team will be better prepared now that we’ve got this first one under our belts.
