In the deer smashing Corvette item earlier today I mentioned briefly that I had a reasonably awful experience at Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia about 10 years ago. I happened to be down at Summit Point as part of the UMass Motorsports team. I was not one of the drivers at this race and was there to serve as a crew guy as I was decent with a wrench, knew the car, and the guys needed help. The event was an endurance race called, “12 Hours at the Point” and it felt like “120 Hours at the Point”.
We left Massachusetts with a race car that wouldn’t start and run long enough to be driven onto the trailer. The ride was pure misery down to WV and when we got there, the real hell started because it was a thrash to get the car running long enough to make it through tech, let alone get it working well enough to actually compete in an endurance race.
This was literally a 12 hour wrenching session under racing conditions which ramps everything up about 100 times. We had issues with every damned thing on that car, especially the fuel pumps. I say plural because by the time we were done I think we had installed four on the car. At one point, the guy driving was of Russian descent and he pulled in the pits screaming something about the car, “Running like SHIT…no power….this is shit”…yadda yadda yadda…we got it pal. I dive under the hood with one of the other guys only to be greeted with an exhaust header that was so hot it was ready to liquefy. To say that this thing was orange would be like saying that the ocean is deep. My compatriot stuck his head around the side of the hood and said, “How long has this thing been running badly?” The Russian answered, “three laps”. That was the wrong thing to say because my right hand man went into a tirade at the driver asking why he didn’t just pull in after one lap.
We got the thing patched up and sent it out only to be greeted by a really pissed off Russian a few laps later. Others went scrambling for a wrench, I went looking for a pistol to put that damned car out of its misery. It was the only race I have ever openly prayed for the car to either explode or wreck. We finished under power but nowhere near the lead or even the top half of the field.
That’s probably the most grueling wrenching story I have. What’s yours?
What is the most grueling automotive event/task/adventure you have ever been involved with?
(Here’s Carroll Shelby after winning the 1959 24 Hours of LeMans. He split the driving with one other guy Roy Salvadori. The men were exhausted.)
25 hours of Thunderhill. Up for 36 hours straight, temps got to below zero with the wind chill. I felt really bad for the spotters up on the hill, at least in the pits we created a wind break and had a propane heater set up. We had a podium car up to the last several hours when we broke a rear spindle, the other three cars in contention did the same but our fix took longer.
Crewed on a winged sprint car once……oh and a little thing called DRAG WEEK.
This would fall under the TASK catagory. I got my first car when I was 16, a 1973 Ford Gran Torino and the only straight panels on the thing were the hood and top. I couldn’t afford to have the bodywork professionally done, so I did it myself! Every day after school I’d get out there and fill, sand, fill, sand some more, primer, sand, fill etc. etc. By the way, I had no power tools, I did it all by hand. I’d come in after it got too dark to see what I was doing all covered with bondo dust and could barely open the front door because my arms were so sore from sanding. Finally after three weeks it was ready for paint,. . .I thought. After I got it back with it’s brand new $106 paint job (1980) I was pretty happy even though I discovered a few places I should have sanded better, but Oh well. I was still pretty proud of myself. 😀
Formula SAE. Anyone who’s done it will know.
I put an alternator on a 1993 Lumina Z34 with that DOHC V6. If you’ve ever worked on one, you know, but for others, don’t bother! Just sell it! The heads are huge, alt is mounted on the back side of the motor at the bottom (of course). You have to tear half the pass side front end off to get to the thing. It took an entire weekend to change the alternator. Afterwards, talking to a friend who worked at the GM dealer, he said that whenever one of the Z34’s came in, the mechanics all used to argue over who got stuck working on it!
I replaced a tranny on a 87 Maxima with a used one he had bought. Drove his ass to Bakersfield in the heat of the summer to go get it. It was no good worked worse than the one we pulled. Of course it was my fault. Then I replaced the timing belt on same POS, but he was too cheap to replace the questionable belt tensioner. It came apart a month later taking the engine with it. A shop wouldve charged him over $1000 in labor alone and I did both for $200. It was very nearly the end of our friendship.
I can think of two things that I have done in recent history that I would consider greuling. 1. Degreeing the Comp soild roller cam in my 302 for last years Dragweek. 2. Overhauling my T56 for Dragweek 2010. There has to be twice as many gears in that thing compared to a good ol Muncie!
Driving across Texas.
I must confess…the worst for me has been a 1980s subaru with a nuclear element found 5 years after never deciphering the constant attention it needed. The engine was a cockeyed sintered block, pinch welds so far off the mark, I ended up making the car myself. 36 pounds of mig wire to be normal. I am a minimalist as well. Pieces do go together, even guided pathways. The good thing about this? A lesson that makes everything else very easy.
did the 12 hrs in ’99. finshed 3rd itb