Most Embarrassing thing YOU have done in a race car!

[Bob Wright]

OK, I've been shamed into posting this one. Maybe people can learn from it. The picture says it all.

Senario: Out lap for qualifying at a NHIS regional race; I smell fuel in turn 2 and think its the car in front of me spilling it. Turn 3 comes up and at the apex its all of a sudden "HOT"! A quick look in the mirror confirms what my back is already telling me; its burning pretty good back there...

I did three things almost immediately- looked for the nearest corner station, undid my seat belt and held my breath. Its faster for you to drive to a station than to have them run to you with a 20lb fire bottle. I looked up the hill and saw two workers reaching for bottles as I came off the corner. Long and short of it...from the time it lit up to when the car was parked at the station and the fire out was maybe 20 seconds. There was a moment when I first stopped that was quite exciting as the flame swirled through the cockpit completely engulfing me. (You know the theory that one is supposed to be able to get out of one of these cars in 5 seconds? It's way faster than that when you're motivated)

The suit worked. It is a 3 layer and I always wear underwear as well. Not a burn, not a bit of redness. The back of the suit is a wonderful toasted marshmallow brown and the left arm restraint had just started to melt. The onboard fire bottle didn't work. I pulled it but nothing happened because the cable was corroded just enough to make it stiff and besides, I was more interested in getting to the corner station and getting out to pay any more attention to it.

The car was on track for the race 3 hours later. The worst part was cleaning up the extinguisher powder that was everywhere and replacing a couple of hoses in the engine compartment. The wiring harness was covered with spiral wrap which all melted but saved the wires...The worst damage was to bodywork (thank you racer's tape inventor). I think if the fire had burned for another 15-20 seconds it would have ruined just about everything under the cowling.

Now the embarrasing part. The cause was a loose fuel line fitting because we kept changing carb jets while using C44 and I forgot to tighten it. I figured this out on the way to the corner station. Funny how your mind works.

The lesson is don't skimp on the safty equipment, and rehearse in your mind what you would do in as many on track situations you can think of.

[size="1"][ November 09, 2004, 09:59 PM: Message edited by: Bob Wright ][/size]

[D.T. Benner]

Thanks Bob! You put us into 3 pages! I know another incident that could be added to this post but the driver is a DSR guy who probably never reads this page. Last weekend at Thunderhill he set a new Track record in Qualifying and a new Race record in the race[BUT] just after his record race lap he had a front wheel break in the fastest corner of the track-130+mph. and did some serious damage to his car and probably required a change of underware! So whats embarrassing about that you ask? Well early in the season he pointed out to me that a particular brand of wheel had a bad habbit of failing around the bolt circle! Yea the same brand of wheel that failed on his car last weekend. Ouch [img]redface.gif[/img]

[EYERACE]

and the brand was ???????? if the proper cyberspace ettiquete is to email instead of post here, well OK but eye'm sure some of us will be curious

[D.T. Benner]

Because it is a brand I have not seen on Formula cars I think I can say without to much concern. It is pronounced Kaiser but not sure of the spelling. The wheel in question was a 4 lug bolt type not a center lock and the fractures seem to happen around the bolt circle area that is a relief in the center. I Do not mean to say that this brand is of poor quality and the wheel that failed may have been subject to contact or other stress that I'm not aware of. I was only reporting on this incident.

[David Ferguson]

In this thread on the Sports Racer board:

http://p081.ezboard.com/fdsrforumfrm...icID=119.topic

Kevin Mitz said the wheel was a Keiser -- lots of references to them when googled, but can't find a website.

[Frank C]

It is probably Keizer Aluminum Wheels at:
Keizer Wheels
- Frank C

[Al Guibord]

Yes Bob was still in the car in this picture...A local photographer had a good series of pictures of Bob's car stopping and Bob and his steering wheel flying out. It was quite impressive. He now goes by the name "Fireball" Wright.

[Jesse Yorio]

i had some experience with keizer wheels when running FSAE cars in college. we used them b/c they were the best trade-off between cost and weight that we could find (the FSAE competition includes a 'cost' event). after two years we started experiencing stress fractures around the bolt pattern on the 'thin' wheel centers that we were using. keizer makes two wheel centers - a thin and thick. i believe the think is about 2.5-3x the weight of the thin but its certainly much more robust. given an FSAE car weighs ~600lbs with the driver and pulls ~1.6gs i'd be very surprised anyone would use the thin wheel centers on a 1000lb car capable of 2.5gs. we put the failures down to inconsistent hub manufacturing on our part, but now i'm beginning to think it is more of a material issue.

if you have keizer wheels and want to stick with them then the thick wheel center might offer a good solution. you can save some weight by replacing some of the bolts around the outside of the rim with aluminum ones. we did this, using a steel bolt for every 3rd bolt. keizer doesn't recommend it, but it worked.

[dc]

Up close and personal with Bob Wright's warming experience...