Tango Uniform early in the race.

Remember the movie The Blues Brothers? The Bluesmobile starts smoking and spewing oil on the windshield. Theres a loud knocking sound and Elwood says, "I think we threw a rod." Jake responds, "Is that serious?"

Yeah, it's serious, Like in the dumper. The Fart-hinder Saab 900 ran fine on the pace laps (see picture at right) but a few laps into the race, it lost power and ran hot. The prognosis is that it dropped a rod. We are out of the race with a bad engine.

At the moment we are discussing whether we should find another engine and make an overnight swap. It would not be easy as the 2.1L engine in our car is a bit different from the plethora of 2.0L engines that we have been offered. We are all pretty worn out from the amount of time spent on the car over the last few weeks, so another night of hard work does not sound like fun.

It began to rain as the cars took to the track for pace laps, so we were thinking we might have a chance against the flock of BMWs here this weekend.

The other Saab in the race, the Team Cougar Bait '94 900, may also be out. They split a lower radiator hose which dumped the coolant out, which caused the engine to overheat, and warped the head. They are dumping in a bottle of head gasket sealant and giving the head bolts a little more torque, but they are not optimistic that it will last.