That Ruled.

(Look here for all my photos from 24 Hours of Lemons, Thunderhill, 2009.)

I had my best race yet and Snowspeeder ran like a champ for most of the race. The trip from Salt Lake was smooth sailing and got to enjoy the company of both Joe's Snowspeeder team and thh Knights Of The Round Track. This was among my favorite racing events. 

Rain poured as we set up Friday, but skys cleared in the afternoon and we had great weather for the rest of the weekend.

During the race I accomplished my goal to keep the car on track and out of the penalty box. I probably deserved a couple flags for two wheels off and passing under yellow, but the workers either missed them or were too busy with more serious infractions. I felt great about my relaxed, defensive driving, and even managed to hold our team's fastest lap until Randal got his next turn.

Joe's car was pulling strong and the suspension felt perfect. 

Mid-Sunday though, problems started. First we burned through our front brake pads and wrecked a caliper. Paul had a whole front hub/brake assembly for us and we were back out in minutes. Then Joe came in with a shaky wheel that turned out to be a rear axle snapped at the hub. The wheel was only held on by the brake caliper holding the rotor. I'm sure this was cracked back at an Altamont race and finally gave completely. Another spare from Paul again had us back on the track in minutes. Then we started overheating. We saw a lot of air under the cap and it looked like there must be a decent leak. We borrowed Eyesore Racing's weed-sprayer coolant injector and hooked it up the way we did in V-RAM at Buttonwillow, but this didn't help as much this time. Unfortunately by the time we recovered from our final overheat, the checker flag was flying and we were not allowed back on course to cross it. Dang! 

Oh yeah, the officials noticed mid Saturday our transponder was not working. Shit. It would have been nice to have all of our lap data and to know how we actually placed. With a few hours of our most consistent driving unaccounted, we finished 78th or something. We'll try to figure how many laps to add and make a corrected guess at our actual finishing position.

We didn't get to pit by Team Eyesore this race, but we did have Snowspeeder, Knights, Killer Bee, and Free Range right in a row. It was also great to have the Nerd Herd MR2 and the Cannonball Bandits Corolla FX16 on the other side of us. As always all the teams I met were great. 

A couple notable entries at this race: Team Diplomatic Immunity with a  V12 Mercedes. They ruffled a lot of feathers with such a blatant cheater that was valued at $130000 when newish, but it was so over-the top I had to applaud them from bringing such a wrong car. They weren't very competitive so no harm done, and the organizers exercised the claiming clause to discourage anyone from trying to pull a stunt like that again. 

Also there was another motorcycle powered econo-box (like the Geo Metro-Gnome project) and my fave at this race: A dinky Honda Z600 powered by a Magna V65 engine.

A GREAT race overall. Among the best.

T-Hill This Week!

We ended up not prepping V-Ram for Thunder Hill. I was lacking motivation after spending so much of my summer prepping for the buttonwillow race, and not feeling like enough of the team was serious about the present task. So covered the car, bought a new mountian bike and spent the my fall riding and camping. 

I'll be racing with Joe/Snowspeeder, and some of the other drivers will be driving with Paul and the Knights Of The Round Track. We'll see if there is enough interest support 2 local MR2 teams next season, but if not I'm happy to keep driving with my bro or Paul.

We're ready to roll out of town Thursday and everyone is excited for the race. 24HL has admited 160 teams (up from the usually 90-100) and will be running the full course. Thunder Hill is already a favorite course and certainly the nicest facility I have raced. EXCITED!

New Buttonwillow Tech

A few people have asked for pics of our air scoop and on-board cooling system re-filler. Here are close-ups. 

Fabbed this scoop from a cardboard box and attached it with sheet metal screws and washers, packaging tape, and a those two steel rods that originally supported the front wheel fender. It worked great and survived at least 4 off-road excursions.

When our overheating issue returned at the beginning of day one we considered our options. We decided to suffer through the day refilling the cooling system as needed implement a fix in the evening. After watching Paul do a 7 hour head gasket job only to still have overheating issues, we decided to it would be better to find a more effective way to refill and bleed the cooling system than tear the engine open. 

I'd seen Team Eyesore's weed sprayer with a pressure fitting on their cooling system and suggested we copy them. Randal took it a step further and mounted the bottle in the cab so we could refill on the track. The pressure bottle feeds through a ball valve and into the heater circuit on the engine. We would pump the bottle a few times on the front straight and if we thought the engine was getting warm, we opened the valve for a few seconds. Not really a solution, but certainly an effective temporary fix. We didn't overheat again during the race! 

If you want more details or images contact me. 

All my photos from the race are HERE (including several shot by Judy Kiel). Joe's are HERE.

Back At It

We've been accepted to Thunder Hill. I've had a nice vacation from so much as thinking about cars and now I'm ready to wrench. 

Met with teammates and potentials for brunch Saturday to plan. Our big issue is still the overheating problem, likely a head gasket. Combined with some mediocre compression, it is time to get serious about rebuilding or replacing our engine. There are some good arguments for either solution. There is an interesting thread about a 1ZZ engine swap underway on MR2OC forums. I love the idea of a lighter, modern, reliable engine with a mild HP increase, but our engine is a known evil and we'll likely just rebuild. 

The team for this race is taking shape. Mark Jr is back for more. Tim, a friend of Mark's who has even less experience with cars than me, has been lending a hand and is in. I met Bill down the street working on his Corolla FX. He spent a lot of time helping me prep for Buttonwillow and is trying to arrange to drive or crew with us. There are a few others thinking about it.

Buttonwillow Summary

How was Buttonwillow? Great! More details to follow but in a nutshell:

Joe and Randal left the Snowspeeder home for this race and drove V-RAM with me. We were also joined by Dan Barnes, a friend of the Eyesores who we met at Thunderhill last winter.

Overheating was not resolved. The new water pump helped but we were still getting air in the cooling system. Saturday Randal rigged a weed killer spray bottle to our cooling system (little idea we borrowed from Eyesore) and strapped it into the cab. We could pump water into the system while driving down the front straight. It worked GREAT and we didn't overheat once on day two.

We stayed up until 1AM replacing our pogo-sticks with new struts. They were an immense improvement.

I rigged a cardboard radiator scoop that was surprisingly durable.

We melted our ignition coil Sunday afternoon leaving Joe dead on the track right in front of the observation tower.

(That's all I have time for now. Pics and more details to follow.)

Honk If You're Horny

After last week's rather destructive 'test' I borrowed Paul's welder and fabricated a rough but effective radiator mount.

We were at the junk yard for an ignition switch connector and I decide it was past time for a loud horn. We found two resonating pairs. I expected the conch shells from an 80's Saab to be loudest, but the pucks form a giant Mercedes literally rattle the whole car.

Three steps forward, ten steps back.

I had hoped for a successful test last weekend resulting in confirmation that the car is ready to roll. Instead we finished with more problems than we started with.

A subtle buzzing noise was agreed to be nothing to worry about. So I took it out for a spin.

First I drove into some giant ruts.

This bent the radiator mount and a fan shroud. Miraculously the radiator itself was unharmed, until we punctured it with a screwdriver while we tried to fix the shroud.

While assessing the damage I notice the subtle buzz was now quite distinct and smoke was coming from the timing belt cover. We had scored a FAIL on our timing belt job reassembly and part of the tension mechanism had fallen ad wedged between the lower cover and the belt.

FUHHHHHHHG!