24 hours of lemons

[WSex]

Originally Posted by IROCZman15

yup, I'm prety sure we plan to participate at 3-4 events this year (in total... LeMons and Chump car combined) Limerock being one of them..

man, the event is only 5 days away! Our car is basically ready. Had to sort out a LOT of last moment items on the car. Also picked up a trailer and had to do a bunch of work on it too. The team spent a few hours doing test-runs of getting in and out of the car while simulating an emergency with full suit/helmet/harness on this weekend so that was good. We will be going down Thursday afternoon and spending all Friday doing the test day and registration processes. Then racing as much as the car will survive through saturday and sunday. If anyone is going to this, come swing by our area if you feel like it. we will have the Inspector Gadget themed car. I'll be looking to stop by and visit with the Rust In Peace guys too.

We are nearing the end. Just need do tow hook. Seat belts . Flush cooling system and add water along with oil change. and some decorating. Will be doing today and Friday morning before we leave at like 11

[WSex]

Ran into some issue on tech friday. Redid some things to please tech. Race Saturday got cut short 1 hour because of 4 penalties. Then raced Sunday no issues other than broken fan shroud.
no tools whatsoever
Friday we need more rollcage pipe and some guy just directed us to his house" the key is hiding near the door go in my garage get what you need" we then used his welder aswell. Truly nice people that attend. Other than that Saturday we didn't even check tire pressure. 20$ used (each) tires on the car and went out racing. Sunday we checked pressures and realized we had 20 psi. Great weekend. No trophy.

Inspector gadget was there. Not as lucky as us due to rod knock. Replaced motor all day Saturday and raced sunday. They got a trophy. Great looking car

[sweetbmxrider]

Pics/vids?

[NJ Torque]

Originally Posted by sweetbmxrider

Pics/vids?

Very interested to see.

[IROCZman15]

what an awesome awesome event!

I TOOK LOTS OF PICTURES BUT NEED A FEW MORE DAYS BEFORE I CAN UPLOAD THEM OFF OF MY CAMERA be patient

I had a great time. we arrived on Thursday around 6pm got our garage area all setup and tents, canopy, etc setup. hungout and drove the car around the paddock a bunch to check for issues. spent some time setting up the go pro cameras to the live-feed and tv monitor system. hungout with a bunch of the other teams that got there Thursday and poked around at some of their cars.

Friday, after we registered, passed the NJMP tech, the driver gear tech, and rules meetings we did some work on the car, took a few test laps on the track and realized the brakes were dragging. pulled off all the wheels and tested the system. ended up buying and replacing the master cylinder, power booster, and shortening the actuator rod to compensate for the bigger, thicker ebc brakes and rotors we run. drove the car around and then noticed we had an oil pressure issue. it was reallly really low. as in 8psi under acceleration! pulled off the oil pan which we knew was damaged by a previous owner who prob thought it was a good place to jack the car up on. however in our weeks of testing the car it never had an oil pressure issue. once the oil pan was off we noticed that the pickup and screen were damaged and that the timing chain guide that was once in the case had been chewed up to a million plastic pieces that were crowded around the entire oil pickup tube. (we had installed a new timing chain guide a few months ago because there was NONE and we did not know why it was missing.... just that it was missing... welp, we found out why on Friday) We pulled the oil pan off the other engine i hauled down (which was actually the original stock engine we yanked out in February) cleaned up the oil pan, ordered a oil pan gasket from NAPA, who DELIVERED it to the track (right to our garage bay) put he oil pan back on and lowered the engine back in the car. it ran fine and oil pressure was proper. there was a rod knock at startup though. the track was closed for the day so we did a few more little projects on the car and tested it on the paddock area (10 mph speed limit) Hungout at various crews garage areas the rest of the night and ate and drank beer.

Saturday morning we went through Lemons tech and the Lemons drivers/crew meetings. We had our theme as the Inspector Gadget mobile and some of the guys had props and costumes.. I just chilled. Since we were all new and this was our first time, along with the theme of the car and our various "bribe" treats for the judges, they gave us ZERO lap penalties. We were put in B class which is for the middle grade cars. (some other teams were assigned CRAZy ridiculous penalties... one team started at -1000 laps...thats negative-one-thousand-laps! ha) The judges wished us luck and gave us the harsh reality that very few "first time" teams do well or survive the two day event.

we got the car on the track around 11ish and on the first lap our driver radioed in that he had a bad rod knock. When he radioed in I could hear the rod knocking very loudly over his voice. We pulled the car into the garage, assessed the situation, and decided we HAD to put in the spare engine. however, we have been robbing parts off this engine since January, so this was a little more complicated. out came the radiator, fans, air intake stuff, strut tower bar, swaybar, lots of electrical wiring etc. at the same time three other guys were starting to get the other engine prepared, cleaning stuff up, checking components, installing various parts of it. it was now around 1:00 when the engine came out of the car and some of its parts (the oil pan of course), the timing chain guide, etc etc were put on the spare engine. we did not yank the engine and transmission together .. and this proved to delay us a bit as we had a hell of a time getting them lined up during the reinstall. once the basics were buttoned up we tried to fire it up but no start. it cranked, had spark, had compression (low on cyl#2 though) but teh timing was way off. we diagnosed it to be 90 deg off , so we jumped links on the timing chain/gear, clocked the distributor and fired it up. it ran! it was like 3:00 then, so we thrashed to get the rest of the stuf (radiator, electronics, hood etc) on, but did not make it in time to get a few laps in before the track was shut down at 4:00pm we were still at 0 laps and in like 114th place

oh, interestingly (and awesomely) the airport that is right next to the racetrack was having a big air show this weekend so the whole afternoon on Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday we were able to watch all sorts of airplanes doing tricks. p52 mustangs, f16 fighter jets, propeller planes, THE THUNDERBIRDS, etc. doing huge loops, spins, dives, stalls, criss-crossing 4 at a time, and my favorite, the f-16 flying inverted/up-side-down probably 200 feet off the ground. broke the sound barrier a few times... man those fighter jets are freaking LOUD.

Sunday, we woke up early, a few final checks on the car, and we hit the starting grid. the car ran great. slow but great. ended up having NO engine issues, and only some steering/suspension issues because our camber is WAY crazy. the go pros were running, the gps tracking setup was recording our laps, we had the live video feed to watch in the garage, changed drivers regularly, fueled up in the hot-pits just fine. We only had an issue with our radio communications not being clear enough but we will fix that. Again, i was not a driver because i didn't put $ into this project... I'd rather put money into my car or house or vacations.

The track waved the checkered flag right at 3:00 pm. We made is ALLLLMOST all day, but on the last 2 laps of the race, the exhaust fell off the car and was dragging and bouncing all over so the driver (who was the least experienced of all of us car/mechanic wise)did not know what the sound was and pulled over to be towed in. he thought it was the transmission or driveshaft, but it was only the exhaust.. all of it. jut dragging like a snake. We did get an award because the judges appreciated our theme, the hard work all Friday and Saturday, the fact that we rebounded from two major engine issues, were a brand new team at our first event, and a few other things they mentioned. The award we got was "for being from new jersey but driving least like a person from new jersey" basically we didn't cause any wrecks, didn't cause a yellow flag, did not get any black flags or penalties, and stayed clear from faster cars passing by. pretty cool.

We had an awesome awesome time. All of us. I met Mario (Wsex) and checked out his car a bit. They ran really well and I saw Mario driving the hell out of the car too. Got some photos for him also. We took a while to pack up all of our stuff, tools, tents, gear, and loaded up the trailers for the long ride home. Got rained on a bit too. Made it back to our home base in Rockaway Twp at 10:30 pm and took about an hour to unpack and unload. Got back to my house at midnight and after a shower and dinner i just collapsed from exhaustion. Awesome event, we will be doing it again probably in Connecticut in August. I doubt there will be a 3 day air-show for us to watch at that one though....

[NJSPEEDER]

Sounds like it was a good time. Glad it worked out.

So, now that you survived this first experience are you planning to do some more racing?

[Artful Dodger]

Congratulations on a job well done!

[WSex]

Originally Posted by NJSPEEDER

Sounds like it was a good time. Glad it worked out.

So, now that you survived this first experience are you planning to do some more racing?

Definetely. We are planning Carolina in september. But this time we are really cutting up the car. Rocket on wheels

[NJSPEEDER]

Is that another LeMons event or ChumpCar?

[WSex]

Originally Posted by NJSPEEDER

Is that another LeMons event or ChumpCar?

Lemons

[IROCZman15]

yes, we plan on doing at LEAST one or TWO more events this calendar year, LeMons and/or Chump car


sorry that these are somewhat out of order, but I just finally got to upload them.


some are my iphone photos, but the rest are from a good-ish Cannon camera...if you want to see the better quality photos, skip the first 60 or so from my iphone and look at the better camera ones. Also, I have some videos of the air-show in there too

https://www.flickr.com/photos/123927...57653080175091

let me know if the link or page is acting weird, it was earlier today

[sweetbmxrider]

Awesome man! What a great event!

[WSex]

Already registered for south fall lemons race. Kershaw sc.
Lots of goodies for the car

[WSex]

coilovers
toyo r888 on factory rim
strut bar
underbrace
clutch
radiator
and performance chip
along with some walkie talkies

good way to spend 2k dollars
lol...

[Jersey Mike]

Originally Posted by WSex

coilovers
toyo r888 on factory rim
strut bar
underbrace
clutch
radiator
and performance chip
along with some walkie talkies

good way to spend 2k dollars
lol...

Personally I think I'd have done a cool air intake, a NOS fogger system and a T4 turbo... direct port nitrous, an AIC controller and a stand alone fuel management system.

[WSex]

transporter
http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/cto/5110892148.html ???????

what do you guys think?
load the car,
leave some seats. turn some around with tables. the never ending possibilites

[Blackbirdws6]

Get it!

[sweetbmxrider]

Smash sent me a craigslist link to a guy that made one into a flat bed like you are saying. It was hilarious.

[IROCZman15]

just a quick writeup to continue info on this Lemons endeavor

So the team I am helping wrench on "Gadget Inspectors" just participated in the 24 Hours of Lemons race a week and a half ago. It was up at Thompson Speedway in Connecticut. Unfortunately for this one I had just gotten back from a 8 day vacation and had to work all weekend that they were going up there so I was unable to attend.

In the interim we had the engine out of the car, completely refreshed and rebuilt by the team. Unfortunately, once it went back in the car (about 8 days before the race) it ran for 15 seconds and seized up completely. Couldn't even turn it over by hand with a huge breaker bar and all the spark plugs out. Tore the entire engine apart to realize that someone had over-tightened the main cap on bearing #3 and this caused the crank to lock up. Sent the block and crank out for repair/repolishing and when it got back 5 days before the race there was a huge thrash to rebuild the engine (Again) and get it back in the car. all went well and the car was up and running with 2 days to go. Trailers were loaded up with parts and the car and 4 of the team members headed off to Connecticut.
-larger swaybars were also installed, different tires were mounted on spare sets of wheels for testing, and various other mods/repairs were done to the car also.

The team said the car ran strong and actually performed better than their driving abilities could handle on this particular course. They finished 60th place with over 250 laps in the two days. We plan on doing one more race this calendar year, and I think its around Halloween actually. I hope to attend and crew chief again, but I just don't have $ in my vehicle budget to jump in as a driver this year


www.bangshift.com actually did a cool writeup and had coverage on their webpage, and theres a single photo of our Gadget mobile. too

http://bangshift.com/general-news/ev...tive-insanity/

[WSex]

We are fully paid for lemons south fall and Halloween hoop tie fest. Feel free to tag along if you want

[NJSPEEDER]

Date and location?

[WSex]

Originally Posted by NJSPEEDER

Date and location?

9/19 weekend. Kershaw south Caroline and laSt weekend of October in new hampshire

[IROCZman15]

yea, the one I mentioned above is October 23, 24, 25 in New Hampshire

[WSex]

ATTENTION DRIVER NEEDED

This is your chance. To race and possibly be permanant on our team. Had 2 drivers back out due to work.
So I'm going to run a really good deal.
600 includes transport race time and your fees.all you're responsible for is chipping in for food and beverages
Your sleeping bag for camping
And fuel for way down and at race. That's all.
Yup
You need to buy or borrow a 3layer suit

We are leaving thus day at 6ish pm
And will be back Monday morning. Early morning.

[WSex]

Text me 9734459231