I had the car for the morning 9-11AM stint. At 11AM they start the "quiet hour" out of respect for the local churches. It's also when they crush the winner of the people's curse. We'd been getting about an hour and 45 minutes out of the car on a full load of fuel. The car still has a couple of gallons left in the tank at that point, but the sloshing in the turns makes it unavailable to the fuel pump.
Driving was fun. I had fresh brakes, new tires and working clutch. The car was behaving well. I made some feeble attempts at conserving fuel at Nicks insistence that I could not come in for more gas. I spent some time behind the 777 car, not trying too hard to pass, but making an occasional stab at it when there was an opportunity. There were a couple of long yellows that helped our fuel timing end up perfect. I was just starting to get some serious starvation on the turns when the checker came out. I had managed to climb a couple of positions to 10th place. For the first time we'd be able to line up with the leaders!
The rest of our afternoon did not go as smoothly. Only about 20 laps into Craig's stint the car died. I assumed the igniter was the problem, and immediately began scrounging for a distributor I could borrow. The bee Civic had an extra motor, but being a D series, the distributor would not bolt up. Fortunately we discovered that the only real difference was in the castings, and that the guts could be swapped.
After swapping the igniter and coil we put he distributor in and ... nothing. Disheartened, we kept looking for answers in the wiring. It was hot and we moved slow. Nick noticed a fuse that had been blown in the ABS circuit. We had tapped a lot of our hot wiring off that circuit, and so it could have been the cuplrit. We swapped the fuse and the car started right up!
Craig made about 1 lap before the ignition quit in the same spot one the track. Once the car was towed in we tried wiggling every connection to see what shorting out. Unable to find a definitive answer, we just started cutting every unnecessary electrical circuit out of the car (headlights, flap, etc). We sent Craig back out with our fingers crossed. He managed to make it until the end of the race, but we ended up in 20th place overall.
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