Three days at Heartland Park Topeka

[Bob O]

This last weekend was Fall Funfast weekend at HPT....a DE. Instructors get "paid" by getting a free open day on Friday. Fun Fun. Off I went expecting Saturday to be rainy (which it was). Got there around 1030, unloaded, said hi to some friends, including my mechanic, Karl, and hit the track. I took a couple of warm up laps (mainly for me since I had driven 75 miles to the track), and then hit it coming off #14.

All was great until going up the hill from 6 to 7. A GT3 was coming up behind me, needless to say rather quickly, so I was keeping an eye on the miror to point him by. Suddenly.... POOOOOOOFFFFFF...a HUGE cloud of smoke comes out the back of the Box. No apparent issues with driving but dammmmm...scary as hell. Slowed down and pitted. Coming into the garage area up the hill off the hot pit lane it started bellowing smoke constantly!! BIG TIME! I was killing mosqitoes all over the county. Geeeezzz I've never seen such a cloud of smoke before. Got out, took off my helmet and saw Karl strolling up to the garage area. I start to tell him what happened and he said..."I watched the whole thing. I already placed an order for the part and sent my wife to go pick it up." WHAT? You haven't even looked at the car yet I said. Yep...it's the AOS he says. Almost can't be anythings else since it's still running. Rolled it into the garage area and he unmounted the AOS...in about 25 minutes btw (would have been less had he had his long handled hose clamp pliers lol) . About five gallons of oil came out of the AOS...ok ok it wasn't that much but it was a lot.

Next morning we (he) installed the new one and voila....no change. DAMMMMM...25 minutes later it's still smoking like crazy. Karl strokes his chin and says..hmmmm you probably ate an oil ring and the engine's toast! WHAT? geezz. Yep, these things usually clear up in 3-4 minutes at most. He says to run it around the paddock and see what happens, it can't hurt it...it's either fixed or not...if it's not fixed, running it won't do any more damage than's already been done! Not a good prognosis to say the least. BUT...after another 10 minutes it starts to clear and finally, after another 10 minutes, it was clear. whew.. The three guys who were in a bidding war to get my car to turn into a spec racer were really disappointed! LOL. Seriously though, there must have been 30 guys come up and offer to help however they could...tools, parts runs, whatever we needed they offered to help. Porsche guys are great aren't they!!!

Rest of weekend was uneventful..other than the damm rain which canceled most of Saturday's runs. You couldn't see 10 ft in front of you and there were deeeeeepppp puddles on the track. oh well. Sunday was perfect. I have some video of Sunday that I'll link to as soon as I figure out how to get it on the net.

Sorry this was so long but you can't believe the emotional ups and downs I went through with all this. I was worn out when I got home...and not from driving.

Oh...my student listened to me!! success! LOL

Bob

[SeanZ4]

Good story. I've been wanting to go to Heartland for a long time. I just don't know what would be involved in just running my car around the track a bit. I'm only an hour or so away. Do they ever have "Idiot Day" for people who just want to drive fast around the track?

[Bob O]

WEll......you can't just come out and run your car around the track fast...at least as a beginner, not without class time, and an instructor. But, we have DEs twice a year...in the spring in conjunction with the Cup Races and again in October.

All the DE's have required classes for beginners, and advanced classes for more experienced track rats. All the run groups are sorted by experience, so you won't be out there with guys/gals more experienced than you. Don't feel intimidated about coming out...you WILL be with an instructor for a while, and remember, everyone there was once a beginner!

If you haven't done so already, join PCA, KC region, and get on the mailing list. The monthly KCPCA magazine, Der Sportwagen, will have several notifications about upcoming events in plenty of time for you to get registered. We even have a few helmets to loan, so you don't have to pop for one if you don't want to.

Come on out..you'll not only have a lot of fun, you'll learn a lot about your car...and yourself.


Bob

[SeanZ4]

Thanks for the info Bob! I was at a German car show in Salina a couple of weeks ago. GCCK event and there were some pca members from Wichita there. I should join one or the other.

sean

[sweeper]

Thanks for the story-I made it to Heartland Park on Sunday but only for a short time. Wow...there were some very impressive cars running around.

It was a beautiful day and I had several things going on so I only watched for a while. I will be signing up and plan to attend some future events- looks like a lot of fun (and I didn't see a single police officer running radar)