It’s Thursday night and the car is still on the trailer from the National Tour. Car ran well and didn’t miss a beat. Friday morning, engine starts and revs freely, installed the electric water pump and it finally stopped leaking. I left the shop around 12:15pm for the short drive to El Toro. Car sailed through tech, as it usually does. Something strange about 3rd & 4th gears… there’s a strange grumbling noise. Hmmmm????? 1st & 2nd gears are all that I will need for most courses anyway, right?
Back at El Toro bright & early on Saturday AM. I called a couple of my fellow Fiat guys to run the grumbling noise part them. We sorta decided that the pinion nut may have come loose and was causing the noise as I went up through the gears. I had retrieved a spare transaxle from some guy up in Lancaster about a year ago so I grabbed the special snap ring to install if the other one had disintegrated. Jacked the car up and removed the speedo cover and hopefully find the loose nut. That was not to be… I set the car back down and took it for a run to see if 1st. & 2nd, were still viable. As it turns out, they were not. The trans is engaged, rude noises are coming from the trans and the car is not moving… at all! Now what?
Walk the ¼ mile back to the truck & trailer and go retrieve the car. Went to registration to tell them of my dilemma and what should I do about my work assignment. Their comment, “You FSP guys are drop’in like flies”. Steve Glusman volunteered to do my work shift so I could scramble back to the shop and set about changing the transaxle assembly to the ‘who knows if it’s gonna work’ trans from Lancaster. I pulled into the shop at precisely 9:00am, by 9:30 the engine and trans was laying in a heap behind the jacked up Fiat. By 11:30am I fired up the car and took it for a quick spin to see that all gears were working – they did! An amazing thing these little Italian piss-pots!
It’s now exactly 12:00pm and I’m pulling back into the pit area… will wonders never cease? Found Steve and was told that FSP had been bumped because someone else had dropped out and there wasn’t enough cars to make a category. I personally think that they must like the little Fiat 850 Sedan and wanted to see if I would make the show – THANKS SCCA and who ever else was in charge.
The engine is running great, the clutch is sorta not fully disengaging but here I am, ready to make my first runs of the day. Got all four run in with out too much drama. The 2nd gear synchro is a bit unhappy, but with a little judicious peddling I made do. The car is launching really well and my 60’ times were a bit of a buzz by the announcer and others as they came by after my runs. Certainly was a lot of fun keeping up with some of the cars that I had to run against with street tyres. Whoopee!
So, the short and long of it is this, I punched a couple of red lights and snagged one cone in the 12 runs, so I wound up 13th in the Bump Class 2 out of 15 entries. Not great, but not bad considering! I gotta work on getting a wee bit more power out of those 903cc’s if I’m gonna have any chance of catching up with Tom Berry.
I want to thank everyone who came over and looked at the little Fiat Sedan, your comments and approval make this sport the best that there is!
John…
