Ok, this one I don’t even know where to start. I tried to be a good boy scout and be prepared. Although I wasn’t prepared for what happened. I am the king of doing things at the last minute before a race day!
After what happened to me in Texas, I thought long and hard about getting a trailer for the supra since I will be racing up at Blackhawk and Gingerman this year. The thought of something happening and not being able to at least get home is worrisome. I found a trailer manufacturer down in Springfield Missouri. Good cheap trailer. It’s a 18 foot + a 2 foot dove tail with ramps that get stored underneath on the side.
We spent a weekend going down to pick it up the weekend before my first race at Gingerman. Since the trailer place closes at noon on Saturday we had to wake up fresh and early. I believe we got there right around 11. They had to still do a couple things to it. Whatever the term flip the axles means and wire in the plug for the lights. The axle thing took no time at all. And when I walked by while they were connecting the plug I noticed they were installing a 7 wire plug when the 4runner only has a 6 wire. So I had to tell them to stop and do a different plug to match. After a little bit of a hassle they finally got the plug situated and when we hooked it all up the lights didn’t work. They double checked everything and nothing seemed to work so they cut the light wires from the plug and attached a 4 wire harness since we also had one of those on the 4runner. That seemed to do the trick so something was wrong with the 6 wire plug on the 4runner.
I pull the trailer into the driveway and figure I will risk being yelled at by the neighborhood association for leaving the trailer there for one week while I fix the lights. I look at the plug on the 4runner and notice quite a bit of corrosion in there so I decide it would be best if I just bought a new one. I never knew the difference between the 6 or 7 wire plugs but have found out 4 plugs give you lights, 6 plugs give you lights and reverse lights and brakes, and the 7 give you all of that plus an accessory wire. Since my plans for adding a winch and possible a bright light to load the trailer at night need a power wire. Here I go trying to think ahead again and buy the 7 wire. It got late (this is Sunday) so I figure I’ll get to the lights later during the week. At the same time I had to work out a couple kinks in the supra. I finally got to the trailer on Thursday. So I cut the old plug and wire in the new plug and test it out and I get headlights but no signals or breaks. Double check, triple check the wiring I break out the multimeter and look for power. Nothing. Great, it’s now too late at night to do this so I figure I’ll do it in the morning before we leave. Morning comes and I try to follow the old wires to find the problem. I found out that this was a Toyota installed tow package. I followed the wires to the inside trim by the tail lights and found a Toyota tail light converter. The wires going to it had power but nothing came out. So bingo I found the problem. I call up Jason at wolfe Toyota and he tells me they don’t sell just the converter it comes with the tow package which is $170.00 so I think about it and say ‘hmmm no’. I run into wal-mart and buy a hoppy tail light converter for 12 bucks, cut the old wires and wire this one in. Presto. Something finally worked. We had tried to arrange to leave by 9am so I could get to the test and tune at gingerman Friday night.
Well it was now 11am and it was time to load the trailer. I pulled it into the street and pulled out the ramps. As I pulled them out I noticed they were a bit shorter than I expected. I connected them to the back of the trailer and looked like a 40 degree angle which was way to sharp for the supra bumper. However since last year I figured out how to load the Honda on emily’s parents trailer I went into the garage and pulled out my yellow metal ramps. With the added length I should have no issue getting on the trailer. I set it all up and get in the car. As I am pulling up I begin to notice the weight of the car is pushing down on the trailer, lifting the front, lifting the rear of the 4runner. As I see the 4runner rear end waving back and forth from being off the ground I put the car in neutral to come back down. As I did this the trailer must of moved a bit causing the ramps to move and the trailer ramps fell dropping the supra on top of the yellow ramps. I had a sick feeling in my stomach but didn’t have time to mope. I got out and the ramps were wedged under the frame of the supra so they weren’t under anything important that could break. I grab my floor jack and jack each side up and pull the ramps out. Notice my bumper is more scratched than it was and the front lip is pulled out further than it was before but I can live with that. I set it all back up again but this time I grabbed two jack stands and put them under the rear of the trailer stopping it from lifting up. This time I drove right up without a problem. I strapped the car down. Loaded up the camping supplies and were finally on the road at 1pm.
Since we were leaving so much later than we expected I had given up hope for making the test and tune but now we needed to get there before they closed the gates at midnight. We didn’t have any problems on the drive up there except the occasional wiggle of the trailer. The weather was fantastic and everything was finally going smoothly. We actually reached South Haven Michigan at 10pm so we decided to stop in at Wal-mart and pick up some things we forgot about (Beer). So we pulled into gingerman roughly at 11:00.
I saved unloading the car for in the morning so I could have some daylight. I set everything up as I did when we left home. I didn’t take into consideration that we were parked in a field that was sort of wet from it raining for the past week. So as I pulled the car back the ramps sunk into the ground creating more of an angle and I hit my exhaust on the trailer. So I had to pull back up and decided to just hammer the gas and hopefully bounce off the exhaust. After making a horrible noise from hitting the exhaust flange to the trailer I was off and ready to race.
The morning started out just overcast but it was obvious it was going to rain. We just didn’t know for how long. When they called the 3rd run group to the grid I made my way up, as I pulled in behind the cars in front of me I realized that I never set my car up for the road course. I had the shocks set full soft, the front sway bar was disconnected and I left my TRD front shock tower bar at home. The previous run group was just getting a checkered flag so I thought I would have enough time to get back to my tools and fix the car and run in the next run group. But I decided to hell with it I am just going to run it like this, since all I was really concerned about was how the turbo was going to perform (this was the first event with the new turbo). Cornering was certainly more of a challenge. The car turned like a boat, but the power was there. I was behind a black camaro for most of the session and on the third lap he got real squirrelly in turn 5-6 so I backed off his tail. He didn’t spin it but he definitely had to fight the rear end coming around. He slowed way down and I passed him on the next straight. As the session ended I reached around to turn off my camera only to realize I forgot to turn it on L.
The second practice session was a little wet. But I had a chance in between groups to fix the car’s suspension. I was impressed with the turbo spool up and the power that it gave me but I was hesitant in the corners to get on it.
It rained through the rest of the practice sessions and it stopped for a bit during lunch. When they called us for our first practice session the road looked a little wet so I was overly conservative until about ¾ of the track when I realized it was much dryer than I thought. That was a little frustrating but overall the run wasn’t that bad. I pulled a 1:52 while my competition (in a c4 vette with some kind of motor swap) ran a 1:50. I am certain that I could have been faster than that but I guess in my old age the saying ‘better safe than sorry’ won out.
The second timed run it was raining pretty good. I could barely push the car without it wanting to loose all traction. I was comfortable with just flooring it and hard braking in the straights but the corners had me worried. I was still slower than the vette though, so I need to learn to become a tad bit faster in the rain. My time was 2:29 while the vette ran a 2:21.
The last timed run was still raining but I figured with being 8 seconds slower in the rain I HAVE to figure out what people are doing. So I spun the tires from the starting point to the brake point of turn 1. Made it through turn 1 and was squeezing the power back on when the rear let loose. I adjusted and caught it and made my way to turn 2 and did the same thing again. The rear end came out about 45 degrees and I caught it and held it straight. I think that I got kind of worried on the rest of the corners but on the two big straights I just flat out floored it. I had no traction but I was still going forward. So I have no idea what the best way to get and maintain speed in the wet is. I ended the day running a 2:32 with my competition running a 2:29, so at least I closed most of the gap…
It was time to load the car, for the trip to MT’s house. It was still raining and everything was soaked. I pulled the ramps out and setup my rigged ramps to get the car on the trailer. As I pulled the supra up the ramps the car stopped and the tires were spinning. I think I had no traction on the flat metal surface of the yellow ramps. So I backed down and tried to floor it and get up there faster. That seemed to do the trick.
Midwestern council always has a little trophy ceremony with food and beverage (yeah for beer). Its usually a good time to sit and chat with the fellow racers and get some serious bench racing in ‘I should of done this, I should of done that, I would of beat you if my wiper fluid was full’. There was another supra there running that day and I was reviewing his times. He was at least slower than me on the first run but quicker during the wet laps (he was BPU, which I don’t really think in the rain that matters), he did win his class (x-modified) the same way I did in 2001.
My mother and I decided it best if we just stayed at gingerman that night since everything was wet so we could hopefully pack up in the dry. So I took advantage and partook in a couple beverages. There were some guys that just arrived for the wheel to wheel racing the next day. And we began talking. It truly is wondrous that a couple of drunk guys that don’t know each other will sit and talk to each other for as long as there is beer. One of the guys was the driver of an old BMW and the other guy seemed to be the mechanic/gofer. When I initially went over to their site they were cooking a whole chicken on the grill, and the thing that I never saw before was they had the bird sitting up on the grill with a opened beer up the chickens butt. Even tho I just had my fill of beans, dogs they were persistent in having me try some. I have to admit the chicken was tasty. We chatted for a while and I went over my day and the things I did wrong. And they told me all about the gingerman 10-heures from the previous year and they had me sold on wheel to wheel racing I just need to be more comfortable with myself on the track. In my drunken stupor, I left my video camera over with them. One of them saw it and put it away in fear the rain would return. That right there is another reason why I enjoy Midwestern council. We have our sides of wheel2wheel Vs autoX but when it comes down to being a racer we do somewhat look out for one another.
Thankfully the next morning was bright and windy. So windy that it blew the tent over. Trust me when your hung over trying to fight the wind and get things packed away you just wanna release the pressure in your head with a rock! But I managed to get the tent into the tent bag (not folded, just nicely stuffed) and got everything loaded by around 10 o’clock. As we were leaving town we came across a big boy and decided that a breakfast buffet was in order. Hmmm food.
The drive to MT’s house was fairly uneventful. We made it in a couple hours. We had a nice visit and went to dinner at some restaurant downtown Kalamazoo. It was actually a really nice dinner. And they made some good tasting beer. Emily’s mom decided that she will just leave Emily with us and take some of the stuff we didn’t need so Emily could fit in the 4runner. So we did some re-arranging and Emily’s mom took off before us the following morning. We took our time getting back on the highway. We soon realized that Makenna in her car seat, Zeke, and my mother makes for a crowded rear seat. So we had to pull over and move things around to get some room. I ended up taking the coolers out and strapping them to the trailer, and moving most everything else that was in the back of the 4runner into the trunk of the supra. That way Zeke had the entire back to sleep. While we were stopped we decided to stop at a winery that we conveniently parked in front of. A case of wine later we were back on the road.
We tooled along nicely through Indiana, into Illinois and made the decision to go down a different highway than we came up. Which would lead us into Decatur then we’d take another highway to Springfield. Well we made it through Decatur and were headed towards Springfield which there is nothing in between but a giant cornfield. The 4runner decided it was a good time to loose all engine power. I looked down and we had a ¼ tank of gas but the engine kept wanting to die. I had the foot on the floor and was hoping to get close to an exit off ramp. No such luck. I had to pull over to the shoulder. I got out and looked at the engine and nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at me. I took the gas cap out and let the vacuum release and shook the car to see if the gauge was stuck. Nothing changed. Car would turn but not start. So we called AAA not having a clue where we really were. The gal on the phone said that since we didn’t know anything but what highway we were on they could not send out a tow truck just to go ‘looking’ for us. So my mother and I started walking up the highway in search of a mile marker. My mom kept up a good pace with me (as well she should a year ago she participated in a 3 day walk from miluwakie to Chicago) however she also began smoking again. And by less than a half mile she was slowing down. However we figured out which mile marker we were on and went back to the car to re-call AAA. After telling them exactly where we were I had an additional request. Seeing how I had the trailer I had to have a tow truck that could tow the 4runner and also tow the trailer. That seemed to be a problem but AAA called me back within two hours telling me a truck was on the way.
While we were waiting for the tow truck I decided it would be best to take the car off the trailer so my mom and I could follow the tow truck and have Emily, Makenna, and zeke ride in the truck (if there was room) so I had to unload the car on the side of the highway. I set the ramps up and put the yellow ramps I had under them. I have no clue what really happened next. My Mother was behind the ramps making sure I went straight and while I was backing up onto the ramps they seemed to move and I could feel the car shifting over as it began to fall. So instead of risking having the car half on the trailer I hit the gas to completely get off. Thankfully my mom also saw this happening and stepped to the side. Once the car stopped I looked around and made sure no one was coming on the highway and I got out. The supra was sitting on top of the yellow ramps wedged just behind the wheels. I went and grabbed my jack and got the ramps out and I noticed the left side ramp was cracked and split. So I am assuming the weight of my heavy ass car was too much for the ramps to support and gave way. Thankfully no harm was done.
The tow truck finally came and he loaded the 4runner up and hooked the trailer up. He also made the comment of how nice the trailer was and if we did have to leave it, the trailer would probably make it about 2 hours before someone came and took it. Since he could tow it that wasn’t a problem and after we were done we headed toward the Springfield Toyota dealer. As we pulled in he dropped the trailer off and unloaded the truck and we looked for a place to park the trailer that was out of the way. Behind the dealer there was a line of parking places that was on a short down hill towards the road. The parking spots had those big concrete curbs so the tow truck driver lowered the trailer thinking it would roll about 2 feet and catch on the curb. Well he missed. I freaked out and jumped forward to grab the front of the trailer. And as I did this I already knew that my 200 lbs ass was no match in stopping a 1300 lbs trailer rolling down hill but as in all the video of cars rolling away I had to grab on and try! Due to the main jack stand of the trailer being down it finally caught the curb and stopped. I was shaken, and very perturbed that the guy just launched my not even week old trailer down a hill. But he said he was sorry and was certain he would of hit the curb. So he loaded the trailer back up and pulled it and shifted it about 3 feet over and did the same thing. This time the trailer wheels caught the curb and stopped.
We stayed the night in a near by hotel. And I woke up fresh and early Monday morning to go talk with the service people. I was actually really impressed with the dealership. Toyota seems to have a good thing going with the new dealers. I explained to him what happened and what it was doing and the first thing he did was put 2 gallons of gas in. the truck started right up. OH MY GOD, I ran out of gas! I was so stunned that the gas gauge showed ¼ tank buy yet it was out. The service guy said keep an eye on it and if it should happen again to bring it back to a Toyota station and they will look at it. But for the current time being he was not going to charge me anything. THANK YOU!