“Hey dude! I think we can extend the ramps on this trailer out parallel to the ground and drop the motor.

Introduction | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4
Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9

Day 3 of Competition - May 2, 2004
Both Dave and I went to sleep at approximately 4:15, he in the front seat, and I in the back box. Just about the time the fiberglass ceiling of the truck started to glow with the sunrise, I heard the front door slam. I ignored this at first figuring Dave had to use the bushes next to the parking lot. A few minutes later, the pass-through door between the cab and the rear box slid open and Dave stuck his head in. “Hey dude! I think we can extend the ramps on this trailer out parallel to the ground and drop the motor without even taking the car off the back!” I thought that was a good idea too and so at 6:00AM Dave started wrenching. By 7:00 the top of the motor was disconnected, the drive axles disconnected, and the electrical all disconnected. Basically, the engine was ready to drop.

Today won’t be a day of competition for us because of this transmission problem, but as One Lap is known for, the event is as much to finish as it is to do well in the standings. The rest of the field, or I should say, the remaining cars in the field are in Colorado Springs for the Pikes Peak International Raceway event. There they will do two sets of runs; one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Unfortunately we will DNF both those events, which give us no points either in class or overall. Glen Clarke in the 911SC will probably do pretty well there since he upped his horsepower, however he did say that he is having problems generating power. It is particularly unfortunate since PPIR really benefits the high-horsepower cars because part of the track is on the high bank oval where you can really get your foot in it. We can’t dwell on what we can’t control, so back to the tranny.

Scott, one of the PowerHausII guys said to call him at 8:00 to let him know where we were. Since we had an hour to spare we went for a walk while the sun came up on the Rocky Mountains. Boulder is a really nice town, with nice biking paths that meander around little mountain brooks. It is a pretty clean town as well. Looks like a nice place to live. When 8:00 came around, Dave called Scott’s house, and his girlfriend answered. She said he was on his way, and when Dave apologized for dragging him out on a Sunday, she said “Don’t worry about it, he is having fun.” Very nice. Gotta’ love that! Anyway, as soon as we got back to the shop, Scott came in on a Honda motorcycle. He opened up the place and we went to work.

A few minutes later, Stanley showed up. He is the senior guy there, and when it comes to experience in rebuilding Porsche transmissions he is the man. We went over the symptoms with him, and he said, let’s get moving! With a collective effort, the engine was on the ground, the transmission off the block and it was mounted to the stand. It didn’t take long for the thing to be torn down, and when it came right down to it, the entire transmission guts except for the differential, and the gears themselves were replaced. While they were going along, they would throw parts into a cardboard box labeled Dave’s Junk. Every few minutes, Stan or Scott would go, ugh, take a look at this, and a new, old part, would be added to the box. Cha-ching!

Roger, who is the manager for the shop showed up around 9:30 with coffee and donuts. Did I mention we haven’t been eating well? That is certainly not to short-change his generosity, since they tasted great and really hit the spot. Roger is a real character and certainly enjoys life. Where Stanley and Scott gave us the confidence the work was going to be done right, Roger gave us the confidence that it would be backed by PowerHausII, if by some freak of nature the work wasn’t perfect. It was nice to be in a facility where they had everything to rebuild a tranny. All the gears, sliders, dogs, everything was right at hand. The only thing we had to go get was gear oil, and motor oil for the engine. I initially raised my eyebrows when I heard they had no gear oil on hand, but it does make sense since they ship their transmissions dry.

By 7:00 the top of the motor was disconnected, the drive axles disconnected, and the electrical all disconnected. Basically, the engine was ready to drop.		Stanley showed up, when it comes to experience in rebuilding Porsche transmissions he is the man. These guys at PowerHausII worked all day.

These guys at PowerHausII worked all day. Dave picked up sandwiches for lunch for everyone and by 2:30, they were done. We bolted the transmission back in and Dave went for a test drive with Roger. There was a whine in 3rd gear, and they adjusted a fork which made the noise basically go away, unless the shift lever is pushed way up into 3rd.
At that point we were ready to go, and Roger took us to a gas station and to the drop off location for Penske in Boulder. We hit the road around 5:00 PM for California.

This leg between Colorado Springs and Sonoma California is 1300+ miles. This is by far the longest leg of the event. This leg is so long that they aren’t running a morning session and will run an afternoon session with 5 laps instead of three. This is not good for two reasons. One is that Dave has run this course before, so the shorter event benefits him because he doesn’t have to learn the track. The second reason this is not beneficial to us is because to gain points, you need events. By compressing two events into one, we can’t gain ground on the pack as quickly. We will see what happens, particularly who is left to compete against.

1300 miles can take a toll, especially when we didn’t get any sleep the night before and we wrenched on the car all day. As I said before, we got underway at about 5:00 PM, and once we were on the road, we called George to see where they were. As it turns out, the choice of transmission places was perfect because George and Steve were driving right by there to get to California. We left Boulder and went North on 25 to Interstate 80 in Wyoming. I 80 is eternal. We will be on 80 all the way through Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. I 80 is also straight and flat. You can see forever and with a full moon, you could also see the beautiful mountains that lace the entire route. Because of the conditions, Dave and I were able to cover ground very quickly. We averaged between 90 and 100 all the way from the crossing into Wyoming to Utah. (Don’t tell anyone) We made a couple of phone calls sometime around 10 PM, and tracked down George and Steve. It turns out that they were only about 60 miles ahead of us, by midnight we had actually passed them. They were at a rest stop for a number of extra minutes talking to an officer about the event and it allowed us to catch them.

At some point before we caught them, they cooked a coil. They happened to have one on hand and were on their way in about 10 minutes. This morning they cooked another coil about 50 miles outside of Reno. This time we had to go find one at a Napa auto parts store in this ghost town called Lovelock NV. As it turns out, the owner of the Napa was there at 6:30 and we were able to get the part really quickly. There also was a little breakfast place right across the street, and they hooked us up with four orders of bacon and eggs, sunny side up, toast, and coffee. We got back to the Mustang around 8:00, fixed the coil and had a picnic on the edge of I80 West. It tasted wonderfully.

Day 4 of Competition - May 3, 2004
We arrived at Infineon Raceway at about 1:00. Plenty of time for us to get unpacked and situated for the one run of the day. Dave spent a weekend here this spring to get to know the track. As it turned out, that was a good thing since he had a good run. We don’t know the results yet, but the transmission stayed together, the car has no added curves to the body, and Dave was generally happy successful it is. We are still trying to get the tire pressures figured out since we have never run these Yokohama AVS Sports before.

Infineon is a beautiful facility, with grandstands all around the track. They have showers in virtually every rest room, which was a relief since we had been in the same clothes for three days. I can’t imagine what we must have smelled like.
Right now we are waiting on George and Steve who have found a shop that knows everything there is to know about Mustangs. They are looking at the ignition problem, hoping to stop their consumption of coils before it gets to be too problematic. continue>