I've been remiss in my reporting again... Simmons Career Center did buy my cars. I delivered them when school resumed after Christmas break. I almost decided to retire from Electrathon completely, but it's just so darn much fun and I was already having seller's remorse by the time I got home from delivering the cars to the new owners. Also, a few days later, another school bought my original prototype car that was hanging on my shop wall.

So.., after taking inventory of the stuff I had left over I decided to build another car. I missed the January race at Wharton High School, but after thrashing 10 - 12 hours a day for the 3 weeks preceding it, I finally finished my new car about 9:00 PM the night before its first race. Saturday Feb 20 I made the trek to University of South Florida in Tampa with my old friend Jerry Bristow, former IKF go-kart champion. I let him drive the first race of the day; my reasoning was if anything needed quick repair I was better prepared to do it since I built the thing. About 15 minutes into the run, the chain jumped off! That almost never happens with #40 chain, but it did. He coasted into the pits and we discovered that the chain was sloppy loose (it didn't start out that way!) We adjusted the tension and sent him back into the fray. He finished the remaining time, but lost too many laps to make up - finished 3rd in our class out of 3 cars.

For the second race I took the controls. We had checked and tweaked all the spokes on the new wheels between races and fixed a slow leak in the left front tire. I went into the race confident that we had solved all our "new car blues" and I had a shot at a possible 2nd place finish, but it was not to be. About 15 minutes into the hour the chain jumped off again. I coasted to the pits and we discovered that the chain was sloppy loose again! Also, now the sprockets were out of alignment. This is a new occurrence for me; I normally never have chain problems. Apparently the motor mount is moving and allowing the chain to loosen. We were credited with 3rd place again. I will tear into it soon and find out why it's moving, but the motor mount in this car is built exactly like the last five and they never had a problem...

Meantime, as soon as I can resize them I will post some pics here.