We had very high hopes going into the Mid-Ohio Premier event Memorial Day weekend. We had repaired the bumper and splitter, and my lack of power would hopefully be less of an issue at Mid-Ohio because it is generally a tighter course than VIR. But it turned out to be a very disappointing event, as an engine problem in the first race caused an early end to my weekend. And to make me feel even worse, I was solidly in the I-Prepared class lead when it happened, so I not only have a wounded car now, but I had to watch a very hard-earned class win slip from my grasp…. so here is the full story….
We had repaired and replaced the splitter and other stuff from VIR the weekend of May 9th, and by the time Memorial Day weekend rolled around, the car was ready to go. Mark and Dad finished prepping and loading the car, and I met Dad in Columbus Thursday night. Friday was a test day, Saturday had two 150% points sprints, and Sunday had a 100% points 1-hour enduro. The weather looked like it was going to be great, and the field was very big (50 total, and 10-11 in IP).
The Friday test day went well overall. The weather was beautiful, and we got a very good paddock spot. Here are some pics of the Anderson-Anderson Racing headquarters, with the crew chief holding down the fort. Friday we didn’t have to thrash on the car at all, which you can see from the totally relaxed nature of our paddock:
The track seemed very slick Friday and the car was understeering, and I made some minor adjustments, but not too many. My ABS was doing it’s normal sleeping-in thing, just like at VIR – it didn’t work during the first test session Friday morning, but then it worked fine the rest of the day. My car obviously has a mind and personality of its own….. I decided not to run the last Friday session, I was tired and I also didn’t want to put more wear and tear on the car and the engine. I knew the engine, because of the Barber and VIR events, was living on borrowed time, so I decided to take it easy….. a little “foreshadowing” there…………
Kevin O, my McB teammate and fellow IP competitor, wasn’t so lucky, as his head gasket failed late in the day Friday. Kevin contemplated trying to fix it Friday night at the track, but that repair is complicated, and unless you properly cut and mill the head and do it right, there is no guarantee that the replacement head gasket will work successfully. So Kevin packed up and went home, leaving just myself and Bob Wright to defend McB’s honor.
Saturday dawned beautiful and warm, two descriptions that so rarely describe Mid-Ohio. Practice went well, my ABS had woke up earlier that day, and started working by the time I rolled off pit lane, much earlier than usual. The track seemed better than on Friday, with more grip, so I’m glad I didn’t make any crazy adjustments on Friday to dial out the understeer. Qualifying went well, not great, but acceptable. I ended up 8th on the grid overall with a 1:38.9, and 2nd in IP. The problem was that Bill H, my main IP competition, had posted a 1:37.3 and was 4th on the overall grid. So on to the race…..
The pace lap started normally, albiet a little slow in my opinion. The pace car pulled in, and the two leading C-Mod cars kept the slow pace speed. I got a GREAT start – I was able to jump right when the starter flinched, and shot up between two Mod cars and quickly made up 3 spots, getting right up next to Bill by turn 1. It was one of the best starts I’ve ever had. I went through turn 1 right beside Bill, but was unable to make the move stick into turn 2 (entering the Kink or Bus Stop). I could have forced it, but I try to not make too many low percentage passes, they are just not good ideas, especially in a 13/13 series. So I instead tucked in behind Bill and hoped for a mistake or opportunity.
Below are a few pictures taken by Allan Lewis’s wife (Thanks!!!) during the race:
I stayed within striking distance to Bill for the first few laps, and things seemed to be going OK. Then suddenly, Bill slowed drastically going over the hill into Thunder Valley – at first I thought his car had broke, but it turns out he said he missed a shift, then had trouble getting going again. Regardless, I was able to take the IP class lead and put a decent gap on him before he got back up to speed. I was able to put almost two full corners on him, so all looked good at that point. Dave White in JP was behind me, but since both of us were comfortably our class leads, with no immediate threats, we were both taking it a little easy. But two laps later, going up over the hill into Thunder Valley, ironically in the same spot where I took the lead, my car suddenly changed engine tone, and went significantly down on power. I desperately hoped that it was just a minor glitch, and would clear itself out (slim chance, I know, but I was hoping), so I stayed out. All of my engine vitals (oil pressure, engine temp, etc) seemed perfectly fine, but I was obviously missing at least one cylinder, maybe two. I stayed out for that lap, but quickly realized that it wasn’t just going to “clear itself out” and it wasn’t an electrical or ECU glitch that would pass, so I pulled in and called it a day. I had lost tons of speed, and most of the field had passed me by then. I was also afraid that the engine was going to let go completely and dump fluid onto the track, endangering me and my fellow racers, so I pulled in and threw in the towel.
We spent the next several hours trying to track down the problem. It was obvious that cylinders #5 and #6 weren’t firing at all, so I basically had a large overweight 4-cylinder M3 – not good. We tried all kinds of things, and eventually figured out that we had no compression at all in #5 and #6. It became apparent that this wasn’t something that could be fixed in the paddock, so we packed everything up and got ready to head back to Pittsburgh. It was very painful to watch the second sprint race, I hate watching races that I should be racing in….
So we towed home Saturday night, and took the car up to McB Sunday to tear it down. We tore it down most of the way Sunday, and found this wonderful-looking head gasket:
As you can see, the nice large missing chunk between #5 and #6 explains the “slight” lack of compression in those two cylinders. The head looked fine, no apparent damage, and the pistons and cylinders also looked fine. But the fuel injector, at least the plastic tip on the end, of #6 was burnt/scorched, and the #6 intake manifold runner was also melted a little. We think that the sudden lack of compression caused fuel to build up in there, and since the engine was still sparking, it eventually ignited and melted a few things. But those are easy and “relatively” cheap parts to replace (a functional M50 manifold is $150 and a set of injectors was $275ish. Well I guess not cheap, but simple to replace…… So at least we found the “smoking gun”, and we were pretty confident that the engine itself was basically OK (except the burnt injector and the melted intake manifold) and with a new gasket we would be fine.
