Thursday, June 16, 2016

Getting up to speed

Like so many Blogs, I realized this one has gone by the wayside. I haven't posted an update in ages and so much has happened. My last posting was the Dyno day. Since then, I have had two race weekends and have not blogged on them.
The first race weekend ended with me cracking the tail shaft on the gearbox. I did the Friday "test and tune" day with no incidents, Ran the practice race and qualifying for Saturday's race but when I got back to the pits, she was leaking a lot of oil from the gearbox and I decided to pack it in.

Not sure how or why the tail shaft cracked but ever since I got her, when I got her up to 70 mph or so, I felt a bad rumble that I think/though was coming from the diff. I still have yet to tack down the source.

The next race weekend, the plan was to conserve the car so I could finish the two races I still needed to get my SCCA competition license. I sat out Saturday's practice and qualifying race. I started at the back of the pack and did manage to finish. GREAT! one more race to get in the books and I get my "hard card". Again, on Sunday, I sat out the practice and qualifying race and again started at the back of the pack. This time, accompanied by two other Triumph Spitfire's. Another '62 and a '64, both driven by good friends of mine. Again, the plan was to conserve the car and just finish the race.

All went to plan till I rounded turn one going pretty much flat out, scrubbed some speed, downshifted into second and I felt a strong judder. I immediately took it out of gear and looked for a place to park it. I put it back into gear and limp it to the run off road at the beginning of turn three. I got towed to the garage and we pushed her up in the trailer.

Now that she's back home, I've pulled the gearbox and drained the oil. Gearbox oil looked good but I did notice the input shaft appears to be bent. I'll need to look into this further. Also, I pulled the driveshaft out and was going to have it balanced but decided to swap it for a Spitfire driveshaft as it has a driveshaft from a MG in her. The MG shaft is much bigger in diameter. The engine I have really doesn't need a shaft that large. Or so I think...