Two-headed Yak Wins Kentucky Derby!

From Murilee Martin's Uber Gallery

In fall 2014, the MRolla finished in sixth position at the 24 Hours Of Lemons BFE GP, and was awarded the series highest honor, the Index Of Effluency. Murilee Martin of Car And Driver described our sixth place (of 42 teams) finish as "an accomplishment akin to a two-headed yak winning the Kentucky Derby".

I asked each teammate to give me a quick response to a short Q/A about their experience with the MRolla and event:

1. What is your background as a driver?
2. What are you used to driving on the street and track?
3. How did you decide to join this team for this race?
4. What was your expectation of the MRolla before you drove it?
5. What were your impression of driving the car?
6. How did the event compare to other racing events you have participated in?
7. Any other comments you'd like to share?

Alex McCulloch, Eugene Yen, James Pancoast, Chris Quintana, Larry Sanders

Here's the response I got from James Pancoast, who started racing with us a year previous, happens to be married to my sister, and is a constant wellspring of jovial wit:

1. What are you used to driving on the street and track?
2. On the street I've had a few sporty cars, a Countour and an STi. On the track I'm used to driving a Miata and some crapcan dual engined cars.
3. 
   
4. That it would handle like shit. 
5. I was pleasantly surprised at how it handled and how much sooner I could get on the gas than originally expected.
6. I've only done Lemons races, so it's tough to compare. Denver is my home track so it's probably my favorite.
7. Scott Ith isn't an IOE winner, like the rest of us are.

Alex McCulloch happens to be a pretty seasoned driver and is active in motor and aerial sports. He authors an action-packed blog and show up in magazines occasionally. This is his version of "breif" responses:

1. My background as a driver is 6 years of performance driving, BMW CCA instructor,  NASA TT license holder, BMW Club Racing School, etc. I came up through the BMW club education. I’ve also done a fair amount of karting, including a few 24 hour races at Summit Point.  I would also say that flying, flight instructing and racing mountain bikes and hang gliders at a high level have also probably contributed in a good way.  I hope that doesn’t come across sounding like anything other than humble, because I am nothing but a work in progress :-)
2. Other than student cars and my E30 BMW, the majority of my time has been in my M Coupe.  The M Coupe has benefitted my driving tremendously.  It has a lot of positive attributes, but it is not an easy car to drive near the limit.  It’ll bite if you don’t respect it.  One auto journalist said it was more like an 911 than 911.  It makes other cars a easier to drive.  It’s held me back in certain ways too.  It has a little bit of power to cover mistakes.  It also is not composed enough to all weight transfer quickly, like say an E36 M3.  It needs a beat pause and I will kill you with anything more than slightest breath of trail-braking.
3. I was offered a position on the team.  I absolutely did not need to think about accepting it.
4. I had no expectation of the MRolla before I drove it, but I did have some experience in a track prepped MR2.
5. My impressions of the car where mostly positive.  It definitely had MR2 DNA that I was used to.  I thought the weight up front and FWD improved the turn-in compared to the other MR2 I had driven.  I really enjoyed the complexity and extra power.  It reminded me a lot flying a twin-engined airplane. The areas of improvement that I think we all know would be better are brake pad compound and fuel consumption.  Overall I loved it!
6. I had not heard good things about lemons from my NASA friends.  They complained about the heavy handed penalties and lack of “real racing”.  Those comments came from dudes with massive budgets, albeit respectable talent.  I took it with a grain of salt.  Having raced Chump, I realized these guys didn’t get what Lemons was about.  I thought it was a blast.  It reminded me a lot of a 24 hour mountain bike race.  I was annoyed with the heavy handedness of the some of the penalties, especially when both mine and Eugene's were the safest course of action, but I also get that no racing license is required for Lemons, so it comes with the territory.  Overall I had a blast and really enjoyed racing Lemons.  For our MR2, I think we are going to focus on World League so as not to be restricted from installing a few upgrades, but I still want to race it at Lemons, just with the penalties associated.
7. I really enjoyed the race.  You ran a great team and really appreciated the love you put into the car.  Everyone on the team was super fun and really made the race great.  Thanks for the doing all the hard work to make it happen.

Snapped stabilizer linkage killed an axel boot.

This Happened

The 9-2013 24 Hours Of Lemons at Thunderhill was a rough race for our stable. First the Snowspeeder did this:

And here is is from the other car's view:

And finally from another car back:




Even more spectacular, but not subject to so many well positioned cameras, yours truly rolled the FX32. Here's a glimpse caught from several cars back:



You can see a bit better if you view this on the Vimeo page, but even there it's hard to see what is going on. The FX is 4-5 cars ahead moving to the outside of turn 2. Obscured from this camera, I go off track on the right causing the small visible puff of dust. Still obscured I hit the concrete rumble strip and loose control, moving across the track to the left where you can barely see the FX tumbling in the big cloud of dust. The car stalled on the right side of the track was not involved in any way, and it was just lucky my out-of-control path did not collide with it.

Later, we'll post a full update on the race, which actually turned out to be a pretty fun one.

Big Lapse Of Judgement

Yeah? Well. Watch THIS:



Learning from the mistakes and lack of footage from the MRolla project, we were pretty diligent setting up the tripod every day we were at the shop working on the FX32.

Footage was shot one frame every 30 seconds, for a total of 20,684 stills, representing over 172 hours at the shop. There were maybe 5 hours we were unable to shoot over the course of the project. I rendered it in 800x600, and to get the length down while using ALL of the still images, it is 60 fps. It was the first time I'd ever used Adobe Premier Pro, so there was a little time lost to the learning curve, but I really enjoyed putting it together, and I'm just a bit proud of the results.

Yes, you do recognize the music. English Beat's "March Of The Swivel Heads", an instrumental remix of "Rotating Heads", is the song at the end of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". I did do a bit of editing and extending to sync the song's and video's features.

I'm glad this video project is done, but if someone had some good in-car or bumper-cam footage of the FX32 on track, or especially any footage of the crash with Metro-Gnome at the final turn of the race, I would love to include such footage.

I'm a bit disappointed with the quality of the Youtube stream. I think once it gets enough traffic Youtube enables HQ, but I'm not sure how that works. Youtube will allow you to download the full quality MP4 file.

Sears Point 2013 Snowspeeder Pilots Association

The Team:

Ezra:  Hanger on, Photographer, Gopro changer, General Awesomeness contributer

Julian: Pit manager, Mom, Cook

Bow:  Chief mechanic, Driver

Randal: Guy with big-ass truck full of tools, Team hotshoe, Fabricator, Do-it-all guy.

Joe: Driver, Team "manager" (ha!)



Day 1



Randal in.  Circulating pre-race, he reports new brakes feel spongy.  He is positive they need bleeding.  Bow and I bled the brakes about 3 times before the race.  We decide to wait and see. Perhaps the new pads and disks need to run in a bit.

Black flagged in because our transponder isn't work.  Randal pull the car up to HQ and we do a quick transponder swap before the green.

Green flag.

Brakes don't improve.  Much hand wringing.  Do we bring him in to change out a caliper which will cost 10-20 minutes or run the car with bad brakes and corresponding slow lap times?  When the transponder fails to signal a lap the decision is made for us.  HQ says the way we mounted the transponder is causing interference and we need to remount it.

2 laps have gone uncounted.

We stage the pit for a fast change of the caliper and to remount the transponder.  Everyone has a job.  
PXX


Pit in, swap caliper and remount transponder.  approx 8 minutes. Sent Randal back out without adding fuel.  Later, after using addition and subtraction, we realized that we may have cut out a pit stop had put fuel on him also
PXX

Randal finished his stint clean. Best time: 2:17.3  /P63
Joe (me) in next, perfect stint, clean no flags: Best time: 2:17.9 /P38
Bow, perfect stint no flags. Best time: 2:19.9 /P23
Randal in to close out the day. Best time: 2:16.7  /P19

Perfect, fast pitstops.
Lots and lots and lots of super clean driving.

Aside from 2 uncounted laps and 8 minutes swapping caliper, this the most Perfect Race* day we have experienced in our ~15 races.  (a Perfect Race* is one in which there are no black flags or mechanical break downs.)

About noon Julian fired up his high tech Treager pellet grill and started smoking ribs.  

I wandered down to HQ to petition for the return of our lost laps due to transponder issues.  I was told in essence: "Tough shit, we told you how to mount the transponder you didn't do it right."

A bit after the session for the day ended, Julian wants to bring a rack of ribs down to the organizers in HQ.  I advise him do revisit the issue of our lost laps with them as he delivers the ribs.  His jist of his report is this:


Jay Lamm: I don't really like ribs, but those sure look good and no I can't help you with the uncounted laps but why don't you talk this lady, she is the head of timing and scoring.

Head of timing and scoring:  Tough shit on the laps, but I LOVE ribs and those are great.  

Julian: The ribs are good aren't they?

Head of timing and scoring: Yes they ARE good but tough shit on the laps... how many laps are you looking for anyway.

Julian: Well you can see here in the data that this lap here and here weren't counted.... how are the ribs?.. and then we had to come to fix the transponder.  Do you like the ribs?

Head of timing and scoring: So you aren't looking for laps that you weren't actually out on the track for are you? 

Julian: of course not!

Head of timing and scoring:  Really I can't help with the lap issue.

Julian: ok thats fine but, how are the ribs?

Head of timing and scoring:  The ribs are great!  Tough shit.

Julian:  Do you like the ribs?

Head of timing and scoring:  I love the ribs!  TOUGH SHIT!

Julian: The ribs are good aren't they?

Head of timing and scoring:  Ok I'll give you 3 laps but you can't say anything to anyone about it.

Julian made some 3 lap ribs.

The next morning we found our p19 finish had been replaced by a p12 start.

Joe opens (me) 2hrs 2 mins of clean driving.  /P9!

Bow gets in the car next.  Drives around the trans for about 45 minutes and is black flagged for passing a race car, passing a disabled race are under yellow.  He privately insists that course marshals are confused but to the judges he is adequately penitent.  Back on the track he goes.

15 minutes later he black flagged again for contact with another car.  He comes in explaining on the radio that he was hit but to the judges again claims responsibility.  / P15  This is kind of a Karmic smack down for Bow.  Usually its Randal and I pushing too hard and black flagging as a result.  Bow has pointed that out to both us often in the weeks leading up to the race.

We do some addition and some subtraction and put gas in the car, add Randal and send it out.

Randal does his usual bang up job.  Clean.  Quick.  Brings the car back to the pit in P11 after  1h 54 min.

I get in to close.  While pitting we slide back to p15.  I stick to our play book.  Clean. Quick not fast.  Lap after lap.  Work our way up to P12.  The rest of the field seems to be done pitting and done breaking down.  13 minutes from the end of the race I get a call from Randal on the radio:  Joe, the P13 car is a brown BMW #144 TWO CARS BEHIND YOU, don't let him pass.  Play book, meet window.

I see the BMW moving up behind me to my right.  Move right to block on the front straight.  GAME ON.  I reach back to an old play book titled:  101 Dick Moves For the Race Track. Published Oct 2007 Altamont Press.  I proceed to execute every single move in the book twice and a make up a few new ones.  His car is faster.  I am less polite.  We swap positions 3...4.. maybe 5 times in 3-4 laps.   

He eventually gets some distance on me.   Starting on the last lap he about 100 yards ahead.  We work our way through huge clumps of traffic.  I'm gaining on him with each traffic jam.  Going into the last corner before the finish line he is on the outside in middle of a pack.  I run up the inside of the entire pack ignoring the brake pedal as long as possible moment, pivot around the tires marking the apex.  He is till trying extricate himself from knot of traffic.  We run for the finish line.  I win our little battle for 12th.  He crossed .xx seconds behind.  With possible exception of my first stint in my first race, it was most fun stint I've ever had.

After the race we are all high on adrenalin.  We track down team 144.  The great us with handshakes beer and high fives.  I had been a bit nervous that they would greet us with tire irons.  They had be having the same fun with battle that we had.

It was an epic race.  Aside from the ribs I've only reported on the driving end of it, which leaves vast swaths of effort and success unreported.  Bows rewire of the entire car, Randals mad genius splitter fab,  Julians' pit time cleaving management,  Ezera's media skillz... and more.  I need to write it down but I also need to get to this published so it will have to wait for another day.  Thank you to everyone on the team.  The team has never been better or more competitive and its all your fault!

So We Did This Race

OK, it's the new year and we're excited about the new racing season and new projects. Dusting off the blog I realize there's a bit of a back log of posts to work on, namely the September 2012, 24 Hours Of Lemons at Thunderhill.

Mostly I needed an excuse to post this photo.

We hadn't been to Thunderhill since 2010. Personally it's a favorite track where I've had a lot of seat time, and I usually have few driving errors there. I was looking forward to seeing the MRolla perform there with the long fast front straight and several other high speed sections.

The only significant change to the car was the spiffy little kick-down lever we rigged up for the rear automatic transmission. Readers may recall that combined manual and automatic shifting dynamics are one of the more complex, interesting problems with the twin-engine MRolla. After too much thought and not enough testing we had settled on a static kick-down cable position that left us wanting more RPM on some steep track sections. For this race we rigged a simple bicycle brake lever mounted to the manual shift lever, and connected to the automatic kick-down cable, allowing us to grab another thousand RPM when we felt a little greedy. On track this worked great and gave us noticeably improved acceleration and climbing.

Unfortunately the rear engine was not up to the task of the additional RPMs. It puked oil and coolant from the seals and head gasket before the two hour mark. We opted to finish the day on the front engine only. We were out of any serious competition, but the car was handling great and front engine running like a top. At the end of day one we decided to just finish the race on one engine and start drinking rather than attempt any overnight mechanical heroics.

Image from www.murileemartin.com.

There were no other mechanical problems during the race and we placed a surprising 56 out of 166. I was impressed with how stable the MRolla was as a front wheel drive. I think much of the stability I had attributed to the all-wheel-drive is actually a characteristic of the nearly even weight distribution.

And Will did this. Image from murileemartin.com.

Oh yeah, and Joe/Bow/Randal ran the Snowspeeder. Finished 11th. Really it was the Snowspeeder's best finish ever, given the large, competitive field of cars. It placed 9th at ORP 2011, but that was against only 37 cars.

Media From The Ridge

Here is some excellent content from the Snowspeeder's outing to The Ridge:

An excellent Podcast featuring the Snowspeeder HERE.

Julian, their rookie crew-mate did this excellent write up.

A mild penalty for Joe:



Some in-car from our good friends with Petty Cash Racing:

Colorado In The Books

Paddock silliness.

The BFE GP in June was another great one. Our final position, 24 of 47 teams, would not lead you to believe what a good time we had at this race on and off track.

Bro Larry, in-law James, Bow, Will, bro James, bro Joe.

The team was a bit of a family reunion. The Jameses (brother and brother-in-law) joined us for their rookie race and did great. Brother James spun off once for our only black flag. Much better than my rookie race! Mom even came to spectate her first race and LOVED it.

Yes it is.

Our position was basically killed when our fuel pump mysteriously quit. We dropped the tank and it started working, maybe just loose wires, but it cost us a couple hours of track time at the start of the race. So with the pressure off to place well, we proceeded to have a blast.

As usual at HPR, the race was stopped briefly for a thunderstorm. The temperature drop was welcome.

Queuing up after the storm.

I didn't drive until the last stint of the race. I settled in behind the second place car and stayed there for about two hours. I knew I was in trouble with fuel and the MRolla ran dry with about 5 minutes to go. That's about what a fuel stop would have cost us so it didn't matter much. It was anti-climactic for the team, but it didn't detract from how much fun I had.

October 2011 Mayhem

Test day aerial photo with what I think is the MRolla on
the right. (Thanks to MurileeMartin.com for the photo.)

The October 2011 Infineon 24 Hours Of Lemons event was one of the craziest I’ve raced since Altamont days. 165 cars of questionable qualifications on track, more generous than usual flagging practices, and some intense competition combined for some spectacular action. The forums have be aflutter with debates regarding safety and sanity levels. Personally I was a bit surprised by some drivers failing to ease up for a dead Camaro mid track with cautions flags flying, resulting in a fairly catastrophic rear end collision.



Also, one of the most spectacular roll-overs I’ve seen at lemons, 5.5x rolls, also occurred.

Before the race. (Thanks to
MurileeMartin.com for the photo.)

We finished uninjured, but did suffer two notable collisions. I've been scrounging for some better pics of the damage we took at Infineon and found a couple shots over at www.murileemartin.com that have finally made this post possible. One was a pretty good t-bone from a CRX. We got this very apologetic email after the race:

After the race (Thanks
to CRX #3 for the bash.) 

“I'm a rookie driver on a rookie team and I just wanted to apologize for making contact with you at Sears Point this past weekend. We had the blue CRX #3. I kept my nose clean the whole race and then with about 15 minutes to go I tried to make an inside pass on the DoubleSuck in turn 9a and our racing lines collided and I caught you in the side. Not sure what happened to you but I spun out because I had my wheels cranked to try to get off you. Took myself to the penalty box, got back out with 8 minutes to go and ran out of gas. It was our teams only contact of the entire weekend and probably my only risky move of the weekend (I mean, other than racing with 160 other crappy cars.) Anyway, again, my apologies. I hope it didn't mess you up too much.”

I enjoyed his forum post even more:

“Maybe it is because this was my first ever race. Maybe it was because we were in a pretty slow, bone stock, junkyard CRX and I wasn't trying to haul ass through a crowded field but I didn't mind the crowds. I was also trying my durndest to drive as best as I could, get out of the way, stay on a steady line as best as I could, keep an eye on my mirrors and be respectful as a new person . I was terrified I was going to mess someone else up more than anything (I think I only messed up once, right at the end. Sorry Doublesuck.) But as I got more seat time and tried to learn how to pass a little I found the challenge of passing cars and getting passed by cars without pooping myself (especially when the HardEze or MTGT or Punk car would go flying by me) to be a thrill. Since it is my only race it feels like what Lemons should be. Fast cars having to use skill to get through a bunch of slow cars, slow cars having the sense to watch out for those fast cars and still get some racing on. It was just so cool. And I'm a big chicken. Not a daredevil at all. Biggest worry wart on my team. Soft hands. Public radio employee. And I dug it all. Got fast time for my entire team of newbies. You all have been doing it longer and you may be right but from the perspective of this new guy, I was okay with everything the way it was this weekend.”

 (Thanks to MurileeMartin.com for the photo.)

Also, former Volatile RAM teammate Mark Jr came by in the paddock offering beers of restitution. In his Piñata Porsche 928, he lost the rear end on the tracks tightest turn, got sideways, came back across the track, and clubbed our rear end chewing up the wheel. We were towed off, but after changing the wheel and pulling the fender back out we were able to finish the race. The hub was floppy by the end of the race and we've since replaced it.

Some find it frustrating, but I welcome the high intensity levels of a crowded field, and it's great that comraderie outweighs competition in this series.

BFE Was GREAT!

I'll do a thorough write up, but just want quickly say BFE GP was a great race. We had a rather mystifying problem that would inexplicably kill the car every 45 minutes then start right up after 10-15 minutes of cooling. 45 minute of MRolla seat is a blast though. We only placed 40 out of 56, but had to be in the top 10 of having the most fun.

Northworst Summary

I won't miss another 24HL at Oregon Raceway Park. The track is incredible. I can't really describe it as "better" than Infineon or any other decent track, but it has some essential features that no other track offers. The course takes full advantage of the natural contours and the result is 16 turns of banked bobsled and roller-coaster ride.

We finished 9 out of 37 in the Snowspeeder MR2. It's been a while since we made the top quarter. But who is counting? We just had a ball driving. I was our only black flag, with a humongous off-track right in front of the hot-pit. We lost a little more time with shift cable repairs.

I spent the preceding week mountain biking in the Hood River area. It was also epic. I'll make this an annual biking/racing vacation.

Just a few quick pics from the Northworst race. Epic.

Paddock neighbors with the IOE winning Killer Bee MG and Petty Cash Jeep.

Me (Larry), Scott, Bow, Joe, Randal, and Enzo in front.

Sunset track walk.

Rogue transponder. All of my best laps were untimed. :-(

Bow working on the snapped shift cable. Sunday we fixed it twice and finished with it broken.

Mt Adams on the northwest horizon.

Rough Footage

Here's a clip of a few laps in the MRolla. Nothing too exciting, but you can get a sense of what driving it is like. Pretty normal except the sound of the rear engine with the automatic drowns out the front completely. So you see shifting does not seem to match the sound of the engine, so it was very important to keep an eye on the front tach.

Answer To Engine Syncing Questions

Nearly unanimously the first question out of anyone after their eyes refocused when they heard about our double engine Corolla/MR2 project: “How will you synch the engines?” I heard this question so often, from the mechanical genius and inept alike, that I started to question whether the project was feasible. When I explained our theory, that synching would not be necessary since the systems would be completely independent like two coupled locomotives, they usually said “I guess that might work” with their mouth, and “you’re a batshit-crazy moron” with their facial expression.

A few would pursue the subject a little further and explain how if the engines were not synched they would contend with each other and drive the wheels at different speeds and chew up tires and put undue torque on drivetrain components and blah blah blah. As near as I could tell they expected our car to suffer the same problems manifest in a 4 wheel drive vehicle, with locked differentials front, rear, and center, doing 15’ radius turns on pavement.

My answer would be that any car has an endless array of forces operating for and against drive train: Going up hills, going down hills, head winds, tail winds cross winds, various load mass, collisions... Being welded to another car moving the same direction is just another external force on the first drive train. As far as one engine can tell, the combination of forward forces is no different than driving downhill.

My favorite is the people who speak with the authority of someone who just the other day was driving their own twin engine car and the axles snapped off on their way to work.

An endurance race proven example has been built and demonstrated. It works great. It ran hard all day. I personally flogged it. Not even an unexpected level of tire wear. If you want to build one that doesn't work just to prove us wrong, go nuts.

Answer To Transmissions Questions

Transmissions: The automatic/manual combination worked even better than we hoped. There was no contention, no heavy clunk shifts in the automatic, no problems. It was as simple as put the rear in “D” and drive normally

We had originally planned to use an electronically controlled transmission and shift the automatic with an electronic dial mounted on top of the manual shifter. Short story is we found a fully mechanical automatic and went with it due to crunch time.

The only adjustment we could make on this transmission was a cable that links to the throttle cable, the “kick-down” that tells the transmission that you are romping on the gas pedal. Initial tests we left this alone and it shifted at pretty lackadaisically. All we had to do was clamp the kick-down cable out a couple centimeters (pictured below) and our automatic was suddenly a hill climber, shifting somewhere around 5-6k rpm.

I was worried that when we released the throttle pedal (which was linked to both engines’ throttle cables, pictured below) to shift the manual, the automatic would disengage and hunt for the correct gear once we hit the gas again. Not a problem. I suspect because it only senses axle rotation, it was always ready to push just where it left off as soon as our manual shift was complete and we got back on the throttle.

Functionally the auto/manual combo was GREAT! Once you put it in drive you just drove the manual normally. Any place on the track where there was a gear selection question, you were fine with the higher manual gear because the auto was still pushing at the higher RPM. This was very distinct on the hill and in the lower speed corners.

The only problem was minor. The rear “muffler” was extremely loud compared to the front. It drown out the sound of the manual transmission engine. We had to keep a careful eye on the front tachometer for manual shifting. Shifting by sound is pretty instinctive and this took a few laps to get used to. Paul wired in and RPM shift light, but it didn’t work right and it wasn’t a critical problem. Fortunately nobody botched shifting too bad because one engine would be more than happy to push the other way past redline.

At Last!

What a pay off. The response to the MRolla at the Reno 24 Hours Of Lemons was fantastic. Everyone stopped by to compliment our whacky efforts.

On top of that, it ran far better than we dared hope. It was strong, fast, mostly reliable, a bit soft in the springs but the 4WD grip was great, and it was a blast to drive.

On top of that, we won Organizers Choice. $500! Sweet!

More details and photos to follow.

Sear Pointless 2010

Joe: Ever the graduate of the Altamont School Of Bumper-car Driving.

My fave car at the race. Cannonball Bandit's Weinermobile FX16

Nice thing about blowing your engine is you get to spectate, lounge, hang out, goof off, etc.

Stick Figure's Deathmobile.

Quicky

So, long time no update. Here's a summary of what's been up:

In March I raced Sears Point with Joe and Bow in the Snowspeeder. The track is my new favorite and after hours of "training" in Gran Turismo 4 I'd say the game nails it. Snowspeeder was running weak and we killed the engine day 2 placing 123 of 147. I was sick the whole trip. It was still a great time. Paul, Judy, Bill and a bunch of other stick-figure recruits were there with the Deathmobile MR2 (finished 89th).

This month I raced Thunderhill in the Deathmobile with Paul's team. 39th of 108, and instead of the usual half the cars falling apart day 1, this had to be the most competitive 24HL I've seen. So We're proud of that 39! The car ran flawlessly and we all had a blast. We threw an Animal House theme toga party.

I'm accepted to the July Colorado race and we should have V-RAM resurrected by then, but we're short a couple drivers and I don't know if just me and Bill can pull the race off. Crossing fingers.

We're in the shopping phase of what we hope will be the whooptiest franken-beater to grace the tarmac at a 24HL. Keeping it under wraps for now but will reveal before we race it. Targeting December Buttonwillow.

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.

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.

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.)