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.

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:

More MRolla

Another HUGE field at Infineon, 164 cars. FUN!

Infineon October 2011: Nutshell version is we blew two rear engines but kept racing on just the front to finish 106 of 164.

We rolled into California early enough to attend the Evil Genius Racing party on Thursday. Evil John was as interested to see dyno results for the MRolla as we were.

On the dyno at Evil Genius Racing.

Front - 97 HP @ 6500
86 ftlbs @ 5250
Rear - 82 HP @ 6300
71 ftlbs @ 5100
Combined : 179 HP & 157 ftlbs.

We also put it on scales:
2810 pounds.
52% front 48% rear.

Drivers were Paul, Judy, Sparky Pete of Killer Zombee fame, and yours truly.

Thanks to Judy Kiel for this photo.

We had a good test/tune day Friday. Dialed in our alignment. The double springs up front made a huge improvement in body roll.

Looking at some photos I think we need to review our tire and pressure decisions. Below is the MRolla rounding the tightest turn on the course on our usual set of 195/50 tires on 14x5.5" stock wheels.

Our friends the Black Flags bearing down. Thanks to Judy Kiel for this photo

Note that the tires look like they are about to rip right off the rims.

Tires look like they are barely hanging on.

Compare to the Snowspeeder's new 205/50 15x6.5" and 15x7" staggered set.

I heart these wheels. Thanks to Judy Kiel for this photo.

As usual, the MRolla was among the fast cars when it was running on both engines, but we (I) blew a head gasket in the rear. So we disconnected the axles and finished day one on the front engine, swapped the engine overnight, forgot to adapt plumbing for our electric water pump, overheated and trashed the second engine, raced most of day two on the front engine.

Wee hours of engine swap. Thanks to Judy Kiel for this photo.

Paul and I were at the track until 1:30 am doing the swap. The lack of sleep really fatigued us and the next day was exhausting. I literally couldn't keep my eyes open while I was watching the race and Paul ended up doing a good share of my driving.

We did get smashed into by two other cars. I'll try to get some details and pics of the damage posted later. Also I'll post about some of what we learned bout our transmission system.


Overall we still had a ball and enjoyed all the challenges. Learned much about our car and we can't wait to make another run with the MRolla.

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.

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.

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!

Reno Fernley Race

We left Salt lake about 5:30 am. The drive was a breeze.

I never get used to the comedy, creativity and chaos found in the paddock. Being new to 24HL, my team was overwhelmed.

We got through tech and BS inspections without a hitch, set up our pit, and once the track was closed to cars we walked the course.

Joe's team had a great start. The starting flag dropped with them in second place. The moved up to #1 and held it for 25 laps. After that they started to see some of the weird ignition problems they had seen at previous races.




Like Thunder Hill last winter, our pit neighbors were Eyesore and Free Range. I was with my own team Volatile RAM and Joe was there with the Snowspeeder. Also Paul's car and team Knights Of The Round Track were there. Unfortunately Paul's car fried some bearing test day and didn't get to race.

Mark Jr started the race for us. He reminded me of me at my first race with his enthusiasm, and spinning out of control off the track. [sniff] I'm so proud.

Mark Z drove our second leg and our over-heating problem from V-RAM's first race last year returned and plagued us the remainder of the race. It took us out of competition, but with the pressure off we could just relax and have fun.



We all managed to take few black flags. The Judges were very generous to us though and usually just sent us to switch drivers and

Eyesore finished first place overall. I attribute their success to a brilliantly innovative car, fantastic driving skill, an organized pit routine, and me letting them sit in my chair. With all their track effort they are also have a great time. This race it was Elvis costumes and a pink Caddy theme for the Franken-Miata.

Toward the end of day two I was t-boned by the Let It Ride CRX in the apex of the first uphill turn. I saw them in the penalty box after that but didn't see them on the track again. I wonder what happened to them.

Mark Jr and I decided to stay in Reno for a night before heading back. On the way there I spotted a bunch of kids jumping jumping in the river off the freeway and had to pull over. Next Fernley race I'll definitely be going for a dip again. We hung out with a few of the Eyesores, decided Salt Lake strip-bars aren't all that bad, and slept in before the drive home. Success.