1786 ORAF 500 Race Report
Our first Race…
We had the 9th starting position out of I believe 15 1700’s
We had a rough first lap, flat tire and a dead battery at mm11, somewhere between mm12 and mm32 we lost our antenna. (see pic)
We got our antenna fixed at mm35 were Travis, of specialty race prep was waiting on us. They jump on the antenna issue and within 10 minutes we were off. The second half of the course actually went pretty smoothly, as I was starting to get a better feel for the Jeep, though the steering was getting a bit sloppy. We made main pit in 3.5 hours (?) or so with out issues. Mike Barrnett of T&J and a bunch of other folks, hopped right on the track bar issue, where they realigned the body and tightened it up and we were off. We were much smoother on our second lap through the first 11 miles, and the engine bogged down and we got stuck in the sand (within 5 feet of where we had our flat tire at mm11). A spectator came over and helped us out and we were moving again. Coming through mm18 the engine was backfiring and sputtering, roughly at mm24 it stalled out on us and wouldn’t restart for 5 or so minutes, which was pretty scary as we were still mostly on the track. We got it started and off the track where it died again. We had made real good time to this point, 45 minutes or so to mm24 with a small time out getting stuck in the sand…
We radioed into main that we were done and Dan “Gerr” started heading our direction. We got the Jeep started again and limped it back to mm18 where we had some friends that would lend us a hand and see if we could get it running again.
There is an obvious clog in the cooling system as the lower radiator hose would collapse as soon as a load was put to it. We pulled the thermostat which had no effect, Possibly just an old hose. It also ended up with a no spark issue,(CPS?) where we would crank and crank with nothing. At this point it was already dark, so we figured we were done my friend gave my co-driver, John, a ride back to pick up the trailer.
Special thanks to Dan, “Gerr” from NAXJA for chasing me around the track with our issues, And to Travis and Tom of Specialty Race Prep for helping us with the race prep on the Jeep and the race support.
And a Big thanks to the Nissens (though they will probably not read it here) for the wrenching and attempted troubleshooting help.
It was a great experience for our first and last race!
NOT!!
We will see you all again come September! We have alot to learn and a summer to do it in.