When All of a Sudden...

Sorry to spring this on everyone after such a lengthy delay, but there has actually been some progress on the car!

The engine was actively being built (yes, by me) starting around June-ish. The big delay was due to doubts about the oil pump and how to solve a major clearance issue between the pump and the gearshift linkage. Short story long, the most common Formula Ford oil pump basically would not allow the use of the Tiga shift linkage. The second- and third-most common oil pumps also wouldn't fit the chassis because of clearance issues, but these issues were much more serious (think motor mount and oil tank clearance). With a bunch of help from (who else) Bruce at Lindstrand Motorsports, the shifter has now been modified to clear the most common oil pump. A new oil pump has been fitted, the engine has been assembled and installed in the car, and we tried to start it this weekend.

And we tried. And we tried. And we tried.

First, the easy part. I have now built literally more engines than I can remember. I am always very careful to install the distributor with the rotor pointing at the #1 post with the #1 cylinder at Top Dead Center. But I have never once managed to line it up at TDC on the compression stroke. I always manage to end up with it lined up at TDC on the exhaust stroke. This time was no exception. Fortunately, I will never forget what Pete Wood told me when we put the car together in preparation for him selling me the car: "My mama told me that when it 'pops' through the carburetor, you're 180 degrees off." And that's exactly what it did -- after a while. After the starter battery had worn down to the point that it was cranking the engine noticeably slower than it had that morning.

Off came the plug wires. I swapped 1 for 4 and 2 for 3, but several more minutes of cranking and cranking and cranking yielded nothing at all. Not even a pop. Checked the timing again. Gave it a little more gas. Cranked some more. More gas. Suddenly the car made a loud clunk that I've never heard before -- and I've heard this car make a LOT of noises -- and then the starter refused to do anything.

The drive on the old Lucas starters is an interesting, if convoluted layout. The starter motor is in front of the flywheel, but the drive gear is behind the flywheel. When the starter motor spins, the rotation forces the drive gear towards the flywheel by means of a screw thread on the driveshaft which engages a similar thread inside the drive gear. The rotation of the starter motor basically "screws" the drive gear into engagement with the flywheel. When the flywheel starts turning faster than the starter (when the engine fires), it spins the gear faster than the starter is turning, "screwing" the gear back to the end of the shaft. Sometimes when the engine doesn't start, the drive gear remains engaged to the flywheel, because the flywheel hasn't kicked it back out. You can turn the driveshaft backwards by hand to release the drive gear in this case. But once in a great while, the gear jams itself so tight that nothing will turn. And yes, we were now witnessing once in a great while.

Even the flywheel wouldn't budge. A prybar in the ring gear teeth couldn't turn the flywheel. Jamming the car in gear and bumping it back and forth only made us tired. Fortunately, Lucas extended the shaft out the other end of the starter motor and put a 3/8" square drive on the end for just such an occasion. It took the longest 3/8" wrench I had and all the strength I could muster to get the shaft to turn. When it finally disengaged the gear, you could almost hear the car heave a sigh of relief. Of course, the wrench was now stuck on the square drive, and it took several minutes of creative prying, chiseling, and hammering to get it off again. Back to cranking.

More gas. More cranking. More cranking. More cranking. Occasionally there would be a slight poof of one cylinder firing weakly, and a plume of acrid smoke would gently waft into my face. After I noticed the garage getting rather cloudy I pulled out my industrial-strength fan to get some fresh air. A few more cranks and I realized the starter needed cooling air more than I needed to breathe, so I aimed the fan square at the starter and went back to cranking again. At this point the starter battery had been run pretty much flat. Time for a Plan B. How about jumper cables hooked up to the truck?

Problem A with Plan B: You can't clamp a big jumper cable clamp onto the little battery quick-connector we use for hooking up the starter battery. So we made a "jumper jumper" by installing another quick-connector to a pair of cables, stripping the other end of the cables, and clamping the jumper cables to the jumper jumper. Only that made the starter turn even more slowly than it had with the dead stater battery. These were brand-new jumper cables from Wal-Mart, which must mean -- they're crap.

Plan B.2: Dad had jumper cables in his truck. Problem A with Plan B.2: They were so buried it took a while to get them out. No biggie. I wasn't going anywhere for a while. Several minutes later (it felt like an hour -- that man can pack 300 pounds of emergency supplies and tools into his glovebox) we came face to face with Problem B with Plan B.2: The cables were warm to the touch after the first attempt at cranking the engine. Reason 1 for Problem B with Plan B.2: These jumper cables were older than both of us put together. What were they using jumper cables for before they had cars?

Plan B.3: Skip the jumper jumper, pull the positive contact out of the quick-connector on the car and use some kind of adapter to clamp the one good set of cables (which have huge clamps) onto the microscopic contact. A small pair of needle-nose vise-grip pliers did the trick, but the weight pulled the positive cable dangerously close to the frame of the racecar, inviting a short. What did we have handy that we could use to prop up the cable? We had a half-full water jug left from filling the coolant, so we stuck the end of the pliers in the neck of the jug. Lovely. Electricity plus water. Hydrogen fuel cell, anyone?

Fortunately, the water jug did not actually qualify as Problem A with Plan B.3. Problem A with Plan B.3 was that the starter at this point was drawing so much amperage that the truck couldn't keep up at idle. So the new procedure was: Squirt gas into carburetor, Rev truck to 3000 RPM, Push starter button. Good thing we had two people. Bad thing we still had no noise from the engine. Could the race gas be so old that it won't even burn?

I took the air cleaner off with the intention of spraying some starter fluid in the carb. Fortunately I looked down into the throttle bore first and saw myself looking back at me. I had flooded it so badly that the gasoline was pooling on the bottom of the intake manifold.

New procedure: Hold the throttle wide open to get some fresh air in the engine while cranking the engine and revving the truck. Wait, we need a third person for that. I tried holding the throttle open and blowing in one carb throat, hoping the gas would evaporate and the fumes would blow out the other throat. Half an hour later, the reflecting pool was gone. We cranked the car with the throttle jammed open and it gave a promising pop, so we went back to just cranking.

The starter was now very warm, even with the industrial blower on it, and it cranked so slowly it sounded like it was just ratcheting the engine over. Dad promised to be home a half an hour ago. Still, we were just SO CLOSE. It had to fire soon.

Half an hour of agonizing cranking later (sorry Mom) we gave up for the night. Actually, I just sent my dad home for the night. I tried a few more times after he went home, with similar results. We concluded that the starter must have worn out from the strain.

I tried it this morning just for fun and it started on the second try.

I can't wait for Road America on Sunday.

The Bartelt Belt

Soon I will need to say good-bye (maybe only temporarily) to the Bartelt Belt.

Informally known as the "Club Ford Federation World Heavyweight Championship Belt," it was designed by Jack Bartelt to honor the Midwestern Council Club Formula Ford class champions. It's an impressive piece of leather, with engraved metal plaques bearing the names of all the champions. The center logo is a larger plaque depicting Jack's Lola T-540 surrounded by the legend "Midwestern Council - Club Formula Ford Champion." On each side of the center logo is a Midwestern Council logo.

The "tongue" (not the buckle) end has one plaque:
Past CFF Champions:
1987 Mike Mudjer
1988 Steve Stadel
1989 Pete Wood
1990 Jeff Jagusch
1991 Mike Wood
1992 Pete Wood

The buckle side has individual plaques, added as each championship is won:
1st Annual Winner of the "Bartelt Belt": 1993 Pete Mike Wood
1994 Marc Blanc
1995 Jack Bartelt
1996 Jack Bartelt
1997 Mike Schindlbeck
1998 Dean Elston
1999 and 2000 Millenium Champion Joe Christenbury
2001 Jack Bartelt
2002 Pete Wood
2003 Scott Reif
2004 Scott Reif
2005 John Haydon

In case anyone's counting, that's 2 championships for Scott Reif, 2 for Joe Christenbury, 3 for Jack Bartelt, and 4 for Pete Wood. Pete will get his name on the belt for a fifth fourth time in 2006. (Three champions won their titles in my car -- Dean Elston in 1998, Pete Wood in 2002, and me in 2005.)

Speaking of my car, the engine block is being checked for cracks right now. I need to test the oil pressure gauge and tear open a few oil pumps to try to build one good pump. I'm hopeful that if I keep working through the winter, I may be able to get the car together in time to run a very early 2007 race somewhere in the south.

Wish me luck!

Progress Report

Well, if you can call it progress. The crankshaft is back from the machine shop. Woo hoo. It is now sitting on a shelf with a clean bill of health, waiting patiently for me to set up a new garage space.

Yes, there you have it, the reason I've been too busy to turn a wrench lately is that I am moving. On the plus side, the new abode has a basement. On the minus... the garage is detached, unheated, uninsulated, and currently occupied by a couple of little furry things. But I think evicting them is going to be the easy part. A little steel wool, a little expanding foam, and their little portals should be plugged. (I heard somewhere that mice don't like to chew steel wool. Is that just an old wives' tale?)

My mission, and I have decided to accept it, is to take an unsuspecting 2-car garage with bare stud walls and a single light bulb (with the light switch on the opposite side of the garage from the door, brilliant) and transform it into a race shop, while still leaving enough room for my girlfriend to park her car inside. Oh, and my budget is approximately zero. My head will self-destruct in ten seconds.

So here's my plan. Seal up every crack and hole I can find. The bare rafters should get at least a few planks across them so we can store things in the "attic", but I'm thinking something resembling an actual floor and even some insulation would be worthwhile. Some insulation between the wall studs covered with either pegboard or slat walls will keep the heat in and the tools off the floor. (One entire wall is already covered in pegboard, and I have two industrial shelving units for the heavy stuff.) Finally, paint every surface white to reflect the light from a pair of 48" twin-tube fluorescent lights.

Any other suggestions? I'd love to move the light switch next to the door, but I'm no electrician. If I were, I'd also convert to higher amperage (or whatever you do) to keep the air compressor from blowing a fuse, and I'd add an outlet about every foot.

What would you do to set up a new shop on a shoestring?

Progress Report

Just wanted to let you all know that there has been no progress to report.

The crankshaft is currently at the machine shop for a check-up. The engine block is on the stand, waiting for me to finish taking all the threaded plugs out so the shop can check it as well. The rest of the engine parts are scattered all over the place, waiting to find out their destiny: part of a freshly-rebuilt motor, or scrap heap? Reassembly will begin when and if the block and crank are given a clean bill of health.

The engine bearings all looked brand-new when I tore the engine down. There were no metal shavings in the oil pan, which suggests that the flakes we saw in the oil filter were leftovers from the last meltdown. (Yes, I know, replacing the oil cooler and all the oil lines after blowing an engine is just basic engine building. It's also bloody expensive, thanks.) I now suspect that a flake or two made their way into the oil pressure gauge line and blocked the pressure from registering on the gauge.

I am still looking for a good (pronounced "easy") way of testing the oil pressure gauge. I can hook a second gauge to it via a T-fitting and pressurize the whole thing with an air compressor or nitrogen tank. Unfortunately, the compressor and nitrogen tank to which I have immediate access are both located several hundred feet away from where a car could go. I will not take the gauge out of the car because removing and installing it risks damaging the gauge. I don't want to replace the gauge again if I don't really need to.

That's not to say that I haven't been keeping busy. My goodness no. I've been doing all kinds of things. All kinds. Like... well, losing at Scrabble, for one. I have also re-read a few racing books, started to get a bit of a tan (nearly almost learned to swim, too), and bought a staple gun. I also saw a college friend on Jeopardy! (she was the champion for a day), outgrew my driver's suit, and watched a parade featuring two -- yes, two -- brand-new garbage trucks.

Not all on the same day, of course. You have to pace yourself.

Broke, Busted, Disgusted (Reprise)

It looked like it was going to be a great weekend for racing. We got the same paddock spot as we had for the last Blackhawk National race, and Saturday promised to be sunny, warm, and dry (for most of the day, anyway).

The first qualifying session went fairly well, but a nasty old problem resurfaced. The oil pressure slowly dropped from a pretty-good 40 psi at the beginning of the session to a dismal 20 psi by the end of the session. I wouldn't have been too worried except that we ran into a very similar problem last year, with very bad results. I got down to a 1:21, which was within three seconds of my best lap time, despite running much older tires. Still, that put me 10th out of 11 in the class.

We checked over the car for the second qualifying session and put on softer tires in an attempt to at least get close to 9th place. I also cranked the oil pressure relief valve screw in, hoping to boost the oil pressure a little. When I started the engine for the second session, the needle on the oil pressure gauge jumped to a very promising 80 psi, but then it began wagging back and forth between 30 and 50 psi as the engine idled. That seemed to be an improvement over the morning.

I followed Allen Wheatcroft for part of the session. His car wasn't handling well during the test day on Friday, and that had taken away a lot of his confidence. He just didn't feel like he could trust the car. That worked to my advantage, allowing me to draft him for several laps before he pulled in. I stayed out for a few more laps and turned a 1:20, which was faster than Allen's time in that session, but slower than his time in the morning session. I was still gridded 10th of 11, and the oil pressure was now hovering around 20 psi at 6000 rpm and dropping to single digits at idle.

We checked over the car again, and this time we also pulled the oil filter to look for any signs of bearing damage. The oil that drained from the filter housing was sparkly with tiny metallic bits, which was normal if a little excessive. The damning evidence was spotted inside the filter by Bruce Lindstrand: larger copper flakes, each one only a little bigger than the dot that a medium-point ball pen would make on a piece of paper. You could probably get one caught under a fingernail and never even notice it.

Those little flakes are shavings of material from the inner layers of the bearing shell. When the crankshaft has worn through the silver/grey outer layer and has begun scraping out the copper underneath, that means the engine is not long for this world. The crankshaft depends on the bearing shells for support. Racing the engine after that support is scraped away will subject the spinning crankshaft to horribly stressful forces and will eventually result in in a bent (or broken) crank and a damaged block. That's exactly what happened last year.

The wagging oil pressure needle now seemed to make sense. If the crank were already bent, the off-center journal would swing around inside the remains of the bearing shell, alternately getting very close to the oil passage (creating a tighter clearance and boosting oil pressure) and swinging away (opening the clearance and dropping the oil pressure). At idle, this could happen slowly enough to register as visible pulses in oil pressure. What a revolting development this is.

We put the car back on the trailer and called it a weekend. I later heard through the grapevine that Bruce Lindstrand drove another inspired race to finish 3rd in a very fast crowd. For someone who isn't out there to win, he's been finishing awfully close to the front.

Now we play the "If" game. IF the crank is not bent and the block is not damaged, we will replace the bearings (with a different brand, I think) and get back out fairly soon, depending on the budget. IF the crank is bent but the block is in good shape (unlikely), I will look into one of the new forged crankshafts which are supposed to be stronger than the old cast cranks I've been running. IF the crank and the block are both bad, then I may be out for good. These blocks haven't been made for about 20 years, and there are just no more available.

Besides, with the luck I've had with the Kent, I'm ready to start shopping for a Honda engine instead.

Two seasons, two cranks, two blocks

Last winter I purchased a used race engine from someone getting out of the Formula Ford class after a minor incident (another car landed on top of him). When my engine oil pressure dropped last summer, I was tempted to put this engine in, but he had stressed to me that it was tired and needed to be rebuilt before I ran it. I stripped it and took the block and crank to the machine shop to get it checked. Good thing, too. The center main bearing saddle is cracked.

To say that I am disappointed would be an understatement. Broke-busted-disgusted would be closer to the truth. But at least I can be pretty sure this one wasn’t my fault.

In his defense, the seller made no promises or claims except to warn me that it was due for a rebuild. The engine ran – very well, according to everyone who saw it – when he parked it in 2003. I am absolutely certain that he never knew or suspected it was cracked. His asking price was less than what I thought the engine was worth, so I pounced.

I had high hopes for that engine. I hadn’t decided whether to use it as the spare or the primary engine, but the plan was to have one running engine in the car and a second ready to bolt in at the first sign of trouble or loss of power.

If this cloud has a silver lining, it’s that I will be spending far less this winter than I thought. The crankshaft from this engine is good enough to put in the other engine, and I won’t have to buy a second set of bearings, piston rings, and gaskets. On the other hand, that "savings" was spent on the cracked block.

If it is possible (and not ill-advised) to repair this block, I will definitely do it. These engines are no longer made, and good used blocks are rare. The theoretical "too expensive to be worth fixing" threshold is pretty high on this one.

Winter 2, Ambition 1

The weather hasn't eased off up here. On the other hand, there has been a little bit of progress, such as it is.

The replacement transmission arrived last Thursday. We took it to Lindstrand Motorsports for a once-over. Everything is in great shape, as advertised, and some internal parts even appear to be brand new! A big thank-you to Larry Oliver, who sold me the gearbox as well as a set of rear wheel hubs at a great price.

The engine block and crankshaft have been checked. The crank is bent. Boo hiss. But the block is not cracked -- big relief. The center main bearing bore did get moved out of alignment by the bent crank hammering against it, but the machine shop is confident that the alignment can be fixed.

Crack check

The crank and the block are at the machine shop for a full checkup. My father has convinced me that the garage method of checking crank straightness (described a few days ago) is just a rough check, and that the machine shop may find a very different measurement than I did when they use the proper set-up and measuring tools. The worst case scenario is that the crank is really bent, in which case we will know that we're not wasting money getting a new crank.

The suspense, once again, is killing me! My fingers are crossed.

Tonight is another garage straightening / chassis stripping / parts organizing night. The temperature is dropping, so I need to get as much of it done now as I can before I go into hibernation for the winter.

A Second Crank Opinion

Special update!

I told Bruce Lindstrand what I found in the engine. He called his engine builder, Curtis Farley, and before Bruce had finished saying, “Low oil pressure,” Curtis told him that the #3 main bearing was pounded out. A clever deduction indeed, 007, but why? Mr. Farley outlined the three likely scenarios.

#1: Motor Mount Strain. The Ford “Kent” engine has motor mounts on either side of the block. If the frame of the car is crooked (all racecar frames are after a while), the engine will not be perfectly centered in the frame. Forcing the motor mounts into position can put a strain on the engine block, and the strain can be severe enough to actually twist or bend the block. I know we can rule this one out. We’ve pulled and reinstalled the engine about half a dozen times, and by the second time we learned the proper technique. You don’t record how many washers were on which engine mount and then force everything back into the same position. Instead, you loosely assemble the engine mounts, install the gearbox, and gradually and evenly tighten everything down. Eventually, the chassis and engine combination will “tell” you how many washers go where. Everything gets centered as well as possible, and strain is minimized.

#2: Insufficient Oil Supply. The Kent engine has an odd oil gallery design. The oil pump feeds into the right side of the block, but the oil has to pass to the left side of the block before it goes to the main bearings. The gallery which feeds the #3 main is notorious for being too narrow and is easily clogged by debris. You could say the engine has a heart attack. The good thing about this scenario is that it is easily fixed. A threaded plug on each side of the engine block can be removed so that you can look through this passage. Any blockage will be obvious and easy to remove, and the oil passage can be drilled out to allow more oil flow. The oil pump plumbing can also be rearranged to feed the main bearings more directly, but that may be a bit extreme.

#3: The “Mystery of the Collapsing #3 Bearing.” The story goes that every once in a while, despite meticulous assembly, a Formula Ford motor never develops oil pressure (or else the oil pressure quickly drops). Everything checks out, but the #3 main bearing is trash. If this condition is found before the engine is run, it may only need new main bearings to live a long and happy life. Nobody knows what causes the bearing to collapse, or why the replacement rarely fails. Although the fix does not involve any machine work, I don’t like this scenario at all. I’d much rather be able to positively identify the cause of a problem and take steps to prevent it from happening again.

Unfortunately, his professional opinion is that reusing the crank would be a bad gamble. Bending the crank has weakened it. Even if the machine shop could regrind it to compensate instead of bending it back into shape, it is still not likely to stay in one piece.

Chicken and Eggshells

The engine has been torn completely down now, and the bottom end has two big problems. The #3 main bearing is completely wiped out, which explains the low oil pressure. The crankshaft is also bent, which is odd since it was new this spring and we had several strengthening and blueprinting processes performed before it was installed.

So which came first? Did the bearing collapse, allowing the crankshaft to flex too much by taking away its central support? Or did the crankshaft bend (or crack) and then destroy the bearing? A chicken and egg problem, but at least the connecting rod didn’t cross the road this time.

The crank and the engine block will have to be checked for cracks and thoroughly measured first. A crack in either one would answer the question while permanently retiring that part. Accurate measurements should tell us if the crank can be repaired and if the block can be reused. It would be disappointing to say the least to have to scrap the second engine in two seasons.

(In case you’re picturing a crankshaft folded in half or twisted like a pretzel: It doesn’t take a very dramatic curve to render a crankshaft unfit for use. It still looks like a good crankshaft to the unaided eye. To check for straightness, you place the crank in the engine so that it is only supported by one main bearing at each end. A very precise measuring tool is put in contact with the center main bearing journal on the crankshaft, and the crank is slowly rotated. In this case, the center main bearing journal is 0.0025” off center. Not exactly a banana, but that’s much worse than the maximum allowed 0.0005” measurement.)

The Racetrack at the End of the Universe

I confess, I didn't get the joke until I saw the graphics on Pete Wood's car: "Arthur Dent" and "Ford Prefect" on the sides... and then he wore a bathrobe to the drivers' meeting. Too bad nobody else got the joke even after that. The title of the race was a play on the title of a book in a series that enjoyed a cult following in the '80s. The central character, Arthur Dent, is a normal Englishman who finds himself a passenger on a spaceship with his new friend Ford Prefect while wearing his bathrobe. Or something like that. I've only read the first book in the series, and it's been a long time since I read that one. (Pete has even run car number 42 for years, which will mean something to those who have read the book.)

We were the fifth group to hit the track, which left plenty of time for worrying and second-guessing about the repairs we had just completed. I did my best to stay calm and rational while I waited for our group to be called to the grid. The car was ready, and I had to trust that we had done everything correctly.

Practice went very well despite some oil on the track in a couple of corners. I managed to keep up with a yellow and blue Sports 2000 -- a much faster car* -- for several laps, which shocked me... until I found out that it was being driven by a racer who had never driven a mid-engined, right-hand-drive car. He is used to the front-engine V8 sedans that he's raced for years, and he was busy learning that the techniques are very different.

Debbie Campbell, a co-worker at Pegasus Auto Racing Supplies, arrived after practice with her parents, who had never been to Blackhawk before. Her father and I chatted about racing while she and her mother chatted with my mother about dogs. Debbie used to show dogs all over the country, and my mother is a dog training instructor, so they had plenty to talk about.

For qualifying I asked my parents to once again time Pete while I monitored my own times on my on-board lap timer. The best number I saw on the pit board was 1:20, while my fastest qualifying time was a 1:18.89. I knew I had turned a few laps in the :19s, so I was confident that I had the pole. The grid sheet confirmed it: I turned a 1:18.89, and Pete's best was a 1:20.26.

Between the qualifying session and the race, there is generally enough time to give the car a thorough inspection and repair most problems that may show up. The between-session checklist includes such things as bleeding the brakes, checking the wheel bearings and rod ends, and retightening any fasteners that may have worked loose. Everything was pretty much normal, with the same old bolts working themselves loose, everything else staying tight as usual, but the right rear hub was suddenly loose. The hub I've been using is a modified VW piece that just doesn't seem to be holding up too well to the stresses of racing. Oh well... take off the wheel, remove the cotter pin, have Dad hold the brakes, torque the axle nut down again, new cotter pin, wheel back on... wow, that's a lot easier and quicker with two people! When it's a one-person operation, you jack up the car, remove the wheel, remove the cotter pin, put the wheel back on, lower the car, somehow stop the wheel from turning -- usually by locking the transmission in two gears at once (a big job on its own) -- tighten the nut, unlock the transmission, jack up the car, take off the wheel, put in a fresh pin, wheel back on, car back down...

The car was ready in plenty of time for the race. I had enough time to watch a couple of other groups race, including the Formula Vee / Spec Racer group, where I used to run. The polesitting Vee, driven by Hal Adkins, spun or got hit on the first lap. By the time the pack went through corner 4, he was at least 15 seconds behind the back of the pack. He drove like a madman, gaining huge chunks of time every lap. Within about 10 laps, he had regained the lead. I confess that Hal is one reason I got out of FV. I realized that I would probably never be able to beat him, at least not with the car I had. I still joke with him that I had to move up a class to have any chance to keep up with him.

We gridded for our race and waited in the cars for ten or fifteen minutes while the safety crews cleaned up after the group before ours. I don't know what it was about this weekend, but every single group -- including ours -- had an incident (or multiple incidents), stranded cars, or blown engines that needed to be cleaned up and cleared away before the next group could hit the track. It was unusual to say the least, and it got us so far off schedule that the last three races had to be shortened by five minutes each and victory laps were cancelled.

I gridded directly behind the yellow and blue Sports 2000 I had followed in practice, and Pete lined up next to me. I was a little concerned that the driver in front of me still wouldn't be familiar enough with the gearbox and might miss a shift on the start. That would give Pete a clear advantage of several car lengths at best -- a good reason for Pete to hope for it. I got lucky, and everyone in front of us got away cleanly. I got a slight edge on Pete and crowded him just a little bit exiting corner 1 to try to keep him behind me. As the race progressed, some cars fell off the track here and there. On the second lap, corner 6 was waving their yellow flag, indicating that there was something dangerous or someone vulnerable on the track or near the track. I slowed and tiptoed around the corner, looking for the incident that caused the flag... but I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. The next lap, corner 6 still had their yellow flag out, but this time I saw a driver standing next to the track. Apparently he had spun exiting the corner and his car went into the weeds about 50 feet off the track. The car was completely hidden by the foliage, and it stayed there for the rest of the race.

My father was showing me the gap times between Pete and me on the pit board -- :03, :04, :06. About halfway through the race, the board showed :13... and my oil pressure gauge suddenly dropped! The rule of thumb for oil pressure is to have 10psi per 1000rpm. Since we spin the Formula Ford engines to 6000rpm, 60psi would be ideal, but most of us settle for 40psi. My car had 40psi all day, but suddenly it dropped to 20psi. Better than nothing, but it seemed to me that if it started dropping, it was likely to drop the rest of the way to zero. I tried everything I could to nurse the engine, keeping the revs as low as I could while still conserving speed. I don't know which would have been a more disappointing sight in my mirrors: Blue-white smoke indicating a blown motor, or the purple nose of Pete's car!

The car held together and the oil pressure didn't drop any farther. I finished about 10 seconds ahead of Pete and shut the car off as soon as I could. Now to diagnose just what happened and what we need to do about it...

The points now look like this:

1. John Haydon: 150
2. Pete Wood: 125
3. Michael Schindlbeck: 69
4. Denis Downs: 33
5. Scott Reif: 33
6. Larry Noble: 17
7. Jon Borkowski: 16
8. Paul Schindlbeck: 16
9. Dick Plank: 13
10. Bob Fleming: 8

Next stop: Milwaukee's lakefront, Veteran's Park, for the "Masterpiece Style & Speed Showcase" car show.

* A Sports 2000 is a little hard to describe. Imagine a formula car, with a 2.0-liter Ford engine in the back, but with two seats and fiberglass fenders. The design of the fenders can make the car handle better than a Formula Ford, and the larger engine gives it better acceleration and top speed.