My Weekend Got Cut Short
This weekend the plan was to see some of my customers at Chin Track Days on Saturday at Nelson Ledges, NASA Great Lakes Sunday at Mid-Ohio, then one more day with Chin at Mid-Ohio on Monday. Chin’s only passing by these two tracks this weekend for the whole year, so I wanted to try to be at both locations. Well, I got taken out. I made it to Nelson Ledges and back for Saturday, but as I made it back into town Saturday night, it was dark out, raining pretty heavy, and I had to go through one of those “drive through our road work area to reach the turning lane” situations on Camden Avenue. Dropping in sounded like I fell off a cliff, and I know some portions of the road out there have a pretty big drop for sports and passenger cars to just soak up. I ended up with tire damage on the left front. I believe the technical term is a “slow-ish leak.”
So it’s Just a Flat?
I’m already getting this one, so here’s why I’m gonna let discretion be the better part of valor this weekend:
So it’s not really a puncture, it looked like more of a tear. I could stick some rubber cement or something in it, but it’s in the tread on the corner of the tire. That part’s going to shift and flex, and I don’t think anything’s going to stay sealed for long. There’s no plugging it. The tire could also continue to fall apart on the inside and keep failing that way too. It’s not a good idea to travel 3 hours away with it in this state and chance it failing and having to unload most of the contents of the back of the car to reach the spare while along the side of the road somewhere.
It was dark out, it was raining decently hard, there was just a bunch of reflections, the windshield was fogging a little… I don’t think I hit anything. The drop may have just been more than I was anticipating. It was just hard to see in general. Good driver in the car or not, it was still a visibility impairment, and I did a poor job of taking care of myself that day. I do that too often trying to push getting work done. It was nearly 10pm, I started my day to get the car loaded around 4am, and I hadn’t ate, was dehydrated. I was out of it. It still falls on me. I made the mistakes.
The Fix
Obviously, the immediate fix for this is to just go get another tire. I think I’m going to try to find a used one since the rest are already worn. I’ve been trying to prep the Veloster for sale for a while now. This car is supposed to be my way into a truck that I’ve talked about for a while now. My plan was to let the next owner choose if they just wanted to drive the car or if they wanted to put a sporty tire on the stock wheels for autocross or something. If I have to, I’ll go get a cheap new one and throw it on the rear. The next owner will get to have a good spare I guess.
That’s the easy part though. We’re not just parts changers, and now the thought has to shift to “How do I prevent a single, simple flat from ending the weekend again?” This is when I’d think about it in terms of what would happen on pit lane. Car comes in with a flat, what do we do? Chuck new tires on and put it back out. Preferably not on a trunk spare though… Key point. Since this car’s up to get sold soon, I don’t think now’s the time, but I will definitely need to have a full size spare for the truck later. We already do this for the trailer, because it’s always a trailer tire that goes flat. I guess the idea just never crossed my mind to have one for the vehicle getting me to my events. Wake up call time.
What’d you Think of Chin?
Hopefully this question comes up too. For those in this area, if you’re not aware, we lost not only Pitt Race last year, but also Autointerests, which was our major track day organization in this area. They put on excellent events all the way from Summit Point in the DC area to Putnam Park near Indianapolis. Gingerman in Michigan was probably the farthest north they went, down to NCM around Bowling Green. They had an incredibly impressive roster of instructors that taught under them. All of that talent had to go somewhere. It seems like it’s mostly getting absorbed between NASA Great Lakes and Chin Track Days.
NASA Great Lakes has always been geared toward a path to wheel to wheel racing, and our region is the poster child for the country’s HPDE program and making people faster. That’s a great reputation to have, but it may not be the environment every driver is looking for. Believe it or not, some just want to have fun in their cars in a controlled environment. Instruction in that arena also makes everyone safer and better drivers on track in general. Chin showing up here and bringing some of that instructor pool back is feeding the needs of that kind of driver.
From what I witnessed, there’s a hell of a lot of promise from those events. Granted I’ve been to one so far, but from what I’d seen, it was well run, safe, and a good learning environment. Is it a setback compared to what was here before? Probably in some aspects. Autointerests was also hyper focused on one area and not dealing with events all over the country also. Chin has some ways to improve, but any program is going to have that. Most notably I think tech may have been a little lax, but that can be said about a lot of these kinds of events and I’ve seen much, much worse. Bear in mind you do sign a waiver for self tech with most organizations also. They can try to do their best to help make sure you’re safe, but in the end, don’t be a dummy. You have an innate sense for self preservation and survival. Use it and don’t drive something you know isn’t solid for track use. It’s not the street. The consequences are higher there. Even if I do feel safer on track than on the street. Topic for a different post. This one’s already too long. Kudos if you made it this far.