Going into this weekend, Jim had 1st place for the Kryder cup at Nelson
Ledges locked up. So when Cathy Ann needed a motor after the last race, we
swapped Jim's motor over to her car. Jim's car got the U20 motor we built
from pieces parts to play with. Cathy needed 10 points to pass the second
place car and finish the year in Second behind her Dad, Jim. Saturday
practice and qualifying went well and Jim had fun learning how to drive a
different motor. His normal R16 generates all it's horse power north of
6500 with no low torque. The play U2 has lots of low end but we worried
about turning over 6500 rpms.
The qualifying race went well. Cathy set some great laps times and Jim
too first in class and even buried a few cars in EP that should have been
ahead of him, and destroyed a Mini Cooper S running in SPU. But once back
to the paddock, Jim said he was down to just 5 the gear. We kicked around
pulling an all-nighter to pull the motor.tranny and replace what we suspect
is a broken drift pin. In the end we decided to trailer the car since we
had nothing to gain.
Sunday morning, we scrapped the ice off Cathy's roadster, and sprayed most
of a can of starting fluid in the carbs before it decided to stay running.
Jim came back from church and asked if we would drain the oil from his
transmission. If it was chunky, we'd leave it on the trailer. If not, he
wanted to try racing it, even if he only had 1 gear. Short story, we pushed
him off the starting grid, locked in 4th gear, but he was out on the track
to race.
Unfortunately, that lasted only a few laps before Jim coasted to a stop on
the track. Not sure exactly what happened but the motor died and he became
a spectator. But even that didn't last long. Cathy Ann had caught up with
an EP TR3 and was looking for a good spot to pass him. A Spec Ford ducked
underneath both of them going into corner 12 before realizing he was going
way too fast. He hit the brakes and tailed slapped the TR3 which spun right
in front of Cathy Ann. The Spec continued with lots of fiberglass damage to
his left nose. The TR3 and Cathy's roadster had to wait for the race to end
to get towed back in. If Cathy had made two more laps, she would have
gotten enough points to finish second behind her Dad.
The good - Father daughter race team winds up finishing 1st and 3rd in the
track championship in 40 year old Datsun 1600 roadsters.
The bad - had to push both cars on the trailers at the end of the last
race for the year.
The ugly - You don't want to see what an upper a-arm looks like after
taking a TR3 hit!!
So ends another great year of roadster racing with Sloan Racing. I'm
already looking forward to seeing what improvements we can make to the cars
for next year!
Paul Kort
|