As of this writing, Car #86 is at Haas Auto Service Center in Manassas, Virginia, where it has been since it came home from Bowling Green. It is on a lift. It is in more pieces than it arrived in. And it is, by every account we’ve been able to get out of it, doing fine, which is also what it told us at seven o’clock on that Sunday morning in Kentucky, right before the oil came out purple.
For anyone joining us late, the #86 is a 2007 Honda Accord that has spent this year trying to become a race car while the year has tried to stop it. Its first engine left us in Louisiana in March, at lap 71, having decided that oil was optional. Its second, a K24 out of an Acura TSX, got the car through Carolina in April, sat out the summer, and then spent one very hot Saturday at NCM shedding oil lines, and blowing a head gasket. Oops.
What’s on the lift
Haas pulled the head, surveyed what an afternoon of running hot and running low had left behind, and quoted accordingly. What went in as a head gasket job is coming back out as a head gasket, new pistons, new rings, and a decked head. If “decking the head” sounds like something you’d regret in the morning, the shop version is tamer and costs more: the mating surface gets milled flat, to the thousandth, so the new gasket seals against metal instead of a rumor of it.
The rings are new, which is more commitment than anyone has shown this engine since we bought it. The pistons are new too, which means that by parts count the RBB3 is now a slightly different engine than the one that came out of the crate in April. We’ve decided it’s the same engine. The Ship of Theseus was also, technically, a Lemons entry.
Visiting hours
While we wait for the parts to come in, the #86 is doing what it does best between races, which is sit still and look like it has a story. It’s parked among the civilians: Civics in for inspection stickers, a minivan in for pads, somebody’s Camry that has never seen a grid and never will. We can’t wait to get it back in the driveway.
Five days
Here’s the part that will keep the group chat lit up after midnight. The car comes home on Monday, October 19 (we hope). Summit Point goes green on Saturday, October 24. That’s five days to the flag and fewer to the tech inspection, and no matter how we run the math it doesn’t get any better.
Those five days already have a list, waiting since the trailer backed into the driveway. The Accusump lines, which let go three times in one afternoon, get rerouted, re-fitted, and shielded, or the Accusump gets a seat on the bench for the rest of the season. The cooling system gets a pressure test from an actual gauge; the last one was performed by the radiator cap, and we still haven’t found it. The fans get wiring that can survive a weekend, in a box the ignition isn’t invited to. The radios, now 0-for-3 on race weekends, will get tested at distance before the trailer leaves the driveway, not after. Then the ordinary pre-race checklist, which never seems to end.
Underneath all of that, a technical note we’d be irresponsible to skip: new rings want a couple hundred miles of easy, varied load before they seal the way the receipt says they will. What these rings are going to get is a driveway in Nokesville, a trailer ride to West Virginia, and whatever Friday gives us. We’ll be gentle. The car has never once returned the favor, but we’ll be gentle.
Three drivers, one story
Summit Point will be a three-driver race, which is two more than Kentucky, and all three have been told the car is fine. We won’t pretend the timing is comfortable. A car that’s been apart for a month wants a shakedown, not a tech line. But look at what we actually have: a specific list instead of a vague dread, a shop that does fantastic work, a crew that has already done the hard version in 97-degree heat, and an engine that has, for once, come apart on purpose. We’re calling that progress. The car is calling it a spa week.
Condition stable. Attitude unchanged. All the Way.
