TNT25169

Hey Dan,

If you need anything for your car that you don't have sitting around in your garage let me know and I can put a lemons price tag on it. I'm excited to have another 944 in the race. You think you can have yours ready by 944 fest? It would be a good chance to get it on the track. I'm going to try to get mine running by mid may so I can auto-x it some and see what breaks.

John

CurtP

E30 winner this year, with a Jetta coming in second (and as a bonus, there was E30 that caught on fire the second day of the race - thankfully the driver got out ok)! I thought for sure the Saab was going to win it. I'm waiting to see the final results, but I think we were 22 or 24 - not bad for our first time not only at a LeMons event, but NONE of us had ever done a road course before, nor had any of us run the car in it's final configuration or in full gear. I'm just happy we completed both days!

It was kind of strange though - after the first day of racing and everyone back on the paddocks turning wrenches, we were grilling and drinking beer. We were known to the judges as "those drunk ********" - not exactly how I wanted us to be recognized.

Our casualties? A bolt fell out of the alternator bracket which we discovered during a driver change in the paddocks (15 minute fix - 14 minutes of that was looking for a suitable bolt). We also had to occasionally add power steering fluid (two times total, I think). Oh, and the most important - replace one of the crimp connectors on the port side stabilizer strobe. We only used one set of tires the whole weekend, and there's still enough tread left on them to do quite a bit of autocrossing.

Probably the biggest surprise for me was that the vertical stabilizers stayed on all weekend! Other than the bolt, nothing fell off our car. No wonder the judges hate the Miata.

I'm not sure how the Porsches fared - the 944 in the stall down from us broke a timing belt and bent all the valves. They replaced the head and were out racing again. There was a hatch-less 944 that was hauling *** around us in the straights.

Lots of cheating going on. A red Miata with no cost documentation, no good story to back it up and no bribe for the judges got a 222 lap penalty. There was no way it was a $500 car though - that thing was hauling *** past us. The douchebags in the Mustang got their car crushed - they had almost 3x as much in just their shocks/struts as we did in our entire car. Probably the biggest thing is they weren't sociable and they were driving like ********. A lot of pissed off people over letting those guys compete in the race - and they were only penalized 22 laps.

Overall it was a great experience, even when our team captain got black-flagged for m2m (and he didn't make contact) and we had to do a conga line around the paddocks chanting "we are bad drivers".

StraightSix

CurtP - you guys finished 29th overall. Full results.

I was in the tower doing Timing and Scoring. The show from our seats was fantastic! The end was a little bit of a nail biter since the red Jetta was lapping 3-5 seconds a lap faster than the leader. The Jetta would have won, but ran out of time.

One of the 944 teams won an award. I don't recall which award, though.

I should be back in the fall for another go at timing.

Patrick E

We were in the red #13 944. The car was quick when we were on track. However, we spent a lot of times in the pits. Here's a quick list of our ailments:

Re-Wire fans (twice)
Stuck thermostat which we simply removed
Alternator Belt shredded
Radiator hose (after getting chewed up by the fan due to old motor mounts) replaced
Fuel Pump replaced
Fuel Filter (cleaned twice then drilled through)
Shift linkage loose then bolt broke while tightening (clamp to keep it from walking)
Shift *** came off (Gorilla taped back on)
Re-Wired Kill Switch
Re-Align car after tow truck hooked up to the sway bar when pulling us in
DME replaced as part of trouble shooting

Fuel pick-up problems ultimately ended our weekend around 1:30 on Sunday. All that adds up to an 86th place finish, a mere 459 laps down. It was a great event and we had a good time, but obviously frustrated we didn't get to compete a little more.

Chads996

We were in the white '88 Honda CRX (Car #24)

Our car was seriously down on power the whole race. Last year we were running with the leaders till the original 500K motor grenaded.

This race we bought a pull-a-part motor and realized pretty quickly that the rings were bad. And...got progressively worse throughout the race. In the end, we blew the head gasket and ran the car with little to no water for the last 15 min of the race. We finished...but in 37th or so.

C.

ian

BeerTech Racing aka The B Team took it on the chin this year, our little e30 was fast when she ran, but a rusty fuel tank had us clogging everything in the fuel system we replaced:

In Tank Fuel Pickup: 4 Times
Primary Fuel Pump
Fuel Filter
Fuel Dampener
Random Fuel Lines

But it didn't matter with all the crap that was at the bottom of the tank, no to mention the Thurnder Bird Coupe that hit me twice in three laps doing some significant damage to the car.... O-well, we will be back in september with the same car.....

Chads996

Heck...that's better than the e30 that burst into flames.

C.

ian

The car going up in smoke would have been a difficult end to the weekend, but that might have been more rewarding than sitting around trying to chase the same issues in the fuel system the whole weekend. I think we only got in 2 hours of running for the whole two days, compared to last year where the car was on track for all but an hour and half.....

Still there were a few adult beverages to keep the spirits up, so it wasn't all bad.

CurtP

Is that the final results? We had heard we were higher than that and the Mustang that got crushed was doing 0:55 laps. We thought our best lap was 1:05 too. No matter - I'm still happy with the results considering we had NO experience. You can tell how slow we were in the straights by looking at our best speed.

The motor we had made it through ok, but by Saturday night, it smelled strongly of gasoline. We changed the oil Sunday morning, but were unable to get the oil filter off - so we left the old one on.

I fully expected the Fiero to catch on fire - the E30 was a bit of a surprise. Poor guys. We had heard that on Saturday they got whacked hard enough to bend their tail pipe, so they cut it off. It was blowing hot exhaust on the gas tank/fuel lines which ultimately failed and caused the fire.

StraightSix

Yes, to my knowledge those are the final results. I haven't heard anything from the organizers to suggest otherwise, and those were the results that were used to pass out the trophies.

The Crushed Mustang only turned a a best of a 59.74, iirc. It was set sometime Sunday morning.

We were posting results for all competitors to see on the posting board near timing and scoring at roughly hourly intervals.

It just goes to show that you can not trust hearsay in the paddock at a race.

That Fiero was favored by the stream viewers to catch fire, too. It has now survived two LeMons races, though. The Kudzu Racing E30 catching fire was certainly the high point of excitement. They were actually called in on Sunday morning because their exhaust system had fallen down far enough to contact the track surface. So, they modified it to sit higher in the car, and the end result was a wicked car-b-que.

knfeparty

The winners, the Dorifto Dogs in the e30, were from my car club! I'm real good friends with one of the drivers, Bernie.

StraightSix

Nice! They put together a heck of a drive.

Actually, a LOT of people that I knew were there. I go to school with all the guys that comprise Subarjew. I'm also an official with NASA-SE, and I know there were a bunch of NASA affiliated people there.

BillJ

This race was a total blast. I was with Patrick in car #13 (un-lucky) that we are going to run again for sure. I think our theme will be the Phoenix as the car spent most of the time dead in the pits. It did indeed run well though when there were no issues. Team was deflated at the end but with preparations for the next CMP event and perhaps even the full 24 hour at Nelson Ledges we seem to have new energy!

StraightSix

I think the biggest thing that helped my friends with Subarjew was that they took it to an autocross for some shake down. It let them find potential problems before it meant time in the paddock.

ian

A good number of the cars there had been either out for Auto-X or even some lapping days at various tracks. Having time to shake down the car helps for sure, but a lot of those teams who did all of that pre-work spent way more than the $500 stated in the rules. One of the cars there had over $6,000 of work into it.

I emailed Jay from LeMons and he gave us a value of our car at $380, so we will spend that 120 trying to track down the current issues and perhaps trouble shoot a few little items we could see keeping us in the pits next race.