Posted 01 February 2012 - 06:08 AM
Ok...so I've kind of recovered from the weekend...talk about earning my stripes...
So, Pop's comes in after the first race on Saturday, and I do my usual after race checks and find that both rear brake rotors are cracked, one in three places, the other in two. So, we certainly can't race with cracked rotors, as cracked rotors become broken rotors, and broken rotors become airborne missiles to following cars and/or track marshalls.
For the remainder of this story, please bear in mind, that the below is undertaken on coarse gravel, under an Ezy-Up tent, in 27-deg temperatures, between the hours of 9:30am and 8:15pm at night...
So, I tell the old man to head home and get the spare rotor's that we got when we imported the project car (which, incidentally has only been touched to steal the oil pump off of since we imported it a year and a bit ago), and I would start stripping the rear end to get the old rotor's off, and the new rotor's on. Saturday afternoon race was out, but if we got it done, we could still go racing on the Sunday.
So off Pop's drives home (45mins up the road), and I set to pulling off the rear end...literally. To get to the rotors, the easiest thing to do is to unbolt the CV joint/half shafts from the transaxle, remove the bottom wishbone of the suspension from the frame, remove the front ends of the two tie rods (trailing arms), remove the top of the shock from the frame, and also remove the camber rod as well...in other words, completely remove wheel and suspension on both sides of the chassis.
Next step was to unbolt the rear crossmember upon which the gear box is hung from, unbolt the engine mounts onto the chassis, and awkwardly maneuver an engine crane over the engine and lift said engine, and pull it back about 50mm (2" for our American and British friends), so enabling the rotor to be removed from the captured bolts on the CV joint / end of transaxle.
By this stage, the old man had made it back, and was able to fit the new rotor's...first little hiccup (as if the above wasn't considered a hiccup) now ensues, with one rotor being tight on the bolt shanks and CV spigot, and thus requires tapping on with a drift and hammer. In so doing the bolts all splayed outwards, thus no longer aligning with the CV joint donut on the half shaft....so enter long hollow bar, and some *cough* subtle tweaking of the bolts by simple lever mechanics. Re bolt on calipers at this stage too, as you can't pull off the rotor's without removing them, and you can't remove them (the calipers) without first removing the half shaft and CV joint. All the fun of an open wheeler race car, built for speed, not serviceability.
Thankfully the second rotor had clearance to the spigot and bolts, and as such the half shaft and CV joint went on much easier.
Once both half shafts were attached, rotors bolted tight, and calipers also bolted tight, it was time to attach the suspension and wheels again...which was not too major a job until the camber tie-rods were to be put back in place.
The camber tie rods are bolted in thru the rear crossmember, the same one that has to be removed to move the engine. Said crossmember is bolted in with four bolts per side, eight total, none of which wanted to line up again with the holes. No matter if we lifted the gearbox, jacked the chassis, or released all the engine mounting bolts, would the damn crossmember go back in. At this point it was 6'ish in the evening...I had being going at this pretty much entirely on my own, and had had only a five minute break somewhere along the line at an unknown time to scull back a bottle of Coke....which was about when the brain is going "AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH" and things take twice as long to think about...
So the old man says that since we can't get it back in, we'll take the car home and scratch from Sunday's racing. Me, I'm thinking that I haven't worked for nine-ish hours non-stop to just throw in the towel at the last minute...what once fitted, must surely fit again...plus I'm one stubborn son of a b'arch at times.
So everyone at this point is packing up for the night - the last race was about an hour previously - and one of the drivers in our division came to pick up his car that he is selling which was in the tent next to us...he say's that he didn't realise how much of a major "service" (for lack of a better word) I had been dealing with, and kindly offered to tow the car up to his apartment where we could hang the car off an overhead gantry and take all the weight off the chassis and hopefully get the crossmember back in.
So not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I quickly bodged together the loose bits of the suspension so I could be towed behind the golf cart up to the apartment, and hopped in the car and off we went.
And then, once the car was slung, the crossmember finally lined up and I was able to finish off what I had started at 9:30am at 8:15pm.
But at least the car was back on track at 9am the following day, and the old man (whom was driving to get some practise in before heading to the South Island for three consecutive race weekends) improved his times in every race from the first race from the weekend prior, to the last race on the Sunday afternoon.
At which point (Sunday afternoon), it was time for a beer and a sausage in bread whilst watching the 15-lapper F5000's, in which, sadly, Eric Haga put his lovely T192 (blue and yellow #81 in the pics above) into the wall along with another driver when they tangled.
Motor Racing....better than work, that's for sure.
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