Racing's supposed to be fun! I've learned in my short racing “career” that when it's not in the cards, pushing it to make an upcoming race weekend just ends up making it worse.

As usual, small things kept pushing my timeline back. Parts weren't coming in on time or unforseen parts were necessary. After installing the “new” motor and topping off the coolant, a hairline crack in the intermediate housing proved that it was more than just a casting flaw. Some stop leak might have enabled me to run the upcoming race weekend... but I never could get the motor to fire off. Everything necessary was there... plenty of fuel and air, plenty of ignition, just not enough compression to do the job. It would make a lot of smoke and create a hellacious back fire every once in a while, and on occasion, shoot fireballs when I'd forget to pull the fuse on the MSD's after pulling the spark plugs :D

Having experianced the frustration levels involved with trying to get a rotary fired off when it's way down on compression, and exhausting all of the sure fired tricks of getting them to fire off, I threw in the towel.

So, I get to sit on the sidelines this coming weekend. Saturday, I'll be helping out in the drivers school as an instructor, and Sunday, I'll either be crewing for my brother Steve and his ITA Neon, or working a corner somewhere.

On the bright side, I was able to modify the exhaust and it's now way less restrictive. In the process, I was able to tuck the 3” tube up a little tighter to the floorpan which will help with trailer clearance. I also installed 2 EGT probes and will be running the EGT guage in the next couple of months. I found a new '79 intake manifold to replace the hogged out cheater one that was on the car when I bought it. The oil cooler as well as the spare have both been ultrasonically cleaned and are ready to go, and I'll be collecting some parts that I'll be taking over to Steven Burkette at Tuxedo Park Racing for him to build be a fresh motor.

“Relax and race another day!”

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