19 April, 2010

Getting Ready for the Race

The first race of the season will be next Friday, on the 30th. Since RalphVee has been in hibernation since November, I gave him a gentle nudge Saturday morning and slowly awakened the beast.

I changed the fluids, charged the battery, and primed up the oil pressure. A couple jabs of the throttle, pull of the choke, and he fired right up. I ran him long enough to get temps up, then turned my attention to a few other little details.

RalphVee ready to rock:


Since the last race, I shortened the steering arm extender, so I needed to set the front toe. Which didn't take long. I also did some spring cleaning, including a full wash of the car. Then I got crazy, and did a thorough cleaning of my driving suit and helmet. I've never actually washed my race suit, so it had some funk on it. After giving it a quick spritz in carpet cleaning spray foam (I tested it on a hidden spot first) i let it soak in cool water, then gave it a trip through the washing machine. I then let it air dry in the backyard. It turned out great.

Fresh duds:


I'll pull together all my tools and spare parts this weekend, so we're ready to go come Thursday night.

C'

2 comments:

sean said...

Nice! Good luck at the race. I got the NCRC e-mail. Hopefully I'll have a working car one way or another to get down there for another event sometime soon.

Chris said...

I'm going to run a few of the T-Hill events during the year, and try to make the Laguna event the first part of November. I think you should come down for Laguna.