Excuses, excuses

Hey there! Remember me? Yes, that’s right, the guy who left you hanging 3 months ago today. I know, nobody likes excuses, but here they are anyway, in no particular order:

• Winter
• Problems with the new gearbox
• Cold and snow
• It’s our busy season at work
• Not much progress during the winter
• Man, it’s been busy at work!
• Went to Mexico for a few days to escape winter
• More problems with the new gearbox
• Haven’t had a minute to think about the blog because work has been so busy
• Problems not necessarily related to the gearbox
• I really hate winter.

I would love to tell you that I ran the first National race last weekend at GingerMan (where Lynn Serra finished third in her first National race, congratulations), but instead I was busy trying to solve a variety of gearbox problems. Some were my own fault (you’d think by now I’d know how to properly install the gears in a Hewland Mk 9 gearbox), and some were not even reasonable (a Sawzall is not a tool you normally reach for when you want to install a starter). I thought they were all behind me until yesterday. I’d like to tell you the story of yesterday’s problem, which is a pretty fair representation of how these problems have presented themselves.

Picture the scene:

It's a lovely Sunday afternoon in spring. The car is in one piece. The engine has been started and run, and much effort has gone into making the new gearbox suitable for this car. The last major project is to align the car, that is, to get the wheels pointing in the directions they should point when the driver’s weight is in the car. My father has come to my garage to help. His job is to simulate my weight in the car while offering encouragement and helping me to figure out why the math doesn’t add up correctly. (Usually by the third attempt to adjust any particular setting, my brain has become so fried that I start turning the adjuster the wrong way. He’s there to catch me when I do that.)

We have successfully set the front and rear A-arm lengths, ride height, chassis rake, and front camber angle. I head to the rear of the car to measure the rear camber angle when I notice a puddle of hydraulic fluid on the floor under the gearbox. A puddle of any type of fluid under a car is not a good sign, but a puddle of hydraulic fluid indicates a problem in either the brake system (potentially very bad, especially if it leads to a brake failure during a race) or the clutch release system. The problem is clearly not in the brake system because one item remaining on the checklist reads “Bleed Brakes.”

I wish the problem had been in the rear brake system. At least then the problem would be easily accessible and easily repaired.

So we spent the rest of the afternoon separating the gearbox from the rest of the car. It only involves removing 10 bolts and 2 nuts and disconnecting 2 hydraulic connections, but it’s still not a job I enjoy. Especially when we look inside the bellhousing and see… clutch fluid mixed with transmission fluid.

The clutch leak was embarrassingly easy to solve (I think). It seems I didn’t tighten the feed line to the release bearing properly, allowing clutch fluid to gush out whenever the pedal was pressed. But the transmission input shaft seal is also leaking heavily, allowing gear lube to flow out and mix with the leaking clutch fluid and make a real mess. If you’ve never seen a mixture of hydraulic fluid and RedLine SuperLight ShockProof gear oil, let’s just say it’s a pretty good appetite suppressant.

I searched through my spare parts, but I did not have a spare input shaft oil seal. As it was late on a Sunday afternoon, we called it quits for the day. It’s a rather odd seal, and most auto parts stores (particularly those open on Sunday afternoons) don’t stock them.

The seals are stocked by Pegasus Auto Racing Supplies, so I picked up three of them today. Hopefully the two spares will enjoy several peaceful years in the spare parts bin.