My season has been marginal at best. My points standings were low, had one good race(went rounds) and got up to 7th. Then two races where I gave it up first round. That put me in the basement again til last weekend. I went 3 rounds and got myself back to 6th place. Though my day ended abruptly when I chunked the transmission 3rd round. UGH! I had a .012 light, all I had to do was get to the finish line...........and just couldn't do it. When I shifted to 3rd, it threw it into 1st also and BOOM...my day ended. I was on my way to a winning day, but just was not to be.
After getting the box apart last Monday, I inspected everything to determine the root cause. Yup, the case I was given had been screwed with by someone some time back and they messed it up. First race this year I notice it would not stay in 1st or 2nd gear just driving around. I had to hold the shifter. PITA!!! Since it was broke I was going to address whatever someone had done to it. Remember this is a Gforce GF5R. After some poking around, I realized what was done. They welded the 1-2 shift cam detent slots up and then ground it all smooth. WTF? Why? I can't really think of any reason to. In doing so, the lock out pins were sloppy and did not function...thus it could allow it to be in two gears at once. I was lucky it made it this far though the season. Just bad timing and something I just assumed was okay when case was given to me last fall. Learned another very valuable lesson...don't assume anything.
So after a call to Gforce on Tuesday morning, I had a box show up Wed at home. 1st and 2 gearsets, a new shift cam and a new detent tube. I carefully fitted the tubes so that it now properly locks out any adjoining gears. I then put it all together and put it in the wagon Thurs evening.
To add to the WTH moment, after loading car and shutting Mack off, I heard an air leak. HMMM? What happened now? Seems my exhaust had rubbed a hole in the supply line from the compressor. The short flex pipe runs just over the compressor copper feed line. With all the smooth roads around here, the coupler had slipped just a touch and the flex pipe had touched the copper and rubbed a pin hole in it. Now, this being a 1950's truck, it has some copper lines still in it. Getting it converted over to late model braided stainless proved impossible on Friday. I was able to solder the hole, cover it and put a stainless clamp over it to protect it. Now exactly DOT approved, but I could not miss my race on Saturday. Once all assembled, the truck aired up and held fine. Yaa.
With the weather forecast coming through as rain all day, it did not seem like the race was going to happen. Ohio was nothing but a green cloud on the weather channel. We pulled out about 7:15am and went north to Thompson. It rained most of the way up until we got to 90 and headed east. Road dried up and not much of a drop the whole day? Wow. We got the race in...............and...................wait for it....................the old wagon REIGNED terror over everyone and I took home all the marbles. Still in a daze. It was a tough day. The wagon performed flawlessly........even though I broke the wheelie bars off 2nd round of competition. I heard a faint rattling sound as I came up the return road. I was thinking the worst, but shut the car off at the ET shack and asked the girl "is something dragging?". Someone standing there said "wheeliebar is broken". Whew. Seems that thin wall tubing is just not up to the task of a 4000# car. I'm going to have to remake the lower bars with something much bigger(like Pro mod car sized tubing).
Anyhoo, after 5 rounds, I was able to keep my cool and put on the last win light. I finally found the tree, got my clutch linkage adjusted just so I could hit it. I was way too close on a few rounds(.008 and .015), and I really laid off the last two rounds as I didn't want to throw it away with a redlight. I was .08 and .06 the last two rounds. Good enough for the win. The $1000 payout will help offset the $1100 I spent getting the transmission back into working order again! Geez.
I worked my way back up from the basement in points to 3rd, and only 3 rounds from passing #1. One last race in Pittsburgh at the end of the month. Two day event with two races. If I keep my head screwed on, I can pull this off for another championship. I've had a real dry spell and it has been 9 yrs since I did it last. Was 2nd a couple years back, typically in top 10 somewhere.
