2004-03-22 - 10:57 a.m.
Mandatory opening disclaimer: What I know about cars is largely limited to "turn the key, engine go vroom vroom...if engine doesn't go vroom vroom, call AAA. Sometimes you have to put some sort of expensive liquid in the hole in the back. Sometimes but not as frequently, you have to go to a place where they drain some thick black liquid out of a hole in the bottom and then put more not quite as thick brownish liquid in a hole in the top. Every year you have to get the car inspected, and they always make you replace your rubber go round and round thingies because the tread is thin...whatever tread is"
Which, of course, made me the perfect choice to help crew for an SCCA (yes, that's two C's, get used to it) driver's school being attended by Elizabeth's husband Greg.
Before we go any farther, I want to dispel all of y'all who are having visions of 330 lb me in one of those flameproof suits leaping over the wall carrying that big can of gas and the hydraulic automatic spinning thing that changes tires in 2.4 seconds. This was pretty much exactly unlike that.
No fireproof suits (well, Greg had one, but then, he was driving the car, so that makes sense). No leaping over the pit road wall carrying a big gas can and being concerned about getting him back on the track in 15.4 seconds. No hyrdrolic automatic spinning thing. Matter of fact, no tire changes at all.
This was a driver school. Basically that meant that the drivers went out for about 20 minutes of driving, then had about 35 minutes of debriefing about what went wrong and what went right during their session, lather, rinse, repeat about 5 times on Saturday and another 4 times on Sunday.
Our job as the paddock crew was basically to check tire pressures, make sure the lug nuts were torqued correctly, which involved this weird wrench which clicked when things were tight enough (but not too tight, I guess...), make sure the windshield was clean, make sure Greg remembered to drink water and eat during the day, and in the event that there actually *was* a mechanical problem, try to fix it.
So we show up on Saturday morning and...well...there was a mechanical problem. See...these cars are home maintained. Greg and Elizabeth had had to fix the brakes on friday night (while Rhiannon and I were driving up to West Virginia), and apparently part of that process involved draining out some old brown brake fluid and putting new blue fluid in (something about type 3 vs type 4 fluid...it went so far over my head it wasn't funny). Well, they were doing that as the sun was going down, so they *thought* they saw dark blue fluid coming out the bottom of the brake line, but in reality they were still seeing light brown fluid. The practical upshot of that was that Greg's brakes, although workable (particularly for the first session, which was a fairly slow one intended to get used to hitting the apex of all the curves), they were mushy and just not happy cheerful car slowing down devices.
Fortunately, we had another gentleman there, who actually knew how brakes worked, and was able to bleed them (which actually looked a lot like putting in an IV, actually...) until happy cheerful dark blue fluid came out of the system and we knew all was well.
Then I got a crash course in how to operate a race car jack. This isn't your father's jack...this is a high performance car picking up and putting down machine. To the point where the difference between bringing the car down nice and gently and bringing the car *DOWN* is a mere 2 degrees of turning of the handle.
Fortunately, noone was under the car at the time...and before I had to do it again, I got the opportunity to practice a little...there's a trick to it...but a trick I understand now (yeah me!)
So Greg went out for his second set of laps around the course, while Rhiannon ran the stopwatch and I got to listen to the "Race radio" channel, where all the corner workers were able to communicate to each other about what was going on around the track.
Greg's car number was 10. Fortunately, that number came up almost never, because what they were talking about was generally one of three things...
1. Car number X spun out on the course, and either needed a tow or was able to continue on under it's own power
2. Car number X wasn't obeying the flags, and needed a stern talking to at the Post-Race debriefing (this was fairly common, but then again, this was a school, so I suppose that's not surprising)
3. Car number X had crashed into the tire wall, needed a tow back to the pits, oh, and could the ambulance come on out too, that'd be real good thanks. (Fortuantely, the driver in question was unharmed, just shaken a bit, and was able to walk on his own power..the car, on the other hand, not so much)
So again, like I said, *not* hearing "Car number one-zero white RX-7" was a good thing.
He comes back into the pits, and we repeat the process. It settled into a bit of a routine eventually. I got lots of practice at torquing lugnuts.
Saturday passed without further incident. Sunday began without much incident, other than a notice that it was about...oh...10 degrees out (no, not really, it was probably about 34...but with a nice biting wind). This had the effect of lowering the tire pressure dramatically (which I actually understood, thanks to my years of High School and College Physics), so we had to monitor the tire temperatures and pressures much more carefully. Fortuantely, we got a nifty tool to do that...sort of like the dial and buttons of a blood pressure cuff, only for air...put the business end onto the valve stem (see...I learned a car technical term...the valve stem is where the air stuff goes into the rubber spinning round and round thingy) and you get the pressure. If the pressure is too high, press the button and air comes out of the tire, release the button and get the new pressure, repeat until you have the number you want.
Until the second Sunday session, when I wasn't listening to the radio (I had actually gone out to the far corner of the track to get some pictures and video of Greg's car and some of the other really cool cars there, I hope to post them tonight). When I got back to the paddock the car wasn't there. Neither was Beth or Greg or Rhiannon or the guy helping us...
Greg's battery had come out of it's mount somehow and he lost electricity, which kept the car from going vroom vroom and he was stuck in pit lane. Fortuantely, no damage or anything, it just meant he had to limp back to the paddock where we fixed the battery mount and connections and everything was okay again.
That was about the last thing we had to take care of. At the end of the day Sunday, they did some practice starts and a little 5 lap mini-race, in which he did pretty well.
So yeah, it was fun, and we'll almost certainly do it again. Next time, though, we will bring warmer clothing. It was *COLD*. Did I mention cold?
So, that's all that's going on in my world...what's going on in yours?
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