Day 0: Usually the purpose of a test day before an event is to figure out tire temperatures, learn the line, and set up in a relaxing manner. The risk is that something may break. Today was a day of things breaking. After arriving in Pahrump at 3 in the morning we settled in for our five hours of sleep and woke to the wake up call at 8 o'clock. After a quick breakfast we headed out to Spring Mountain racetrack, also known as Rupert's playground. The day was going well at this point; we quickly set up shop and swapped in the race brake pads. After a few finishing touches, I jumped in the driver's seat and Joel and I hit the track to bed the brakes. The car felt good, tire pressures were a little off, but hey that's what a testing day is for. Lap 1 we took slow, surveying the course. Lap 2 we sped things up a bit to bed in the brakes and have some fun. Lap 3 was going well but oil temps were reading high, about 260 degrees, so we pulled in. Although Rupert says that we shouldn't worry about oil temps until you break 300, 260 is 30 degrees higher than anything we normally run. It looks as though the intercooler is blocking air flow more than we thought. So, we put the car in the air, drop the belly pan, and work on improving airflow to the oil cooler. During this we notice a drop of oil on the bottom of the oil cooler. It looks like its coming from the thermostat bolt. Not a big concern, we can take care of that later. Bad mistake. Did I forget to mention we also have a problem with intercooler piping blowing off? Flaring a pipe by making the truck into a 4 ton press Joel rigs up a beautiful air dam to direct airflow into the oil cooler and bypass the intercooler. Damn, this looks like it is going to work.With thoughts of cool oil filling my head I suit up and jump in the car. With a comforting sound the vehicle came to life and almost immediately Joel's parents point to the ground and yell for me to turn off the car. I shut the car down and hopped out. A pool of oil is under the car. What the hell? That drip of oil we saw earlier had turned into a full on leak. Instead of coming from the thermostat bolt like we thought, its actually coming from the earls fitting on the oil cooler line. The actual fitting on the brand new stainless steel line is leaking. Of all the things to break, who would have figured. Well, we had not planned for this. So basically the rest of the night was spent searching for a fix. Nothing turned up so except for a lead for a company called American Racing in Las Vegas. Tomorrow we get up at 5 am to head to Vegas and hopefully we can be racing by noon... Oh yeah, can't forget to mention; I won $30 dollars tonight at craps and Darren came out about $15 ahead.
-Matt (11:16 pm)