Posted on Leave a comment

Wings-n-things

After introducing the Lab Rat to a local track day we had a couple of take-away lessons.

Lesson 1. If it’s not ready to race for an hour, it’s probably not ready to race 24 of those.

In an effort to exorcize the race-car-bug demons there was much blood-letting, which came in the form of numerous oil leaks.  First, via a silly mistake, we blocked off a breather, which, during continuous boost pressurized the crankcase, blowing out the dipstick and coating the whole engine compartment (in addition to smoking out the driver)!  Brilliant!

LabRat_oil_explosion
Notice the high gloss finish!

The second leak was the oil drain line.  Our shielding slipped down the hose, exposing it to the intense heat of the nearby manifold.  Fantastic!

LabRat_torched_drain_line
Crunchy on the outside, leaky on the inside

Lesson 2: We needed a big front splitter for the giant tacky wing we put on the back.

A giant, obnoxious wing was bestowed to us by Doug Chase of Chase Race.  We think he wanted it out of his shop for fear of damaging his business’s credibility.  In the end, his garbage was our tacky, tasteless treasure.

crazy-wing-stantions crazy-wing-3quarter

LabRat_wing_installed
Sexy indeed!


Soooooo…. to compensate for the wing we made a splitter out of someone’s leftover ABS sheet and glue.  We know, we know, we could have just taken off the wing and saved ourselves the trouble.

Here's Brent making some fine adjustments to the wing. He's got a good ear for these kind of things.
Here's Brent making some fine adjustments to the wing. He's got a good ear for these kind of things.
The ABS splitter (under construction) that wieghs more than the hood and should make a fine bumper.
The ABS splitter (under construction) that weighs more than the hood and should make a fine bumper.

Some shots from the track day.  Believe it or not, we actually got in some testing with the LabRat under its own power!

LabRat_trackday_group_huddle

LabRat_trackday_mountain

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *