Aaron Jongbloedt's site dedicated to promoting of amateur motorsports (particularly in the Midwest), high performance drivers' education, the prevention of street racing, and general automotive enthusiasm.
I was traveling for work, in Atlanta, but was able to schedule some time to play tourist. I went to Atlana Motorsports Park to check out their out door karting track.
I got the fastest damp lap of the day, the two other times were by drivers during the day. This place has 45' of elevation change, and the track is 0.85 miles long. The automobile road racing track was closed so I couldn't even get a sightseeing lap in. I shall have to schedule a return visit! https://atlantamotorsportspark.com/karting/
Up the road a little ways in the city of Dawson, is the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame.
A little bit of rear bumper cam footage from Sunday.
Saturday the first driver came in 25 minutes early due to a vibration; couldn't find anything but it was puking transmission fluid. Swapped vehicle speed sensors which was a debacle because the plastic speedometer gear fell apart in the gear box, discovered the gear box was over full, which was the source of the gear lube all over the place. Sent the 2nd driver out, he came in at 5 laps with vibrations, found all of the passenger side axle bolts were loose, that was a disaster narrowly avoided. An hour later that axle needed replacing. After another hour the spare used axle also needed replacing! The damage to the axle also damaged the bearing. So that night the spindle was swapped and a roughed in alignment was done using borrowed Intercomp Racing Products.
I started the race Sunday. Discovered during the first lap that I have virtually no front brakes. The rear brakes would lock up and send the tail of car off to one side or the other. I was forced to move my braking points way back to avoid tire lock up. In turn #3 I would brake about the 4.5 marker were as I would usually brake at the 2.5 marker or so. After 1.75 hours in my stint, the brakes came back! My only theory is that all of the gear lube, axle grease, and touching the rotors, contaminated the pads/rotors. In hindsight we never did use brake cleaner the night previous. Apparently we miss a few things when doing 1:30am repairs. Lap times dropped by nearly 3 whole seconds.
The car went off of the track at least four times that weekend, but the only definite damage was the partially torn front air damn. The fourth driver went out and after a bit he calls in "I have no power, car dead!". Turns out that the on this generation VW the cast aluminum starter is sandwiched between the front motor mount and gear box, a long bolt goes through all three. Which makes it a real PITA to get all parts to align up. The "ear" of the starter sheered off, the starter fell out of position. The motor mount came loose, ripped out part of the air inlet tubes, making the car not run. The motor also came crashing down, where the oil filter was bashed into the front sub-frame. This is a first time I have ever seen a failure like this! We got the car back out on track, and we were still in 2nd place, a few laps up on 3rd. Fearing the motor ran without oil for a while we asked the driver to keep it under 6000rpms. We had no hope of catching 1st place, and at that pace we would keep 2nd.
Not very exciting bumper cam footage of the failure.
The car held together, and we came home with a 2nd place trophy.
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