The Official Website of Marty Grilley
RACE DIARY ENTRY: 5/10/02
By Marty "Crash" Grilley

After the last race we had to change and fix a couple things that were pointed out to us during our first tech inspection. Nothing major, but it still added to the list of things we need to work on. We had to move the battery into a marine type battery box instead of just the open box we had. We figured that since we had to make that change, we may as well move it to a different location and hopefully improve the weight percentages in the car more to our advantage. The battery box was originally located high and left center in the trunk above and in front of the fuel cell. We moved the battery and the new box in the green house behind the driver's seat and as far to the left as we could get it. This would mainly shift a little more weight further to the left than we originally had it and also get it lower in the car to help lower the center of gravity a little bit more. Every little bit helps.

Another project on our list was to plug up the holes in the floor boards, the wheel wells and the excess metal that was cut out from the trunk to fit the fuel cell. We were told that the metal had to be within 1 inch of the fuel cell. We had 2-4 inches of open space. Not a major project, but it still took an hour or two. You would be amazed how much mud was pulled from the inside of the car the next day! I bet I pulled 15 pounds of mud from the inside of the car!

Time to clean up the car and get it looking presentable for the next race. One thing I learned about the cleaning process...clean out the mud from the inside of the car before I spray it down and wash the outside. The mud from this track is incredibly sticky and not fun to deal with once it is wet.

Oh yeah, one more thing. With everything that I had to think about last week in our first race, it never even crossed my mind that I had no power steering! No wonder I worked up a sweat. I changed the power steering pump and now this should be more fun than work.

Looks like rain this weekend. Not looking good for the possibility of getting a race in. 70% of rain Saturday.

Just as I figured. Rained out. Time to do some dry wall work in the basement.

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