Building our Lemons/Chumpcar (Page 13/29)
DonP FEB 05, 02:14 PM
Somewhere in this time that we were getting ready to get back to the track, Robert got married. Paula had officially been our fourth driver during that first race. Somehow or other, she didn't actually drive, or want to drive the car but filled the required fourth driver position. Rich and I didn't hear a thing about it until Robert showed up 5 days later, post-marriage. But Paula is sufficiently involved that we had full confidence that Robert would still be able to come out and play.

As the race date approached, we added a new driver to the team. My brother Doug and I had built and raced several cars way back in the day. Our last car was built based upon a How to build a stock stub car video package that Rich had created. Doug, a certified welder and full on equipment mechanic, could be a great addition to the team. In the last several years he has been the mechanical tuner on an IMCA modified team out of Oregon. The down side was that he lives over 470 miles away in Springfield Oregon.

We really had just a few smaller tweaks to deal with in getting ready for the next race in March Once we got the $900 entry fee taken care of ( $500 for the car and $100 for each driver) there wasn't too much else to deal with.

Out front, we wanted to work a bit on the cooling. During the September race, the temperature would occasionally peak at around 225 degrees. Not too serious, but we sometimes had to back off just a touch to drop to the 205 degree range we wanted. One of the things we should have done prior to the NASA HPDE day was to modify the nose just a bit. So now we took the time to trim up the aero nose in an effort to limit any restrictions. The original inlet folds in and extends for several inches. We took an air driven cut-off wheel and relieved the extra material, retaining just enough of the bend to maintain the strength.




You can see that our tow hook was attached to the bumper bars Rich had fabricated and welded to the original structure. Earlier, we had placed some expanded metal in front of the aluminum Champion radiator to help keep damaging debris out.




We were still relying on the holes cut through the front tub to move air up and out of the vents cut in the hood. The theory is still to prevent the air from stalling behind the radiator.



The 400 pound West Coast Fiero front springs finally arrived. They had been on back-order prior to our NASA track day. The guys at WCF have to modify the springs for proper fit. Rich ran them through the spring checker and found that they were about 15-20 pounds less than the advertised rate. Still, much stronger than the cut stock springs. We dropped them into place and checked the alignment. The nose was noticeable stiffer when we did the bounce test.

Robert may have taken a few days off, but the race was approaching quickly. So Rich bit the bullet and tackled the paint job. Robert had cleaned off most of the graffiti and the car was mostly white again. But we had still not followed through on out theme. We weren't going as whole hog as our original plans, but we still needed to do something. I was very surprised when I came in to find the car had changed.





We elected to leave the nose red, as it was originally painted. Good move as the red/white contrast makes it very easy to spot the car on track.


Doug traveled to Reno a couple days before we were scheduled to leave for the track. His intention was to change out the valve springs on the 2.8. Unfortunately the valve springs he brought with him were not correct and that job went by the way-side.



Yet another super sized driver in a tiny car.....................
DonP FEB 10, 09:06 PM
Less than a week before our scheduled departure, things got complicated. Rich and I were heavily invested in promoting a racing series at the Reno-Fernley race track. On Saturday, 6 days before we were to leave, we learned about a motorsports focused show scheduled at the convention center the same weekend as our race. we had the chance to participate (by paying $1,600 exhibiters fees) and promote our event. Obviously we didn't want to miss our race opportunity. But business is business and cannot be ignored. We paid up for the show and spent a couple days editing up a video and printing posters for the event. It was decided that Rich would man the booth on Friday and Saturday. I would transport the car over the mountain and be one of the drivers on Saturday. After the 7 hour race, I would truck on back to Reno and Rich would head to Sonoma after the trade show. Rich would be one of the drivers for Sunday.

Okay, that's probably more than you were interested in, but it's relevant in showing how I got the worst of the weekend. My brother Doug was in town a couple days early in order to help with any last minute tasks prior to heading to the track. That worked out well as he could help us in setting up at the sports show. But more importantly, it meant he was already in the area as we were watching the weather turn nasty.

We had scheduled to leave early in the morning of Friday, March 23rd. Friday is the day we are required to be at the track in order to be tech'd for Saturdays race. But as we watched the weather coming in on Thursday, we decided that it was going to be a risky trip over the summit and we needed to leave early. It's not unheard of to have the pass into California closed due to weather conditions. I-80 passes over a little place called Donner Pass. Maybe some of you folks back east haven't heard of the Donner Party, the pioneering group for which the pass is named. The story involves a lot of snow, poor decision making and ultimately cannibalism. Now there's a State park on the campsite. Only in California.

Back to our story. Instead of leaving at 6:00 am on Friday, we left at 9:00 pm on Thursday. In the dark. To a light rain. All was good until we hit the state line. Really, exactly as we crossed the state-line, the snow started. Three miles later and I was flying blind. At 35 mph, I couldn't see the roadside and forward visibility was maybe 30 feet tops. So I was chugging up the hill in a king-cab Duramax - powered Chevy truck pulling a 28" enclosed, wind susceptible trailer in a white-out that was forecast to be getting worse as the night wore on. Worse yet, the only thing the radio could get was a country music station.

Robert drives from Reno, NV to Truckee, CA every day for his job. Usually he gets it done in about 30-35 minutes. I took nearly an hour and a half. We were still heading uphill from there. Fortunately, there was a break in the snowy weather a few miles beyond Truckee. That just left the ice. Longer story short. we made it early Friday morning.

Friday was dry-ish and hopeful. We eventually had everything ready and went through inspection. We had a plan to have Robert be the one taking the car through tech He's the youngest, smallest and most agile on the team. And as part of the tech session, they make the driver climb out of the car while they yell "fire" all in under 10 seconds. I had accidentally been near the car the first time and had to do it. No way, Robert was our candidate.





The tough part was when they judges spotted our homemade coilovers. All attention was then placed on how cheaty our car was. But we had equipped Robert with a copy of our "residual value" statement issued after the first race. In addition, he knew what we had done to build the coilovers. I nearly mishandled the whole thing by jumping in and defending our actions. But Jay Lamm, the main guy jumped in and cut me off. He commented that we could run but would be bumped up a class to the "B" run group. This was a faster class than the "C" class we had been running and meant we were even further out from winning our class. But we took it.

There were 172 Cars entered to compete this weekend on the Infineon raceway. Here are a couple of our competitors.



"Speedycop" is the middle Blue-man racer. He's a D.C. Cop who races several events all across the country. I believe he won the national championship after racing at ten (?) races last year. He's the guy who raced that tent trailer car I showed earlier. And his team brought a bowling alley built inside a trailer to one event. Rest safely knowing he's among those sworn to protect us (when in D.C. at least.) His team required almost two hours to remove the blue gook. They suffered slight chemical burns making it look like the had been out in the sun too long.



And a Miata was powered by this snowmobile engine. A pull-start snowmobile engine at that.

.


Here's a hint about how our weekend went.
doublec4 FEB 10, 09:16 PM
Keep this thread going, I'm enjoying it!

It's too bad you got bumped up a class but you guys will still have a great time I'm sure.
thesameguy FEB 11, 05:49 PM
Ugh. My worst fear is Lemons in actual wet conditions. Half the track (more?) can barely stay on the track in the first place.

True story: While taking a piss at Infineon '09 two judges came into the can.

Judge 1: These California guys!!!
Judge 2: What is it with them?
Me: What's wrong with us?
Judge 1: You guys drive faster and crash harder than any other race we do.

YEAH!!!
Tony Kania FEB 11, 08:50 PM
Somebody needs RainX.

Yes, easily one of my most sought after threads when logging on.
DonP FEB 11, 09:21 PM
Thanks guys. I'm trying to keep a balance between telling racing stories and telling what we did to/with the car. Hope there's some entertainment value.

We bought the large economy size Rain-X bottle. Robert's experience led us to clean the window with lighter fluid before the rain-x treatment. Supposedly this really cleans the class to start. That was the theory and I'm not about to dispute it. Rich, as a dirt track driver has no experience with windshields. It did become hard to see. Thank goodness our somewhat klunky mounting of the stock wiper switch kept the intermittent function working. Some cars had nothing!

Don
DonP FEB 12, 03:59 PM
I thought we were far ahead of the game given that we had installed the washer/wiper controls back into the car before our March 2012 race at Infineon. Saturday came and, when we opened the hotel windows we were greeted with the sight of rain. Not totally monsoon-like, but more than you want for a race. Oh, well. At least we had an enclosed trailer. The car was stored away nicely over-night and the team members not driving had an assured spot out of the wet.

So now we had a little bit of car prep for the new conditions. We had already cleaned and Rain-Xed the windshield, but did it again. We pulled off the brand new Star Specs and reinstalled the used tires. They were harder but had a lot more of a tread pattern to move water and that seemed more important than compound choices. And we loosely wrapped the PCM in plastic wrap. It was bolted to the inside firewall behind where the passenger seat would be. This was too exposed to the elements and, not knowing how safe it would be, we sided with being cautious. We also mounted the GoPros in waterproof mounts.

Nobody was all that excited about driving in the rain with 171 other teams, so I drew the short straw.






It was exciting to hit the track. I fully realize that everyone has this image of Lemons and Chumpcar races being quasi destruction derby's. But the actual truth is that nobody goes out there with the intention of even touching another car. And I'm willing to bet that, given 172 cars on the track with potentially huge speed differentials and experience levels, we stack up fairly well with SCCA and NASA events with say 20-30 cars on the track. Of course the rain might change that.

Under caution getting ready to start.



That snowmobile powered Miata mixing it up with a BMW and an Opel GT.






Cool, we were doing , uh, okay. I had it sideways but not stopped a couple times. I believe my re-occurring error is in lifting while in a turn. Particularly in turns 2 and 3a, both of which occur while cresting a hill. Driving in the rain is a great learning experience. Doing so in a race isn't an appropriate time to have a learning experience. I did get called in for one of those sideways moments. I think it took 45 plus minutes to call me in because of the sheer number of spins on the track. All I can say is that it was a good thing we had all these softly sprung cars on the track.

All told, I ended up being out on track for nearly two straight hours. Every time I called in to see if the next driver was ready, they told me to keep going. They may have had the heater going in the trailer.

Eventually, a problem came up. For whatever reason, I managed the first hour and a half okay. But then the windows started steaming up. We had anticipated that with the engine heat in the back, we would not experience fogging problems. That theory went away after about 1 1/2 hours. I stuck it out a another 1/2 hour, but had to call it quits when it became too dangerous to continue.

I wasn't sure what we could do about the problem. But after I called in with the complaint, Robert and Doug jumped on working out a solution. Rain-X probably wasn't going to cut it. A rag on a stick would be awkward. But they found a potential solution in the equipment drawers. Rich uses a helmet blower/filter when racing his IMCA modified on dirt. Essentially, these are 12 volt blowers originally used as bilge blowers in marine applications. You may have seen nozzles incorporated into some racing helmets. These blowers are attached via a flexible hose to the driver's helmet. The air inlet to the blower is typically filtered. The driver is therefore force fed clean air into the helmet.



Since Rich was in Reno attending the trade show, we took it upon ourselves to appropriate his stuff. What Robert did was basically cram the outlet hose from the blower through a gap in the dash. He fixed it in place where the airflow was directed mostly at the driver's side of the windshield. We used the 12 volt connectors that had been wired in to power the radio to now power the blower. And we put the regular battery back onto the in-car radio.

It mostly worked. The picture does not show the full width of the windshield, but you can see a clearer spot starting in front of the driver.



Doug was the next driver. He had never driven the car and had never even seen the track other than watching a little bit of NASCAR racing on the track. Luckily, the windshield was clean (to start) and he entered the track under a full course yellow (to start.) On the down side, it was still raining. I placed his first lap under green on youtube. Remember he's new to this track and car. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IvO2MxjWR4

Now that I was no longer driving, I inherited the "communications director" job. That meant I had the radio and tried to stay in contact with the driver. After our first race a few months back, we realized how ineffective the handset mic/speaker combination was. So after some research, we upgraded to a full headset from Sampson Racing Communications.



We paid about $160 for the headset with the necessary adapter cable and it was worth every cent. At the first race weekend, we relied on someone hearing the driver through the standard mic/speaker. But it was too easy to get distracted and never even hear the driver sniveling about , well, everything. It was a great investment as we go forward. The down-side this particular weekend was that, as the spotter I wanted to sit high up in the grandstand. The problem was that if I sat under the overhang, I lost all communications. I had to sit several rows down and about six feet forward from the metal deck. In the rain. I got a lot of practice doing that stoic long-suffering spotter thing.

Doug managed to only get called out on two spins during his stint. Actually, the first incident was when he got hit. ( about 2:46 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7cc1i7iDdQ it starts behind the Fiero Libre boys ) Given the situation, both parties are assumed to be guilty and he got a black mark. The bigger problem is, that once you spin three times in a day (recall I had one spin to my credit) you are either done for the weekend or have to sit out the next three hours. By this time, it was 2:51 and the races ended for the day at 6:00 So our option was to park for essentially the rest of the day. If you followed to this point, you do not recall Robert getting any seat time for the day. Ouch! So we spent some time putting the car away, fueling it and trying to get everything cleaned-up. We were done and sacrificed our remaining 9 minutes of track time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4V7Cqq3oC8

Twenty minutes later they announced that, due to the sheer number of cars spinning off the track, and the fact they couldn't keep up with the resultant penalties, they would no longer count anyone out for too many (3) black flags caused by spins. Other violations, yes. Spinning no. Robert was already out of the game for the day and decided to look for a dryer track come Sunday. I had a long trip back over the hill to Reno, so off I went. My weekend was done. Rich, Robert and Doug had Sunday to play.
Fierofreak00 FEB 12, 05:13 PM
This is getting good! -Jason
SCCAFiero FEB 12, 11:04 PM
Rainex makes (well they used to anyway, have not checked recently) an anti fog product for the inside of the windshield that works really well. Apply it like the exterior rainex and the window stays clear.

An old racers trick was to rub some bar soap on the inside of the window and that is supposed to prevent the fogging up as well. Never tried that one though since I just used the rainex.
DonP FEB 12, 11:43 PM
I figure someone will mention the old diver's trick of spitting inside the mask. Used to work. But A. I cannot produce enough saliva to do a windshield and B. I wouldn't really want to get into a car treated with enough spit to make it work.

Thanks for the tip about different Rain-X products. Here in Nevada, we just don't learn much about that type of product. I'll do my research.

Don