1st Place Win Podium Finish at NOLO
Sportscar Vintage Racing Association
12Apr24; Fri. We go to the New Orleans Motorsports track (NOLO), Barret Camper as driver, Jamie as mechanic, and 19-year old Dale Miller as apprentice. He's been playing racing games on line and wants to get into the real thing.
NOLO opened in 2012, is flat as a table and well designed. It is a power track. Horsepower rules.
We tech our 1970 Ghia, and are designated Class 3, D-Production, which is considered by SVRA as classic, golden era sports cars. We get weighed in at a trim, legal 1800lbs. Stock factory weight is 2000lbs. We have 53 on a diet, with a plastic rear window, no door glass, 8-gallon fuel cell, no heater boxes, no spare tire, aluminum driver's seat, no passenger seat, light 6-point roll bar and aluminum rear push-bar bumper. The only extra weight we carry is our 3-gallon dry sump system full of Lucas Classic Hot Rod oil.
We're running a non-legal "Carrera" 94x69 1915cc engine with Weber 44IDF's, just for qualifying, not racing, an old NASCAR trick. It gets you a better starting position. However we do observe rules. Our Ghia has cross-drilled front disk brakes but rear drums to meet the SVRA rule that we must be compliant to 1967 or earlier specs. We use Porterfield front pads and semi-metallic shoes. No worries. This is just sprint racing, not an enduro.
We discover in Tech the racing gremlins have beat us to the track. 53’s single working 3-prong brake light switch (the other port is sealed with a brass plug) has died on the tow trip here. It was working when we loaded up. Dale makes a run off-track to an O’Reilly’s and scores us one replacement 3-prong brake light switch, all they had in stock.
We quickly replace the switch, trying to get Barret out for our 12:40 PM qualifying session, but he barely gets on the track before the accelerator cable slips out of the barrel nut clamp. He has to be towed in. The set-screw blade slot was worn so badly it had not properly tightened back at the shop. Jamie replaces it. Better to find trouble now than in a race. This oversight has cost us a session. We are up against three well prepared Sprigets (Sprite-Midgets), all CVAR of Texas club cars, serious 1400lb, 100+hp racers with a reputation of being like overpowered go-karts. I doubt they considered our Ghia much of a contest.
Qualifying. You can see all three Sprigets here.
13Apr24; Sat. The morning weather is beautiful. Barret goes out for our 10:30 AM qualifying session. He runs away from the Sprigets with the 1915cc engine, but before we can tell if they are just warming up, we lose the fan belt. We will later discover the belt was rubbing on the new close-fitting engine compartment sheet metal exhaust cover whenever the belt would flex at high RPM. Barret drives the severely overheating engine back to our tent and trailer. The 1915 turns over but will not restart. Engine swap time anyway.
Our "Carrera" engine, named for its power similar to the original Porsche 356 Type 547 4-cam.
The legal “Super 90” 1.7 (rounding up) is going in. Barret and Jamie get to work while Dale and I drive back to the Super 8 motel to fix reservation and room change hassles. By the time we get back with ham and cheese sandwiches, the engine swap is done and 53 is ready to rock and roll. The swap luckily revealed the aftermarket press-fit throw-out bearing guide tube we installed in August 2020 has been loosened by the high heat transferred to the transaxle and we were bleeding gear oil. Jamie fixes it. The racing gremlins are after us with all they have. We are due out to race at 4:35 PM.
The legal "Super 90" engine is in. The exhaust is street, not racing, but works well.
At 4:30 PM Barret is lined up on the grid with the three Sprigets. A large pesky field of FV’s and Formula Fords follows. When the green flag goes down, Barret's "Super 90" engine quickly (first lap) leaves the 1275cc Brit cars behind in one masterful corner pass and is swamped by all the tiny, low FV cars. He's afraid he’ll run over one. For a few turns, the Sprigets dice with Barret, trying to outhandle him.
We're racing on experimental tires. Instead of our usual expensive Hoosier Speedster's we have some cheap 185x15 130mph rated Indonesian-made Forceum Hena tires. These are better known as "drift" tires. We'd tested them on track in Alabama and they were surprisingly sticky. We actually got them hoping they'd serve as rain tires.
For the record, we do not drift except in the real sense of a full powered four-wheel drift in the curves in traffic, not sliding around and calling it racing. The Forceum drift tires have good directional stability and would make good street tires.
Even winning, Barret feels like he has half power. A plug check later shows we have almost burned away the ground electrodes on two of the four Denso IXU22 Iridiums. Should have checked earlier, but the 1.7 had been in storage for a year or more. The Denso's have been in service since 2017.
After the 10-lap sprint and checkered flag, Barret is directed to the winner’s circle and told to take 1st overall on the podium. He is photographed, interviewed, and awarded a gold medallion.
Barret’s best lap is 2:36. The fastest Spriget runs 2:43. Our oil temp for the race was 200°F. ambient 80° F. day. We have two fan-fed oil coolers mounted over the fan housing, which is fed directly from the aft luggage compartment area through a baffle box. We do not use engine compartment air for cooling. Tire pressures only went up approx 2psi front and rear on the Forceum Hena tires. That means good good suspension setup. We also note that our twin-choke Weber 40IDF's fuel consumption is double that of single barrel [Kadron] Solexes.
We’d ran off and left the Brit cars before losing the 1915 engine, officially beat them in the first race just now, and had no reason to believe we would not do it again on Sunday. Was a final humiliation for them worth the wear on our engine? Yes. However, the racing gremlins were returning. The old accelerator cable cleanly snapped at the new retaining clamp on the very short drive from winners circle back to our trailer! We replace it on the spot. 53’s engine hours are noted at 103.4. since guage replacement on 16Oct16.
We replace the Denso Iridiums with NGK’s, and in the swap, do not notice plug #3 has no screw-on nipple and the connectors we use are the type that requires it. Jamie plugs the wire connector onto the #3 plug, feeling that it snapped on. It hadn't.
14Apr24; Sun. At 9:20AM we run feature race 2. It is again a beautiful bright morning. We get Barret strapped in. He rolls out on track, staged ahead of the Sprigets. And as the checkered goes down, Barret stands on it and within two laps, is a third of a track ahead of them.
About halfway through the 10-lap race, he starts to feel a loss of power when the ignition wire flys off plug #3. We see him slow down, then, something totally unexpected happens. The small expansion muffler-collector, which is welded to the four extractor-type exhaust pipes, literally blows off the pipes with a loud bang. Barret hears the noise and rolls to a stop, having no idea what was wrong.
“Something just fell off!” Jamie says to me. He had seen the piece tumble away from the car.
He is able to drive back to our paddock. We’re too happy with our overall performance to be too disappointed. Barret and Jamie think the exhaust blew apart because enough liquid gas from the inoperative #3 cylinder had been dumped into it and it exploded. I think the weight of the collector couldn’t take the vibration as its only support was from the four closely joined exhaust pipes.
We take our SVRA 1st place gold medallion, pack up, and tow home.
See the race here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gxMmW2t2rk
