I picked up this Zink Formula Ford in Topeka, Kansas in May of 2001. It hadn't raced in 10 years, but I put it in my garage and started going through it in my spare time. Over the next six months, I removed and had the fuel cell re-foamed, flushed all the fluids and changed filters, rebuilt the brake calipers and master and slave cylinders, rebushed the pedals and replaced the throttle cable, which was kinked and sticky, tightened up the shift linkage, completely overhauled the Hewland transaxle with Roland Johnson, a local FF guru, installed some low autox gears and a new clutch, repaired the throwout bearing (which appeared to be the reason it was parked awhile back- it had failed due to a $.50 spring clip breaking), put on a new Phase 9 silencer to meet the 90db sound regs at Qualcomm Stadium, the local autox venue, replaced the catch bottle with two new units to separate oil and water venting, put in a new battery and bought some new tires and had them mounted, had my Porsche mechanic, Steve Grosekemper, do a preliminary setup on it- alignment, ride height and corner balance, and it was finally ready for a test run in November of that year.
I took it to a PCA-SDR DE event to shake it down, and ran the tall skinny "trailer tires" that day, as the course crossed a drainage swale in the parking lot and the low ride height on the FF would have bottomed it out, whereas the Porsches could all clear it easily. These tires are just cheap 185/80-13 street tires, and I mounted them on a spare set of rims that came with the car to make getting it up the ramps and onto the trailer easier. They didn't have a lot of grip, but they raised the ride height by 2" or so over the slicks. The car ran well with no problems, the motor pulled strongly all the way up to 7000 RPM and didn't overheat, everything worked, and the car was actually fairly well balanced and easy to drive, although it did slide easily and had a bit of oversteer due to the skinny tires, and I missed a lot of shifts getting used to the Hewland dog box and clutchless shifting. Needless to say, I had trouble keeping up with the faster Porsches on the 90-100mph, 1-1/4 mile Time Trial course we were running that day, but I was happy with this first test, overall.
Rear view in pre-grid:
Front view in pre-grid:
Steve Grosekemper driving in a later session:
After this shakedown, we decided to run it in an SCCA practice autox the next month. We put the slicks on for this event, as the SCCA sets up their courses without crossing the swale, in order to account for the regular entries of quite a few very low formula cars and sportsracers in their events, and low ride height would not be a problem.
Steve co-drove with me again, and went out before me. Unfortunately, the car lost a wheel on the first lap when the left rear hub fractured in the first high speed, righthand turn on the slicks. Steve spun immediately, of course, and was stranded. Corner workers pushed the car out of the way and the session resumed, but we were done for the day. At the lunch break, we took the trailer out and winched the car back aboard, and started checking out what happened. Apparently, the rear hubs were machined poorly, and the VW hubs which were used were poor quality castings, possibly Brazilian replacement pieces. The first time we loaded the hub sufficiently on sticky tires, it failed catastrophically, ripping the hub flange right off the axle.
Notice the granular look of the potmetal in the casting. Needless to say, we didn't want to have this happen again, so I had a local machine shop make two new hubs out of billet chromally steel. They are beautiful, strong pieces, and we have had no problems since. We took it out to the next SCCA practice, and Steve posted the TTOD for all cars, and I was a few seconds behind him, still having problems with the 3rd-2nd downshift in the Hewland box. Then I ran the SCCA National Tour event in March, 2002 and trophied in C-Modified, placing second out of six cars even after blowing the first day totally with some bad driving errors, going off course in my first two runs. The second day I posted the best time in CM, however, beating the class winner by almost 1/2 second. If Steve would have run that event with me, he probably would have won the class, as he is a better driver and 70 lbs. lighter than me to boot!
At the last practice autox we attended together, I got within 1/10 of a second of Steve's time, but in the championship event the next day, I was over a second slower, so I still have a lot to learn, but I am getting better in the car all the time. The quickness and handling of the Formula Ford has made my Porsches seem sluggish to me in comparison, now. On the same 60-second autox course, the FF is probably 5 seconds a lap faster. I am getting addicted to the low weight and good grip, and while I used to think the Porsche handled like it was "on rails", it seems to roll and wallow around the course, now. I think I have been spoiled.