Carter Racing

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...