The return of Mortimer

["Brian Shorey" <bshorey@domain.elided>]

Well, Mortimer the Berlina made it's long awaited return to racing this past
weekend at the AROCt annual Lime Rock event.

Prepping a car that has not been driven for 3-4 years for track time turned
out to be pretty time consuming, but all in all Mortimer was in pretty good
basic condition.

It took a couple of sessions to get the surface rust off the rotors and the
brakes heated up enough to actually have some grip.  Prior to that, I did
not have kind words about those amazing (on paper) brakes.  I'm still a
little neutral about them, I think after I adjust the linkages to get some
bite a little higher they'll be ok.

The car itself was a hoot to drive!  Pretty neutral overall, but with enough
power to bring the rear end out if I gave it too much throttle at the wrong
time.  But then very easy to get back in control.  I'm not sure where the
limits are with this beast, or how close I'll be able to get to them, but by
my third session I was starting to turn some more respectable lap times,
even passing a couple of P-cars.

And then the head gasket blew in a major way just after the uphill, pi$$ing
anti-freeze all over the rear wheels and resulting in an exciting spin.
Caught sideways in the dirt and thought I might be going over at one point,
but ended up stopping without any damage.

So, a little more sorting to be done, hopefully a few more events this year,
and I'm already making a list of things to be done over the winter
(rebushing the suspension will be high on the list).

I'll have a more extensive write up for our local newsletter, and have also
promised something to Andrew for the Berlina newsletter too.

The low point of the weekend was when good friend Gene demolished his
Spider.  Luckily he was banged up but relatively unhurt, however his
instructor ended up at the hospital for observation.

Gene is now in the market for a clean, rust free Spider or GTV shell, drive
train not important.  If you know of anything, lemme know.

bs
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