Initial Thoughts

When my brother and I began going over the car, we had many thoughts. Most of it was the car needed help. It was early May and the driver’s school through Midwestern Council was in late June. Would we be able to get it ready – it was rough. My high school auto shop teacher always said, “Brakes and tires! I don’t care what crap you have under the hood, without good brakes and tires you aren’t going to do s%*t!” He was a crusty soul but he knew his stuff. We dove into the brakes. They were well worn and a rear caliper was hung up. We gutted the yellow roll bar padding. We removed the leaves and debris. The seat was removed and for the first time, on a folded towel, I sat in my car. Yes… I made the usual go-fast, screaming motor sounds. My brother’s wife Leah had a great laugh. I pulled the car back to Wisconsin and stuck it in the garage - I thought, what have I done?

FIAT Community

When I got the car home, I dove into the Internet after digesting all the notes the seller gave me from a guy named Bill McMahan. These were worthwhile reading particularly the parts of his notes about how fastidiously he prepared the block and head. All the right bits were in this 1608cc motor. It was balanced, and in tune with Improved Touring C class specifications. That was the last time I thought I would pay attention to the name Bill McMahan.

I quickly found a number of Fiat sites. Spider.com seemed to have a very useful forum and I followed the interchanges. Hints obtained from EProdRacer, Joe Clemente, SoCalMark and others were used. I committed the Haynes manual to memory. After two weeks of going through everything, the Spider was ready for school. She now wore new numbers - #86.

One day on Spider.com, EProdRacer responded to a performance question of mine. In the interchange he mentioned he once had a 1972 Spider racer but sold it. Long story short, after some exchanges it turned out that EProdRacer was Bill McMahan and I had purchased his old ITC racer. It’s a very small (Fiat) world indeed. Bill has been great helping me out with facts on the car, ideas and support!

Racing License

I embarked on my certification to race. The classroom was a tad boring, but you need to know the basics flags and your expected reactions. Next weekend it was off to Blackhawk Farms Raceway for my on track training. My brother Dave, nephew Logan and my son Nick were crew. They kept the Blue Flame, ready to run.

The school was cool. I did well having previously participated in three Honda High Performance Driving schools. I am sure my car had a stroke when it saw me approaching with my instructor, Jeff Willert. I am a big guy and Jeff was 2 inches taller than me. It was a hilarious sight seeing both of us packed into the Blue Flame. The car sure handled differently with 500lbs of people in it. The car ran OK, except for the engine temp. It was a pretty hot day. The car boiled over each time I came off the track. Temps were consistently over 220-degree range and the oil pressure would drop to 10-15 lbs. The wiring started acting up. Grounds were bad, electronic fuel pumps stopped. The temp issue became critical. Late in the day my instructor told me to get at least 5 laps at speed in the final race or I would not pass.

I soon found out how durable a Fiat 1608cc motor is. In the last race I jumped the green flag and took off. By lap 4, the car was at 230 degrees with only 25 lbs of oil pressure. At the 6 th lap my instructor gave me thumbs up. I began to slow and short shift. The engine temp was buried and oil pressure was barely 15 lbs. When she barfed her radiator on pit road I figured that was it. By the time I stopped, the water was gone. We laughed that it was over before it started. I got my Novice license. I was hooked on racing, but I feared the damage I had done. Amazingly, after topping off the water, the car fired and purred. I loaded up and headed home. I eventually found that silicon had been used to seal a water pump gasket. I found 10-15 pieces of silicon gasket material in the radiator.

Let’s Go Racing – Year 1

I returned to the Blackhawk Farms track to race. It did not go well. The engine temp had me bugged. I had to short shift and slow down every other lap. It was not fun at all. I met a great mechanic, Howard Rauch who has tons of experience race prepping BMWs for 35 years. We worked on the car the next week and decided to replace the factory core with aluminum internals. Good idea - the old core was plugged with more silicon.

My next race was the 4-mile Road America Course in Elkhart Lake WI. Everything went pretty good. That is, until the 80 mile Enduro when the car caught on fire in the pits. The header broke on pipes 1 and 3. The exhaust from cylinder 1 blew right into the battery, melting it and setting the battery and the wiring on fire. Another racing day came to a close with major issues. I was not happy.

I affected repairs on the header, rewired the car, validated the alternator, got a new battery and headed off to the next event. Not much better of a result. Overheating again plagued me. With Howard Rauch’s help we found the car had been advanced to the point of stupidity. It was my fault for not checking it. The max advance was into the 40-degree area. After adjustment, the car really came to life. I traveled to Mid Ohio for the end of the 2003 season with the VSCDA. Well…that race went the same as the others. The electronic ignition controller went out during the 1 st Friday practice sessions. With no back up, season over. How to summarize a very disappointing year? Well, we were now affectionately calling the Fiat racer – “Shitbox”

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