Mike Puckett
SCCoA Member
Once again my SC got me home with a bad problem. I've driven my SC home from the track on 4 cyls, 5 cyls, a blown plug, a dropped valve, a badly separated tire, a crunching tranny, a bad clutch slave cyl, and now this. Yesterday I drove 2 hrs down to Silver Dollar Raceway in central GA. The weather was sunny, crisp, and chilly, perfect for making power and running great times. The track was fast and all the index cars were running too fast. Everybody was breaking out all day. Both my opponents broke out on their runs. My first time trial was a 12.775 @ 107 mph just off my all time best. On my second TT I spun real bad, even some at the top end of the track and only managed a 13.04. 1st round I dialed a 12.80 and ran a 12.04 Camaro. He drifted off to sleep and I treed him big time and ran a 12.836 again at 107. Next round I nailed my dial dead on and ran a 12.801 but tripped the red light with a -.011 r/t. So I loaded up after watching a couple more rounds and started the 2hr drive home. In about 15 mins I could smell oil ever so slightly but didn't see any smoke and the motor was running fine. Wasn't sure it was oil at 1st. When I stopped it got slightly worse. Then when accelerating under boost away from a traffic light I saw a cloud of smoke blowing out behind me. So, I stopped as soon as I could and looked under the hood but everything looked Ok except for some oil over by the PCV valve which was in the hole Ok. So I gingerly drove on home incident free until a block from the house when I got on it real hard to see what it did. The engine ran perfectly fine all the way home. Once in the garage I popped the hood and there was oil all over the right rear of the motor and all over the header collector and EGR tube. The valve cover gasket split lengthwise and blew out. Whenever I got on it, it blew oil out the gap. Another pass and I'd have possibly oiled the track. A little prayer was answered there. I'd rather not win if I'm going to have a bad problem. Fortunately it'll be an easy fix. This race was the motor's swan song. It's coming out after 11 years, 8 years of drag racing and over 500 passes. With only about 45,000 mi it is well worn. The new one is still under construction and I'll do a thread about it later on.
