seattletom wrote:
Team Slotus' fans need to know.
benny_toe wrote:
Yeah, what Tom said.
Ahh, the clamor of my fans, how I love it! All two and both of you!
Before I get into the weekend report, I probably should back up a bit. Did I tell y'all that we bought an RV several months ago? It was a "fixer upper" to some extent, but I worked on things and had things worked on and finally, TWWTFM and I did an "experiment" where we spent the night in it as though we were camping out. RV was parked beside the house, but we pretended. That went well so we planned a "stage two" trip. We had planned to tow the DogA$$Slotus to the track on Saturday, spend the night and race on Sunday. However, the track was hosting a Saturday evening event, so we couldn't park on the level pavement or plug into the electric service and it looked like rain, so we didn't quite do that.
What I did was get up Sunday morning and tow the trailer to the track with the RV. It did just fine, no problems other than me getting used to driving the RV itself and having such a long "train" behind me. It's a 28 ft RV and then the enclosed trailer that's probably around 20 more. Looks like a string of boxcars in the mirror...
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The race itself went kind of OK. Nothing broke (well, nothing big), fell off (almost), or caught fire (dodged that one entirely) so it was a good day. Made 4 runs before lunch and 4 after, put the car back on the trailer under its own power. OK, only sort of... I installed a winch in the trailer a couple of weeks ago and use that for loading/unloading now. I highly recommend it, especially if you're loading alone without a spotter/helper. I'll have to take a video of that operation, just to show off.
When I re-installed the shocks, I was kinda short on time. (Read that as: "Spent too much time playing with the grand-kids on Friday/Saturday." I'm not sorry.
) So I didn't put the car on the scales, just set the ride heights to what I thought would be a good starting point and away we went. What I discovered was that the rear was too low and allowed the tires to hit the fenders in the back. They hit hard enough to almost rip off the C-channel attached to the rear part that the front part nests in. Made a helluba racket...
Also popped a rivet on the passenger side body panel at the rear.
I took the rear clip off entirely, which helped, but I didn't discover the missing rivet until first run that afternoon. Using "The Handyman's Secret Weapon" (Duct tape) I braced up the rear side panel as best I could. Still had problems with clearance, so I raised the ride up about half an inch. The last thing I wanted to do was totally rip off a fender and/or ruin a tire. (Especially that last... Them big ol' tahrs is EX-spend-sive!)
OK that was the drama... I also found I have much better grip in the rear. That's a good thing. (OK, somebody make an "A$$ Grabbing joke... We'll wait...) The re-worked shocks and the rebuild of the A-Arms and their mounts seems to be paying off. I'm still kinda far off the pace of the really fast bunch, but improving. I blame the car for half of that "slowness" and the driver for the other half. We'll get there... From first run to last I cut off about 4 seconds (62.xx down to 58.xx) even with all the fiddling about with tire clearance and such.
Engine ran just fine. Plenty of power, lots of good V8 noise, pulls strong even in third gear. Nothing caught fire and no giblets were expelled from the crank case. (Ya gotta have standards... )
Oh, and during lunch, me and Earl made and ate our sammiches at the table in the RV, sitting on the cushioned benches and drinking cold drinks out of the fridge. After the event was all done, I loaded up (with the winch!) and drove that train home. Backed it all in beside the house and didn't hit the front steps or TWWTFM in the process. It was a good day overall. Life is good!
Peace, Love and "Tire Clearance" --
JDK
_________________
JD, father of
Quinn, Son of a...
Build LogQuinn the Slotus:Ford 302 Powered, Mallock-Inspired, Tube Frame, Hillclimb Special "Gonzo and friends: Last night must have been quite a night. Camelot moments, mechanical marvels, Rustoleum launches, flying squirrels, fru-fru tea cuppers, V8 envy, Ensure catch cans -- and it wasn't even a full moon." -- SeattleTom