Then it was time to hit the road. What an unmitigated disaster.
I left my shop around 4:30 after work on Wednesday. Everything was going well until I had a blow-out on my trailer about 130 miles from the track. Not a huge deal, I had a spare that was pretty rotten but I felt it could get me the rest of the way if I took it easy. Unfortunately, while on the side of the interstate changing the tire, the alternator on my truck quit while it was idling with the flashers on. I was able to get the tire changes and limp to the next exit. At this point it was 11pm and no part stores were open to replace the alternator on my truck.
So I did the only thing I could do. I fired up the generator in my truck, ran a drop cord through the windows, stuck my battery charger on the windshield with the cords running under the wipers, and put the clamps on one of the batteries. I drove 45 mph for the rest of the trip and limped to the track. Unfortunately, the 40 amp charger wouldn't put out enough juice to keep everything running so I could only drive about 15 miles at a time before I had to pull over and let everything re-charge for 15 minutes, then hit the road again.
My 7 hour drive ended up being 13 hours, I pulled into Gainesville Raceway at 5am and slept for 1.5 hours. Then I got up, pulled through the gate once it opened, unloaded everything, warmed it all up (I was running SST and STK, the first two classes out) and made some qualifying hits. Over the course of the weekend I was able to get 4 new trailer tires from Greg Lubben who owns a tire shop not far from the track and a new alternator and serpentine belt from an O'reilley's about 15 minutes away. I spent all of my free time at the track working on my set-up to make sure when I was ready to leave, I could.
