Here's another scenario for you more (or less) experienced guys to consider.
How often does someone bring a car to a meeting covered in grime and shit, they get the thing up onto stands and then they proceed to pretty much try and rebuild the bloody thing half an hour before scrutineering closes and practice begins? Obviously the thing has not been out of the trailer since the last meeting.
Surprisingly often actually!
Many years ago I used to race sprintkarts and I was getting my pit area set up for a big meeting at Oran Park near Sydney N.S.W. The meeting was the Castrol International and was regarded as a reasonably big international event at the time. I was just about to present my kart to scrutineering when these dudes drag out an absolutely filthy, greasy, shitty looking machine out of one of those really trick, mag wheeled, electric disk braked, multi-level car trailers with all the you-beaut lockable tool compartments and flashy sponsors and kart/engine makers graphics and logos down the side, filled with a million car bits, racks of spare tyres and numerous, mysterious looking jerry cans skulking in the corner. You know, the "Money Is No Object And I Don't Mind Telling You About It" type? Anyway, these dudes drag out all this gear and set up their pit and next thing you know is they are asking all and sundry about them if they can borrow extension leads 'cause they want to do a cylinder hone and install a new piston and are too far away from a power point!! Yeah, sure, and pigs fly too! Bugger me if the guy doesn't fish out of one of his trailer's lockable toolboxes a big electric drill and a bloody expensive looking parallel hone and starts waving it around! Next thing is they lift the barrel off the engine, clamp it up in a vice and one of them start honing away! His mate proceeds to strip the kart right down to its undies and between them they do pretty much a complete rebuild on the thing. Now I have been guilty of late car prepping on Saturday night before races on Sunday but, please, doing a complete rebuild on a go-kart in the pits just before scrutineering and practice for a big two day international event is the the last word in lack of preparedness!!
This type of scenario happens to a greater of lesser extent at all levels of all motorsport, not just karting. There is no real excuse for this lack of preparation. Oh please! Don't hand me that crap that you didn't have the time to prepare. Meetings of this magnitude and far far less don't just appear overnight. Even the most minor of club test and tune days are scheduled weeks in advance. The only excuse would be a private practice organized the previous night! These guys don't have trouble with finding time to do this pre-race preparation, they just can't be bothered to MAKE the time. The sequence I have described below may look long and detailed but in reality it can be done within a couple of hours. If there are significant repairs necessary or major engine builds to do then of course the time needed will blow out considerably. Routine maintenance and preparation is a simple and straightforward task and doesn't need to take dozens of late night hours.
Car preparation can sometimes mean the difference between a complete hell day without finishing an event or a successful and enjoyable day out at the races. I'm not going to bother here with suspensin setuo or engine rebuilds and tuning. There are too many variables here and so many jokers have their own ideas on how a race car chassis and engine should be set up.
It is very often the simplest of things that can ruin you race day, so I have compiled a list of things to do before you race, indeed before you even take to the track in your new toy! This is a useful preparation regime if you happen to buy a used car. If you buy a used car, be wary of preparation of used cars by other guys as they may not be particularly vigilant with their maintenance and may have just quickly tarted up the car to sell.
These parts can hide a variety of sins and only get in the way whilst you are cleaning and working on the guts of your machine. Often times seats left in place can hide a failing engine mount or gearshift linkage.
This is possibly the best form of preventative maintenance you can do to your car. Just the act of running a rag over every inch of you car can reveal potential dramas before they actually occur. Avoid the use of high pressure water blasters and such as they have a habit of forcing water under high pressure into wiring looms, gearbox and carby vents and even past gaskets into the bowels of the engine! This can promote corrosion of critical parts, particularly if the car is left for long periods of time between meetings.
Use a bit of kerosene on a rag to remove that stubborn splattered engine lube, grease or rubber. Loose and missing fasteners, fuel & oil leaks, chaffed wiring looms, fuel lines & brake lines, cracked engine mounts and chassis and a myriad of other gremlins can be found under all that grimy, abrasive black shit. If you clean every inch of your car you will become quite familiar with all those inches and will soon see any potential dramas before they become a real drama. A bonus of using kero is that it will buff up quite nicely and doesn't seem to affect paintwork or powder coatings like other solvents. Work out for your self a logical order of cleaning and inspecting the car, such as starting at the front right corner and working your way around the car or across the car or whatever system you feel comfortable using. Stick to it! If you use a simple order such as this every time, you are guaranteed to get to every bit and will learn to recognize early signs of dramas before they get a chanced to ruin your day later on. I usually take about only about 20 to 30 min to completely clean my Formula Vee. During this cleaning process, give all the suspension attachments, rose joints, pushrods and such a good reef back and forward looking for loose and worn bushes, joints and steering components.
Another bonus of cleaning you car is that it looks really nice when tyre kickers wander past in the pits to scope out your toy. Show a bit of pride here lads!
Now is a good time to check tighten all those fasteners such as front and rear suspension attachment bolts, brake caliper bolts, steering components, pedals, gearshifts and other sundry fasteners that may cause lots of irritation, damage and pain should they undo! Now is the time to replace all those spring washers and "Loctited" second lock nuts with Nylok nuts. These little blighters use a nylon insert to provide friction and preventing the nut from coming right off the threads. Note: Nyloks will not prevent eventual loosening of fasteners, just prevent them from dropping right off the threads, so give them due attention in the critical areas mentioned. Don't ever trust them!
Cables should be regularly checked for correct tension, free running, and overall outward condition. Pay attention to reusable joiners used on throttle cables for loosening. If the cables run roughly they will need to be lubed with (preferably) a light machine oil. Pay attention to the adjustment of throttle cables. Ensure that the pedal hits its travel stop at the same time that the carby/s go wide open throttle. During the heat of battle out on the track you will be stamping pretty hard on the loud pedal and if you are having a drag race down the straight it is amazing how jamming the pedal down even harder onto its end stop , possibly even bending it, makes you feel like you have a better chance of passing your adversary! If the carby is wide open and the pedal has not reached its travel stop the eventual result is a broken throttle cable, or at the very least a very stressed cable inner and bent throttle pedal and/or linkage! This can really piss you off if you were dicing for the lead in a state championship final and a cable breaks! A little attention here can multiply the life of throttle cables immensely.
A little thought to the original installation can make the world of difference in the long run here. Wiring on basic cars can be very simple but without a bit of thought, the wiring looms become bulky and very messy unless a bit of forethought is put into the installation. A bit of thought here on the running of various wiring to the assorted components such as ignition, oil pressurte switches, starter and such with a view to having all the wires cut to the appropriate length. The temptation here is to leave the longer wires just dangling around and the shorter wires stretched too tight on their terminals. This type of setup invites fatigue and eventual breakage in the wires and terminals and possible shorting due to chaffing and eventual failure on some sharp bracket.These failures always seem to occur AFTER practice and about 1.5 laps into the first race of the day! Spend the extra effort and shorten lengthy wires and lengthen too short wires. If possible, use colour coded wires the same as what is used in the original loom. Solder these connections and support the join with heat-shrink tubing. Use heat-shrink tube to support wires where they come out of earth lugs and switches as well. Ensure that all the wires are the same length especially where the enter connector plugs and so forth. This will ensure that all the wires share the load if they are pulled about and help prevent wire breakages. After making up you harnesses to length to suit your car installation, re-tape the whole loom with electrical tape or enclose in that flexible plastic loom tubing. Don't make the mistake of using re-usable "scotch-loks" or wire connectors that require crimping or the use of a grub screw to join. These type of thing may be fine for bodging up a shitty old FM radio under the dash of your old Dattsun 1600, but are useless in the long term in the component abusive, high vibration, extreme weather environment of a racing car. They have a nasty habit of crushing the wire and creating stress points and are notorious for corroding around the wire strands and creating the worst type of electrical fault of all, the dreaded intermittent fault! Cleanly broken wires are relatively easy to trace and repair but an intermittent fault can ensure a frustratigly shithouse days racing and hours of tedious fiddling to trace the fault. These faults will almost never show their ugly little zit heads in the workshop or at private practice! Usually they rear their mugs early in race one and then every race thereafter! The addition of nylon "spiral wrap" or flexible plastic tubing designed for tidying up under bonnet wiring in cars is a worthwhile step and protects the whole harness against chaffing on sharp metal parts. Unsealed push-on connector blocks should be replaced with good quality weatherproof connector plugs. These can be sourced through auto electricians or auto accessory shops. It is very important to use correct soldering techniques to avoid the dreaded "dry joint". These joints are about as useful as twisting the strands together and using chewing gum and a rubber band to hold it together! If you doubt you own ability to solder correctly, you should be able to find someone in your club with soldering experience to help. If not, it would be a worthwhile investment to visit an auto electrician. These guys do this type of thing for a living and although this may cost some, at least the job should be done right. As a bonus, if one of his solder joints fails due to a dry joint you can pay him a little visit and shove the loom firmly up his bum! Seriously though, these guys have a reputation to protect and bad soldering is not a very good advertisement for their trade. Wiring looms, cables and fuel and oil cooler/filter hoses need to be run in smooth, straight as possible runs and secured by "P" clips, electrical tape, cable ties or all of the above. Oil Cooler lines are notorious for chaffing where they run over chassis rails and such. If the cars are seldom cleaned oil and dust mix to create a wonderful grinding paste that just loves to chew up the soft rubber of coolant hoses. Then one day when you least expect it, hot summers day, drafting up the arse of the car in front for most of the race, engine temp getting right up there....PHHFFFSSSSSSST goes the oil cooler hose! But did you hear it go? Nope! Oil pisses out behind you and all over you mates visor behind you and a few laps later your engines exhaust note goes kind of funny and clangy and it loses a fair bit of power and you lift your foot off the loud pedal and are rewarded with a sudden deceleration even though you didn't touch the brakes! The deceleration increases to the point of locking the back wheels and of into the scenery you go. "Bugger it" you think, "Just flat spotted my new rear Dunlops"! The flat spotted tyres are now the least of your woes as the piston has gotten to really like the cylinder bore it was in close company to and the crankshaft has done its best to pulverise the bearing material! Not to mention the fact that the dry lifters managed to rip off the cam lobes off that one-in-a-million camshaft you have coveted for years! Endo one expensive engine assembly. Jeez you wished you'd seen the chaffed hose but because you didn't clean the car thoroughly this time you didn't check things out as usual. Keep all hoses and lines loomed up and secured and if they have to run over or hard against chassis rails consider using a "P" clamp or using the next size up hose and sleeve the oil hose and securing with a sturdy cable tie. No pretty but very effective.
Have a sniff at your battery mountings and terminals for loose fasterners and corroded battery posts.
Brakes require very special attention and, curiously, are often one of the most neglected systems of a car. This is truly absurd as brakes are possibly the most important safety system on a race car. Usually, the brakes just don't have enough "pedal" Ie: the pedal moves too far before the brakes actually work (if they work at all). Some drivers can get quite snaky when pinged for bad brakes and make smartarse comments along the lines that "Oh I don't need brakes to go fast, they only make me go slower" and other such shit! Well if you have ever had someone spin right in front of you in the first corner after a massed start and you've got nowhere to go you may just appreciate brakes that actually work. I reckon blokes say that type of crap to somehow justify their lack of preparation. Go figure!
There are plenty of other things to look for other than fluid leaks and pedal travel. How about the condition of the brake pedal and linkage/s or cables to the master cylinder/s? It'd be a real bummer if your pedal or linkage broke! Check for brake hose damage. The best brake lines to use are stainless steel braided/teflon hoses. These hoses are usually expensive to have made but are well worth the money in terms of longevity and reliability, no question here. If you must insist on using plain rubber tubing as brake line then keep a close eye for cracking and fatiguing of the hose. Common brake fluid is made up of alcohol and vegetable oil and is hydroscopic or can draw in water in solution and this can lead to corrosion in the master and slave cylinders with consequent seal leakage and ultimately failure. Brake fluid should be completely changed at least once a year.
Pay close attention to where the flexible lines exit brake calipers as this is an area that is subject to constant flexing and stressing, particularly front brake calipers, The lines do need to be long enough to flex easily during movement of the steering and suspension components and can flap about markedly during racing, This can lead to weakening and a possible failure. Also pay careful attention to where the metal lines run. If they run over chassis rails use clamps or even some fuel line that slips over the brake line and secure with a cable tie. Secure all other brake line runs to the floor tray or along the chassis rails using P clips, electrical tape or cable ties.
Take a close look at the drums, shoes, slave cylinders and adjusters on drum brake systems and calipers, pads and brake rotor assemblies on disk brake assemblies for leaks, loose or missing fasteners and excessivewear. Check for correct adjustment, lubrication and smooth running of the wheel bearings. Give the stub axles a good wrench up and down and check for excessive king pin bearing wear while your there.
Adjust the drum brakes to compensate for wear but avoid adjusting the shoes too tightly as this simply robs the car of power that it does not have enough of in the first place! Rotate the drum by hand and adjust both the shoes up until they "just" contact the drum and back them off slightly until there is barest minimum, if any, resistance to the rotation of the drum by hand. This will result in minimum rolling resistance and shortest possible pedal travel.
This segment of your preparation could easily be given a whole topic to itself if you wanted to include engine strips and rebuilds, tuning and so forth. What we are looking for here is what may fail or break in the course of usual running so I won't touch on the subject of engine building and tuning.
Have a good look around the engine for oil leaks from gasket areas, pushrod tubes and hose connections.
Ensure that the cooling tinware is secure.
Keep an eye on the generator mounting clamp that it has not loosened over time. Take a close look at the fan-belt. The usual practise in Formula Vee is to run the belt as loose as possible and this results in the belt flogging and chattering a hell of a lot more than usual which can result in damage and increased wear of the belt. Often, in the heat of battle, the only indication of a missing fan belt is the loss of engine power as the engine tries to go China-Syndrome as outlined elsewhere and quite often the damage can already be done.
Consider the fitting of a micro-switch with a small metal paddle in the inlet of the fan housing that is held closed by airflow into the fan and lights up a nice bright red light right in front of your eyes in event of a fan belt failure. Very cheap and simple to fit and may save your expensive engine from going China Syndrome one day.
Inspect mountings and bracketry, many guys still insist on fabricating exhaust, ignition coil, and other sundry mounts out of aluminium due to ease of cutting and bending and lighter weight. Aluminium, by it nature, tends to work harden and fatigue under constant bending from vibration and becomes very brittle and eventually breaks. Light gauge steel is far stronger and way less susceptible to vibration induced fatigue. If you add up the weight of bracketry made out of steel versus aluminium, you are not saving a significant amount of weight, but are introducing unreliability, when alloy is used.
Pay close attention to the exhaust mounting nuts and look for "blowing" of exhaust gas from a dodgey gasket or loose flange nuts. Dont ever use Nyloks here as the zorst heat will simply melt the plastic friction insert away. There are specific friction nuts available that employ steel inserts to lock the nut and are not affected by heat. Have a look at the entire exhaust system while you are here for leaks/cracks, broken bracketry and dents. All of these little gremlins can rob the engine bit by bit of precious horsepower.
It may be a wise move, if your car doesn't compete for a while to drain the carby bowl. Fuel, if left for very long periods of time, can evaporate leaving an oily, gelatinous goo. This can clag up the carby jets and such so draining out the old fuel may be a good move. The same goes for the whole fuel system if a long period of inactivity is expected.
Check tighten all coolant hoses and ensure all drain plugs are tight and lockwired.
Take a close look at all gearshift linkages from the shifter right back to the gearbox looking for loose or worn universal joints and fasteners.
Look around the transmission for oil leaks, particularly around the swing axle rubber boots. Depending on oils used, these things have shown signs of perishing and deterioration over time.
Put a spanner on all rear suspension mounting brackets and attachments bolts and nuts and look for oil leaks from the wheel bearing housings behind the brake drums/disk caliper brackets.
Now is the time to check/change gearbox, brake reservoirs and coolant system fluids. If all went well during your cleaning and inspection routine and no obvious leaks were found this should amount to a quick level check or change. If fluid levels are unusually low then further investigation is required to determine just where and why the fluid is going. Don't ignore mysterious losses of oils and fluids. Its worth a mention to keep an eye on levels of fluids in overflow bottles.
Ensure all fluid filler and drain plugs are secure and lockwired.
I'm presuming that you have air filters fitted here. Follow the manufacturers recommendations here. Don't forget to oil up your foam filters with the correct oil for that filter type. Some foam varieties can be buggered up by using incorrect filter oils.
Hopefully by now you have run a rag, eyes and spanners over every inch and system of your car and made any necessary adjustments, repairs or replacements. The time has come to replace all the goodies you took off before you started. Once again check out all the bodywork, floorpan and firewall for cracks, buggered fasteners and other damage. Take a close look at your seatbelts and attachment points. Take the time to inspect your fire extinguisher and ensure it is in test.
Refit the bodywork. Check the wheel mounting flanges, bead areas and tyres for any damage and have a close look at the wheel mounting studs/nuts for looseness, possible fatigue and thread damage. Now is a good time to balance those wheels. Bolt them up and your car should be as ready as it ever going to be for an enjoyable days racing.
For the very final touch, get out you can of Mr Sheen/Kitten #1 or whatever and give the bodywork the once over with a clean rag and buff up. This may seem like wank, but car presentation goes a long way in the eyes of spectators. You may not necessarily remembered for your on-track activities/victories but you will certainly be remembered for your clean and well presented car. Scrutineers really appreciate the time and effort put into a clean, tidy and well maintained car!
Finally
This is by no means a complete maintenance regime, you may wish to add engine tuning and adjustment such as valve clearances and so-forth and that can result in a chapter on its own. Different guys have their own tuning, /lubrication and adjustment procedures and some don't even adjust them at all so I am not going to go there. How you specifically tune and maintain your engine is between you and your engine builder and my checklist may be very different to what you feel is necessary.
This section is primarily aimed at BASIC pre-race attention to the car for the newer racers amongst us based on years of competition and scrutineering experience.
Happy racing!!