Tracy		Dana

July 2006 Reports

29 July - Progress

Giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, it is possible the problems we were having with the Horstman FX-100 clutch were self-induced. It came to light that some miscommunication had taken place with regards to the grade of threadlocking compound to to use on the more substantial nuts holding everything together. In our defense, the owner's manual illustrated using Loctite 290 (penetrating, wicking, permanent threadlocker) in one picture and Loctite 242 (serviceable) in another but in the text only referred to "Loctite" whenever an application was directed. With some clarification and a few replacement parts from Gary Gebhart of Horstman we decided to give the new clutches one more chance to prove themselves.

On Friday night we ran both karts (both wearing the FX-100s) at Circleville Raceway Park with Tracy doing the testing of her #99 kart and Eric testing #13. With each lap we tentatively allowed ourselves to think we'd found the combination but before we could feel to confident the RPM spiked under Eric's foot and the #13 coasted to a stop at Turn 4. More...

23 July - The Misery Continues

In spite of our best efforts and combined wisdom of Bill Willis of POWERsports and Gary Gebhart at Horstman Manufacturing, we cannot keep the new Horstman FX-100 clutches on the crankshaft for more than a few laps.

With Tracy spending Saturday night near Chicago, we asked Eric Creech to do the clutch testing on the #99 kart. He got in about 3 practice laps before he felt the clutch slip accellerating out of Turn Nine and then again exiting Turn 10. He immediately came in to limit the damage. This was the second week in a row that the clutch loosened on the #99 kart, but meanwhile, Dana was able to complete both her practice sessions. Based on this we began to suspect something was different with the crankshaft taper on the #99 engine.

But, on her first qualifying lap, Dana spun her FX-100 clutch off on the long pull out of Turn Four. This was doubly aggrevating since she felt she had a shot at the pole. In her second practice she got down to a 44.7 with a badly oversteering kart. On her Qualifying warm up lap she felt the changes we made to the kart gave it perfect balance and she knew she'd inprove on her earlier times. Fastest qualifying time in TaG Senior was a 44.5 so she may have been right.

Sick of looking at those clutches and thinking about solutions I went off to work a corner. There was some good racing and a few things to comment on from that perspective which I'll expound on in a later update. The day was saved by the social aspect of the MSOKC Hog Roast and games afterward - from which I was surprised to learn that I am some sort of tire changing wizard. More on that later too.

21 July - New Photo Gallery

Back in April, Indianapolis photographer Eric Rumschlag shadowed us for the entire Great Lakes SuperKarts! USA Klein Tools Pro Tour weekend at New Castle Motorsports Park. He took something on the order of 600 pictures from which he would choose a select few for a photo essay of our team for his professional portfolio. So inconspicuous was he that rarely did we realize he was there clicking away. Eric also recorded a dozen or so sound bytes - team discussions, driver interviews, pit work and on-track sounds - to use in a short photo essay movie. We're currently working on trying to get the movie (which in it raw state is 500MB) down to a manageable and downloadable size.

In the meanwhile we've posted a couple dozen of the images Eric captured. No captions - the photos, we think, speak for themselves. We hope you enjoy his work as much as we do and for those of you that have not raced with us maybe give you a sense of what it is like.

15 July - Long Day, Short Night

With the heroic efforts of Bill Willis and some of the tools he has available to him at Rahal Letterman Racing, we were able to get one of our new Horstman FX-100 clutches together and installed on Tracy's kart for Saturday night's races. In addition to the #99 kart, final prep was done to the #13 kart for a National Kart News article and photo shoot Dana would be doing on Sunday - the plan was to transfer the new clutch to Dana's kart overnight. All that last minute Saturday work caused us to miss all the practice sessions and get to Circleville Raceway Park barely in time for the first race.

But, a possible mismatch between the tapers on the crankshaft and the drive hub of the clutches caused the clutch to slip on the crank during the warm-up lap and Tracy stopped the kart out on course to limit the potential damage. We missed the second heat race while we considered our options. For the feature we reinstalled the clutch with a few changes but it only lasted a lap and a half and Tracy watched her second race of the evening from out on track. It also meant we'd have to sit out Sunday's NKN assignment.

We're obviously dealing with a fundamental problem with this new clutch and will be working with Horstman to determine what may be different about our particular installation. Hopefully we'll have it sorted out be next Sunday's MSOKC race at CRP.

13 July - Clutch Problems Sideline Us From July 15 Race

Problems with the new Horstman FX-100 clutches have forced us to scratch from this weekend's races. As with the PRD engines, it appears we're one of the first teams to install them and we're running into a few bugs. This is particularly unfortunate since we were looking forward to racing with our old Mid State Ohio Kart Club friends at Circleville Raceway Park - the first opportunity since April! We hope to work with Horstman over the next week to find solutions but the July 23 MSOKC race. For that race we plan to have Ford Focus Midget Pavement Series driver Lynsey Tilton driving the #99 kart while Tracy is out of town.

10 July - New Tech Section Started

In an effort to share some of the information and knowledge we've acquired over the past two seasons with the PRD, we've added a new Tech Section under the PRD Tech button to the left. We've posted photos and some tips on the new Horstman FX-100 clutch and links to some important PRD Fireball documents. We hope to post more articles to save other PRD owners times and money. So if you're a Fireball racer stop back often to see what's new in the PRD Tech section.

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