Scoob scoop: Gila Monster 200

Scoob scoop: Gila Monster 200

Saturday, before race weekend we got the tranny reinstalled after we lost 4^th gear on the way home from Parker. We had other little things to finish up, new hood pins, door alignment, fuel cell mount modification, etc. We finished these things up in time to do a little testing, so I drove it to work on Thursday with plans to take it out and ring it out a bit. On the way in it seemed the tranny was shifting a little soft. I showed up at my co-driver’s place to prep for testing and adjust the TV cable. We took the hood off and cruised up and down the road a bit, and the problem seemed to be getting worse. We drove to the tranny guy’s shop and tried a few suggestions that included adding some lube guard. The end result was that at 3pm Thursday I had no 2^nd or 4^th gear (same clutch). We had planned to leave before lunch on Friday for a leisurely 2-hour stroll up to Gila Bend . Not! We limped home and were able to pull the tranny in 1hour and 15 minutes. We also finished up some minor prepping and turned out the shop lights at 11pm. 8am Friday I was sitting in the parking lot of the tranny guy’s shop waiting for him to show. He immediately went to work on the tranny, and all he found was the 2-4 clutch glazed. He asked a curious question when I turned the tranny into him. As he was pulling on the TV cable, "is this the original TV cable I installed", "yes". We got the tranny back at 3pm. He was delayed a bit waiting for parts. We got the tranny back to the shop and had it all hooked up by 8pm. We took it down the road to check it out. I was shifting very hard and couldn’t get 4^th gear even after we adjusted the TV cable all the way out. We were rapidly running out of time. I made the call to get packed and go, if we only had 3 gears to race with, oh well. We left the shop at 12am. I ran 3^rd gear down the road to make sure I wouldn’t burn up another clutch, although every 50 miles or so I would shift it into 4^th and see what would happen. About 20 miles out of Gila Bend, 4^th gear came back. We stopped at the Texaco to top off with uh "92 octane race gas". Camp was set at 3am. Our group wasn’t to hard to identify in the dark, a 20+ foot boat has a distinct silhouette I awoke at 8am to a buggy cranking thinking that we may have to stage in 15mins. We had heard that there was an unfortunate death that delayed the race. There was no complaint from the racers at having an informal impound while the funeral procession was in progress. We lined up for staging then shutdown the engines. It was very appropriate and respectful.

We started first out of three in Class 3, Tom Swanson (303) starting second and Larry Phoenix starting third. We started strong; the truck was running great. 303 was appearing now and again for 15 miles about 100yds back in the dust. 303 was obviously running faster but was having problems in the dust. Eventually, 303 caught us when he had some clear air and we let him by, as we had backed off because the steering was feeling a bit loose. At one point we made a right hander into a wash, and I had the steering full right, but the truck did not respond. We went wide through the turn and went into the trees before getting into the wash, we guessed that there was definitely a steering problem, we backed off a bit more and made it to the midway pit (race mile 27). We didn’t know this was the midway pit, we just pulled up to the first group of people we saw. Lucky for us it was the well-prepared Wood Bros. Team. We yelled out to check the steering. They did a quick check and said they didn’t see anything wrong. I yelled back to check again, this time I moved the steering back and forth, there were 4 people with their heads under the truck, and they all simultaneously yelled out some expletive. They motioned me to pull forward and to stay strapped in. They were quite the impressive team: they were all over the truck running or running for tools. What they had discovered was the front axle U-bolts had worked their way loose, so when I turned the wheel the axle would just move back and forth on the springs. While this was getting fixed Larry Phoenix passed us. Thanks to the Wood Bros. Team we were quickly on our way. Another 10 miles down the course the engine started heating up and the alternator was not charging, we threw the fan belt. We were only 10 miles out from the main pit and I thought if we could keep the speed up the temp would stay down, no such luck. The temp kept creeping up and at 250+ we pulled over and shut ‘er down to put the belt back on. At this point we had lost a lot of radiator juice and once we got running again the temp was still in the yellow. We radioed into the pit that we were going to need water. There is a trick technique where if you keep the engine above 2000 rpm the fluid doesn’t come out of the radiator, well this only works if your temp is below 210... which it wasn’t. The Doherty and Kolt Teams and of course my team, were all there to help. They got the radiator cap off with out much to-do, but when they started dumping water we had a no-kidding geyser going, pit teams 4 pits down estimated a 30 footer. Luckily no one was seriously injured, but we did have to close our visors to avoid the face wash/warm shower. We got that all squared, double checked all the U-bolts, pinned the hood and were back on our way. We proceeded into the gauntlet where one of the hood pins went vertical and was slipping through the hood. We stopped at a group of spectators who righted the pin, but a few bumps later the pin came out and was gone. Luckily we crossed near our pit again were Kras and Randy removed the offending hood for good. I recall two other times we had to put the fan belt on but don’t remember where. About 4 miles out of the gauntlet out of the second lap the engine stopped accelerating. It would slowly rev to 4k then bog, if I tipped it in it would bog right away. We pulled over and looked all over for anything wrong, fuel pressure was good, batteries were good. We called back to the pit to the experienced to see if they had any ideas, they came up with a bunch of good suggestions, but everything was checking good. The engine was still running, so we starting limping our way around trying to hold 2k rpm and let the tranny bring us up to speed. The tranny hung good. We were running 2k rpm 4^th gear in the wash, and the tranny didn’t even get warm. As we were driving we thought of some other things to check, the fuel injection ground and power (Holley projection). The power fuse checked good, and we could not locate the ground wire, so we decided to get rolling again. But the engine wouldn’t start. Just by luck we were trying different things and we ended up cranking the fuel pressure up 5 psi and going full rich on the injection, that allowed the engine to start and accelerate, so we were at race speed again but leaving a trail of black smoke.

This was only our second experience running without a windshield. AC, my co-driver, kept complaining that every time he would "clean house" of branches I would bring in some more. We came upon a buggy being towed by a stock jeep blocking the racecourse, and my co-driver pointed to an alternate course through some very low branches that stripped off our radio antenna. We also found a 5 car on its roof so we strapped him upright. The last 10 miles the alternator belt turned over and wasn’t spinning the alternator enough to charge, but luckily we had two batteries to get us back and we shutdown all the electrics that we didn’t need. During one of our breakdowns we discovered that the engine temp sender was broken so we knew that the gauge was out. When the belt turned over we would smell a bit of burning thinking it was the engine over heating we stopped at where a buggy was broken down and had him check the engine, and he said the radiator was cold. Eventually we noticed (the hood off helped) that when we hit 4-5k rpm the belt would fling some smoke.

Being a Gran Prix style race we were checker flagged on our second lap and claimed a 3^rd place finish. Tom Swanson (303) ended up being the 2^nd overaller and the only truck to finish all 4, 47 mile laps. We were plagued with a bunch of little problems which delayed us about 2.5 hours, but at least we didn’t get upside down like last year. I ordered a new front fiberglass clip, so it should be ready for the next race. Hopefully eliminating the hood problem.

We stuck around Sunday to help with our quad and pilot brethren, dumped some gas, changed a tire, and pulled a quad off a brush pile. In the process we acquired a flat on the race truck (go figure after the race). Being new to refueling quads, I spilled fuel all over my buddy’s quad. I figured I’d let AC try fueling to see if he could do it any better, this resulted in me getting a petrol face wash. This gave the quad rider something to laugh about for a few miles. After the bike races, we looked at the truck a bit more and found the main fuel injection ECU ground broken and the choke wire broken. We repaired these to no avail, probably because the plugs were fouled beyond recovery.

The race was fun when we were running good. The washes, the low branches, and the gauntlet made for an interesting course. The breakdowns were disappointing. We were not as tired as Parker, but still content with the weekend of racing. A sincere thanks to all that assisted us (and this was quite a few) during our race.

Scoob #311