oh my-O-my it really upset me! after a very long tow wednesday night
into thursday morning i was unloaded tech'd and 100% ready for first
practice friday morning! on my way to the grid the car started vibrating
like mad making a noise i had never heard! i shut down right at the gas
pumps and got out, opened the hood to find the harmonic balancer all askew.
on saab 2 stroke motors the balancer / pulley assembly is not at all like
the vulcanised assemblies common to the cars most familiar here. the
assembly on a saab 2 stroke is made up of 6 pieces held together by the
nut on the end of the crank. 1 piece had cracked and allowed the outer
weight to go eccentric and damaged the reast of the whole assembly, hence
the vibration i felt! ok, i had evry piece of the balancer in my spares
box and i spent the entire day taking apart evrything and reassembling it
to find that the brief period of running damaged something in the crank
causing it to rotate 2/3rds of a revolution smoothly then bind up. that
was the end of my weekend....so i thought! anyone who was there for
sunday's group 3 warm up session saw the blue morgan with black wings out
on course with a white helmet with bright oarnge duct tape on the helmet
visor.....that was me! my teammate felt bad about my never having driven
the course loaned me his car for the sunday morning warm up session! i
did not fit very well in the car as there is a cage tube, side to side
right under the dash wich ruthlessly beat my bad left knee senseless when i
was off the clutch pedal. i'm still very sore but would not trade it for
anything ! i was getting to the point i was drifting the morgan in the
corners and .....well it is not "my car" so after 4 very enthusiastic laps
i retired quite satisfied , very sweaty and limping sucessfully as i now
know a huge amount of the feedback peter had been discussing with his car
and the course is a rather interesting course i know the saab would have
liked very much!
oh, john? think it's time for new front shocks?(or a stiffer front bar?)
i saw you on sunday heavily loading the left in right turns "smoking" the
right front into a corner! *grin*!!!
peter and i were cheering for you and a few friends out on course during
the healey challenge race! (my spare rear brake springs were running in
the green aussie spridget out on course and of course we were rooting for
wendy too! )
and yes i saw the yellow "triumph thing" too! darn wierd gull wing doors
on it. it was definitly a old fiberglass kit car, but whose?
so it was a bitter sweet affair for me and i must admit that i'm still a
bit burned out from the drive home! thank goodness for starbucks
espresso's! (that was the only thing that kept me awake for the looooong
drive home.)
L.B#1(lust bus 01) now has 392,000 miles on it and the mid ohio "paddock
nazis" did not catch us camping in my trailer at the event! *grin*
chuck.
a sprite and a saab kinda make it all right.....in the end! :)
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