Nice. Thanks for the follow up.

However, the ending as it's told in the video is not wholy accurate. From a purely technical standpoint they never lost 5th gear. What happened, when the brakes ran out and 5th gear took a hard downshift on the main straight in absence of brakes, is a single gear tooth got plucked off of 5th. That was it, one little tooth. And temporarily the car kept shifting fine and driving fine. It took a little while before we figured out what exactly had happened.

When Eric came in for the driver's change and James got in the car, it was clear that there was a gearbox oil leak. It stunk of it, it was smoking and it was dripping. The crew ripped the rear aero-cover off the back end and it was covered in gear oil. But not being able to figure out what was up, they sent James back out after equipping him with working brakes.

But the gearbox kept leaking and as described in the video, eventually as it ran out of oil it got hot enough that it didn't want to shift any more. When we pulled the gearbox out of the car and opened it up, we found that single tooth sitting on the bottom of the case giving us a certain idea of what had happened. But it wasn't until the endcover came off the gearbox that it became clear.

When that single tooth got plucked off the body of the gear, it acted like a bullet (sorry, no pun intended) and punched a small little hole in the side of the case. Now a gearbox is under nowhere near as many PSI of internal pressure as an engine crankcase, but a 5mm hole is still a hole. The box wouldn't hold oil and the race was over. One tooth and a pinhole ended it all for us.

 

One of us has bad intel, my current understanding is the gear box was not fully operable BEFORE the race started, having never been repaired from damages during practice, it was old and never rebuilt with new parts and, knowing that the trans was the Achilles heel for Porsche's, a spare trans was not provided by the team- a standard operating procedure for any endurance racing. During the race, during the downtime, a transmission was available from another source, but it was not in the team's budget. There are those who will protest this view, but does it really matter? What is indisputable, the car broke, there were no back up parts and the car never made it back on the track. Race over at 11 hour mark.

 

nice vid

 

I've decided this is a matter best addressed privately...

 

Hey! That is our car! Just fiddled with the just installed Porsche throttle blipper on monday at the track.

We had the new 2011 car on display on the weekend, here are a couple of pics.

As for the dispute about what took the car out.... Like Matt said, better left offline. That said, this is the first time in 4 years we did not finish the race.....

 

FACTS!

Here are the facts from the guy who built the gearbox. Not once did we have a shifting and/or gearbox issue in practice or anytime before the race. If anything at all, I was very surprised at how little wear the drivers put on the gearbox throughout all the practice sessions prior to the race, which I discovered during pre-race rebuild.(On gearbox I just built prior). Regardless of this, I still replaced all gears from 1st to 6th, all dogs and claws (thanks Matt for the dogs/claws), all 3 shift hubs, 3-4 and 5-6 shift rods, polished ring and pinion, bearings and filter, complete sachs clutch assy., new throwout bearing/slave assy. and rebuilt Pankl axles. The gearbox blew up for one reason and that reason only, a driver tried to shift into 4th gear going into the busstop, didn't shift hard enough to complete that shift, which made it bounce back into/engage 5th therefore cause the damage from the recoil (which 3 industry specialists agreed with at the track). Brakes had nothing to do with it. Data logging is a beautyfull thing.
These are the facts.

Bernie
B

 

Bernie,
Thanks for posting. I've got no problem being corrected by you and telemetry. My information is only as good as standing next to you at 4am the night of the race as the gearbox came apart and what we speculated at the time. Clearly you've been back to the home office and been able to review the logs and piece together the exact chain of events as the computer recorded them happening.

What I do have a problem with is some random joining this forum and making a single post to argue with me about something they clearly have no first hand information about. I also have a problem with them doing it anonymously and not owning up to who they are. I sent a polite and detailed PM to DWA asking him to remove his derogatory and inflammatory post speaking poorly of Bullet Racing. It was met with silence and a week later the post still stands. It's a shame that someone who is most likely a member of World Stage Racing felt some overwhelming need to bad mouth a quality operation like Bullet Racing.

The arrogance of armchair quarterbacking Steve Paquette's operation after the fact and second guessing his decisions as team owner and manager just blows my mind. Steve has been at this thing longer than Brian Wong has been alive. He's a gentleman and a consumate professional. He may not run the fanciest team in pro racing, but his operation showed up at this race intending to and prepared to win. World Stage's video even talks about how Bullet bought not one but two brand new engines in their efforts. Bernie has described here the lengths he went to to make sure that the gearbox was up to the task at hand. DWAs post stinks to me of sour grapes. In endurance racing you don't finish every time. Sometimes the equipment gets you. Sometimes human error gets you. But to publicly go on the web and bad mouth a team that did no wrong in their efforts just really lacks class in my eyes.

I know I said I was going to take it to PM, but my PM was ignored. This unprofessional trash talking doesn't set well with me, and it really has nothing to do with why the car didn't finish the race. I'm glad that Bernie has posted here and set the record straight.

 

very nice... thanks for sharing

 

Just click on the screen name, public profile, about me and he has the same last name as Brian. Wow they spent a fortune on the Videos nicely done as well.

Tony