Our most recent vintage racecar purchase.
A Tales from the Track Episode
This is a story about the moment when you have nothing to lose, when frustration drives you to the breaking point, and when assistance appears from unexpected places.
Also Coca-Cola.
And flour.
For quite a while, I had a problem with the Sonett stalling under braking. It wasn’t an issue driving on the street, even spiritedly, just when autocrossing at 10 10ths.
Macon MR7
chassis 100 is a Formula Ford built in 1969. Happily, I do have a bit of period history of this car.
Macon MR7B chassis 105 is a Formula Ford built in 1969. I really don’t have much history of this car prior to the previous owner. If anyone can provide more information, please get in touch with me. I will update this post if I obtain any additional history of the car.
These videos and these photos are from the VSCCA’s event at Virginia International Runway (VIR) in 2004. It was held the first weekend in May and Peter Krause was the event chairman. I drove Dad’s 1964 Quantum Formula S.
One of the challenges for a hobbyist doing a vehicle restoration is finding inexpensive and space saving solutions to mimic professional level tools. For at least one situation, I have an alternative that is functional yet cheap enough you can recycle the material when done.
I can do math, but it is hard.
So I like to devise ways that I don’t need to do the math in common situations where math is required, situations like…
Needing to convert the number of ounces of oil to add to an odd number of gallons of fuel to get a particular fuel-to-oil ratio.
The racecar doesn’t have a speedometer, or at least not an accurate one. So when people inevitably ask “How fast?” I have to reply “about 5500 RPM” or some such number.
I am rewarded with a blank stare that says
I don’t SEE a second head, but there must be an explanation for what just came out of your mouth.
Back in the summer of 1997 I was a towheaded recent college grad. I’d spent the last several months working with a select group of hooligans (University of Delaware Mechanical Engineering Majors) building a Formula SAE car. When it was finally ready to run, I volunteered to be the first Test Driver. Here is the story, as told by my friend Brian Davison who witnessed the whole thing.