Hi All.
Up here in the Northeast, was were blessed with awesome weather this
weekend past and coincidentally a kind of a wrap-up event held by New
England Region SCCA that actually was for a good cause.
In short, there was a two day autocross/rallye/Solo I and road race
ostensibly billed as "The Race Against Luekemia". The AutoX raised
something like $1600 for a local New Hampshire charity named "The Why Me
Foundation" - sort of like "Make a Wish". Way to go. Not sure about how
much money was raised in the other events, but figure another $2k or so.
Triumph turnout was actually pretty low - but there were some notable
folks that showed up to road race. These included, but were not limited
to Tony Martin and his GT3 TR6, Doug Fisher and his FP Spitfire as well
as a really nice GT6 (running GT3) and a few other Spitfires - all FP
except the GP car of Bob Beaulieu. That was for the road racing.
For the Autocross there were exacly three Triumphs, Bob Totten and his DM
'64 Spitfire LeMans replica, Randy Clark and his '80 TR7 DHC and yours
truely in a '74 TR6, D Street Prepared. The original plan was to build a
team of all Triumphs for Sunday's "team challenge", but Totten had to
take the day off - the result of having the flu after his journey to Indy
and the VSCDA event there... something about rain and cold weather. So,
Randy Clark and I teamed up with two Jaguar E-Types and called ourselves
the "Coventry 'Crossers". FWIW, Gary Hagopian and Jim Roberge drive thier
Jags pretty aggressively - Kool Cats.
My event went pretty well. Lots of runs - I presonally donated at least
$25 to the charity, as all runs cost $3 and the money all went to the
charity. After driving a front wheel drive car for almost half the
season, my first couple of runs were pretty "thrilling" and I was able to
spin the TR6 and plow off course in a few spots - in my own defense, I
can state that three year old Hoosiers still stick pretty well but not as
well as the brand new ones I ran at the Solo II Nationals... However, as
the day went on, the times dropped and pretty soon I was back to my times
of close to 1 second off the leaders. I _must_ get my Quaiffe or Detroit
"locker" in that car for next year... maybe a new set of sneakerZ too.
The ride home with the top down was totally great. Maybe like it would
have been in the old days, but I can only imagine what it might have been
like to be racing back then. ;-) Not that I'm young or anything - I just
wasn't racing then.
Sunday was pretty much the same. But with two differences.
My first runs were pretty darn close to the leaders and I was able to
keep the times dropping. But only fractionally - one of the front-wheel
drive cars (ironically the one I drove for the better part of this
season) was able to get all the elements of the course "right" and create
a one-second advantage to the rest of the field - and nobody ever
figured that out so, victory to the Scirocco. With _nine_ runs, I cannot
say that I didn't have a chance.
However, my last run was to be a defining moment in my TR6 autocross
season. As soon as I get the November edition of the "New England
Triumph" out, I can start to do a post-mortem.
As I entered the first "sweeper" turn, the car was running perfectly -
lots o' power and even a little oversteer. Then there was a tight corner,
I backed off the throttle, braked slightly and rotated the car right in
exactly the right spot. When I tromped on the gas, I could tell right
away that I was down at least one or two cylinders. I tried "back
pedalling" to see if I could "clear it", but the revs did not drop -
oh-oh! Stuck throttle??? I managed to drive off course under power by
modulating my speed with the clutch and brake.
I opened the hood and immediately saw that all the linkages were
working perfectly but that they did not appear completely closed. While I
was playing with the linkage, I noticed that the front carb was _waaaaaay
hot_!
Here's what I know - I had a carb fire in the number one carb. Not too
bad, but two Aux. venturi's are literally toast. As well as the air
filter and the gaskets for the carb to intake manifold. The resulting
temps were hot enough to melt the pot-metal, so I wound up injesting
several "blobs" of melted metal into cylinder one. Hopefully, there's no
damage, but I won't be surprised if I pull the head and find a problem
with a valve seat or something. FWIW, I can see some silvery speckles on
top of the number one piston, so I think what might have happened is that
the cylinder went critically lean and burnt a valve enough so that a
backfire occurred through the carb and subsequently the flame spread over
to the number two throat and was hot enough to melt that venturi also. I
cannot see any damage in the number two hole - but I have not yanked the
head yet.
So, my "lean burn" problem finally became bad enough to screw things up
in there.
And it happened on the last run of the last event of the season. Colin
Chapman would be proud - it lasted "just long enough, no longer".
Now I get to do a teardown and try to figure out what happened. Not to
mention that I also get to send a few more hundred $$$ to Joe Weber et al.
And for the first time in the three seasons that I have autocrossed
heavily, I had to get the car towed back to the barn. Not bad, really,
when you consider I've put 20k+ miles on the car and competed in around
50 or 60 autocrosses - even won a few - in that time. Triple-A-Plus came
in handy, as it was 73 miles from the race track to my house.
Will it be a trailer queen next year? Probably not. I'll leave the
trailer thing to Khartu. I like to drive this car. Will I dump the
Webers? Probably. I'm getting the feeling that the Webers are just not
suited to the in between type of driving that I do, so I'll probably pick
up a set of SU HS6's over the winter and get those tweaked up a bit.
... unless I win the lottery. If so, we're talkin' fuel injection.
Later,
rml
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