Saturday
I got to the track and basically waited for an hour... tech was pushed up this year and the timeline was tight so I was nervous. Once the car showed up it was a little difficult getting it started, but as soon as it did it went straight to tech and passed with just a little bit of explaining along the way. I installed a furniture knob that Robbie picked up on his way to the track which somehow threaded onto the shifter perfectly despite being untapped cast iron. MrJoshua and I installed stickers. The car had no charging system, no way of being started from the driver's seat, and I was going to be mostly on my own as everyone else had their own car to attend to or other stuff to do that day. I was ready.
So about that charging system... not only did it not work, the lawnmower battery could barely start the car and would only run it for a couple of minutes. I pulled hobiercr's truck over to grid and would spend the time in between autocross runs like this:
So the starting procedure was: with truck hooked up and running, turn the MR2 key on, uncap the starter wire, touch starter wire to post until the car fires up screaming with an open exhaust at 2500rpm (now start the timer to the battery running down), recap wire, disconnect jumper cables from both truck and car, hop in, helmet on, go to the line. Luckily Robbie was working grid so we had the timing down for exactly when to do this.
First run, off the line and the first two things I notice are that the clutch is clearly slipping and there are lots of smells. The decade old tires had the consistency of a sugar cookie so grip was uninspiring, but the car braked and handled like an MR2 should so it was halfway decent at autocross anyway- but my run was red flagged for a timing issue, which really felt rough because what if it never ran again?? Back to the truck, coast in, connect jumper cables, re-ziptie a few things that moved and wait for the next run.
First timed run this time, do the whole starting dance, back to the line, launch gingerly to save the clutch and it runs a 54. something. Return and repeat, twice. I believe in the morning I got down to a 53.8 or so and the car was puking rusty coolant occasionally but otherwise seemed to get faster each run as the tires wore down to what little grippy rubber they may have had left.
In between heats, Mr_Asa and I topped up the cooling system with water again, tightened the supercharger belt, and I borrowed a fuel can from singleslammer to add 5 more gallons to the tank. Back to the grid on the truck/generator/starter battery setup and it was go time. First run uneventful, second run the car went faster but ejected the alternator tensioner pulley which rolled all the way across the course and crashed into the bathroom- Tom found and returned the belt:
Didn't need that anyway since the charging system didn't work. Final run, I really went for it and was not nice to the clutch, the shifter broke going into 2nd but it stayed there, and with the last little bit of grip the tires could find we got a 52.6 I think, which was pretty damn respectable considering the circumstances.
Back to the paddock, and once the car cooled off I made a crappy little tape shifter bushing and discovered the fore-aft cable had lost its' clip at the transmission. Luckily they're the same at both ends on an MR2, so I relocated the left-right clip and made a ziptie replacement for drags- all I needed was to do the 1-2-3 shift sequence once.
Once drags started I waited until what I thought (from the far end of the paddock) would be a good opening, did the starter dance, and got in line. The car would start to break up a bit as the voltage dropped but luckily I got staged in time and pretty soon I was off- the clutch was slipping pretty badly, but the car managed a 17.2 at 86mph wobbling around on its' rock hard autocross tires and I was happy.
Mission accomplished. I watched the drags with TurnerX1/9 and generally wandered around until stuff shut down for the night.