Last Ditch Efforts

Meanwhile Darnell was bargaining for a probe radiator and some hoses. None of use had the energy to solve that puzzle at the moment though. I curled up in the Hippo and awaited the rain they had been talking about all night. Where was the rain? This would be a perfect time for it to start raining!!

Between the night sweats and overall stress, I may have gotten a couple hours of sleep. Morning came and the car was in the same place.




We knew the crew wouldn't be back until 10:00am so we headed out for some breakfast and took a trip to the parts store. The girl at Autozone opened early and we got some hoses we needed. Not bad actually. We were shooting for maybe 4 hours on the track at this rate. Nice.



We went back to the track and waited for our radiators. One thing Darnell hadn't forgotten was the fact that he had hit someone and they had called a penalty. Last night we weren't able to get the car down there to serve the penalty, but they said once it got running to bring it down and do the time. We thought we would get it out of the way while we wait for our parts.

The dart landed on the Sarah Palin penalty.



Innovation at the track had lead to this new penalty. The accused had to put on Lipstick, get sprayed with racoon piss, (which they must have ran out of), go hunt a bear in the pits ans then change a baby. What do this have to do with racing? Absolutely nothing.





So with that out of the way, our new buddies showed up with two radiators out of various Volkswagens. Everything looked like it was going to be ok, but the damage was worse then we had foreseen. The coolant pipe, (which was rust now), that runs under the oil cooler and in turn cools the oil cooler had busted a hole as well. We didn't have enough tube or connectors to jimmy something up. It was getting close to 1:00pm by now and the people's curse was coming up. I said, we could get what we need from the store and maybe get on the track by 2:00. The race is over at 3:00. Who wants to watch a car get destroyed and relax? So we did the latter. It was a valiant effort and I couldn't have been more thankful from Jason and the boys from Ann Arbor for not giving up hope. There was just too much to do and our energy was so low at this point.

I do remember the next morning, waking up and thinking in my head, we just have to run a hose to bypass the heater core outlet and splice a T in there, man....oh well, still would've had to go to the store. It's really amazing how much the fatigue and emotion really swallows you up. You sit there and cannot believe how hard it is to fix something, when really it might not be that bad. Granted there wasn't much time left in the race, but I really couldn't see the car working at the moment. Our team was beat down and a shower was just around the corner. We were happy with how far we had come and pulling the plug when we did. Well, next year we know now.