Stock Car Maintenance - The Secrets Of Staying Fast

For the midseason seatbelt inspection, pull the entire seatbelt assembly out of the car so that you can inspect every inch of the webbing. Look for areas, especially where the belts wrap around the mounting points or pass through the seat of some type of sheet metal, where the strands are frayed. Once a belt begins to fray-either from rubbing against something, a wreck, or just age-it loses a great amount of its strength. And once that happens your protection is severely compromised. If you spot this, go ahead and replace the belts.

Finally, while the belts are out, you can also take a look at your mounting brackets. Are they bent from an impact? Check the welds to make sure the connection between the brackets and your frame are still solid and crack-free.

Heim joints and ball joints allow precision movement of your suspension. But they will wear with time and stress. If the heim joints in your suspension's pivot points, or the ball joints holding the spindles in place are worn, they will allow slop in the system and dull the precision handling from the setup you've worked so hard to perfect.

To check your heim and ball joints, you will need to remove them from the racecar and check the amount of play by hand. After cleaning the joints, manipulate them by hand to make sure they move smoothly with no binding or hard spots. You should also not be able to wiggle the ball end inside the joint. If you do notice any problems, go ahead and replace the joint.

Short track racing is, by nature, rough. Not only is there a lot of beating and banging, but the sharp turns also produce extreme G-forces on both car and driver. As a result, a short track racing chassis takes a beating.

"Check the chassis thoroughly for stress cracks," Richards recommends. "This is especially important if you are running on rougher tracks with a lot of holes and ruts. Over time, any chassis will develop cracks in the welds. So you need to look the chassis over with a fine-tooth comb after around 500 laps.

"One of the areas where stress cracks are most likely to show up is the panhard bar mount area. The panhard bar mount sees tons of stress. It sees more lateral loading than any other component on the car when cornering. Also keep a sharp eye on the rest of the suspension mounting points, especially the control arms.

"When cracks show up, get them repaired right away. And don't just weld over the crack. They need to be repaired by a qualified welder so they won't show right back up again."

Vibrations loosen bolts. And producing vibrations is one of the things a racecar does best. It may be an unintentional consequence, but solid motor mounts, steel (instead of stock rubber) suspension bushings and heim joints, coupled with extended periods at full throttle makes for a machine that can eventually vibrate even the tightest fasteners loose.

It is not a sexy job, but by midseason you need to take the time to methodically go over every nut and bolt on the car. This doesn't mean cranking down on the bolts again so that the bolts that are already tight are just a little bit tighter. This will lead to over-torquing critical connections such as brake line flanges which will lead to cracks and leaks. Instead, this task is to simply confirm that all nuts and bolts are properly tightened so that something important doesn't fall off and get left on the track.

Most lower-level racers try to make it an entire race season between rebuilds. If you can do that, then great. But there are also checks you can make to make sure your engine isn't going to give up on you three-quarters of the way through the season and cost you races.

If you are racing an engine with solid lifters, you should already be checking the lash at least every other race, but if you aren't that's a good place to start. If you have been checking lash and it is consistently opening up on you week after week, or you get one week where the lash has opened up 0.005 or more on just one lifter, you may have a damaged lifter or cam lobe that requires additional attention.

Another good midseason tip for your race engine is to perform a leak-down check to see how well your rings are holding up. With the engine cold, the leak-down reading should be less than 20 percent. If you get more than that your rings aren't, sealing well to the cylinder walls and its costing you power.