The BHG Transplant FAIL!

This is definitely not how you want to be spending your Saturday night at the race track let me tell you. As you've read most likely from the previous post things didn't go well Saturday morning. I drove the car into the pits due to a drop in oil temperature and an increase in oil pressure. I can only imagine that this was caused due to water getting into the oil and it flowing more freely.

When we opened the engine lid we discovered that there was water and oil all over the engine compartment, a missing bolt out of the egr plug in the header had all but burned a hole through one of the shifter cables as well.

What happens now? Well I'll tell you in LeMons wonderful things happen. Mike Mosty provided us a couple weird gaskets and a head gasket, and Paul Bender (on loan from TARP Racing) stayed with us most of the night pulling the old head. He even showed us a trick to get the head off faster. We pulled it off with the intake still attached. Yes it was easier, yes it works well. LeMons are an interesting crowd, everyone wants to win (who doesn't) but they are very helpful and friendly and generally will bend over backwards just for the asking. At the minimum for a beer.

So Saturday night we removed the head, discovered that cylinder 1 has some pretty severe scoring on the piston wall, cylinder 4 actually had some swirling on the top of the piston which we were told by Paul that it is the beginning of a hole being burned into the piston. The missing EGR valve plug sits right above that piston, I wonder if that had anything to do with it.

We decided that the engine was done, and that this was it's last race regardless. What do you do at this point? Go out with LeMons style! Our intent was to put the head back on and race till the little 2 gave up the ghost completely. We stayed up most of the night Saturday night. I think I got to bed at 3 a.m., then got up at 6 a.m. to make the finishing touches putting the engine back together again.

During the test fire we discovered we had a serious air leak on the exhaust side of the head. The head had been warped. The little 2 that could was done for the weekend. So we packed it up and headed back to Dallas.

Next time a little something about the suspension on Black Betty

Always check the simplest things first!

The Dead Presidents MR2 raced at Gator-O-Rama this is the teams second race and the outcome wasn't as we'd hoped.

We arrived at the race track Thursday evening and unloaded got everything situated and started going through the checklist on the car. While doing it we discovered that we had a short and the car wouldn't start. So that evening we spent about 5 or 6 hours trying to run down the cause of our start to no avail. Friday morning came and test-n-tune began promptly at 9a.m. Rich still troubleshooting the issue found the engine fuse popped in the engine bay fuse box. We replaced it and we were running again. At this point Rich needed some driving gear and I had forgotten my racing shoes (now I have 2 pair) so we went into Houston to buy gear from Pro-Am. These guys were awesome and if you get a chance to stop go ahead, you won't regret it. Curtis and Rick stayed behind and took the car out on the track.

When Rich and I returned we were informed that when Rick got on the track the car died and had to be towed back to the paddock. Some quick troubleshooting revealed a discharged battery. We threw the battery charger (my trickle charger) on the battery and started working to determine the cause of the discharged battery. Rich and I pulled the alternator and Rick took off for Autozone. When they returned the bench test was fine on the alternator. We kept looking and discovered that the fuse for the charging circuit was blown. You've gotta be kidding me I thought. So we got it all back together replaced the fuse and went through tech inspection. After strenuously trying to convince Judge Phil that we didn't have a turbo on the car we got through with flying colors.

The next morning the race began, we got out to the grid and started going through the pacing laps. The car sounded and was running very well. But, the water temperature guage never started rising it appeared dead. I did have oil pressure and oil temperature so I kept going. I got black flagged on the last pace lap and pitted in. Seems there was a transponder issue and our laps weren't getting counted. After a couple minutes in the pits we were back on the track and the race was on.

Since the last race we installed new struts and springs. There were no motor changes at all, and the car was moving really well. I was able to dive the car into turns and carry a lot of speed into the turns. For a couple laps I mixed it up with a CRX back and forth it was very fun. Then my oil temperature bottomed out and the pressure went through the roof. We had blown a head gasket 37 laps into day one. My next post will be a recounting of the heroic effort to get back on the track.