FIRST RACE - GRATTAN 2013

The WKA Nationals at Grattan was held May 17-18-19, 2013.  This was my first race.  

Dad and I had talked about what to do about a front of the kart.  Should I leave the front as-is or add a front bumper.  At the Grattan test day I was told the WKA rules call for a bumper on all enduro karts with a front porch since the driver's feet are in front of the front tires.(except the vintage karts with no front porch.) 

I found a older guy here in Marion, Hal Canode, who has been building dragsters and funny car frames for 40 years. He took my drawing and did a great job.

So Thursday Pam and I packed up the truck bed and cab and headed for Grattan.  We checked in on Thursday so we could be there bright and early on Friday for practice.

Pushing the kart to tech...truly old-school... without a pushstick.

While in line for tech we got to be friends with Mark Hinds, another vintage driver, but he drives in the Vintage Euro class.  Here is his push stick, which became sort of my guide.  More on that later.

At tech

My boss allowed me to use the department's GoPro HD camera.  I just can't drive without documenting it...

There are four practice groups on Friday. I was in the "slowest" group, Group 1.  I tried to get the engine running but it just wouldn't, but got help from two kraters, Jim and Bill.  Turns out the plug was fouled.  I replaced it with an old Autolite plug from Dad's stash.  Jim set the carb needles with a process I still don't quite understand.  Lots of hi-revs and braking... probably could do it, but no yet.

I went out for the next practice... my first time on track.  I took it very, very slow, got around to the last up-hil stretch and barely made it to the top and the main straight.  It kept going slower and slower.  So my first full speed dive into turn one had to wait.  I was going so slow I finally had to pull off just after turn one.  I had to wait a bit then get pulled back in.  

Back at the garage Jim said the loss of power was from the fulcrum arm being too high.  

I opened the carb but it seemed all was well.  Jim worked with it some, though.

The engine still was not running well and I was missing lots of track time.  Between nerves, a small breakfast, and not drinking enough, I felt very down.  I actually thought of giving it all up.  

But right then I got a visit from Johnny West, who is quite a character and runs in the F-250 SuperKart class.   He thought it was bad that I was not out running the kart, so he quickly tuned the carb.  

So here I am totally old school...jeans, leather jacket, and duct tape for a visor.

Off to the practice from the hot pit.  Notice the large, yellow "X" on my helmet, denoting "rookie"

Zoom.. there I go... the slowest on the track.

I have thought of many captions for this photo:   " Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap! " or  "oi! where are my keys?"

Pam tried to do work in the garage. This was her office.  But with no wifi it was hard for her to do her grading.

Saturday was the one year anniversary of Dad's death.  I think it is very fitting to be racing on this day.

Here is what I wrote on the gas tank as a memorial.  

Here I am waiting at the pre-grid with Bill.  He started me so Pam could take video and photos of the start.  Bill is a retired NYC garbage man who now lives in Florida.

My first race day I wore Dad's old Indy Kart Club shirt.

Off to the grid!

On the back stretch...

...with the modern karts...

Initially, I tried to stay just left of the groove so I would not be too much in the way of the faster karts. But in the Sunday race I was feeling pretty racy.  Still the slowest guy on the track, but having fun.

After my Sunday race Pam took photo...

And the result was taking first place in both races.  OK... but with no competition.  My best time on Saturday was 2min 10sec.  But did much better on Sunday with a time of 1min 58sec.  A 12 second difference.  The average speed was 67mph...with lots of twists!

Here are some of the more modern karts...

Pam took some time pix around the track.  It was her first true race and had lots of new experiences.

Here are a couple videos.  The first is a quick "movie preview" made in iMovie

This is a compilation of the week-end...

Grattan Test Day

The last couple weeks I have been finalizing details in preparation for the test day at Grattan, especially the tires and clutch.

The last two tires from Fox Valley Kart came in and my helmet from Greg Wright at Rapid Racing.  I went with  flat black instead of all the graphics in hope of painting it.  Its an up-to-date Snell 2010 so should be good for 7 more years.

Steve O'hara gave some advise on gearing, suggesting changing it for Grattan.  I knew Dad had a couple more sprockets, but I hit the jackpot.  In a soggy, moldy 40+ box, I found all these sprockets!  They include: 53, 54, 55, 56 (4sets), 58, 59, 61.   The sprocket on the kart is 60. The clutch is a 14, so 14/60 = 4.3 ratio.  SteveO thought that would be fine.

The last start really heated the clutch, so I needed to check it out.  Oil was drained and cover removed.  It all looked fine and put it back together.  On to the tires...

I removed the tires and wheels from the kart pretty easily.  The fronts are no problem, but the the rears are tough, especially the right-rear.  I had to take the wheel apart and remove the tire before I could get some leverage and movement.  Snug is good, but I need to be able to remove it more quicker.

Using inner tubes with these vintage two piece wheels

Hoosier Tires are constructed to be turned in only one direction.

 I was putting the first wheel back together when I had an "oh crud" moment:  the bolts were too short! Great!  How am I going to get new tires before Grattan??!!  After checking the measurements several times of the old and new tires, I figured the problem is not the bolts, but the wheel halves not seating down in to the tire.  They slide in nicely until an ever so slight thickening.  I pounded with a mallet, stood on them, even huffed and puffed.  NOPE!  Then I recalled a certain vintage mentor saying what he used, so I got some, well, its called "personal lubricant."  

Then I had a moment of inspiration: use longer bolts!  The longer bolts will act as "come-alongs" bringing the halves together.   Here is the first stage, long bolts all tightened up.

Then one by one, the long bolts are changed out with the original bolts.  The first one went very slow, but got quicker with each one.  Wrachet wrenches and cordless drill really helps.

Here they are, all buttoned up and ready to be balanced. That is BooBoo sniffing them. He is a Madagascar Pygmy Lion, so I locked him up so he did not start playing with one.  Don't need a popped tire!

I had seen Dad do the balancing so many times as a kid, but couldn't think of what he used as an "axle".  I used some threaded stock and a huge bolt.  I seemed to work, but not as efficiently as I would want.  So will think on that for a while.  Each tire took two-four weights.

The test day was scheduled for Saturday, but cold temps and snow was forecast.  The Grattan owner allowed the day to more to Sunday, which was forecast as 56º and sunny. I spent a late night Friday finishing up the details on the kart and packing up tools.  We packed up the truck and headed out around 1PM on Saturday.   Here is the truck... sort of 'old school'.

Grattan is about a 4-5hour trip up I-69 to Lansing then west to Grand Rapids. I was a bit keyed-up (that's a shocker), and was trying to stay hydrated, so the trip was closer 5.5hours due to bladder stops. Grattan, the town, is just a tiny village in the rolling hills.  And they are rolling!!

Wow!  I was shocked at the elevation changes.  Here is a view of the track: the straight is in the foreground (karts travel right to left in this view) with turn one just off to the left, exit of 2 is just visible on top of the hill, then it dives down for 3...totally blind, off camber,  left-hand turn!  Standing there in person... it looks like karts will just slide off!  Then up the hill to 4.

Then a downhill straight passed a pond.

Turn a little more right, there are the garages and the main straight.

Here is the upper paddock, the highest point of property with the pits and garages, which is all inside the track.  Fun to see all the trailers...then my little red truck.  

With the limited number of participants, we were able to use a garage.. NICE!

As you can tell here by my use of neck warmer and gloves, it was cold!  The forecast was very wrong. When we got up it was 32º.  The oil I use in the gas is castor bean oil, which separates out of the gas at about 50º, so I decided to wait to get to the track until it warmed up.  At 11AM when we finally arrived at the track, it was only up to 36º with heavy overcast... instead of 54º and sunny.  There were about only 5 guys running pretty slow.  But we set-up and waited.

There were a couple guys that came in an looked at this strange machine.  One guy said, "that looks old!"  Another said, "Is that a Mac?  I haven't seen one of those for years!"  He's the one that suggested not going out. He wasn't either so nothing would be broken.  Apparently, many guys got out between 9 and 11AM.

Then at about 11:45AM the snow started.  Big, heavy, wet flakes.

After lunch I bought some fresh gas and some Klotz synthetic oil to prepare for cold weather running.  I kept looking at my weather underground app on my iPhone, hoping it would show some clearing.  At about 2PM I decided there was no "clearing over Terre Haute" and started packing up.  It was just too wet, with puddles on the track.  On the way home Pam checked the map and Grattan is only 36 miles from Lake Michigan.  As we headed south the temp went up slowly until we got just north of Indiana, then it went up to 69º when we got to Fort Wayne.  Sigh.

Though I did not actually run, I met a few new people and got to know the track a bit better.  Now it's just waiting on May 17-20 to get here for the real race.