The end of a long hiatus with a “Weekend at Bremerton

[Erik Halvorson]

I have been out of a kart seat for over 4 years and so my laydown enduro kart was in a state of disrepair. I had spent about 3 solid weeks of working on it nearly every night. The original plan was to get my 15 year old nephew, Rory, into the kart for Jr. Laydown. I had planned on running Piston Valve and Yamaha Sportsman in the same kart. That was going to take some wrenching to accomplish but since I have been wrenching for my dad, Ken Kohanes, these last 4 years I figured we could pull it off. Rory doesn’t have his learners permit so his only vehicle experience was a couple hours at an indoor karting facility doing hot laps and then a day playing in my 1979 Bug Black Widow powered by a PCR reed with the Everett chapter of the Boeing Employees Karting Club. He really enjoyed both of those previous experiences and was eager to try his hand at enduros. Both Ken and I were excited to get him involved in our favorite sport. We arrived late on Friday and the track was already set up. At Bremerton the facility is an old airport and it is a multi-use facility, thus the track is temporary. We took a couple of laps in the Explorer to show Rory the layout and give him an idea of breaking points and such. My enduro is a 1987 Motive Systems. I put new body work on the kart for this event with new paint too (got lots of positive comments so Thanks goes out to my bro-in-law, Tim Boyd for his hard work!). Since I would be running PV on Saturday and we wouldn’t need the Yamaha set-up till Sunday we would be practicing with the Komet K71 and a slippy pipe. The brake system was new for the kart but had been run on a friends kart. I assumed (bad bad bad) that it was ready to go and installed it with out checking all components. We had left some miscellaneous items unfinished and those took longer to complete than we had expected so we missed the first few sessions of Friday practice. When we were finally ready to hit the track, I killed the engine at the end of the first straight in two consecutive sessions. I was tuning like a rookie, as in “not even close”. I finally got it to run okay and had an okay session. Ken’s kart wasn’t pulling the rpm it should have so I jumped into his kart and took a couple of laps. After getting the carb adjusted and achieving a high enough exit speed I was able to see 13,200 at the end of the straight. We were on the right track. Practice for Friday ended and to our annoyance, Rory wasn’t able to get any lap time due to our ineptitude. We were hoping for better things on Saturday. Saturday arrived with beautiful sunshine. We were at the grid early so as to make the rookie/motor break-in practice. Rory was in Ken’s 1986 Margay and I was in my kart. We got the green flag and I led Rory down the front straight for his first lap ever in an enduro. He looked nervous before the session. He made the first hard braking point just fine but spun on the 1st high speed chicane. He got towed back in at the end of the session. Second session, Rory flooded Ken’s Yamaha so we switched and then he flooded my Komet. I was pulling my hair out. We finally got the engines to fire and mine ended up having a broken coil wire to boot. Practice was over and it was time for Ken and me to race. Ken would be racing Yamaha Heavy and I would be entered in Piston Valve. The green flag dropped and we all watched Dave Bauder jump off the start into an early lead. It is fun to know someone can learn to set up and tune a kart. Congratulations Dave! I got an okay start but stayed back so that I could run with Ken for a while. Ken was struggling with the handling of his kart in a couple of the fast corners and I was getting frustrated as we were losing ground to the pack. I decided to pass Ken on the main Straight and give chase. Well I had a couple of clean laps but I could tell I wasn’t making much headway on the karts in front of me. I started to push a little harder. The brakes were working great but the handling was twitchy at the limit. Coming off the last turn onto the straight I drifted wide and made contact with the hay bales on the outside of the track which happened to grab the kart and spin me in the opposite direction to the slid. The nose made contact with a hay bale and whipped me around the rest of the way and I was pointed in the right direction. I had kept the engine running so I sat up and quickly surveyed the condition of the kart and decided it was safe to continue. In the meantime many karts had passed me so I decided to play catch up. I slowed up a bit to keep from making the same mistake as I had previous laps but still pushed it in some spots. I finally caught back up to Ken in a couple of laps and followed him again. He was really driving deep into turn one. It was fun to watch. Finally pulled out to make the easy pass on the straight and eased off when I got beside him, gave a wave and proceeded around. I pulled back in about the time of my usual braking point and decided to go a bit deeper so as not to “brake check” Ken. I squeezed down on the pedal at “3”. My foot went to the bumper. No Brakes!? I pumped quickly trying to slow the kart. At the end of the straight I was traveling around 90mph. At the same time I was looking for a softer place to land the kart. The escape road has a chain link fence stretched across it a couple hundred feet down the road or I could try and make the turn and hopefully just spin harmlessly through the grass. I chose the turn and sure enough and the outside tires loaded up they quickly let loose and I snap spun and left the track backwards, pirouetting across the grass and onto the adjacent pavement at the exit of the turn. I traveled about 300 yards. Nothing broken or damaged. Upon further inspection I lost a couple of pad retaining & safety screws and the pad had fallen out. Lakc of thread locker. DOH! The one brake assembly was toast! I pulled the wounded kart to a safe position and watched a great race with Daryl Owens dicing with the lead PRD entry of John Musil and the other interesting battle was with Dave Bauder Leading Yamaha Heavy against PRD entry Thomas Plante. Daryl took a chance and tried a dicey pass on a slower PRD entry, sliding wide and off the track so he joined me on the jersey barrier watching the rest of the race. Ken had gotten a great view of me leaving the track and had no idea I had experienced a failure so his confidence had shrunk some and thus his braking zone increased into turn one. His lap times increased and the heat started building in his Yamaha. His decreased exit speed up the back part of the track was obviously frustrating him and he decided to try and tune a bit more torque into the motor. It worked and allowed him to power away from a few karts for the next few laps. His frustration lead to trouble as his engine finally expired with a burned bottom rod bearing and Team HalKen’s day was over. I entertained myself by talking Daryl into joining me at B-A’ing our fellow competitors as they raced on. Martha Morse showed her approval from across the track with an enthusiastic thumbs up! Dave Bauder lost some time as he had trouble keeping his kart on the track due to laughing and fogging the inside of his face shield. We might not be the best drivers or tuners but we sure can entertain! After the race I had the tough job of telling my nephew I would not let him race because even if I could get the rear brakes operational I wasn’t confident enough to let him go out with rear brakes only. He was disappointed but he said he definitely wanted to try it again next year and also wanted to go sprint kart practicing with the Boeing club too. Excellent!

After pushing back to the pit, Russ Dyer and Martha badgered me into repairing my system to run rear brakes only (separate system to each side of the caliper) AND to clean up an old Yamaha that he would loan me. The engine I was supposed to have used was now on Ken’s kart as he was going to run Sportsman also. The loaner engine hadn’t been run in 4 or 5 years and was pretty gunked up. I spent most of the evening and the next morning repairing the brakes and cleaning the internals of the Loaner. Ken and I both missed all of Sunday morning practice and barely made the grid for our race. Russ had turned the needles on both my kart and Ken’s to try and help ensure we wouldn’t hurt our engines (ROOKIES). He felt confident about mine but wasn’t so sure about Ken’s (different carb blueprint). At the start my kart fired right off but Ken’s loaded up and he faltered off the line. I wasn’t sure where my braking point would be so I held back and just really wanted to finish. Ken’s engine continued to load up and would not run clean, unbeknownst to me. I past two people in my class and was running 3rd well behind Russ and Martha. Russ was pulling away from everyone, even the sprinters (it was a 30 minute race so Yamaha Laydown Sportsman runs with the Sprint classes). I was gaining confidence and increased my speed through the back part of the track and I was also shortening my braking zone into turn one. Braking with rears only was starting to become familiar again. At about 7 laps into the race I pushed my ill-tuned chassis too hard and spun coming into the set of tight Pit turns. It cost me tons of time and then next thing I knew I was in 5th again. Dang! The next lap I noticed Ken standing along the short Pit Wall, giving me thumbs up. He ended up stopping as he couldn’t get the temps to fall in his engine and pulled off before damaging his Yamaha. I wanted to make up some time but was paranoid about spinning again. To add further insult to injured ego, Russ caught me while entering the chicane and stuck his nose in beside me. On the next straight I pulled wide and backed off to let him by (ROOKIE MISTAKE) he zoomed by and so did a sprinter as I was pulling back in and then I nearly ran Martha off the road. Luckily everyone made it passed the moving chicane (me) safely. A lap later I was following one of the sprinters that had got by me. As we exited the last turn onto the straight, he slid wide and into the haybales spinning back onto the track into my path. I steered inside of him as calmly as possible avoiding an incident and continued on. I caught back up to the 4th place Sportsman kart but just didn’t have the grunt to get by him (Dave, Russ’s friend). I could catch him down the straight but he would brake much later than I so that didn’t work. We were pretty even pulling out of turn one and up the hill. I was faster thru the two high speed chicanes but that didn’t leave enough room before the last braking point and tight Pit turns. Again, he was braking much deeper than I. Finally I just backed off and cruised. Enjoying the ride that I had been missing for so long. Man, I love this stuff. I would like to thank all of the friendly people associated with PSRRA, Camp Canada and PKA that make Long Course (Road Race) Karting so enjoyable. I look forward to the next chance I can race and associate with all you friendly people. It was a frustrating and yet exciting weekend but I got to enjoy the ride at the end and it was good.

[ September 28, 2001: Message edited by: Erik Halvorson ]