John Stecher’s Racing Blog

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