Less than a mile from the house an indoor Karting track has opened. Welcome Race Rochester.
Last night I hit the track for the first time and it was fantastic.
These are not your run-of-the-mill go-carts, but rather performance-oriented machines hitting upwards of 25 mph. They take a little getting use to, but after a couple of laps I was powersliding around every corner. It was a blast. At only $15 for 10 minutes, I’ll certainly be back — a lot.
This past weekend I finally got around to some automotive repair.
The flange between the exhaust manifold and the tailpipe on my street car rusted apart several months ago. I put a temporary fix on until I could get parts. Turns out the “front pipe” (see photo and notes) can only be bought from Mazda at a cost of $300. That’s $300 for a 12″ piece of cast iron.
My temporary fix was looking pretty good. (more…)
Speaking of racing, this coming weekend marks the first outing of the year.
After getting the motor back in, the car went off for a little welding. G.T. Fab & Welding did a fantastic job installing a couple of extra door bars for me. Now not only do I meet the updated rules, I feel safer.
All that’s left to do for the weekend is to finish installing the new race harness and gather up supplies. We’re heading out Friday to run the open test-and-tune session at Gingerman in order to break in the new motor without breaking it. It will also give me some much needed extra seat time.
Let’s hope everything goes well.
In just over 5 hours the race motor was reinstalled into the Omni. Everything went into place like we knew what we were doing. With just some minor coaxing, she started right up. The best part — a steady 60 psi of oil pressure.
It is now off to a welding for a little bit of work. Next, the Fury.
The race motor is on its way back to the builder. Let’s hope one of the rod bearings simply slipped out of its journal. We shall see.