Fun Filled Labor Day Race Weekend

Friday, 04 June 2010 14:05 administrator

4-day-rotator

Well, thank god that May is over with. May just kicked our collective butts. Between the bad weather, bad finishes, and bad running cars I don't think there is a group more looking forward to June then Team CRC.

This weekend pretty much surmised our month in a short condensed four day time span. A lot of work, a lot of effort, and nothing really to show for it.

Now, that doesn't mean we didn't have fun. This weekend we actually had a lot of fun, in fact, reading over some of my own face book status updates, evidently we had more fun then we exactly remember !! Black Tequila is good. Two shots is enough, three is too many. For this lightweight anyhow.

As always, you can check out the Jenkins Performance Motorsports blog to get their perspective on the race weekend : http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=452919696240

So back to the week that was... Since Cam was suspended on Mon and Tue from school, I put him to

Patrick McNamara's #99 Cats-Parts-Mart Ford Focus in the pits at Plymouth Speedway

work helping me in the salvage yard pick parts for the cars. We set to getting the brakes on the cars back into working order. We needed calibers, rotors, drums, pads and shoes for #57 Okemos Auto Repair/Jets Pizza Dodge Neon, #00 O'Neils Auto Repair Dodge Neon , #99 Cat's Part Mart Ford Focus and the #13 Your Sponsor Name Here Ford Taurus. The #8 Your Sponsor Name Here Dodge Neon was left off the list as we didn't plan on racing it, so we didn't focus on working on it. Getting the Neon parts was easy, there are a lot of Neons at Cats-Parts-Mart in Lansing. Cat is one of our good sponsors and she and the guys there help us out a lot. Monday, the temperatures hit a high of 94.. and Cam and I were in there sweating our rears off. She only had three Focuses in the yard and two of them had the brakes picked already, so we set to work on the last one. After two hours of knuckle busting effort, we discovered why those brakes were still there, they wouldn't come off. We got the Neon stuff and went over to the Taurus to start working on it. But it was so hot and we were so tired already that after 4 hours in the afternoon sun, we decided to call it a day and come back on Tue. On Tue we were back refreshed and ready to attack the Taurus. My Taurus is a 94 SHO model, but its been in a couple of bad wrecks and had replacement parts put on it from various cars and by various people. I do most all my own work now, but I used to get a lot of help and what they did I didn't always know or understand, so now we are having to work through some of those fixes which got made "back in the day". Like the rear struts aren't from a Taurus. At least not from a '94 Ford Taurus SHO, because we picked the brakes off a 94 and took them to Robs and they didn't fit. So Wednesday, Rob ordered us new rear calibers, pads and rotors for the Taurus and new rear drums for the focus. We spent Wednesday getting the #00 right, including installing the muffler per spec. Randy's car needed more help then that. He broke the RF spindle coming out of turn four on Saturday Night and whacked the wall pretty good. Lot of broken stuff up there which had to be replaced in addition to the brake work. THU we go to install the new parts on the Taurus.. and they don't fit !! So the car isn't the older Gen 1 style Taurus in the back either, like we thought it was.. must be the newer Gen 3. So parts get sent back to supplier, we decided to revamp and improve the exhaust on the #13 since it was still a little bit loud. In addition, we put all new brakes on the front of the car. The front of the car is a Gen 2 and the cleaned up rotors, pads and calibers went on without issue.

Friday we headed to Mt. Pleasant.. expecting a good show there, the ALMS guys are in town and they

Tim Rodger's #13 HotJackets.com/Okemos Auto Service Dodge Neon at Plymouth Speedway

always bring lots of cars and lots of fans. Track Promotor Bill Long calls us mid-day and asks if he can borrow our pits stops. Team CRC and Jenkins Performance Motorsports had reserved several slabs of pull through parking for the season, but since many of the ALMS guys have huge tractor/trailer toter rigs, they needed a little extra space. So we gave up our spots to help out the folks at MPS & the ALMS. We left Okemos Auto Repair at 6pm.. not really thinking that it was Labor Day Weekend.. by the time we got to St. Johns, we were reminded. Bumper-to-bumper traffic at 25mph from Colony Road all the way to M-57.. put us a solid hour behind schedule and we pulled into MPS at about 8:30pm. The Stock Four cars were already lined up and we put on a mad rush to get unloaded, suited up, and ready to go racing. We barely made it.. literally pulling up and out onto the track as the heat race started. There were 12 cars again, a couple of new cars I hadn't seen before including our friend Marc Eaton who made his first start on dirt. Taco Bob wasn't back yet, but he was there, said he'd be back next week. On the start, I got pinched in behind Fred Dow who didn't get a real good start. Randy, Cam and Tim all passed me and I was dead last on the grid.. the Focus ran better this week, we got the fuel delivery issue all figured out, had plenty of power, car still doesn't handle real good though. I made my way up to 6th which is where I finished the heat. Randy 5th and Cam 4th.. not bad all things considered. We headed back to the pits and Cam's car died on the way in. I pushed him on in and we discovered his fuel pump had just died. For the next hour we thrashed on getting that fixed.. we were worried about running out of time, but turns out, we didn't need to be. The ALMS guys had a really tough night. Lots of wrecks, spins and cautions. The hot weather had backed the track and they had to add water and roll in the track a lot. Finally, at about 11:30 pm they finally got the ALMS feature completed (congrats to Jeep Van Wormer), but none of the other features got on the track due to Mt. Pleasant's curfew. So double features next week... but a whole day of wasted time, wasted effort, and wasted pit passes.

You can read my good friend Jake Dickman's write up from the Mt. Pleasant Morning Sun here : You can look here for the official race recap here : http://www.themorningsun.com/articles/2010/05/29/sports/doc4c00a4e2b67b1122003622.txt

Saturday Morning we met up at the shop early. We needed to try to get the brakes working on the Taurus again.. parts guy delivered the corrected parts on Friday and we set to getting them installed on Saturday. So many of the old parts were in really bad shape. We needed impact wrenches, torches and a lot of cussing to get everything off. And the clock was ticking... we were down a tow vehicle, so we were going to have to make two trips to get everything there. At about two everything was installed and ready to go, only thing left was to fill the system and bleed the brakes.. and that's when things started going wrong again. First we popped the left side line, then the right side. The lines under the car were in bad shape and as they pressurized we found leak after leak. Finally, at 3pm we had to make the call to disconnect the lines and cap them back off so the other guys could go to the track. I decided I'd take the focus and go to I-96. Rob suggested I call Jeff and ask him about the cars, so I did. He said as long as we had made diligent attempt to fix the brakes, we'd be okay for another week. So we loaded up the #00 and #57 and headed to Owosso. Off loaded, I went back to shop the shop to get the #13 and #99. We didn't really need the #99, but I knew that Josh Shiver didn't have a car and I thought maybe he'd want to race it. As I went to load the #13, it wouldn't start. Somehow, the starter decided right then and there to die. So off to Autozone to pick up a starter($175), picked that up and headed back to the Big O. Got there at 5:30pm and was told there would be no late qualifying, so our cars couldn't qualify and we had to start on the tail of the fast heat. I spent the rest of the time getting the starter into the Taurus.. I got it done and jumped into my suit and headed up to the track just as our heat was pulling onto the track.. when I got up there, I couldn't reach my helmet (had rolled out of my reach) and I stopped to loosen my belt and put it on.. while I was sitting there in clear view putting it on they threw the green flag and left me sitting there. Back to the pits to wait on the feature. Feature time comes, go to the scales and then get told that since my rear brakes don't work I have to trailer the car. I explained to tech people that I had called in advance and explained the deal.. that they could see the brand new brakes, but they said, they aren't hooked up, you can't race. Same thing to my #99 car I was letting Josh use. So I went back to the person who told me I'd be okay and got a no response. So we were done for the night. Cam's car died on the parade lap (fuel pump again) and Randy wrecked on Lap One. Just about as bad a night as you can have. $1000 invested into parts to race, 2 trips back and forth to the track and a combined 1/4 lap of feature racing between 4 cars.

You can look here for the official race recap here : http://www.owossospeedway.com/component/content/article/8-sport-stock-news/440-14-year-old-kyle-crump-wins-his-first-career-feature-in-only-his-third-ever-start-

The points standings are here : http://www.owossospeedway.com/track-info/standings/410-2010-okemos-auto-service-sport-stocks-

Sunday Morning we meet up at the shop early to work on Randy's car. Lot of damage from the broken control arm and hitting the wall. The plan was to head to Plymouth Speedway for Sunday Night racing and then to Mottville for Monday. We got the car done and headed out to Plymouth... we didn't get there in time to qualify but we did okay in the heat races. Cam had a near wreck as this kid in a cavalier

Randy Kretzinger's #57 Jet's Pizza/Okemos Auto Repair Ddoge Neon at Plymouth Speedway

was completely out of control on the race track and hit everything near him.. he spun Cam on the back stretch and he looped it completely. Luckily no one else got caught up in it. The Focus was really loose, which we worked on between races.. in the feature, I got up as high as 8th place and finished 9th. Randy finished 10th. Cam had to pull off, still not sure what's up with the car. Plymouth is a short 3/8th and Tim's car didn't seem like it cared for the track. He ran okay, but didn't look like he was having any fun.

The official report from Plymouth Speedway :

http://plymouthspeedway.net/20100531223/Carlson-Wins-Big-at-Jim-Blount-Memorial

Sunday Night we had a grand ole time.. we camped at Plymouth Speedway.. hung out, relaxed. It was the first time this year that my wife came to the races and really hung out with us. It was good to unwind after the horrible night we had at Owosso. Sue and Bruce were there.. Shannon and Buttercup.. the KOC.. Romeo.. the kids and of course my lovely wife.

KOC stands where we are suppose to be pitting at Mottville Speedway

Monday can be summed up with the photo to the right.. RAIN !!

It just poured and poured and poured.. Monday morning it woke us up it was raining so hard (woke up out of a drunk sleep.. that's how hard it was pouring) and it cleared and got super hot and muggy for a bit.. then as we left to head to Mottville.. it started pouring again. And it didn't stop all the way there and all the way home.

So.. the schedule for this week is up in the air. For sure, we'll be heading to Mt. Pleasant for the Double Features of Friday Night.. I think we are going to do good and I'm really looking forward to that. Saturday, not sure yet.. the Sunoco National Tour is going to be out at Springport, so we might go there or we might head down to Angola to get a practice race in before the June 10th Stan Perry Memorial which we are planning on attending.