This is Not Going to End Well Part II

This is Not Going to End Well Part II

When last we last met I had approached Bob Graham to help me by building a motor for the Siata to make some real power. This he did...in fact, Bob took over an almost parental and somewhat proprietary relationship with the car. For the most part I hardly minded as he obviously knew more than I had enough time in my life left to learn. And most of his tweaks were minor and much appreciated...unlike the upholstery job I got. That one got me so steamed I'm not even willing to mention the guy's name here, other than to say he was a fellow racer who even ran a Crosley powered special at one time, although his main ride was a Model T with period hot rod upgrades.

His day job was upholstery, and my car was without for the first couple of years. It was both a question of funds and the fact that I could just drop a piece of foam on the bare aluminum seat and drive quite well without it. But it really did not do justice to the car, and anyway among the nine cartons of parts I got with it was the original naugahyde seat coverings. I also had some of the ribbed floor matting and the covered inserts for the doors as well as the panels for the footwells and firewall.

So there was plenty of original “stuff” to use as templates and patterns. I even borrowed a seat from Graham's car, which was correctly done with the right materials and stitching. What I got back was seats which had been triple rather than single stitched, with the backs covered with “racers rug” where they should have been bare, incorrect ribbed floor mats, and, the real finishing touch...the padded panel for the firewall had a half-assed replica of the Siata emblem embroidered into it.

Cool...if I was going to enter it in the Oakland Hot Rod show. However not quite so neat as I had made plain I wanted to match the original as closely as possible. Oh yeah, the quoted price had somehow doubled. That didn't fly either. Once we got THAT clarified I tossed the firewall cover into the cabinet and left the area painted black metal...and I can even live with the floor mats and seat backs, but it bugs me every time I get into the car and see those triple stitched seams on the seats. No one knows they are not right but me, but...

Bob truly was a “shade tree” mechanic, but I was not yet educated enough about cars to really question him. He kept deciding on his own to try and save me money, but he never asked me if that was my aim on any given project. The required shortcuts cost me at least one engine, and indirectly led to “the big ouch” later that same year.

But there was only one thing he did that really made me feel badly. Without asking, he lowered the car. The body of the Siata is connected to the suspension through aluminum blocks. One is above the front transverse spring which serves as an upper A arm (don't laugh...it is the same exact setup as used on the AC Ace, Bristol, and Ace based 289 Cobra and works quite well), and one above each of the rear leaf springs. To lower the car you use thinner blocks at both ends. But the front fenders also have a flat metal strap in addition, and these had to be shortened. The rear axle is held to the springs with “U” bolts (more like “Cs” that “Us” actually), and these too had to be shortened.

Bob made new aluminum spacer blocks for both ends of the car. So far so good. But he cut the fender straps, overlapped them, drilled a hole through the two pieces, and bolted them together. At the rear he “fabricated” new U bolts out of rods called “allthread.”

These are two no-nos, one because it tampered with the originality of the car, and the other because it was not safe, though I managed to run the car for many years with those nasty U bolts before they cut through the axle housing.

To understand the problem I should first clarify what allthread is. You can buy it in various thicknesses from any building supply house...a three foot long, soft steel rod which is threaded for its entire length. You just whack off whatever length you need with a hacksaw, put nuts on it, and voila...you can fasten things together. It has the structural strength slightly above that of cooked spaghetti, and the threads are cut rather than rolled into the rod, meaning they are sharp and brittle. It is not designed to be bent, and to bend it into a “U” you are creating two stressed turns where it is very likely to break as it flexes. And believe me, the rear axle of a solid ale car in racing conditions jumps up and down like a toad under a napkin.

It finally sawed its way through the housing during the first race Adin ever did in the car...at Fernley Raceway outside of Reno. This track runs in a counterclockwise direction, and after the event there was oil from the differential to and all over the right rear wheel. Siata axle housings do leak, and this one was a modified setup, required after one of Bob's shortcuts (you did know we'd come back to him, right) literally blew up on me.

We simply thought that the seals had leaked...until I took the car to its next race, at Coronado Naval Air Station, an airport course which happened to be run clockwise. After the first practice session I noticed that the axle lubricant was slewed from the wheel in to the differential housing, unlike the Fernley episode, where it was from the differential to the wheel. At Coronado the wheel itself was dry.

I parked the car for the weekend. Sherri was annoyed at flying down to watch me race “for nothing,” until I explained that, if I continued to run it that way, it was possible she would be watching me die instead.

But way before this Bob's engine turned into a hand grenade at Sears Point. You see, he had decided to use stock Crosley connecting rods in the motor he built for me. The connecting rods do just what the name says...they link the piston to the crankshaft, and convert the up and down motion of the piston created by the controlled explosion of burning gasoline to the round and round motion of the crankshaft, which then gets transmitted through the transmission(clever name, eh?) and other gears to the wheels, thus motivating the car. The upper end of the Crosley rod is notoriously thin and weak. This motor was designed for a budget economy car, and more metal means more mass which means more power required which means more gasoline burned which all means more cost...you get the picture. Racers in the period substituted beefed up rods made for a version of the motor used for boat racing called a “Bearcat,” which were thicker and, well...beefier.

Coming out of the fast turn at Sears Point, lined up on the straight into the hairpin at turn 11 a rod broke so hard and fast it also snapped an axle, causing a piece to wedge in and break the differential, which locked the rear wheels, which meant I was suddenly ripping towards that turn at somewhere north of 80 miles an hour..backwards. The car had 180'd and I was staring into the goggled eyes of the drivers of several cars which were behind me. They, like I, were likely thinking that no one, not even me, was a bad enough driver to spin a car on a straightaway.

But that wasn't the end of the fiasco. Over the ensuing years, though Ernie thought he might have had the presence of mind to somehow save it...I rather doubt there was anything even he could have done, and certainly nothing that was within my skill set. Steer a car at that speed backwards and try to get it pointed forward again? Hah?

Prior to that race I would have just ultimately slid to an embarrassed, but unharmed, stop. However, this was the year Sears had decided to build a row of workshops behind that straight, and had put in temporary concrete highway barriers all down the straight, to protect the construction site as well as the ditch just behind the barriers where the new wiring and plumbing ran. As the car came to an almost complete stop it slowly, like something out of Buster Keaton silent movie, climbed the wall and slid to that stop...on its left side.

I knew this was not a safe place to be, so I unbuckled, leapt from the car in spectacular fashion, jumped the barrier, and almost broke my leg when I fell into the ditch. The car came out relatively well, though with a lot of road rash on the door and rear fender...better on it than on me!

While Bob built the new motor Jarl deBoer (John, mentioned more than once in thee posts, is one of his two sons) said he would do the mechanical repairs on the differential, so off the car went to his shop and house in Walnut Creek.

The broken ring gear had been custom made by Siata...and there was “none chance” of finding a replacement. It was a numerically high ratio...somewhere around 5.4:1...meaning that for every 5+ turns of the driveshaft the axle itself, and the wheel attached to it, turned once. Jarl had a modification which used the differential and its housing from an Austin Healey Sprite which he welded to the rest of the Fiat housing original to the car. You might wonder why we could not just use a Sprite housing as well...but it was not the right length and though there were Sprite axles for wire wheels they use a very different setup than the Fiat brake housings and Borrani wires on the Siata. Suffice it to say it would have been harder, if not impossible, to do, which was also the situation finding a “Sprite” gear set with the right ratio. I finally located one at a race shop back East. Seems this ratio was only used on British Telecom line off-road line inspection trucks in England....lucky me!

Of course to do this conversion the brake line which runs across the rear axle housing had to be modified and installed on the new setup as well. All of this was not a simple job, and at the time Jarl was not in the best of health. In fact, very shortly after completing the work he wound up hospitalized and in surgery, though I don't think I ever knew the specifics.

The accident had occurred in the Spring event. I missed Monterey in August, but we wanted to get the car back on the track in the Fall rather than sitting for a full six months without knowing the new motor and rear end were OK. As Jarl attached the brake lines to the backing plates he put a pretty sharp bend in the one on the left. In fact it was almost crimped shut. I saw it, and I'm sure he did as well. It was not ideal and I certainly thought it an issue but it did seem to work OK and the line was fastened hard through a bracket welded to the housing so it didn't seem like it would be subject to “going anywhere.” I did ask Gary Winiger to look at it, and of course the tech inspector for the Fall event also “had eyes” on it, and none of us felt it was a problem.

Boy...consensus has rarely been so wrong. What none of us saw, because there was nothing to see; what none of us anticipated, because there was no basis for doing so, was that central bracket breaking free and allowing the brake line to bounce up and down, thereby fatiguing the crimped bend until it fractured, spilling all the brake fluid from the system over the course of the parade lap for the race.

Now you know why modern cars have “dual braking systems.” Today there are two separate closed systems moving fluid to the brakes at either end of the car. While the way this is done varies from one maker to another, in no case can a broken line result in loss of all braking capability. I had considered installing such a system, a modern change which is allowed in vintage, but to do so meant cutting and modifying the support for the left front fender, which I was unwilling to do.

This is not a slam at Jarl, or Gary, or the tech inspector. It is always the guy who steps behind the wheel who has the final say, and the final responsibility. My own lack of knowledge does not exonerate me. I thought it did not look right...and said nothing. Lesson learned.

For safety vintage racing does not use standing starts. Instead there is a parade lap of the cars, in rows of two each. Really pretty to watch. The pace car then pulls into the pits before the start line, and once the cars are lined up on that straight the green flag drops and we're off. Of course I had learned to test systems on the car such as brakes, check the clutch action and shifting, and eyeball the gauges on this lap. Everything looked and felt fine. When we “went green” I usually stayed pretty conservative until things sorted themselves out as the race into the first turn or two was pretty hectic and the traffic density high. This usually sorted out within two turns.

Not this time. Particularly on the fist lap when my car is not at full speed by turn 1, I don't need the brakes until turn 4...from 1 to 2 is steeply uphill, and then 3 and 3A are tight enough so, on the first lap only, I still was not up to the speed I would normally be on subsequent laps. But the run to 4 is downhill, so by then I was up to a brisk clip...perhaps 80 or so when I went to stab the brakes.

My foot went straight to the floor. And I really did have time to think “this is not going to end well.”

Usually things were strung out by this point on the first lap, but for some reason, on this day we were all still really tightly bunched up. I was in a kaleidoscope of color and noise. Turn 4 is downhill, decreasing radius, off camber, and there is a 4” lip drop off at the exit on the left. The perfect disaster setup.

Innocent Looking Turn 4
Yeah, Right?

What happened next was not fun at all. I wouldn't say I exactly froze, but other than trying to somehow finesse the car around the turn at an impossible speed I took no other action. I only hit one other car...bounced off Hans Mathon's Arnolt Bristol, which was fortunate as that car had enough mass to knock some speed off the Siata.

I almost made it, too. I was past the apex, which given the traffic I could not have gotten near anyway, when the car did a 180 and slid to the exit of the turn. And unfortunately also that 4” drop. The right rear wheel dipped into that...and launched the car.

I don't know how many times it went over. The corner workers later told me it went end-over-end once, then sideways over again, and then another end-over before they got too busy trying to shut down (red flag) the entire group to notice. All I could see was asphalt, grass, gravel, and sky going by multiple times and never in the same order twice. Fortunately I came to rest right side up.

In the ensuing years I have wondered if, with more experience, I might have done something else. I know I did not panic and did not become a “deer in the headlights.” There is a saying in racing about what to do when something goes very wrong: “In a spin, both feet in, but when in doubt both feet out.” It means to step on the clutch and brake at the same time in a spin, but if you are uncertain what action to take, keep your feet off the pedals.

Which was what I did. I don't think I considered downshifting, but reflecting on it, I think that would have actually made things worse. It would have blown the engine as my speed exceeded that for a safe downshift into second. That's not important, but what is, is that it also would likely have locked the rear wheels and spun the car in the middle of the turn. I'd have missed Hans..but hit the car next to me backwards, which would have then probably bounced me sideways into the middle of the track, whereupon I would have been “T boned” by at least two other cars. Rationalization? Maybe.

During the incident all I could think of was that I did not seem to “be dead” (whatever that means), I was conscious, had no feeling of bleeding or anything on my body breaking, and kept my arms clasped to my chest so they would not get caught under the roll bar.

When things stopped moving I reached down and unfastened my belts in case I needed a fast exit due to fire. Ernie went by and saw me with my head down. The wreck and that vision scared him so badly he drove his car back onto the trailer and did not drive again the entire weekend.

I know this is getting to be a long post, so though I did not plan on it, I think this is a good place to stop and plan a “Part III” to talk about how this event impacted me going forward.