Roebling Tales and Videos thread


#1

What a great time!

We had, for Roebling, a big field. With the exception of a couple special IFU weekends over the years, it was the biggest Roebling field ever. 22 signed up, 2 no shows and 2 engine failures hurt our #'s, but one PTE 325e guy (Savannah based Bud Scott) kindly joined us so we could get back to 19 for deep Toyo Bucks.

We all went out for chow Friday night. Fred and I headed to the Mx place a little early to reserve a table for 15. Ultimately we had 30, count them 30, of us. It was terrific!

The weather was beautiful. Saturday had folks running some really fast times. I don’t have a feel for what happened around the field, I was struggling with some problems, but Rob Eskew won. We had some confusion at Impound that the new tech guys and I have to sort out.

I was losing oil pressure on left turns. The car was behaving like it had no right-side baffle in the oil pan. Oil pressure would consistently drop to 20psi in turn 3. I could make the behavior happen by simply scrubbing my tires in a L turn on the outlap. Hopefully I will find that the problem is indeed the my baffle has simply fallen off the side of my pan where I glued it 4-5yrs ago with JB Weld. Yes, I really did that. . I got impatient with the local AL welder, and my own attempts to weld AL were unimpressive.

After Sat Qual I put in an extra quart of oil. That is to say, I was 2 quarts high. This made the engine unhappy and after filling up the bottle I have connected to the rocker arm vent, some excess oil wetted down the underside of the car and got on my tires. In my Sat race video I got so sideways in 7 that, for the very first time ever, I had to put in 360deg of steering to keep the car on the track. I had a GTS2 guy right on my bumper and I’m sure he thought me a madman.

I also had big power problems in Saturday’s race. I wasn’t able to hit 5th gear on the front straight until braking zone marker 5. Once I realized that I’d been blowing oil, I pulled out my spark plugs expecting to find them oil-soaked. But no, they were fine. The only other theory I could come up with was that the oil had soaked my O2 sensor. I was left in “hope” mode, hoping that the problem would go away. I figured that if the problem was indeed an oil-soaked O2 sensor, that maybe the oil would burn off. For some reason it had not occurred to me to watch my F/A meter to see if maybe the O2 sensor was leaning out my mixture or something.

Hope mode worked. The problem was gone on Sunday.

Saturday night we had great low country boil for chow at the banquet. There was tons of food. Everyone was kinda tired so we, uncharacteristically, didn’t go out for chow.

Sunday I figured I’d hope for the best re. oil pressure. Sure, I wanted to race, but I also wanted to go home with a block that didn’t have any big holes in it.

My old tires were pretty bad for Saturday’s race, so I put on a different set of old tires for Sunday. To my surprise, one of them had no air in it at all. I figured that one of my kids had been fooling with it. I put air in the tire and checked it’s pressure after a couple hours. The tire seemed fine.

I started Sunday’s race in the back with Robert and Fred. I got a good start and zoomed past a few folks. But after a few turns I started having problems keeping my rear under me. I felt it out for a couple laps, and finally decided that it was likely that the damn tire wasn’t so fine after all. I was 3 laps into a 40min race. I figured that I had time to go in, sort this out, and get back in the race. So I headed for the pits.

What followed was agony as I tried to get the pit-in guy to check the tire pressure on my LR tire. We could barely make out what each other was saying, and he was clearly not emotionally prepared to switch gears from “pit-in official” to “find a fucking air pressure gauge guy.”

Pit-in official patiently explained that he was sorry but he didn’t have an air pressure gauge. I encouraged him, at the tops of my lungs, to kindly ask one of the 6 guys, standing in various places on the pit wall with an air pressure gauge hanging out of their pocket, if they could spare a moment to check the motherfucking air pressure in my LR tire.

I worry now that I may have been a teensy bit too assertive re. enlisting aid.

The tire was at 10psi. So I hustled to SpecE30 land looking for someone that could change my tire w/0 me having to unstrap. And there was Danny Parkhurst. Danny didn’t have to shift gears at all. It took 1sec to explain the problem and he raced to find some tire, any tire, jack, gun and torque wrench. In 60secs I was turning around and heading back for the pits.

It was one of Robert Patton’s tires. Let me state it now for all who gather here, Robert is really much faster than his lap times would have us believe. I’ve now raced on one of Robert’s tires and it’s truly awful. I went from drifting with big countersteer because of a flat, to drifting with big countersteer because of a Robert tire.

Race blown, I just went looking for folks to fool with. And that turned out to be plenty of fun. In the relatively consequence free environment that is Roebling, I had a good training session on dealing with lots of slip. I’d fight with a couple folks for a couple laps, and if I fell back and if it just seemed impossible to keep up with the traction I had, I’d just back off and putt-putt for a minute so another group would catch up. The last lap I fought it out with BillZ and we had great fun.

I’m usually a bit wary of going 2-wide turn after turn. I usually make a decision early on as to who is going to come out best, and if it’s not me, I back out instead of fighting it out in the high risk situation probably for naught. But I was feeling plucky at RR and spend a lot more time then usual 2-wide in turns. Heck, there was a lot of that everywhere. It was really cool, it was really fun. I saw a lot of friends fighting it out together, but being careful to give the other guy enough room to make it work if they could. It was really a great commentary on SpecE30.


#2

Scott, thanks for the kind compliment. New tires matter. Laura and I had put new (although purchased in 2014) tires on the rear at CMP in February and the car qualified okay.

Those rears, as well as some old hand-me-downs from Lako’s 2014 races at Road Atlanta, are now gone and she and I will have to break down and buy some new stuff(hate to buy for CMP).

Watch out to all other mid-pack racers: we aim big to, once again, define mediocrity.

Congratulations to the SE30 race winners. Those race wins are difficult to come by.

Big congratulations to a NEW race winner in PTD, Aaron Whitinger. (Did I spell that right?)

RP

Other stories?


#3

I want to thank everyone for kindly letting me hang out with the group this weekend. I really enjoyed it and am amazed at the comraderly. It’s got me really motivated to get my new car done and join in the fun.

Warren


#4

I had a great time all weekend as well. I think I was the “midpack champion”, as I was the first guy behind the “fast 6” both days.

Saturday I had a good race with Fred; looking at the comparative lap times it was almost like field stripes; one lap I opened a small gap, the next lap he closed it. Eventually lapped traffic worked more in my favor and I was able to pull out a small lead and hang on for 7th.

Sunday AM I was determined to get back into the 1:23 range again, which I had visited for the first time ever in January this year. Charged out behind the “fast 6” and was tight on the pack all the way to T5 on our first flyer, when I threw it away with a bad 5 that had me 4 wheels off. So much for following the fast cats to another 1:23. Ended up about where I deserved again, P7 (sigh).

With all the pre-race DQs and what-not, I ended up starting 5th, took 4th at the start and was hanging onto the fast group for a few laps, but then they slowly gapped me. After that, was just cruising around for the most part. Lost count of the spins off-track in T1/T2, both our class and others, and ended up 5th. I’ll take it, and get ready for RA in June.

The Whitinger compound was, as always, the place to be. Lots of great stories and just hanging out. The Sandro ex-Petty NASCAR made a noisy entrance, and a few of us got our calisthenics in by push-starting that monster on Sunday.


#5

Here are the pictures. :woohoo:


#6

Jim, those are awesome pics. WTG man.

I think I figured out my oil pressure problem in left turns. Recall that we have 2 oil pressure relief valves. One in the pump, probably to protect it’s drive shaft from stress due to thick oil in cold climes, and the 2nd that hangs down from the block and sets max pressure. I have the 2nd one removed tho. I stuck in a big bolt, years ago, to block off that port. I did this for 2 reasons. First, you can put in a much better baffle in the oil pan if you lose that oil pressure relief valve. Oil pan right-side baffles have a big hole for the oil pressure relief valve and the hole allows oil to go thru the baffle. With the oil pressure relief valve, my baffle perfectly seals the right side of the sump by creating a 1" shelf.

2nd, I had an engine fail because that oil pressure relief valve was weak and wouldn’t hold oil pressure. It wasn’t really an engine failure, it was just a matter of replacing all the bearings, but in the legend of my “replaced 10 engines in 18month,” or whatever the hell it was, it counts as an engine failure.

The damned big-ass bolt that blocked the oil pressure relief valve port was loose. I’m not sure why it only leaked oil in left turns, but I couldn’t see anything else wrong last night. I’m sure it was torqued to spec, I’m pretty anal about that sort of thing. So I imagine that the torque spec that was good enough for the softer steel of the oil pressure relief valve that would deform a bit and stay in place nicely, wasn’t enough for the hard steel of the big-ass bolt. This time it’s going in with locktite.

But first I need to wait 10days or so for the Blackstone report to come back. A bearing replacement may be necessary. I did note tho, that when I dropped the oil load there was no sign of sparklies in the oil.


#7

Clean religiously, apply red loctite…forget:laugh:


#8

Boys and girls, where’s the tales of misadventure and daring? Give me some raw meat for the Speednews story pls.


#9

No real stories. Saturday mostly just watched as Chuck slowly disappeared in the distance; Sunday ran with the Old Farts Racing League in the back. But had a GREAT TIME both days. Man, am I glad to be back…


#10

Well, it was my first time racing at Roebling and my first time at the track since a DE in 2007. So I was slow. And confused. Which makes it just like every other race weekend. :slight_smile:

Saturday started out just like CMP…I forgot to empty my trunk before practice. So Jim Pantas did me a favor by removing the ballast (tool box) from the truck, and I meandered onto the track to start trying to figure it out. Practice was slow and I was on my CMP tires, so that didn’t help.

I qualified 16th on Saturday (on my CMP tires) and finished 15th in the race (still on my CMP tires). :slight_smile:

After following some folks in the race, I determined that one of my big issues was grip, so I switched to stickers on Sunday. That bought me some faster times and an opportunity to take some better lines in the turns without experiencing four wheel drift everywhere. I qualified 10th on Sunday, but still wasn’t running the lap times I thought I should be. I later determined that I am overslowing for most of the turns, especially Turn 1/2 and 4.

The race was fun, had some great battles early on, and then Scott played with me for the last lap or two. I finished 8th, but more importantly, I got faster in every session. I plan on running a few track days at RRR to try to pick up some speed before the next race there.

Overall, it was a great weekend, and I got to show Alena Historic Savannah, which she had never seen before.


#11

Bill, work on you exit speed in t9. Hug the inside line like you are going into the pit lane. More grip there equals more straightaway talent and that was the place where I was able to get a run on you.

Don’t brake as much for t1, let it slide and scrub off speed…but then you have to make the awkward turn-in for t2.

RP


#12

[quote=“Patton” post=82682]Bill, work on you exit speed in t9. Hug the inside line like you are going into the pit lane. More grip there equals more straightaway talent and that was the place where I was able to get a run on you.

Don’t brake as much for t1, let it slide and scrub off speed…but then you have to make the awkward turn-in for t2.

RP[/quote]

Thanks Robert!!! By the way, it was great seeing you at the car show on Sunday!


#13

Time for another show, Going to the Mitty?

RP


#14

Yep I’m going to the Mitty tomorrow with (grown) son, anybody else going?


#15

HAH! Total score!

Recall I was hitting 20psi at high rpm every time I went thru turn 3. The cause was the my oil pressure relief valve delete bolt being loose. Well I just got my oil analysis back and it’s fine. I did pull rod bearing #6 and take a look and it seemed ok, but it’s even better to get an analysis back and find that it doesn’t show any bearing bits. Woohoo! Dang how I dodged that bullet. Boys and girls, go buy yourself some Redline.

And use locktite on your oil pressure relief valve.