Car loaded on the Friday morning, we then started the 6hr journey down to Victoria to Winton Raceway. Cruisy drive with no issues. Love this trailer!

Sunny weather at Winton on the Friday arvo upon arriving! Unloaded the car into a pit, chatted with the fellow MWSCC members who were doing the Friday practice day, which I should have done as well.

Saturday started off on the wrong foot. Whilst warming up the car for session 1, my brother noticed the CEL was on. I couldn't actually see if from the drivers seat with the race dash in the way (design fault, gonna have to fix that). I assumed it was to do with the IAT again, but my laptop decided to not connect properly with the Hondata software to scan it, I missed the session.

Stuffing around trying to fix it, it kept crashing when turning on ignition. Eventually I realised the fault was due to no internet connection on the laptop, so a quick hotspot worked. Of course, once connected the CEL didn't want to come back on. With this, I just waited for the next session.

Steering issues

Well well well.. I went out for session 2, did 2 warm laps to get a feel for the track. On the first flying lap I went down the straight, turned left into the chicane and the rear came around, I tried to catch it but spun out over the ripple strip bouncing about. Once the traffic went past I came back on track and the steering wheel had turned half to the left from center in order to drive straight. Turning right was really hard, left was easy. I already knew what this was..

Back in the pits, I swung out to reverse in and as I turned the wheel i felt something give and pop out, no steering. We spun the car around with the jack, at which point my jack tore the metal unit joint between the handle and the ram.. Luckily a friendly club member lent me their huge low profile jack.

Jacked up the car and as I had expected, the pinion had falling through the bottom of it as you can see by the first photo. Earlier in the year when rebuilding the car, I removed the thick 6mm block off plate I had originally made and noticed it was cracked in half. I decided to replace but just used a thin 1mm sheet.

I'm guessing it has been like this for a very long time but I never realised as the thick 6mm plate must have been strong enough to hold the pinion up in it's location, enough that it was in contact with the rack and allow me to steer. The creamy looking paste around it was JB weld I tried to put on to hold up this side of the plate as there are no bolts. I doubted it would work at the time of reinstalling the rack but I thought why not.

As a track side repair, all I could do was pull it back up, smack the plate flat and send a few cable ties around it and hope it holds, though I doubt it will. This took a while as I was having trouble trying to refit the uni joint, having to move the pinion around to fit the bloody uni joint in. I suppose the annoyance of everything added to the situation.

Ready to go back out

Not much luck in the end

Eventually I got back out on track, did 1 session going easy on the steering wheel to see how it held, which seemed to be fine. On the next session I decided to push a bit more, but into the T5 long left hand sweeper, I went into 4th probably around 150-160km and as I turned into the turn I kept turning left but the car started to steer right, I knew it was starting to break again. I let off and babied it back into the pit, barely getting into the garage. Lined the car up for the trailer and turned it off.

On the previous session where I didn't go too hard, I managed a 1.38.xx which came up on the Natsoft live + my RaceChrono, but then the Natsoft end results only showed a 1.40. My current PB is a 1.37.52 so I wasn't overly bothered.

On the trailer, ready for it's trip home.

Nice dinner with the club, a few drinks and many laughs, overall just tired from the whole day, constant headache since waking up too which didn't help.

Easy trip home, a lot of reflection on the car and making a plan on what to do. Until next time!

Photographer photos

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