Never the Same IC#17 Wintertime Blues

Racing dreams, hard work, and cruisin' with the White Rat!

            

Cue: “Runnin’ Down a Dream” https://youtu.be/Y1D3a5eDJIs

Never being a fun season, winter approached. For those of you reading along, this is Kirk’s era after Bonnie and before the second go-around with Farrah and before he met Sarah Elizabeth. Despite some hope of fun and distraction in the future, Kirk remained bored, depressed and loveless. Work at the dealership remained a drudgery and considering winter with its cold, snow, and ice being a mechanic just plain sucked. Cold metal parts equated to cold numb fingers. Cars came in with snow and ice stuck to them that melted once inside the warm shop, which meant that if Kirk worked underneath all that ice and snow fell on his head, shoulders, and feet. On the other hand, for the more experienced mechanics, the professionals like Kirk’s brother-in-law Mike, they’d have the yard lackeys, which Kirk was one step above in pay grade, bring the cars in for thawing out and drip drying. Kirk in his lowly position wasn’t that privileged.  So went the life of an apprentice mechanic.   

Pondering his upcoming stock car season, at least partially committed with a racing number, the number 3, and given a car for a reconstruction, Kirk recalled watching stock car races through his young formative years. The earliest races at the coliseum of speed Kirk remembered as a kid was when the tracks were still constructed of dirt and usually dusty. The stock cars for the most part raced in that same condition. Back then, stock cars were junky rattle traps, all banged up, dusty, and dirty with drivers that didn’t care if their cars became even more so. At the same time, the dusty, dirty drivers wouldn’t think twice about crashing into a competitor purposely to gain a single position. Prize money never was the object behind winning because the payoff in these outlaw races would only buy a six-pack of beer. Oh! But the glory of taking that one victory lap with the checkered flag held high!

Years later on, when the tracks became asphalt, the cars, along with the drivers, became a bit more reputable. Cleaner of course, in both cases, with better paint jobs, better dressed, with better manners while adhering to more rules so racing wasn’t so much of a free-for-all, dangerous, and plain crazy happening.

Kirk as young teen sat in the stands with his friend, the long, tall, pretty Babe. He recalled when she pulled his freezing hands inside her jacket because he had gotten so cold sitting in the stands because he had dressed for style and not for the cold. He should have been aroused, embarrassed or self-conscious, but being naïve, he wasn’t any of those things. Then later, as a mid-teen sometime after Babe, he’d accompany his brother-in-law Mike to the track and sit alone in the stands wondering if stock car drivers were either brave souls or foolhardy chumps. This was the period when he’d sit in the car hauler truck after the races while his brother-in-law would go in a bar to drink and bench race with the other racers. Of course, Kirk couldn’t go inside, he was underage! He was still, after all, a timid, shy, and naïve kid.

Times change and Kirk changed too, except that he remained unsure if stock car drivers were courageous men or reckless fools. His brother-in-law Mike and he were going to build two stock cars and one was going to be his�"which category of driver would he fit into when he drove on the track? Time would only tell.

One thing for sure, Kirk didn’t create his own destiny again. It seemed outside influences always pointed Kirk’ life to go in one direction or another. His becoming a stock car driver came about either due to the autogods’ decree or Mike’s sway in getting him involved with racing. Every day from the day he found out he’d be racing, Kirk wondered if he were up to the challenge. Some days he’d think that he’d be a complete failure, like some of those slow drivers he’d seen out on the track coming in last every time afraid to push their cars to the limit. Then, on other days, Kirk would think that racing was what he was born to do.

All those hours of driving field cars as fast as he could, sliding about turns while imagining racing on a track. And all the times of spinning donuts, pulling trooper turns with the Pink Bug. And driving the Firebird well over twice the posted speed limits, loving the speed and feeling completely calm and in control. But, as Kirk reminded himself, those were all car maneuvers he pulled all by himself with no other cars around. Definitely different situations than on a track with ten or more drivers racing wheel to wheel at speed in close proximity with one like goal in mind�"to get to the finish line first! Well, he might have fostered reservations about racing but snow was falling, racing season was months away, and he had a lot of work to do!  Time would only tell. (Sorry about that.)

As winter wore on, Kirk found out, as he had suspected from day one that his White Rat was not any fun to drive in the winter. Not only his car was big, ugly and underpowered, it would not do any of the fun tricks in the snow he had learned early on with his parents’ station wagon and had fine tuned with his Pink Bug. There were no fancy trooper turns or awesome donuts in parking lots with the White Rat. In a renaming it could be called the White Whale. It was big and clumsy, wallowing about like a whale when Kirk tried to perform a trick. It had a foot parking brake that was difficult to operate and then had to be manually released. The White Rat had snow tires on, don’t get me wrong, but they weren’t as big and grippy as the ones he had on the Pink Bug. And those huge Bug tires had studs in them to boot! That’s why the bug could go anywhere in the winter. Believe it or not, the power to weight ratio was better in the stock VW bug!  

So, the White Rat remained your basic transportation. Kirk would often give his younger sister lifts when she had to go to town or school for activities. As Kirk had done, though not mentioned in this lengthy account, his sister was prescribed by their parental units to take religious confirmation classes, a requirement for young teens of the Lutheran faith. On a Saturday after a snowstorm, the Arctic chill set in with a hellacious north wind. Kirk’s father didn’t want to take Kirk’s sister to the church, so Kirk volunteered seeing the snow spread deep on the road and the wind blew it hard into impressive drifts.

Heading out, Kirk decided to take the back roads much to his sister’s indignation. It started out pretty much uneventful which disappointed Kirk who expected a little bit of winter fun with the White Rat. Visibility changed up and down from nearly clear to zero when the blowing snow completely obscured their vision. Kirk did get a little thrill over a few drifts that they smashed through with snow blasting over the hood and windshield. His sister hung on with an expression of tense trepidation. As they motored on, they rolled down into a lower area where much to Kirk’s joy more snow had remained on the road. Almost constantly, the snow bashed noisily up against the inside of fenders and under the floorboards. More often, bigger drifts smashed over the hood and began piling up and laying up against the windshield.

Kirk sat up higher in his seat so he could see over the snow while fumbling with the switch to flip on the wipers. With one agonizing slow sweep of the wipers, he decided it wasn’t a good idea seeing the heavy snow would probably burn the wiper motor out. Suddenly, with one impressive drift, POOF! the White Rat slowed suddenly, its back end slid sideways, the engine revved with the tires spinning with the car going a-skewed. Kirk white-knuckled the wheel and steered into the slide. His sister exclaimed something about slowing down, but Kirk knew that they’d be walking if he slowed too much. He suddenly realized the engine sounded quiet and muffled. He listened carefully and pressed on the accelerator; he deemed they still had full power albeit normal weak, six-cylinder power. Just then an amber light on the dashboard caught his eye�"the battery warning light! He let off on the gas and out of his sharp peripheral vision he saw that his sister didn’t notice the warning light. He motored on gripping the wheel, praying to the autogods who he hoped still favored him.

Soon, they came to a wooded area where the winds dropped off, so he only had to deal with a thick layer of snow on the road. He plowed on. The sister seemed to relax. They went through another blowing snow area, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as before. He glanced to the offending amber light way too often. He worried. They drove into the town limits with streets that were plowed for the most part. The abnormally quiet White Rat bothered Kirk, but they continued on for the mile or so to the church. Stopping out front of said church, his sister got out looking a little shaky on her feet.

Kirk got out as well and grinned, and sarcastically said, “Have fun!” Remembering how unfun the religious training was to endure.

“Oh, thanks! I’ve already had enough fun!”

Kirk left the White Rat run there on the street and popped the hood.  Steam rolled out. What he saw amazed him. The inside of the engine compartment was packed tight with snow. Solid snow! All of the engine he could see was the circular top of the air cleaner and the top of the radiator that was furiously melting the snow and steaming. The rest of the engine was buried in snow. No wonder the engine was so quiet! He shut the engine off. With gloved hands, Kirk began furiously digging out the packed snow between the engine and the radiator because of course the engine cooling fan wasn’t moving when he inspected under the hood with the engine running.

Steam rose about his face and head as he dug out the packed wet, slushy snow. He soon found what he had suspected�"the fan belt had slipped off because it couldn’t handle all that heavy snow packed around the fan. Working at it while getting wet up to his elbows, he got enough snow away from the belt and fan. He then put the belt back on the alternator and engine pulleys. After that, he forced the belt crookedly on the edge of the fan pully. Grabbing a fan blade, he levered the fan around while carefully working the belt back down into the pulley’s groove. It all looked okay. He knew the engine was close to overheating despite the wet snow packed around it�"maybe the snow had made it hotter�"worse! He quickly got inside and started the engine. The warning light went out, but the fan belt squealed to high heaven. It quieted down after a few moments while the whirling fan spewed out slushy snow splattering all over the fenders and windshield and out from under the hood.  

Inspecting the rest of the car, Kirk saw snow had packed up inside the fenders, around the axles, springs and shock absorbers. In fact, there was barely any clearance between the tires and the packed in snow. Water from melted snow dripped off the exhaust pipes and muffler. He thought about cleaning the snow out from underneath, but he only had a few emergency tools, so he decided to drive back home the way the car remained; nevertheless, he took the safer, cleared main road home.

This incident was just a little bit of fun with the underpowered wallowing White Rat because he sure wasn’t going to drive twice the posted limits like his Firebird that rested in the barn for the winter. Kirk experienced another weird encounter with the Rat later in that winter. 

***

Getting back to stock car building, Kirk knew that it had to be labor intensive to build a car from scratch, but he really did not have a complete conception of how much work. After getting the roll cage built mounted on the frame and fitted snugly inside the coupe body, there were many man weeks of welding to finish it up. Kirk had some practice arc welding but his expertise wasn’t on par with what was needed to weld a roll cage when safety remained of utmost concern, so he left the welding up to his brother-in-law Mike to complete.

Mike had some engine blocks and transmission cases around so with the stock car on stable jack stands, the two men positioned the engine and transmission with the help of a rolling floor jack. According to the rule book, the rear of the engine had to remain forward of the firewall of the body. This prevented guys from putting an engine midway in a frame which would spread weight distribution across all four wheels, so in this hypothetical case, it would be an illegal placement. Mike pointed out that the rules for engine placement could be fudged a bit anyway because of the widely used old rusted car bodies. This meant you could fabricate and position a sheet metal firewall any matter of forward or backward, preferably the latter for better weight distribution just as long it wasn’t extremely out of place. In reality besides, a builder could actually shift the engine crookedly in the frame to counteract the centrifugal G-Force on the track where you’re almost always making a lefthand turns. But problems arise with side shifting the engine like that with exhaust routing, cooling, transmission mounting, driveshaft offsets and other things.

Considering all that, they would mount the engine in the middle of the frame ahead of the repositioned firewall that was maybe 5 inches rearward of the original firewall. From there, it proved relatively easy to build simple solid mounts for the engine and transmission keeping in mind how low they could mount the engine without having the oil pan scraping the asphalt. Got to always keep that center of gravity as low as possible. Again, the mounts were spot welded in case “adjustments” had to be made later on. 

One note here, engine mounts are bolted solidly to the engine. No vibration-dampening rubber motor mounts are installed to make the engine feel smoother and run quieter. With rubber mounts as in all car manufacturing, engine torque is reduced when the engine twists under power.

With the firewall location established, the cockpit layout could be designed. This meant the seat position, pedal placement, and steering wheel locations could be engineered for the driver, which by the way, would be smack dab in the middle of the car. It’s said that race drivers could feel the quirks of the car’s handling better when they sit in the middle of the car. The seat itself was a fiberglass bucket-type seat of unusual design because it had a right-side rib wraparound feature. Because the car would be always turning left the driver’s body is thrown to the right hence the support on the right side. There wasn’t much cushioning in the seat�"maybe an inch all around. Everyone who raced locally knew the dreadful story of one driver who had a thick cushion shoved underneath his seat. He was involved in a terrible wreck that caused his car to rollover several times. He broke his back because during the rollover the cushion fell out allowing his shoulder/seat harness to become slack and so his body thrashed about violently during the crash. Stock car builders, drivers, and track technical inspectors all knew the story. Of course, the shoulder safety harness was secured solidly and directly to the roll cage and not the seat or floor.

Besides the seat located in the middle of the car, pedals were laid out with accelerator on the right side, clutch and brake on the other not unlike a normal car but almost spread-eagle style. Drivers race with a foot poised on the brake while the other stays on the accelerator, sometimes applied at the same time! Because of low ground clearance and the ever-present desired low center of gravity, the driver’s legs were stretched out almost flat, parallel to the ground. The gear shift resided between the driver’s legs. Also, to be added in the cockpit was the steering wheel centered of course, straight on. Some cars in the lower racing classes were built with the steering wheel at an angle instead of working it out so it was directly in front of the driver. A discussion over this with Mike, Kirk found out that the feel of the car was lost, not to mention the driver can’t sit square in the car with the wheel installed crookedly. He’d be always facing and looking to the left of center in the front of the car. Definitely not the way to go. 

The dashboard had the minimalist analog gauges of a tachometer, oil pressure gauge and a temperature gauge. Actually, a tachometer looked cool in a racing cockpit, but once the gearing was dialed-in for the track the car raced on at a regular basis, the tachometer became a worthless ornament. Besides, during a race, who has the time to watch the tach needle? Finally, the simplest engine start and stop switches were mounted close to the driver so he can just drop his right hand to access them. A large knobbed push/pull switch was used for run and stop while doubling as a “kill” switch for emergency stops, and a trouble-free push button was used to start, that’s it! These were added last of all on the car build.  

Much more engineering, designing, and work was needed on Mike’s stock car. Then, after that they could begin the rebuild on Kirk’s car. The winter months always seemed long and endless, but would they have enough time for all the work they needed to do on two cars before the season began? Time would tell.

Despite the promise of a possibly life-changing diversion in racing, for now, Kirk remained static in his depression and hard work.