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Darwin Wrenching is pleased to announce that Tom Hall has signed on for the Feb Lemons race at CMP. Tom will be substituting for team principle Al K.
Tom was chosen for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that he said “ok”, and that he has an RV for us to sleep in during the subzero early Feb CMP nights.
-Scott, Fred & Jim
Yall have fun feeding Jay Lamm’s Ego and wallet. Malt Liquor Tech and Scuderia Gonzo Alonzo will be running the Chump Car 24 hour races at Rockingham, VIR and Roebling Road. The Rock and VIR dates are real 24 hour races…
AL
Steve D wrote:
[quote]87isMan wrote:
They’ve seen you drive. BAM! 
:
:[/quote]
Easy Steve, or I’ll stop providing all those E30 fun facts for you.
Did I notice you posting on BF.c in the E30 section? better behave yourself!!!
Greg
FARTBREF wrote:
[quote]Yall have fun feeding Jay Lamm’s Ego and wallet. Malt Liquor Tech and Scuderia Gonzo Alonzo will be running the Chump Car 24 hour races at Rockingham, VIR and Roebling Road. The Rock and VIR dates are real 24 hour races…
AL[/quote]
I gave up on Lemons last year - especially when I realized that I could spend the exact same amount of $$ and race in a NASA Endurance race - and proved it during the 9hr with the new $1000 Camaro we built…
any news from the lemons race this weekend? calling ranger gress, calling ranger gress, come in over…
I worked until 0200 Thur night putting swaybars in. Front bar was a bastard. Then I was on the road at 0530 heading for CMP so we could get a good paddock space. That turned out to be completely unnecessary because with only 60 teams showing up, there was plenty of space. There were 114 teams in last Sep.
Friday was mid 30’s, rainy and windy without a single let-up. Being tired, wet and cold was isn’t as much fun as it used to be. But I did get the car thru judging with no penalty laps. I had the original classified ad from the Lemons website that showed it being sold for $500, and I had an email from the PO that said no penalty laps in it’s previous 3 races.
Our car: http://www.Gress.org/Home/Cars/TrackTales/Lemons/LemonsRacing.htm
Greg has proven to be best able to recall details of the racing, so he’ll need to chime in here and help. For me it’s all a blur.
I had the first stint. They get all the cars out and circulating before they randomly throw green. While circulating some car lost it’s oil pan bolt and dropped it’s whole load in one 5’ wide strip down the racing line. The entire track’s worth of racing line. In the light rain.
It was insanely slippery. There was no way to avoid the oil. The track and our tires were soaked with it. I made it thru 40min of ice dancing and then snapped around backwards when braking into turn 14. I got back around, looked for black at turn 11 (no) and then again at turn 14 (yes) so I came in for my penalty. The judges were more annoyed that I’d ignored the black flag (WTF??) then they were about the spin. They directed us to write some silly penance on the car 100X and then handed us a single Sharpie pen. I ran to my gear and grabbed a fistful of Sharpies and with all of us writing we knocked it out pretty quickly.
We lost 20min there and it was my fault.
Greg Moberg headed out for the next session. Greg came in about halfway thru his session with engine temp problems. We couldn’t find an obvious cause so we cut some holes in our plastic circle track front end in order to allow more air thru to the radiator. That seemed to fix the overheating problem. We also unfastened our rear sway.
The next excitement that I recall was Fred coming in 5-6hrs later. He was whining about no brakes. Because Greg’s Lemons car had hardly worn the pads at all last Sep, and also a couple sets of OEM pads had come with our car, I had put OEM pads on. I figured that they ought to be good enough for a day. I was wrong.
Fred’s right caliper had failed because Fred had wanted brakes badly enough to push the piston out. Brake fluid was everywhere. On the left side Fred had wanted brakes badly enough to turn a backing plate into some kind of “stamped” mishapen looking thing that looked more like twisted taffy then a brake pad backing plate. Jim had brought a replacement caliper so we replaced the caliper and the front pads (more OEM), while suffering only a few burns.
I figured that I might as well check the rear pads too so I pulled off a rear wheel. We were using bottlecaps and you can’t see thru them very well. To my surprise I found that we had no rear pad either. On both sides. Fred had come in with backing plates on rotors at all 4 corners. All 4 corners.
That probably cost us 30min and again it was my fault. I’d made the brake pad choices.
We also found that we’d completly shredded the outside corner of the LF tire. Probably because we’d left the rear sway bar disconnected all day.
Sunday morning Jim was to be the first person out. But he couldn’t get the car into reverse and once we got him pointed forward he seemed to head out in 3rd. He would barely make it out to the track before the shift lever let go entirely. He completed the lap and came in. The shift linkage had snapped. Greg fought for an hour, working blind with his arms around the transmission to remove a clip that fastens the linkage to the shifter assembly. When he finally got it we danced and whooped and hollered around the garage bays for a bit. Then Jim ran off with the parts and welded them into the strongest shift linkage ever seen. Installation went easier.
That cost us 2hrs and got us to the Sunday quiet hour. Because of a change in the People’s Curse voting process no one was crushed. You now have to get a critical mass of angry votes instead of an automatic crush of the winner. This helps ensure that the People’s Curse award goes to a team that is genuinely the subject of ire, and not just a casual vote for whomever is in the lead.
Johan’s car escaped the crusher by 2 votes apparently.
Jim and his shifter linkage did a session after lunch. He was pleased to be able to report that we were running times very close to the leaders.
Both Jim and Greg got blackflagged over the course of the weekend, but both of them were able to talk their ways out of it. Only my blackflags resulted in penalties.
I was next. I had a blast slicing and dicing, but the car was behaving a little unpredictably. The soft suspension meant that it was harder to judge the traction budget state, and when it let go, it really let go. And there were sneaky little oil spots here and there that seemed invisible. Once again at the 40min point I was braking into a turn, no lat g’s, and suddenly I was backwards.
I reported what had just occured and Fred suggested that I come in for gas since I was about to be called in anyways. The whole team had talked about this as a reasonable way to get some use out of being called in for a penalty. So I went immed in for gas. But then the fireman that was our excrutiangly anal fueling monitor wouldn’t let me go into the paddock so I could go to the penalty box.
I knew I was expected in the penalty box, even if I’d not actually been black flagged. But the fireman told me that I had to go back out on track.
Note: The control tower had a paintball gun to use against drivers that ignored the black flag.
So I went thru the pits and started to head out to the track. Which is when I saw a guy in the tower lock and load a paint ball gun and sight in on me.
WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM. I stopped the car in the pits next to the tower and looked to a worker next to me for guidance. He was waving me back on to the track. I was trying to tell him that the cks*er in the tower had just shot me and maybe he should let me turn left so I could go see WTF was going on. What I really wanted to do was charge up that ladder and throw that M&$&%$#&#@R off of the tower. God I wanted to do that so bad I could hardly stand it.
I had not been black flagged. I’d come in before a black flag was thrown. And the a**hole with the paintgun had just shot me for ignoring black flags.
Based on the guidance from the worker I headed back out on the track. And I still didn’t get black flagged. But I came in anyways, figuring that if I stayed out until they finally black flagged me they’d just go ballistic on me.
I came in and they were very unimpressed with our little slicky get-gas-after-spin move. They wanted to know who’s idea it was. It was really a group idea. It was just Fred’s bad luck to be on the radio at that moment. So I told them that it was my idea and yes, it was very foolish of me.
That got us the picking up trash penalty. Once again we lost 20mins because of me spinning.
I got in one final session that took us to the end of the race. There was glorious slicing and dicing. It was really fun.
There were lots of amusing penalties. One was a recreation of a NFL replay box, complete with black curtains that reached down to your waist. If the driver argued a point he got an opportunity to review the replay by standing in the replay box for 30min. Which was like standing in a crowd with a box over your head.
Another favorite was the Village People penalty. The team would be issued Village People costumes, complete with mustaches. Then they would follow, dancing, a station wagon around the paddock with speakers booming Village People songs. YYYYYYY MMMMMMMMM CCCCCCCCCCCCAAAAAAAAAAAAA
http://jalopnik.com/5455450/yet-more-lemons-penalty-cruelty-the-macho-man
But the all-time best penalty was “teach my girlfriend’s sister how to drive a manual”. Lamm’s girlfriend’s sister was some adorable blond ~20yr old. The team had to teach her how to drive a stick using their race car around the paddock area. AND THEN SHE RACED THEIR CAR FOR 30MIN.
Although we knew that at least one other E30 out there was running a chipped ECU, we resisted the temptation to use our chipped ECU. We decided that engine longevity was a lot more important then doing a little better in the race. I can’t tell you how tired I am of rebuilding motors.
Epilogue. Tom Hall didn’t get much mention here. Without his RV we’d have been cold and miserable all weekend.
I found it very interesting that the LeMons folks knew who was in the car for the 2nd penalty. After gassing up the car, the rest of of went directly to the penalty area and I overheard them talking about it being Scott that was driving the car for that spin. It probably says something that Scott was the one that collected the penalties and Greg and I just got a stop and go.
Next time we’re gonna have to put Scott in camouflage
Scott Forgot to mention that it was Fred that broke the shift linkage. In his last stint Saturday he was driving with such rage that not only did he destroy the brakes he broke the shifter. I picture him in the car yelling “brake” while trying to push his foot through the floor, then yelling “shift” while trying to rip the transmission through the tunnel into his lap. But to be fair Fred did help fix the shift linkage while Jim and Scott stood at the back of the car drinking coffee saying things like “keep it up” or " you can do it"
Can’t wait for the Spring race!!
If its a lemon’s car (or really any track E30)
Take a sawzall (or dremel if you’re picky about appearances) to the tranny tunnel and avoid the 4 hours on your back in the rain.
Little aluminum tape, gasket maker, etc will seal it right back up to “factory-like” conditions.
For the record: I did NOT break the shifter (burned up a caliper yes, but the shifter was not my fault) That’s my story and…
Fred42 wrote:
I have to agree with you. Greg was the one complaining about the shifter before you got in the car Saturday. Therefore he’s the one that broke the shifter.
jlevie wrote:
[quote]Fred42 wrote:
I have to agree with you. Greg was the one complaining about the shifter before you got in the car Saturday. Therefore he’s the one that broke the shifter.[/quote]
I like this theory much better. Greg did it!
87isMan wrote:
[quote]My Laps is up! 29th out of 65
Not bad guys:cheer:[/quote]
Yeah not bad at all considering that we lost right at two hours of race time.