FWIW, an electric fan, even if switched on, will restrict air flow thru the
rad at speed, so that a car that would otherwise be OK might over-heat on
the track. My recommendation is to live with the no-fan situation and
learn to start your engine at the three 3 minute board. Helps to have
confidence in your engine to start, a crew member with a jump battery, and
you can always just ask for a push start from the grid marshals if needed.
Glad you had a great first race!
Brian
At 01:31 PM 04/19/2000 -0400, Phil Roettjer wrote:
>snip
>My car, a 1953 Lotus Mk VI, performed very well aside from my one
>knucklehead move of allowing it to overheat in the false grid area. The car
>doesn't have a fan and I started it up a little too soon for the 9AM student
>race on Saturday morning. The next thing I knew it was spewing water out
>like a hose was broken. After taking off the hood and the nose section I
>could see that it looked OK. However when I restarted it just prior to the
>cars moving onto the track my temp gage was rapidly climbing and hitting
>260F when I again shut it off. Luckily the folks from Vintage Racing
>Services were there and they advised me to just get it on the track and it
>would be OK. My thanks to Paul Lane and Brad Capshaw. So I entered the grid
>in last position for the pace lap and it turned out to be a very enjoyable
>race. The steam stopped by the end of pit lane and the temp was back to
>normal by half the pace lap. I was able to pass about half dozen cars by the
>end of the 5 lap race and it was great fun. I spent some time after I
>returned home installing an electric fan. My heart gets going fast enough in
>the race without these last minute problems. The only other problem I
>experienced was a wheel vibration coming down the straight at max speed.
>Charlie Gibson helped out by balancing my wheels even though two of them had
>too much runout. I have a set of new wires on the way to hopefully take care
>of this problem completely.
>
>Later that morning I was in the first practice session with the experienced
>racers. This was quite a different experience from running in the student
>race with much more aggressive driving. The car performed well for the
>remainder of races that day and I feel absolutely great with one race
>weekend now under my belt. I am now anticipating and preparing my car for
>the June 2nd and 3rd event at Lime Rock. I hope to see everyone there.
>
>Phil Roettjer
>53 Lotus VI
>67 Morgan +4
>67 MGB
|