Friday, January 16, 2009

Battle damage

Here are some shots of Pujo! apres trailer tumble. This is a tough car; we all expected a wadded up ball of metal to be inside the trailer, most certainly not an angry French Bulldog, ready to drive!



Ouch! We don't need to open the back doors anyway...
After breaking free of the tie downs, Pujo! appears to have impacted his roof against something solid. Trailer wall against ground? Even though the roof is deformed, and the door is pinned shut, the rollcage is not touching any metal it shouldn't.



We won't need that window in Reno.
A quarter window didn't survive, and a valuable piece of exterior trim was damaged.



Pujo! is mooning you!
The ride height is a bit funky in the rear. We'll need to see what's going on here, I'd hate to have the suspension let go during the race. Welding rod is cheap, right?

We in the Chase van were sort of expecting to see pieces start flying off.
While Pujo! did not make it to ThunderHill, he did drive home. Sean reported that the car was a bit on the chilly side as he drove through the snow back to the Monkey House. You can see the missing back window (no it's not just clean) and the dangling right side mirror. We'll need to resolve the mirror - those are handy. I think I saw a couple busted off mirror housings on the express lanes entrance...

The trip from Olympia-ish back to the shop was the longest distance the car has traveled in years and it didn't blow up or catch on fire. We're hopeful that the damage sustained bouncing around the trailer like a mixing ball in a can of Krylon hasn't messed things up too much.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

It begins again...

I registered us for Going for Broken in Reno in May yesterday. 5 months should be sufficient to fix our busted up pug.

Brent and Scott actually made it to Arse-Freeze-Apalooza and were offered a ride in the Dead Smurfs Miata. Many thanks to those guys for adopting our orphaned Monkeys. Sadly they didn't have a chance to win because of an enormous lap penalty. 1200 laps. Wow. Only one car got more and that was only because the owners of the offending Acura demanded it.

Anyway, time for us to dig into Pujo! and see exactly what the damage is. I drove it home but it was obvious it didn't escape unscathed. The suspension definitely suffered. It was noticed on the way home that none of the tires were actually pointing in the same direction. Plenty of negative camber on the drivers front, but the passenger front was showing significant positive camber. The passenger rear for some reason is an inch lower than the drivers rear.

Whatever the diagnosis is, we'll get Pujo! back on his feet.

And then, hopefully, win the index of effluency in Reno. :-)