Rock Harris - Off & Running

Second in a Series
The constant worry over whether enough adjustments were made or if the right bolts were tightened never really leaves a racer's mind, even up until the time he takes the green flag. That much was evident during the off-season as Rock Harris prepared his Late Model for the '07 season.

A few weeks prior to the season-opening race at Friendship Speedway, I met Harris at his shop as we began to prepare for an upcoming test at the 4/10-mile track.

Tucked away in the Lone Hickory community of Yadkin County, North Carolina, Harris' shop is less than half a mile from his house and it's where he can be found most evenings and weekends.

Entering the shop, which has an extra full-length garage bay on the lower level, running parallel to four smaller bays on the top, it's easy to see that it's not an ordinary garage. It's a racer's garage.

With a race-ready Late Model Pontiac resting on jackstands in the first bay, your attention is immediately diverted into the second bay, which sits open for small repairs and miscellaneous work.

Next door, in the third bay, is where the current object of Harris' attention can be found-a Greg Marlowe re-clipped Late Model Chevrolet that Harris hopes will bring him another title at the conclusion of the season.

For the first time in four years, Harris is the owner/driver of his team, and with the added responsibility of ownership comes an abundance of required time and energy spent in his shop.

The pressure to succeed and a strong desire to be the best at what he does-combined with a keen attention to detail-are some of the qualities that have led to Harris' past success. But Harris, a veteran Late Model racer with plenty of laps under his belt, doesn't seem at all intimidated by the challenge of being back on his own; in fact, he seems to enjoy it.

"I just like that competitive part of it," said Harris. "You know the accomplishment of it, that's what keeps you digging. I've never been able to out-dollar somebody. If you don't have plenty of money, you've got to be smarter with a lot of things you do and work harder. That's what we've always had to do because we've never had the money to operate off of. We just have to be smart with what we've got and make the best of it.

"That's what keeps you going."

Despite some long days at Carl A. Haas Motorsports, where he's employed as a member of the Busch Series team for rookie driver Kyle Krisiloff, Harris, like other weekend racers, manages to stay focused on the upcoming Late Model season by working late into the evening at his own shop. Working alongside of him most evenings is a coworker at Haas, David Milholand.

With the faint sound of the Busch Series race on the television in the shop, Harris began checking his notes before the preseason test at Friendship. His attention to detail was evident in everything he did. Whether it was the measurement of his tires or the waxing of his car before loading it onto the hauler, he constantly checked and rechecked.

"I'm not taking a dirty car to the track," Harris said. "I can't do it. It drives me crazy. I want my stuff to look good."

It's with that same attention to detail that Harris explained that he would run a smaller 2-inch-diameter, 42-inch-long driveshaft during the upcoming test. He had a new driveshaft on order but was forced to use the smaller one in the meantime so he could see where the car stood as far as the rest of the setup was concerned.

The initial test went well based on lap times and speeds, but there were three specific areas Harris pointed out afterward that had to be addressed.

The first, obviously, was replacing the smaller driveshaft used for the test with the one he planned to use to begin the season. The second was a hitch he noticed in the steering box during the test. Lastly, he had to fine-tune his braking system.

Soon, it became apparent that another problem had crept into the picture.

A few nights later, a Richmond T-10 transmission Harris had removed from his car and torn down sat in a vice mounted between a row of cabinets.

In the bay adjacent to the transmission sat his yellow and white No. 59 Chevrolet on jackstands, wheels off, with the driveshaft removed and lying just underneath the rear end of the car. The transmission had been pulled from the car because it was leaking. Not a bad leak, according to Harris, but bad enough that it had to come out.

Any kind of fluid leaking from the motor, transmission, or rearend, of course, has the potential to cause a hazardous situation on the racetrack, and it had to come out.

Soon we learned that the rear bushing had gone bad and an output shaft sealhad all but worn thin, thus causing the leak.

As Harris worked on the transmission, his thoughts turned to the test.

"I was satisfied," he said as he carefully applied 730 Solvent Resistant Silicon Sealant to the edges of the transmission casing.

"After I've had time to think about it, there are some things I want to go back and change. We weren't running the shock package that we're going to be running this year and I want to change out the driveshaft. I've already got one on order that should be in here next week.

"And after having some time to think about it, I wouldn't go back with the same brake package . . . we're going to change that."

Harris explained that the leak was something he thought might happen.

"We knew going in that we'd have to change driveshafts," he explained. "We ended up putting the small driveshaft in just because we didn't have enough end clearance. We had to just make do with what we had. It was 42 inches long and about 2 inches in diameter, and I don't think they even allow that now, so we had to get to a 3-inch driveshaft.

"After the test, we came back and we had a problem, which I had anticipated, with the transmission leaking grease. The fact that we bought the car used, it never had the correct length driveshaft in it and also the transmission came factory from Richmond with a narrow rear bushing in the transmission.

"In order to fix all of that, we came back and ordered the proper-length driveshaft and took the transmission apart and took it to Larry Pollard at LP Gear and he machined it and was able to make it about an inch and a half longer so we could put a longer rear bushing in the transmission, which makes the input of the driveshaft a lot more stable than just having a little bushing back to take care of some of the vibration."