Another race season, another race series

There is a race car somewhere under all that snow.

It has been a long winter at Fart-hinder Central. A very long winter. It was without a doubt one of the snowiest and coldest on record in northern Minnesota, and our poor Saab spent it outside. Under a LOT of snow.

The Saab was parked outside the garage, with the gas cans, tires and some spares still in the back. Fortunately the water was drained and some old coolant added so the block would not burst.

Once the snow was mostly melted, a battery charger was connected, and after a few hours of adding electrons, the starter button was given a try. Rr-Rr-Rr-Vroom! Just like that.

For those who haven't been paying attention, this will be the 5th racing season with our old, mostly reliable 1992 Saab 900S. It was built in less than two months for a June ChumpCar race at Brainerd International Raceway. An engine failure early on put the 900 on the trailer, but the team put it back together for a race at Iowa Speedway a few weeks later and managed a pretty fair showing.

The first race on the Fart-hinder schedule this year is with a new group, the World Racing League. Former ChumpCar regional director Joey Todd has been listening to the suggestions of Chump teams over the past few years and came up with a new endurance racing series that will allow ChumpCar, 24 Hours of LeMons, SCCA, spec series cars from BMW and Porsche clubs, and just about any other racing group to participate. Cars are divided into classes based on HP to weight, so even though our Saab may be on track with a bunch of faster BMWs, Acuras and Porsches, we will no longer be competing directly with them.

The May 31st WRL race, held at our "local" track, Brainerd International Raceway, will be 12 hours. We have four drivers entered: Mark Fitzpatrick, Mike Mandy, Travis McCormick and Tim Winker. Now we need to get the car ready.

Right front pads on the left side of the photo
 are worn through to the backing plates.

Mark came over on a Sunday afternoon and he and Tim went over the car, making a list of what needed to be done. The first problem encountered was brakes. The pads on the right front were worn down to the backing plates, the left fronts were very thin. Fortunately the brake rotors look good. Unfortunately the right front caliper piston will not go back into the caliper housing. Parts have been ordered.

After last year's scary experience of having a ball joint fail while driving through the Road America Carousel turn, Mark has insisted on new ball joints. They are on the way from eEuroparts.

Also found a crack in the header pipe along a weld. It had been welded before, shortly after Tim acquired the car, so a replacement is needed there as well. A friend happened to have one in a pile of scrap metal he was getting ready to recycle. It is in good condition, so we'll buff off the surface rust and put it into service.

Those are the primary issues, and we have a couple of weekends to work on the car before the May 31st race.

As to the rest of the racing season.... Mark and Mike will be joining John Stiller in his Chevy Cavalier at the ChumpCar race at Gingerman Raceway in Michigan on June 14-15. With two races fairly close together, we decided to pass on the June 23rd ChumpCar 10-hour race at Road America.

Instead, we will concentrate on getting a NEW (to us) race car ready for the August 2-3 ChumpCar race at Brainerd. We are in the process of fetching a different Saab for future races. More details in a week or so.