Submitted by: Submitted by panache72
Views: 560
Words: 589
Pages: 3
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 08/15/2012 11:48 PM
Carter Racing - B
“Get Pat Edwards for me.” BJ was calling to
get the engine mechanic's opinion on whether
they should run today. The data Robin put
together indicated temperature was not the
problem, but BJ wanted to get Pat's direct
assessment.
Pat Edwards was a classic “gas station
mechanic,” with fingernails permanently
blackened by grease and coveralls never clean
for more than two minutes on Saturday
mornings. Although lacking the sophisticated
engineering training that was getting more
common in racing, Pat had been knocking
around the professional circuit for ten years after
dropping out of school at sixteen to follow drag
racing – and, without question, knew racing
engines as well as anyone in the business.
BJ was calling Pat for more information and,
while waiting, thought about their discussion
about the gasket problem two days ago. “The
way I see it, the turbo-pressure during warm-up,
in conjunction with the different expansion rates
for the head and block, is doing a number on
us,” was about the extent of the analysis. This
was Pat’s personal opinion about the cause of
the problem, and was not represented as
anything else.
It was the same story BJ had heard twenty
times, but it just did not match Robin's data.
“Pat, we’ve chewed this over before. How do
you know this is the problem? When we ran at
Riverside the temperature was 75 degrees and
we still lost the gasket and engine.”
“I’m not sure what happened at Riverside,”
Pat replied. “I’m not sure that temperature is the
problem, but it’s the only thing I can figure that
would lead to the stresses we are seeing. It’s
definitely the gaskets that are blowing out and
causing the engine to go. All of the engines
have failed in different ways, and all the failures
were due to loss of cooling or lubrication caused
by a gasket failure.”
Part of Carter Racing's success was due to a
unique turbo-charging system that Robin and BJ
had developed. They had come up with...