Racing is mostly just trailer repair

Headed home to Colorado from the SVRA event at COTA and this happens.  Fortunately my wife noticed the trail of smoke before the tire was completely destroyed. Never mind that I have new tires/wheels, freshly repacked and adjusted bearings, and new LED lights on the trailer.  So here's a trailer failure mode I didn't even consider.

The wheel chock suspension mod got me to a random shop in Post, TX that happened to have a set of old leaf springs the right length which they installed for me after a few hours, so it could have been worse.

I had no idea when I started racing how much of it was going to be taken up with trailer maintenance/repair.

It's been a rough event.  After someone crashed into the safety car scattering carbon fiber across the track, my final race at 9:30am race got rescheduled for 4:30pm which basically meant getting home nearly a day later than planned.  I opted to stay for the race, which I lead for most of it until my clutch cable broke.  At which point I was glad the race was shortened--still managed third place shifting badly without the clutch.  And then this happened.  And then a winter storm closed the road home, so I'm stuck in New Mexico...

Talk about perseverance.

Hope you get home soon.

Wow, so many new and exciting failure modes to discover!

Glad you guys caught it before the tire/fender suffered critical existence failure. 

I often ask myself whether it's worth it, and after crashing a modern car the questioning has reached fever-pitch. This leads me back to my belief that racing as an addiction has just been flying under the mental health establishment's radar, and that we should enjoy it before society wises up and starts treating us like we got hooked on oxys.

This reminds me of one of the biggest takeaways from that time we went B-Spec Racing:

Pro racing is all about the show, and it’s more expensive than you think. Everything there costs money.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

This is why I race old cheap cars.

Basically I have a box wine addiction versus crack.

Hah.  I'm not sure anything is cheaper to race than vintage Formula Vee, but I'm pretty sure supporting both a boxed wine and crack addiction would be cheaper.  I think I spent something like $30/lap just in entry fees this weekend.  (SVRA COTA costs more than twice what a normal vintage weekend costs with less than half the track time, so it's hardly representative...)

Of the racing I do, the FV is the easy car to campaign!  Rally is so very much harder, but man this event was frustrating.  Probably worth it--great to spend the weekend with race friends and driving on a phenomenal track.  I really do hate trailers, though.

That's the thing about GRM and the shared interest. I read the above and yet the first place my brain goes is "huh, vintage Formula Vees are kind of neat..."

Anyhow, sorry about the chaos level and I hope things smooth out ASAP.

Rough weekend. But explains exactly whey I gave up even just HPDE a decade ago. It takes an entire Saturday just to go through the car and make sure the marks for alignment haven't moved, etc. 

I just don't have the desire to spend all my free time on my back in the garage anymore. Not to mention the cost. 

That said, I would still like to take the BRZ out to Hallett once. I think it would be an absolute blast. 

Jesse Ransom said:

That's the thing about GRM and the shared interest. I read the above and yet the first place my brain goes is "huh, vintage Formula Vees are kind of neat..."

Anyhow, sorry about the chaos level and I hope things smooth out ASAP.

It's the end of the season, and I'll be so excited to go racing in the spring that I'll have forgotten all about this by then.

Vintage Formula Vee is neat!  And cheap!  Come race with us.

In reply to Berck :

Yup, Vees are neat. 

In 1990 or so I had a Beach Mk5C. It was my first formula car. 

Knock wood I've had good luck with trailers but they were always single axle open trailers with no suspension or brakes.

I've only had my enclosed trailer about 5 months so we'll see how it goes.

That wheel chock fix was an excellent roadside idea. Trailer springs seem to break all the time, I'll have to remember that one. My little enclosed and my toy hauler have both snapped springs on me, even though they are always loaded well within their rated limits. 

Berck said:

 I think I spent something like $30/lap just in entry fees this weekend.  (SVRA COTA costs more than twice what a normal vintage weekend costs with less than half the track time, so it's hardly representative...)

Even HPDEs at COTA are twice as expensive compared to other tracks.

TNiA at Charlotte are $185

Lots of HARD walls to claim fenders, nose and tail covers

j_tso said:

 

Even HPDEs at COTA are twice as expensive compared to other tracks.

Yep.  $600 per day minimum...and that's with 30+ cars on track per session.  Lower density costs even more.

It's $50K for private rental.  But hey, I believe that gets you free catering!!