We HAD pretty excellent brakes

It might be hard for the uninitiated to tell, but that engine is pretty far forward. Look how close that exhaust manifold is to the radiator.

Notice that the manifold is actually melting the fan shroud. It turns out that our front engine mount completely collapsed under the heroic forces our brakes put on it. I can't fault Ford for this. Rubber that's 10-20 years old really shouldn't be asked to handle race duty. We'll have to come up with a solution for the next race.

Also, we somehow lost ALL our brake fluid while the car was parked this winter. That's bad. We'll have to track that down, or the only heroic part about our brakes will be how we sail it (heroically) into an embankment and burst (heroically) into flames.

In other news, we're fighting with this stubborn bolt in one of the rear struts. We got a good better set of springs to put in, but this bottom bolt here was 100% seized in place. We tried all kinds of things, eventually breaking off a drill bit inside it. The team's self-proclaimed Old Fart got out a grinder and ground off what was still sticking out so we could at least finish the spring swap, but this piece still remains. After last weekend's work we put the strut back on with just one spindle bolt (the upper one you see here), and had so much negative camber as we rolled the car to its parking spot that the tire was rubbing on the strut body.

These are just two of many, many things we have still to tackle before the next race: American Irony at Gingerman this July!