[clyde]

Oscar update:

Kevin and I took Oscar to Lincoln, Nebraska for our Spring Nationals. This year it was two Championship Tour format events instead of the normal one Pro Solo and one Championship Tour format because Pro Solo broke and was not yet fixed. This is the site where our National Championship event is held the week of Labor Day. Additionally, the local region held a low cost extended Test and Tune on one of the 2019 Championship courses.

To recap, the car was barely driveable in New Jersey in early May. We did some inspections, made some alignment changes, did some testing and pronounced the car "better…but still needs help."

When we got to the site Thursday morning, we swapped the rear springs from the 450s that were in it to 400s and did some runs on the practice course. We fiddled with shock settings some more and after that session declared the car "driveable…but still needs help." In the process of changing the springs, we noticed some other issues in the rear suspension and later in the day, got a call from Paco Motorsports that they cannot fix the rear control arms mentioned in the previous post.

To simplify a bit, through the four days of competition and further inspection and tweaking what we had left to tweak we got Oscar driving pretty well and developed a high degree of confidence in things "most important to do next." At the top of the list:

Install a shifter that allows us to reliably engage third gear. The courses we ran were previous east side National Championship courses, as well as running them backwards. In the normal course of events three of the four courses would have required three shifts to third per run. Our collective success rate at shifting to third was about 16%. A few second to fifths, a couple second to neutrals, more than a couple second to can't get into anything back to seconds, and I personally did at least two second to firsts. Why? The guy Kevin bought it from put in a shifter with an arm that sits about five fucking feet tall because some road racers like it(?). There's no feel and it's such a huge lever. Ugh.

After running the last day, a friend came up to us and said, "I was working course. You guys looked miserable…you'd be flying and then, oh man, it just looked so painful. I'm so sorry. But it was rad because you were lifting the inside front through some turns."

So, while it looks cool, lifting a front tire is often an indicator that something less than great is happening.

Other things we learned: the car has a substantial rake that it probably shouldn't have. The roll center may be off of where it should be, there's a crack and possible bend in the front subframe, there is a new potential bind in the rear suspension that we have not located (and didn't discover until reviewing video after getting home where we could clearly hear something going on that shouldn't be), the (unnecessary) spring perch locators in the rear are cutting the axle boots, we probably have too much camber in the rear and maybe not enough toe, the shocks need to be revalved on new curves or replaced, and about half a dozen other minor things.

We also got to run in the rain on Hoosier rain tires. In some ways it kind of sucks to have had to use them, but it's totally awesome to have had the experience with them so we know what to expect in more important events.

We only had three drivers in the class in each event. Two other drivers were signed up for both events, but were no shows. It takes five drivers to make a full class. With five drivers, if Kevin and I placed first and second in each event, we would have won a total of six tires (assuming that Hoosier will award tires to codrivers if the other driver "bought" the tires), but with only three, there was only a reduced amount of Mazda money to be won. Kevin won both events and I was second in each so we both won a couple hundred bucks. That's cool, but our times were not very good relative to anyone else.

When we rolled out, we felt good about having a much better idea of what else we needed to do and happy that we'd made the car pretty easy to drive (although off the pace where we need to be). Basically, a successful trip.

And then it got fun…as in, you ain't really traveled through this country until you've towed a "racing car" through it. That part of the story is for another day.

The postscript is that after dropping me off, Kevin got Oscar back to his place, put the car away, backed the trailer into its spot, shifted the truck to "D" and there was no forward motion. Yeah, the transmission in his 300k+ F250 died at the very end of the trip. As of Sunday, the old transmission was out and the replacement was waiting to go in as soon as the old one was removed from the transmission jack. The shifter for Oscar has arrived, also, but still waiting on some other parts. Not sure how quickly it will all get put back together. As of now, it looks like we will be taking the Camaro to Bristol for "Summer Nationals" to do a Pro and a Champ Tour.