We raced 24 HoL Buttonwillow in September. It was hot. We were doing pretty good, up to about 15th overall after 6 hours on day 1 when I got in the car. About 15 minutes in I was getting a flicker at the end of straights on the oil light, came in and added some oil. Got back on track and a few laps later car felt like it was missing badly at lower RPMs but felt okay at top end. Brought it in, and started trouble shooting. No compression cylinders 2 & 3.


I pulled a spare head and gasket out of the trailer and we got to work. We had been boosting a bit more than normal and it was hot, later saw intake air temps were in the 150F range. Perhaps we were pinging and we didn't know it and blew the gasket. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lost about 1:45 of track time on day one. Had the engine back together by midnight, but couldn't get the waterpump to seal. In the morning I pulled a new pump and gasket out of the trailer and also applied blue gasket maker to everything. Problem solved. I think we spent more time on the water pump than the head gasket.
We also disconnected the wastegate arm on the turbo to make sure we would get through day 2.
Made the green flag in the morning and made it through the day with no drama. Car was running good, but slow. At the end of the race we were flagged to park near where the awards would be held. Even though we were out of the race for almost 2 hours, we placed 34 out of 93 and 13th in class. The judges awarded us with the 'Dirty Butt' award. The rear end of the car was covered in oil and dirt. We have a leak somewhere.
The car has had a clunk in the front end for a few races now and we tore apart the front suspension trying to find it unsuccessfully. Since we were leaking a lot of oil, we decided to pull the engine last weekend to replace the rear main seal and search for leaks.


We pressure washed a large amount of gunk out of the engine bay and engine/trans. Then we found the front crossmember was cracked, I bet that is where the clunk came from.

Since the engine was out, the oil pan had a huge divot in it, and the oil pan gasket was suspect, we pulled the oil pan. How was this not leaking. Maybe it was.

Decided to check a rod bearing just to be safe.


A little bit of wear...send it. I figure there is about 7k miles on this engine since we rebuilt it.
We should have a new crossmember in a few days and will put it back together for our next race at Sonoma November 23rd. If anyone has any crossmember reinforcement suggestions let me know. We have the 960 brackets we are going to try and fit.