Running on Fumes: Rocking the I-500...

[JoeRainville]

With another sub-par finish in the I-500, the old saying that its "about the journey not the destination" rings somewhat true...

This years adventures and mis-adventures started with flying up to NY from my TX home on Friday, Feb 1st. First order of business was picking up my Dmax from "Caledonia Diesel" after having a new clutch installed at 180,000 miles. The rub was that the clutch and pressure plate looked really good, but the dual mass flywheel was shot. The floating face has way too much runout and radial play:



The rest of weekend was spent loading the trailer and putting the finishing touches on the race sled. Running on RMT, I arrived at Kulda's place north of Buffalo around 1:00 am Tuesday morning, Feb 5th, loaded his sled and gear and hit the road.



Since we actually left with plenty of time, we were able to crash in a hotel just on the outskirts of Minnapolis on Tuesday night. We spoke to Wade Bennent and Chris before hitting the rack. They were several hours behind us, but making good time coming up from Indiana.

[JoeRainville]

The closer we got to Thief River Falls, the better the snow looked. This was very good news as reports from the area in the weeks before the race were not the most encouraging...



We arrived uneventfully at the 7-Clans Casino were Tim and I checked in and then attended the first drivers meeting. Brian Nelson started a new circuit to replace the USCC started by Pat Mach and ran by the Mach family follow Pat's untimely death. Brian ran the drivers meeting with the USXC crew, reviewing the rules for fuel stops, repair sessions, ect:



We also ran into some of my buddies from VS, including Dick Krogstad and Tony Brenna, not to mention some of the early arriving vintage racers. Tim and I got to bed early since he was running the 85 hp class early the next day.

[JDT]

So did you stop in Wadena or just take a picture at the redlight?

Yes, it is true. I lived in Wadena back in 77-78.

[JoeRainville]

Tim had to impound his sled the night before the race, so the morning was just gearing up and getting ready go:



Tim started darn near last, something like 99 out of 103 sleds. Notice how staging behind him is pretty much empty:



Since we met up with Wade and Chris, they joined me with going to the fuel stop. Made my first mistake there, where I locked myself out of the truck. Luckily the AAA driver knew the area, and took care of it before it became a real issue.

Much more to come...

[JoeRainville]

So did you stop in Wadena or just take a picture at the redlight?
Yes, it is true. I lived in Wadena back in 77-78.

Hey Todd, the pause at that red light was about our only stop in funky cold Wadena. Made for a nice picture though...

[I500]

Strong effort going from Fort Worth to New York to Northern Minnesota................Great job and strong commitment.

[JoeRainville]

Thanks Chuck. I will be back again next year, hope to see you there.

...Day two started pretty uneventful, with me manning the gas stop for Tim's race efforts. The second day was cold, about zero out when I arrived and waited to fuel Tim's Cat.





Tim was having a good run up to the second time through the fuel stop. Assuming all was well, I returned to the Casino and waited for Tim to arrive. It warmed up to 8 degrees by the time I left.

[JoeRainville]

Tabor tells me that eating a cheeseburger is no excuse for missing a repair session, but I was really hungery after working the gas stop on Day 1 of the race. For Day 2 I made sure to be ready for Tim, just in case.

Tim sent me a text at 2:29 "You going to wrench?" on Friday, Feb 8th. I was ready this time, but he called me in the trailer and asked if I could bring files after describing a metalic grinding sound for the last 40 miles of the race.

By the time I borrowed files from Wade, and walked over to the repair area, Tim has the driven clutch off and it looked pretty bad. This was his jackshaft bearing:



It was so shot that it allowed the driven clutch to interfear with the drive, and both outer sheaves were trashed. Tim looked up at me and said "I don't know about this." Well, thinking WWTD (what would Tabor do) I pushed all doubt aside (I gave us less than 50/50 chance really) I sprung into action and said "where it the Cat Parts trailer? We didn't drive 1,500 miles to quit." I pulled the junk bearing off and ran to the trailer, returning moments later with a new one. Tim and I look turns cleaning spalled metal off the jackshaft, and I then took the file to the mushroomed outer sheave. So much metal was smooshed to the inside, where the belt rides, this was our biggest repair challenge.

Once the driven was cleaned up enough to hopefully not chew up a belt, I tackelled the drive. Since I was running out of steam, I used the flat file to knock off the huge chunks on the moveable face, and asked Tim to block the view behind me, and start the motor. While his 500 idled along, I cleaned and smoothed the movable face, hopefully enough to not trash belts, or crack and explode. Gave if a final smoothing with some borrowed emery cloth Tim obtained from the guys next to us.

In the 45 minutes we had since my arrival, we replaced the bearing, smoothed the jackshaft, cleaned up the clutches and got a belt installed. But Tim found blood all over the sled. Turns out I sliced a finger open on the darn razor sharp keyway, oops. With a few minutes to go, we slammed on a set of freash carbides, and Tim flipped the sled down and started it...with only 3 minutes left in the hour long session.

I just leaned over and tried to catch my breath as Tim pulled away...

[Ruppster1]

Come on Joe !!! Waiting for the next installment to see if the repairs worked !! Nice story and YES a great effort by you both to make the race.

[JD600]

Tabor tells me that eating a cheeseburger is no excuse for missing a repair session, but I was really hungery after working the gas stop on Day 1 of the race.

This may be true, but I've heard there is at least one excuse that IS acceptable....

DE

[JoeRainville]

Thanks Ruppster, much more to tell.

Duster, I will let Tabor answer that one!

And now back to our regular story...

Lets just say that I might have a well earned reputation of waiting until the last minute to prepare for an event. While I came to this race with a sled nearly race ready, I still needed to finish a few things such as studding the track. After I was done crewing for Kudla, I spent some time in the trailer finshing up my sled:



Around this time, our volunteer crew of Todd, Dustin and Dustin (Elder and Erickson) had rolled into town. I checked my Liquifire in, and was tech'd before lining her in staging for the overnight.



About 40 sleds were expected to line for Vintage and Vintage Legends, making Vintage the largest class to race this year. 103 modern sleds lined up on day 1 in all the classes, for comparision.

[WinnipegStPaul9]

For those of you waiting anxiously for the more of the race, there's only 8 more miles to go

DA

[JDXspec]

Its too bad we don't have helemt cam video of Rainville . THAT would be interesting.

[JDT]

DA you are cruel!!!!!

[JoeRainville]

Don, I went over the bars about mile 6, but limped along until mile 45. This was a significant improvement over my first attempt!

I did not install my helmet cam, but wish I did, even though I would have needed a new one after I hit the eject button...

And now back to our story, already in progress:

Tim, myself and our volunteer crew all met up at the drivers meeting, along with Chris and Wade. The durable Doug Oster was there with his friend Bob, and he and I talked about the FOX shock kit Kenny and I put together for Doug, as well as Doug adding a center shock. We agreed it makes a huge difference to these sleds in the mogals and jumps.



In case your wondering if Doug is tough, he has been racing since the 70's, was a factory race mechanic and rider for ETD, factory test rider and racer for Cat, raced the entire USCC circuit in 2008 and again in 2009. He has also attempted the I-500 on his 81 Liquifire twice. Like I said, tough dude!

Since our sleds were impounded, not much left to do but get some sleep. I think we all hit the rack by 9:30...