Post Summit Damage Assessment

On the opening lap of the Summit Point National this weekend I had a little coming together with Jim Oseth in his Van Diemen. I can't really blame Jim at all - Colin Thompson was fighting for the lead into turn one directly in front of us, and inexplicably he either missed a shift or brake checked us. At full accelleration under green things happened VERY fast and before I could zig enough to miss them I was climbing Jimmy's left rear wheel. The impact was enough to send the nose of my car skyward to about 45degrees.

My dad was running a couple of positions behind and caught the action on his incar: Here

The rear tire ran up the right side of the nose and dinged the lower a-arm and tie rod. I continued on and ultimately worked my way up to 3rd overall, but the race was not kind to me. On lap 8 I developed a slight miss. By lap 9 it was getting worse and coming into turn 9 the car quit completely. The AIM system was in alarm mode and the fuel pressure was dropping like a stone.

Poor focus in the photo, but the point here is that the failure was the spade connector on the fuel pump switch on the back of the dash. The hard impact of the car coming back to the tarmac apparently knocked it a little loose. Over the 9 laps afterward it started to arc and voltage to the pump dropped. By the time the engine quit pressure was down to 7psi. I wish I had thought to reach under the dash, bacause a quick reseat of the connector returned operations to normal and 52psi. A probable National podium finish wasted.

When it bagan to rain around noon at Summit I was really sweating it. I had rain tires in the trailer, but they were not mounted. Fortunately the rain let up shortly after lunch and the group before us largely dried the track, so I did not have to go out on a wet track on slicks (the tire guys were long gone).

Monday afternoon my new wheel halves arrived to allow me to rerim the Panasport C3 wheels to 5.5". Another small project for this week as I prepare for the next Pro Series races at the Glen. They look very pretty and seem pretty light too.

As the week progresses:
1) Replace bent a-arm
2) Replace bent tie rod
3) Fix Nose and paint
4) Fix crush box cover and paint
5) Rerim the C3 wheels and mount the rains
6) Install Glen gearing
and so on...

Sean