Follow em live!
Follow em live!
watching now
About 6 PM Saturday, full course stop for a fire. The car involved: none other than the Tunachucker Volvo. 
I got $5 says it's back in action tomorrow morning. 
I was this close to making Lemons a stop on the way home from Nationals, but being away from the wife and kids for a week has me eager to get home.
Good luck to all involved!
10 AM Sunday morning: the Chuckers are back in action! 
Looks like a beautiful day at CMP again. #731, White Lightning Racing, is in the overall lead. For some reason, I didn't see the Hongers. 
EDIT: Just saw the Obamanation go into Turn 1.
There's an awful lot of folks overcooking Turn 1 just past the flagstand, too.
AAAAUUUUGHH. The Curse is underway, there are TWO excavators fighting over the winner, er, loser (which appears to have been #333, Rusty Hood Racing) and the wireless cam won't reach that far.
The latest: it looks like the first and second place cars, White Lightning and Lightning McQueen, were both voted as Cursed but Jay Lamm appealed to the crowd and they relented, White Lightning went on to take the overall win.
So why did Jay intercede for White Lightning?
ahh.... misclick there on Xceler8xs post. Hit the ! thingy. Sry about that. Was going for a simple screen click...
AH! You trying to silence me! 
No need to get mad. I was just asking about Jay's motivation. Hey, why are these guys here in dark suits? WTF man? I didn't do anything. I especially didn't do anything in District 9..come on guys..just a laugh right...
Tom Heath wrote: I was *this* close to making Lemons a stop on the way home from Nationals, but being away from the wife and kids for a week has me eager to get home. Good luck to all involved!
Tom and Kevin left on Thursday in order to make the drive back to Atlanta, drop the Miata, pick up the Obamanation, and then continue on to CMP. berkeleying insane...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aOkaHur-YQ
here's a quick vid
Of course the Chucker car got finished before morning. It was only a little fire. Plus, we had all night.
By the way, A arm bushings are important. You'd be surprised how much the car moves around when braking now - quite the handful. Still very fast though - passed the Hawaiian 944 like it was a Fiat, and the Fiat like it was a Chevette.
43rd place - and they basically invented a trophy for us - not a bad deal.
I think we're all still in recovery from this one. The weekend was anything but uneventful.
After a 20 hour drive from Lincoln (2 hours down to rebuild a hub on the trailer), Tommy and I got about 3 hours of sleep only to load up again to head to Wayne's. We all set out at about 11 for Kershaw. Shortly after crossing the SC boarder, Wayne gets the call from Tom that a trailer tire blew. We caught up and 5 mins later, we were all back on the road again.
Friday was the most relaxed day only having to perform the necessary routines to pass tech and BS inspection. The real fun began Saturday. Wayne went out first, driving for a while, before hooking the front bumper on a wayward Volvo. After pitting, a good samaritan assisted to yank the bumper off only to burn himself from grabbing the hot steel that had been dragging the ground. He returned to the course for while longer uneventfully. Tommy took off only to return the car when he saw the low oil pressure indicator flick on an hour later. With a very noticeable rod knock, we loaded the car with oil in hopes of avoiding the inevitable. I was already suited up and took the car out...didn't even make it through the first turn when the #1 rod ventilated the block. Fortunately, I was able to drive the car back to the paddock on 3 cylinders.
In a hurried thrash of Hongism, we had the car on the ground and running in roughly 1.5 hours. I took the turd back out for a bit over an hour. No noises, no smoke, and a fairly strong engine. Matt was up next, and after finishing only two laps, BOOM. Engine #2 was out with a hole in the exact same place as the first and an hour remaining in the day's race.
Motivation wasn't as high that evening for a motor swap as it was earlier in the day. A respectable amount of beer was consumed over the course of the next several hours while we worked. Engine #3 had former issues from nitrous somewhere in its life and the head needed swapping. An exhaust valve from engine #2 was fitted into head #1 and then assembled to block #3 with a used head gasket. 12:30 arrived in what seemed to be a very quick evening and we finally started the car...3 cylinders with zero compression on #1. At this point, we were pretty much in berkeley-it mode with the exception of stereo Matt of Hong South. After succumbing to his reasoning, we followed suit to pull the head again and swap the intake valves of the #1 cylinder. 3:30 rolled around and the car ran normally. All was not lost.
Sunday, we all had good runs with stints of over an hour each. Mike and Matt drove extremely well for their first time in the car reeling in several positions. Tom and Wayne followed suit with the same results under orders to thrash. I was the final (terminal?) driver. With 10-15 minutes left in the race, the fuel guage on empty, the car loosing power, and a dying radio battery, I attempted to signal to the crew that I was planning to pit after the current lap, all while the car started hesitating and bucking on throttle. I tried to pull through the next turn, but with very little power. Attempting to throttle out, I felt and heard the all too familiar BOOM of an engine letting go. Exiting the course hurriedly and Matt working the radio, I hear "I think you're on fire. YEAH YOU'RE ON FIRE!" while noticing the course had been red flagged. Fun. After a banzai exit I saw a 30 foot long trail of burning oil behind the car on the grass and under the car. Fire crews were dispatched and the car survived with no damage. The applause from the crowd was exciting as the tow vehicle exited the course.
In all, the car still shows promise and has a future, sadly. We finished 31/63 in class from the 50s after day one and 63/113 overall. As a bonus, we set the 5th fastest lap time. The car and its drivers were no slouch and we were awarded with The Most Heroic Fix trophy. We'll definitely be back with some creation of whatever ghastly Hongism is determined.
I want to rename it The 24 Hours of Engine Swaps...
Wayne went out first and started great, drove the snot out of it consistantly, but then hooked the bumper on someone and pulled it half off. He came in and we pulled it off completely, and he went back out and set some great times. We then did a hot pit and a driver change. Tommy took over for second shift, and continued the trend of working the corners and keeping up momentum, passing lots of people. About an hour and a half later he saw the oil light flicker in two corners and quickly headed to the cold pit. When it came in ticking we pulled the dip stick and found it dry. So we added oil and went back out, then, as expected, had to come right back in because noise got REALLY lound and it made no power.
Two hours later and with the help of our trusty 4x4 engine hoist we put in "Clacky", the engine that just wouldn't die from the last Lemons. Kevin went out and set some blistering laps one after another, ol' Clacky banging away so loud down the front straight you could always tell who it was. That ran like that until the next cold pit when we checked the oil, which was great. Matty took over for his driving debut and put a solid two laps in until bang, Clacky made it's final clack...
...So we get some cheese burgers, crack open the beers, crank the tunes, and go for swap #2. The only problem is that engine 3 had oh, about 100 nitrous passes on it and didn't run that well when it was pulled. We pulled the head off of #2, found a bent valve and by some miracle Wayne's neighbor had a valve spring tool, so we found a valve from head #1 and swapped it out. We assembled head #2 with a valve from #1 on the #3 block. Around midnight (I really have no idea what time) and we fire it up, and to our dismay, it sounded like an evil Subaru...
Luckily we find a compression tester and find out the #1 hole has zero compression. Back off comes the head and we swap out the remaining valves from the problem cylinder. A few hours and an e36 m3 ton of beer later, we have a proper sounding engine. Off to the waffle house...
Day two kinda goes well, and Mike is chasing down people left and right. We got one penalty that involved finding change from 1984, how ironic considering what's on the side of the car.
The Obamanation is running strong, well run pit stops, serious driving and 12 minutes left. What could go wrong now? Pow! ..." uh dude I think I see a little bit of- oh yeah you're on fire!" Kevin is out before it stops and the crew snuffs out the trail of burning oil. Time for beers...
As horrible as it may have sounded, I had so much fun that I can't wait to do it again! Berkelying awesome!
later, matt
Double post,sort of!
heheh later, matt
At least our posts are consistent.
xFactor wrote: As horrible as it may have sounded, I had so much fun that I can't wait to do it again! Berkelying awesome!
No doubt. It was great having the team together this weekend. I can't wait for the next!
Thanks evilmentaldude! Your flame-free doo-doo drawls caressed my satchel nicely.
20 hours of car fixin', 10 hours of beer drinkin', 1 hour of racin'.
still had a great time.
Buzz Killington wrote: 20 hours of car fixin', 10 hours of beer drinkin', 1 hour of racin'. still had a great time.
Holy crap. What were you driving? My one complaint with LeMons: There's no big hotel with a E36 M3e-load of rooms blocked off so we can all get together in the same place for drunken bench racing/shenanigans.
it's really what we were NOT driving. the other Schumacher guys gave me a stint in their Audi at the end of the day Sat, however.
our FX16 popped the upper rad hose early Sat morning, and the water flashed away so quickly that the temp guage never moved. the head gasket followed shortly thereafter (likely aided by an overheating incident in the previous race at Stafford).
Toyota 4AG head gaskets are (perhaps unsurprisingly) non-existent in rural south carolina, so we tried a pour-in solution, Blue Devil, which was recommended by several people. it might work fine for a commuter trying to keep his car on the road (and at $55/quart, it had better), but lasted an hour at CMP (it also spawned a "Runnin' With the Devil" theme idea). it was a good hour, though...the car was fast.
one of our team members (Chris from TrackGeeks) had a buddy coming down from NC, and had him pick up an HG in Charlotte (in hindsight, i should have simply driven to CHA immediately upon finding that there were no HGs in the Kershaw area). When we pulled the head, we found that the combustion gases had eaten away the aluminum between cylinders 3 and 4 in our head. after another search for aluminum welding rod, we went the JB Weld route. We let that cure overnight and ground it into shape in the morning. we got everything back together and running by noon on Sunday, but had a water leak from a hard line flange on the side of the head. we tried to tighten the flange, but sheared a small bolt, which was not going to be fixable in time. and our motivation to pull the head agina was very low at that point.
so we loaded up, took off wristbands, and cracked open some beers. by our estimation, we were the first team to be drinking on Sunday, so we were the winners.
argh. Yeah, I saw her smoking early on. Sorry dudes.
meh, it happens. disappointing, but that's how things go sometimes. i guess if you've never taken an engine apart at lemons, you're doing it wrong.
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