May 16th 2008
Weather is great and we are going racing! Discovered a missing bolt on the gas tank and was unable to match another one up but found one the same size and I thought it would work. Joy got off work early and we drilled and mounted the side panels, took the weights off of the seat mount and moved the seat back. The rear end of the Kart was jacked up on the right side and I went ahead and moved the rear axle back down to match the left side. Not sure how to set up this year so I will try a neutral set-up and adjust for Jaz as needed. Jaz helped me change the oil and I blew out the air filter. Not sure what the Kart is going to weigh so I decided to just leave the weights off of the seat mounts and see what Jaz runs across the scales at the track. Not sure what the weight rules are going to be this year and since it is a non-points night we should be OK.
Everyone (including us) that was running a gold restrictor plate had to have it changed out to a new plate that the track was running. I didn't know what the rules were going to be for the new "Chargers" class so I took off about 30lbs of weight from the Kart. Jaz ran across the scale and weighed 301lbs. The rules are the same as Jr1 and we needed to weigh 310 lbs. Now I'm running around looking for 10 lbs of weight to add. We got lucky as Ryan was over weight and gave us a 10 lb weight. We just mounted it to the rear bumper for tonight. The "Chargers" class will not run for points like Jr1 but the top 5 will get trophies each night.
We decided to run Jaz in the new "Chargers" class this year. It is a new class between "Rookies" and "Jr1". Jaz started on the outside front row for the 1st heat and got 2nd place. She started outside in the second row for the 2nd heat and got 4th place. During the Final she lost the Kart coming out of turn 2 and went head first into the outside wall. It appeared that something broke as it turned right into the wall. She was not a happy camper when she came off the track! She said she couldn't steer the Kart and I looked over the front-end and I couldn't see anything wrong. Ryan told her there was a rut towards the top of the track and we think she spun and hit the rut and that grabbed the wheel away from her.
I did play around with the tire pressures a bit but Jaz really could not tell any difference. She seems to like running a little loose and sliding thru the corners or as she calls it making a square turn, took me awhile to figure out what she was talking about on that one!
6 Karts ran in the feature race and Jaz had a DNF so she misses out on a trophy for the night.
We paid the $50 to reserve our pit stall so at least getting a pit stall is one thing less to worry about this year. It was super nice meeting everyone again and hopefully we will get to know some new faces this year.