Burke 2023 hillclimb was fun; great seeing the usuals and new people. Well run event (two first-timer chairs) with lots of runs.
There was a lot of rain in the evening, but the days were pretty good. Very wet road on Sunday so I skipped a lot of runs as it was too slippery to put the power to the road.
First one at tech inspection on Friday.
Before the weekend, I replaced the fuel pump seal. It seems with the monkeying around with pumping the race fuel out of the tank earlier this year, I dorked up the seal.
Three problems at the event.
On Saturday I noticed that my car was running hot while waiting in line to go up the hill. Since I was next in line to practice, I drove up the hill pretty slow just to get air going over the radiator. Cooled everything down.
At the top of the hill, I checked all the coolant hoses... they were all hot (means it isn’t the thermostat not opening). But... the fans weren’t running.
I turned off the car to poke around. Started the car again and pushed the AC button. I recall that the fans run full speed with the AC is on. Of course, I have no idea if this works on my car because so many stock wires were removed and there is no AC present.
But... the fans were now running. Pushed the AC button off and the fans still ran. Seems I had a correlation/causation fallacy.
Turns out it was simply some cut wires on the fan switch. The wire raceway was no longer connected to the car; this allowed the wires to come in contact with the sharp edge of the fan. Was able to fix thanks to fellow competitors with tools/parts.
I could also smell coolant (since the first hillclimb of the year), but didn’t locate the source until this weekend. The -6 AN fitting for coolant that connected to the turbo was leaking.
It was hardly leaking, but we decided to see if we could fit it. Nope... made it much worse!
Thankfully, Joey (Kales Fabrication) was coming to the event on Saturday night and brought extra fittings and hoses. We did a temp fix with two premade hoses. Something to address in the next few weeks.
The biggest problem was discovered when we were fixing the coolant line. The hot side of the turbo was loose... it was able to wiggle and rotate on the center housing. We checked the bolts and what we could easily access were tight.
Will have to take the turbo apart over the next few months and figure out a solution.
I believe I will replace the timing belt/manual tensioner/water pump at the same time.
Two months until the next event... good time to start is this week.