John Stecher’s Racing Blog

Finally the time has come to really get the Stohr on track for the first time this year. After a little bit of a false start two weekends ago when unfortunately work kept me from the track its time to get rolling and head down the Milwaukee Region SCCA National race at Blackhawk farms. Depending on weather I’ll be running the test day on Friday as I have never been to the track before and then heading out for quali at 8:45am on Saturday for the first of my two sessions. It’s been a long winter getting a lot of things sorted back out on the car after a crappy weekend at Autobahn last year but we’re ready to roll and I am looking forward to this weekend like no other. Got the new wing mounted, various body parts upgraded and ready to roll and hopefully have a lot better camera mount than last year so you don’t just see my melon wobbling around through the whole video. Videos, pictures and results to follow next Monday.

Cars, F1000, Racing, SCCA Club Racing, Stohr Blackhawk Farms, F1000, Stohr

Here is my video from what ended up being a very short race last year at Autobahn Country Club as I struggled around the track with what ended up being a broken a-arm. You know its never good when you show up and set your best time by over a second in the very first practice session and then have things go to hell in a hand basket and are never able to get back within a second of that time. In any regard this race capped off the season as I just got to busy at work to make anything after Autobahn. It was a fun track that I am going to miss going back to since the whole central division SCCA schedule revolves around Road America.

F1000, Racing, SCCA Club Racing, Stohr Autobahn Country Club, F1000, SCCA, Stohr

Finally got all the schedule figured out for this year and REALLY looking forward to getting the car back on track! Now that February is here its time to get the car ready (hope that gas that has been in there since August didn’t gum crap up) and need to get the new front wing and a-arm on the car. More as that unfolds here. I am going to be committed to updating this page at least twice a week from here until the season ends folks so keep checking back.

2009 Trackpedia Racing F1000 Schedule
3/28/2009 - St. Louis Gateway National - With Billy
5/2/2009 - HPT Double National
5/16/2009 - Blackhawk Farms National
5/31/2009 - Mid-America America National - With Billy
6/19/2009 - June Sprints Road America
7/24/2009 - Cat National
8/16/2009 - Mid-America National - With Billy
8/29/2009 - Kettle Moraine National

Should be a hell of busy year. As always I am sure I won’t make all the races with my travels for work and other junk but one can only hope.

Cars, F1000, Racing, SCCA Club Racing, Stohr F1000, Gateway, Heartland Park, Mid America, Road America, SCCA, Stohr

Here are some of the videos from last summer posted on Youtube (I plan on using vimeo in the future just because its a little clearer for all the videos that I have seen) so you can check out what my first year of learning was like in the F1000. These are videos from the June Sprints and from the Cat National at Road America in June/July 2008. I’ll add an Autobahn video when I get a chance here to get it uploaded over the next few days.

Cat National

June Sprints

Cars, F1000, Racing, SCCA Club Racing, Stohr F1000, in car video, June Sprints, Road America, Stohr

So since I promised updates on all the races over the summer I figured I would go in order starting with the biggest event of the year the June Sprints at Road America and shoot through August before I get to the winter projects and other miscellaneous ramblings over the winter here.

So here we go recapping of one of the first times out running the F1000 after a ton of work from the guys helping me get it together.

First and foremost I gotta thank my friends and family for busting their asses all weekend with me chasing the car all over Wisconsin trying to get it close to working the way I wanted it too (finally figured out something by the race and actually had grip!) and all the FB guys I talked to for being awesome and helpful as all hell and most importantly coming out. A HUGE thanks to Jeff Dinges for helping me sort and work through issues with my car that I was battling all weekend dealing with temps in my car following the same path as Mike B’s as well as figuring out how to get the car balanced aero wise as it was tricky for a newbie and his team. Overall as i was heading to impound I was thinking “damn the weekend after the race felt not to shabby for the sixth race of the career and whopping second in the car.” Whole weekend was a fricking blast and really what racing is all about.

But the bad news is that both Kyle and I got bumped down to 5th and 6th respectively (behind all running cars at the end of the race) for having our rear wings be 4mm to wide. Yep thats right 4mm to wide. 95.4cm versus 95cm per the GCR. It was a kick in the nuts to end a hard weekend that had turned around massively and finally during the race. We had to sit in impound for fricking 2 hours waiting for a decision and that sort of drove the thorn deeper into my side as most of us had long tows home and needed to get on the road. After two hours we got informed we could pay a nice 100 dollars to appeal the decision (how the f can I possibly want to pay 100 bucks to argue with the fact that 95.4 > 95) and then go on to the SOM and appeal a crap ton of more times. What pisses me off most is that according to my crew they measured the wings after quali one and didn’t say a fricking word to us about it. It sure as **** didn’t change size in the time between then and the race for btoh Kyle and I. In the end both Kyle and I just accepted it and moved on. Hopefully karma returns the favor to us.

Thanks guys for all coming out and making the sprints a lot of fun. I know we all didnt have much time for hanging out and BSing but next year when we all have our cars sorted and are whipping up on the Atlantics like Coop and Kyle were we’ll look back and laugh.

More pictures here http://picasaweb.google.com/scca.june.sprints.2008.b/RoadAmericaSCCAJuneSprints2008

Cars, F1000, Racing, Stohr F1000, June Sprints, Road America, SCCA, Stohr

So the short summer unfortunately here in the midwest is over way to quickly and I apologize greatly for not even updating my blog here once. I promise in the future (yes I knew I swore before) that I will make sure I keep this page dealing with my racing more updated. I also have a job related blog coming so I’ll have double the work to keep articles flowing up here. I wish I could just think it and the page would update…maybe someone should invent that.

I have spent a busy summer racing F1000 and working as well as spending time with my lovely family. What is F1000 you may ask? Well its basically the same car I burned up before except in open wheel flavor. Net is in the SCCA its called Formula B or FB and is an open wheel single seat race car powered by a motor cycle engine. If any of you out there have ridden a late model liter bike you know the power these babies put down and let me tell you its not that much slower in a 1000lb car.

Here’s some pictures of the new girl with more details about the races this summer that I ran in complete with videos coming over the next few days here.

Cars, F1000, Racing, SCCA Club Racing, Stohr Autobahn, F1000, SCCA, Stohr

God what have I been doing since I last posted. Well my time can be broken down into three main areas. One is work…this summer has probably been the most intensive year I have spent working at IBM. I have enjoyed it all, as always however still playing the lottery, but it was a lot of work! My second main area of time spent was figuring out what the hell car to buy and race next. Let’s just say this area will be touched upon in my next post. My last area of time spent was on the track baby!!

First we started off at Road America for the PCA HPDE event where my buddy Rob and I shared driving his brand new 1987 Porsche 924. While she had been prepped with a cage and stripped interior that was about all she had. We liked to call her the leaning tower of Rochester as we pushed her around one of the greatest tracks in North America. Overall the 2-day event was a blast and it was great to get back in the car.

A little picture of the 924 leaning tower.

Next up was a combined Skip Barber lapping day at Road America followed by a one day PCA HPDE event at Blackhawk Farms once again in the now newly race ready 924 of Rob complete with a full suspension setup, corner balance and real 7 inch wide phone dial wheels instead of the 6 inch ones she was rolling on before. First up was the Skippy Lapping day. Personally the lapping day to me was a bust…yeah it was fun to get the instruction but jesus we only probably got max an hour of track time for nearly 1k. Hindsight being 20/20 I would have just held off and done the 2-day school (which I plan to do this spring if the cash tree in my back yard grows). The PCA event at Blackhawk was a lot of fun as well but the weather sucked. We met up with Mark Repka in the morning after driving down from Milwaukee and that’s when the clouds opened up. It rained pretty much the whole day and learning a new track in the wet was a royal pain. It sucked even worse to not get to test out the new suspension that we invested so much time (not to mention eBay profits from our dead Porsche 914 project) in. But at least I have some knowledge of the track for racing down there next year.

With these days out of the way it was on to Road America for the SCCA Chicago Regions Kettle Moraine Double Regional Race which was going to let me keep my racing license. Once again I was behind the wheel of Rob’s 924 SP1 completely outmatched in ITS with my 135 rear wheel horse power versus the 200+ in some other ITS cars. More to come in my next update…

Cars, Porsche SP1, Racing, Racing School, SCCA Club Racing Blackhawk Farms, Porsche SP1, Road America, SCCA, Skip Barber

Well back to the beginning…well actually further back than the beginning if you consider in the beginning I actually had a full car. During my first outing this year the car had a major issue with an oil cooler fitting and burst into flames. Here is my account of what happened as I posted on Trackpedia.com in this thread: http://www.trackpedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2494

Not to much to say really other than at least I went out in impressive fashion. Had the first test day with the Stohr all back together at BIR yesterday and things were going great in the afternoon after some purely crappy weather and rain in the morning. Got in two great session in the afternoon and then came in to fuel up and head out for the last one. Little did I know it was the last one for a long time.

Had little teething issues all day but worked through them and figured the car wasn’t that bad and I had been lucky. My luck ran out on my 8th lap of my final session. Just turn in my personal best lap at 1:43 on the dash and headed down the front straight after passing Steve B in a SRF between 9-10 up to 140 under CarreraRS, PawPaw, Rob and others in the control stand with Conan up ahead and then turned in for one. Car squirmed and I looked in the left rear view and just saw a big orange glow. Thought first I just blew the motor, but then realized that it was on the opposite side of the exhaust so I checked my other mirror and same thing big orange ball. So pretty impressive site to see I can image…140mph (with given I could see nothing else in the rear view besides fire) with probably a 30 foot set of flames behind me in the middle of T1 at BIR.

First thoughts were honestly “why me?” followed by kill all the fuel, etc and get the car slowed down which was a pain as the fire was hot enough it was eating through the rear brake lines. As soon as I got the car straight and down to probably a 80-90mph I pulled the extinguisher and NOTHING happened. I dicked with the handle trying to pull it on the canister itself and nothing, pulled the dash handle one more time and said f*ck it I am out of here as I had fire now around me coming out the air intakes by my head. Slowly got the car down to 20 and just had my belts undone before she stopped rolling. Hoped out, ran away from the car and then just sat back and watched it burn.

What seemed like 30 minutes later but really was only a few the crew arrived on the scene and ran over to the car thinking I was still in it. Gary Curtis was the second one out there and also thought I was still in the car. After seeing I wasn’t we started spraying the car down. Fire crew had a hell of a time putting out the car as it was pretty much engulfed in flames from the cockpit back and as I am sure you will see in some pictures later was burning really damn hot and kept reigniting.

I’ll never forget looking up and seeing Sean’s face after Rob, Mike and him got out to the scene. I think the look pretty much summed up everything I was feeling. It was just one of amazement.

After getting the car scraped off the track and dumped off back in the paddock the Trackpedia crew…

(Sorry Gary Curtis just called to check up on me - Once again probably one of the nicest guys in racing. Pointed out a good visual parallel to my car from his vantage point of a WWII fighter being shot down with flames out the back is what my car looked like.)

…and I stood over the mass of mangled fiberglass and carbon fiber looking for the cause and there it was right in front of me. The top outlet of the oil cooler had blown right off the units body. Were not talking the AN fitting came off, no this is the whole threaded in section of the cooler blew apart. Thus 188 degree oil at 60 some PSI (I had checked passing the start finish line) came rocketing out all over the cowling and side pods when then ignited when it touched headers. The Trackpedia crew on hand helped my scoop the remains back into the trailer and haul it home. It now sits at another friends place a big piece of ash from cockpit on back.

This was going to be a really short update as I have of course been swamped at work but it turned out to be my full account. My feelings on all of this at the moment are mixed. Number one all I can think of is I am ok. When you look at where my belts were burned too as I was getting out of the car and when I think back to being able to see flames around my head while still moving at a good clip I am happy I don’t have a scratch on me. Also considering this was at the turn in to the fastest turn in North America at 140+ mph I got damn lucky I didn’t end up upside down or worse. Secondly I just am thankful that I have the friends/TP buddies I do that were concerned enough about me to have the expression Sean had and the concern Rob, Steve, Conan, Dave Billy, Eric, and Mike had. Lastly I am pissed that I didn’t do this to my car. I can handle my mistakes breaking something or me screwing up but I just turned in my best lap ever in the car everything was perfectly fine with the gauges and then as David Hobbs would say Kablamo. A stupid part rated to a way higher psi then I was running blew up. I really wish I had screwed up because then it would have been on me and I feel much better when its my fault.

If I had a car I would be back in it tomorrow. As long as it was painted Black and silver with the number 4 on it carrying the Trackpedia logo proudly. So rust in peace Stohr S/N 13. You were the most awesome thing I have ever been in…to bad our time together didn’t even include the first race that I had bought you for.

So the process starts. Back to the garage tomorrow to sawzal off the burnt up body and attempt to take apart engine and out of the chassis. Fricking sucks but with the help of my friends and of course my wonderful wife understanding my obsession maybe the car will be back together next Spring. Who knows but luck was on my side and I got out of the car so like Bill Murrary says..”So I got that going for me.”

Cars, DSR, Stohr Accident, Brainerd International, DSR, Stohr

Spent all yesterday pretty much in the garage with Eric helping me in the morning with getting the cooling system to run and then dorking around by myself at night trying to get the oil system in working order.

The water system was a bear. Lets just say that I had more fricking air bubbles in the system than I could have ever imagined and they were harder than I ever could have imagined to get out. We started working on the cooling system about 8 and by 11 had things running and the little Davies Craig electric water pump spinning away. The main bear was just getting the coolant to pump up into the motor. The bikes have a intake to the water jackets at almost the bottom of the engine under the headers. Getting water to flow uphill as we all know is a royal pain in the ass! Then the radiator had a really goofy issue with the main inlets being about 3/4 the way up the radiator so as you can imagine this creates a lot of issues with getting all the air out of the system. I had to pull a plug on the top of the radiator to get her to push all the air out but it wasn’t easy. I still honestly am not comfortable that the setup is correct as it just does not seem that I am able to flow enough water through the system but then again the switch to Evan’s coolant and a little bit of advice from a Yamaha tech have me thinking it might not be too bad. Right now my plan is just heat cycle and try to bleed again later.

Hopefully today I can get her to fire for the first time.

Cars, DSR, Maintenance and Assembly, Stohr Assembly, DSR, Stohr

Well the eagle has landed! My baby is finally back in my garage and looking, well, remarkably like a car again considering how completely stripped down she was when it rolled out of the garage and up to Carriage House Customs. It took a hell of a lot of work and without the excellent craftsmanship from the folks at Carriage House it would never EVER have been possible. Overall the cost was something I could stomach and much better than a few other conversion kits (Infact carriage house still has all the jigs if others want the same conversion completed) that I had looked at.

The real cost that came into this whole upgrade was the dry sump conversion as that is where the majority of cash was spent with the cooler, hose, dry sump itself and other related expenses. Behind that was the cost of the rework of the engine cradle. I hope to have a full break down of costs and work that was done here in the near future when I get a shot after the car is running here and gets it annual tech finished on April 21st. I would love to have this become a guide to other looking to do the conversion as while it was tough I think the upgrade to the newer engine will be well worth while.

Tonight with the help of my buddies Rob and Eric we got the wiring harness, fuel cell and battery back in the car and working. All in all about 4 hours of time which isn’t bad at all considering the knowledge base of doing this on a DSR was zero. Main trick was just getting the wiring correct as there were some interesting bits dealing with the change from the 99-03 engines using a power interrupt based starter switch to the 04-06 motors using a grounded starter switch. Once we worked through that it was testing circuits and THANK GOD the fuel pump spun up AND the starter kicked on for a brief second (”hey rob try it now! BuZZZZZZ”). Thursday night hopefully will be dedicated to finishing up the wiring harness and plumbing in the fuel system as well as the new remote water pump.

I will snap pictures of the work as it progresses but here are some as she came straight back from the shop on Friday.

Cars, DSR, Maintenance and Assembly, Stohr Assembly, DSR, Stohr, Yamaha