2013 Season

Not  a great beginning to our 2013 season.

Built a "new" motor over the winter.  Motor ran fine at the shop.  Went to the Sparta dragstrip the Wednesday before the season open at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (a.k.a. Mosport) to to a little testing. Not good.  The engine was not running properly--seemed to not be running on centre cylinders.

Back at the shop, some changes were made, and everything seemed to be okay.  Did not want to drive all the way to CTMP and find more issues, so Friday morning went to Sparta again.  More problems, or same problems...not running on centre cylinders....Spent a few hours trying to diagnose problem, no luck, so headed back to the shop.

Back at the shop, did a "leak-down" test, and found the centre cylinder were hitting the head--that is a BIG problem.  So, made a decision.  In order to attempt to make the season opener, decided to replace the "new" motor with the motor from last season--which ran fine at the end of last season.

Many hours later (just after 1am...) the motor swap was complete, the motor ran fine,  we loaded the trailer  headed for bed.

 Left London the next morning (Saturday) at 7am, arrived at CTMP at 10am.  The driver registered, and we unloaded the car.  When we started it up, it was not running right--sounded very off.  Spent about 4 hours going through the wiring trying to diagnose this issue, with no luck, so we were relegated to spectators for the weekend.

Congratulation to Mike Hall on winning the first F4 race of the season, and the Leighton Irwin memorial trophy.  Congrats to Mike MacNeil winning the first race Sunday with his new motor after performing an engine upgrade/swap over the winter.  And congrats to Aldo Stracuzzi on not blowing up a motor!

Back at the shop, the problem was diagnosed as a timing chain issue--the timing was off, and two bent valves.  These should  be replace in time for the next event at Shannonville the last weekend in May, which we plan to attend.