So come to find out, I haven’t been so “safe’ while towing. Not only did I not use trailer brakes, 3/4 of the lights on the trailer didn’t work, the breakaway switch was busted and generally sounds like I was lucky I didn’t die the last ohhhh 20 tows

So as not to cheat death anymore, I decided to do a trailer overhaul. I was going to do the wiring myself, but after getting an $85 quote from a trailer factory, they did the work. Got the trailer back and couldn’t be happier. All the lights work, the brakes work, got a fresh breakaway switch, and for a few bucks more, I got the hubs repacked, and even bought a spare hub to assure that I won’t ever need one on the road. An old Autox buddy of mine Aaron had an extra brake controller, so now the 4 Runner has that installed.

With all the mechanicals overhauled, I decided to give it a fresh coat of paint as the 2-3 year old rustoleum was getting a little long in the tooth. Decided to go with truck bedliner this time around instead of plain spray paint. Figured it would be more durable, protect from rocks better, and also provide more traction for the R-compounds driving up on it. Rather then deal with the pain in the ass of rolling on the stuff, I decided to go with spray. Along with the easy of cleanup, its also 1/2 the price. I’m not going to be putting it though THAT much, and you can layer the liner, so I’ll probably give it another coat in a year or so.

I ended up using 9 cans of liner at $8.50 a can, right under $80 after tax. Not too bad on the price considering the roll on stuff is $70 a kit and needs 2 kits to do a trailer. The entire trailer got 2 coats, and it took about 1.5 hours or so. Not bad at all and it came out great! The only thing that could be better is a little less “spotty” coverage. Because of the spray, some areas just get a bit more then others, and because its a closed deck you can sort of see that on the deck. Once it dries/cures it will probably get better. I’m still really happy, as it looks like brand new trailer! Maybe I’ll even get it registered to become “fully legal” even though I haven’t been bothered about that in 5 years now.

Here are a couple of pictures of the texture and the final product.

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Started getting the car ready for VIR today. I didn’t have any big mechanical issues or anything. Just the standard in-between event work. I thought I was going to have to add a rear wheel bearing in to that mix, but after checking everything out, it seems I just have a touch of play in the rear pillowball bearings, and not the wheel bearing. Also, the front tie rods have a *very* slight touch of play, so I’ll replace those after this event.

Other then that, I just did a normal nut and bolt of the whole car, rebuilt the front calipers and bled the brakes, all new fluids and some cleanup. I realized that the fuel leak I thought I had in the trunk was just spilled gas from when I was transporting the car, and the oil leak I had in the front right seems to be from the power steering pump lines rather then something more important. I couldn’t find it, and its not so much of a leak, as its just “oily dirt” around that area, so I figured I’d just pick up all the spare parts I might need, and fix it after this next weekend, unless it gets worse. I cleaned the whole area up, so it should be easier to tell where its coming from, if it is at all. Lastly, I realized I bent the bolts for the rear swaybar endlinks, so have to pick up some new ones tomorrow. Hopefully I can find those in town.

Leaving on Wednesday for Raleigh, and I’m skipping the test day, so I’m hoping the Roebling setup is going to work well for VIR, as I go right into qualifying. I might adjust the shocks a bit to make the car tighter on entry until I get a few VIR laps under my belt, but going to leave the swaybar on the max setting. Seemed to work for Roebling!

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This weekend was the first race of this season. I was really excited to start racing, and at the same time, a little nervous about this weekend, as a couple VERY fast cars were showing up, and I was wondering how I was going to stack up.

The long weekend started out well with Friday’s testing. The car was pretty good right off the bat, but I decided to make some air pressure and shock adjustements, as well as drilling an additional hole in the rear sway bar to stiffen it up. Those changes worked like magic and the car worked AWESOME in the first session back from lunch. With that, and the fact that I pretty much used up all my testing tires, I decided to skip the last session of the day and just drink some beer. The only sad news of the day was that the pimpy VS camera mount still did not work with my Canon HV10 MiniDV HD camera. Boooo. That night, we stopped by walmart and picked up a cheapo Panasonic camera to see if maybe the MiniDV tapes were to blame. As luck would have it, that camera was DOA…..the in car video curse continues.

Saturday brought the first qualifying session. I went out and the car felt awesome the first few turns. As soon as I started my first hot lap though, I got fuel cut. Realized I forgot to put gas in the car. DOH! Even with those hiccups though, I still put her on pole for the afternoon race. The race started out very exciting right from the beginning. I got a great start, and came alongside an RX-7 for turn 3. He totally did not see me coming and hit me and forced me off the track. 97 mph in the dirt, foot to the floor, and I manage to keep the car from spinning, but lose a lot of ground to the lead pack. I put my head down and start driving my ass off and manage to catch the lead group, pass them, and go on to take the win in ITA. The only thing better would have been %$#*$&*# in car video!!

Sunday morning, I get a wild hair up my ass and decide “I’m gonna give it ONE last try for video”. We head back to wal mart and this time pick up a nice HD Samsung camera to borrow. Qualifying comes and the weather is much better. I go out and run a great lap, but its only good enough for 4th place. 1st is at a 1:21.8 but then 2nd through 4th is all on the same tenth at a 1:22.2 lap. Should be a doozy of a race! Even better, the new camera worked! I have flawless video. Woohoo! That 1:22.2 lap is about as fast as any ITA FWD car has ever gone at Roebling, so I’m VERY happy with my times.

I had another good start in the race, and ended up right behind Mike VanSteenburg for the beginning part of the race. I was able to battle through the ITS cars with him, and ended up catching him, as well as the polesitter Kip VanSteenburg, and passing them both to take another win! They fought hard the whole way, and I had to spend about half the race driving with my eyes in the rear view mirror to not let Mike by. I’ll let the full video I post tomorrow do the rest of the talking, as it was a very exciting and fun race for me.

The next race weekend is at VIR on May 9th and 10th. Looking forward to this one, as I love the track, and if the weather holds up, I’ll have a good shot at the track record!

Here is the Qualifying lap. I’ll be posting the full race tomorrow morning, as YouTube is doing maintenance right now.

You can check out the full HD footage by clicking here or just play the smaller embedded version below