24 Ulcers of Lemons: It's race day. Wake up and vomit.

[Society Mike]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA  amazing

[Society Mike]

[Brooks Rogers]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA  amazing

[Brooks Rogers]

[josh]

El Gaguar.

hero status

[MR 1JZ]

very good

[MR 1JZ]

[Lawless]

This thing is awesome and the stories are even better!

El Gaguar.

"Night Ulcers"

[Lawless]

[Brooks Rogers]

dave doesn't get it...

[Brooks Rogers]

[Keith]

Eric, Crab & I were the only ones that did, had to explain it...which really didn't do justice of course.

"Just sit down, lean against the car, don't look at the camera & shut up."  -me  Crab's lovely wife did the photographic duties.

Watched Senna on Friday.  Inspired me for Autobahn next month.  Hope it rains.  Not really.

[Keith]

[GG Simba]

lol Dave never gets things

[GG Simba]

[Crab Spirits]

Inspired me for Autobahn next month.  Hope it rains.  Not really.

If it rains we should rip as long as people stay off our sheetmetal.


Told him he "couldn't afford it."

[Crab Spirits]

[Crab Spirits]

It's that time again. Cleaning all the car-blood off the front of the grape for another lemons race this coming weekend. This time, we are back at Autobahn C.C., but running the south section with over 100 other pieces of volatile machinery. It's gonna be a bloodbath. This is a fast, tricky course.

Our tire situation was a fiasco. The high-treadwear, reverse-stretched  215/40/16 Maxxis MA-Z1's on the 16x6 slicer wheels feel like driving on melting chocolate. If you own a Taurus and want to upgrade your wheels and tires to anything good, just kill yourself now. The best I could work with were these China 17x7.5's, now wearing 235/40 Nitto NT-05's to fully exploit the 190 minimum treadwear rule.

They increase track and ride height by an inch. The car now no longer drags it's mufflers all over the place and feels pretty damn good.

Speaking of mufflers, they exploded and fell apart. Lemons can destroy anything.

Can't believe I'm repairing mufflers, but it's easier than redoing all this bullshit. Took some baffles out cause the team thought the car was too quiet.

Patched them back together with some pelts from a Deere I slayed...

Closeup shot of the fender vents, which are actually functional.


Bleeding the air from the cooling system on this thing is a real bitch. A new addition to the car is a swirl tank setup. Found these at the yard. The one on the right comes from an early 90's Crown Vic, but we couldn't pass up the Econoline one. They come with 16psi caps, but an 18psi one from a GM 3300-powered car screws on. Using the 18psi cap on this thing with 300 different locations for a possible leak made me reconsider using it though.

Watch the rusty water circulate! Can't beat it for $10.


Our battery is shot, and our cam or crank sensor is dead. Fortunately, we got some residual value and another Metro convertible maniac (yes, they are out there) bought some nasty crap from our car. We snapped our front motor mount too, so that has been beefed up. I think with 10 more races, we might have this car figured out to the point where we have a chance. 

[Crab Spirits]

[GG Simba]

Looking forward to finally seeing this thing on the track. I'll be there, maybe both days.

[GG Simba]

[Keith]

I'll be there for neither and I'm still depressed about it. 

Crab are you coming to USAIR?

[Keith]

[Crab Spirits]

Race starts at 10am CST. We're trying to live stream it. I don't have much faith with these things, so no whining when it doesn't work.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/charnel-house

[Crab Spirits]

[Crab Spirits]

So yeah, live streaming was a complete failure. Worked great while my brother was riding his bike around the track however.

I'll let teammate Michael do the review of this one.

Had another very fun lemons weekend with the Sick Gut Gaguar.

 

Saturday our first driver went out and drove 2hrs. He reported transmission problems, he could not get the transmission into any gear but 3rd.  Luckily this was a perfect gear for the course in our car, and we didn’t really have to shift to be competitive.  We attempted a driver change but the car wouldn’t start. We fiddled around and suddenly it started for no reason. We sent the next driver out, and the car was promptly towed back in. When the car got back to the pits we attempted to diagnose why it wasn’t starting..but it fired right back up.

 

The problem was intermittent and hard to chase... it only happened when the engine was hot.  Brian and I diagnosed and pondered. We got the car hot in the pits and waited for the problem to happen.  When the car shut-off we were ready.  I used a screwdriver as a stethoscope to determine our injectors were firing only once every 6 revolutions of the engine, then I checked spark with a spare plug and there was no spark. àCrank angle sensor was our guess.

 

Brian and I left to get a new sensor and crank pulley puller while instructing the team to clear a way to the crank pulley.  The crank pulley was impossible to reach from the top or bottom of the engine compartment. We weren’t about to pull the engine out. They went in through the side…  It was a delicate surgery; they removed the wheel and cut away the inner fender with a saw. This revealed the pulley.  We returned 2.5hrs later with the new part and installed it. The car fired back up at 5:35… 5 minutes after Saturdays race had ended.

 

Sundays racing went well. We were still 3rd gear limited but the car was among the top 5 fastest lap times.  My stint in the car was pretty fun for the first hour.  The handling was much improved by the wheel/tire upgrade, and the car was very controllable (and fast!). I battled a Saturn around the track for about 30 minutes.  Around the hour mark I noticed occasional smoke in the cockpit; trans temps were reading 260°F and I could taste the fluid in my mouth. After a few laps of that I felt pretty sick and radioed to switch drivers.  The other guys did really well and everyone had fun.  We ended in ~63rd out of ~100cars. We lost 6 hrs and ~180laps on Saturday. Had we carried Sundays pace we would have finished in the top 15. 

This race also had some very interesting machinery. I was super-excited to see what we could do against the swapped Fiat X1/9. Here is an article on that car, highly recommended reading.
http://www.kilometermagazine.com/artman2/publish/feature_article/Lancia_Stratos_LeMons_Launcha_Splatos.html
They seemed to have a few hundred lbs less weight on us, and the team is top driver stocked. Dave had a nice exciting battle with them at the end of the race. A couple times he came through sliding the Metsho through turn 1-2. This ended when the Splatos got nailed by an over-aggressive Camaro. There was also a Fiero with a 3800 swap that was a close match for our car.


The new tire setup has totally changed the car. The thing is incredibly fun to drive now. The swirl tank worked excellent. With both fans running, coolant temp made it down to 190, and the exhaust smelled rich. I had to leave them on to help cool off the trans, which now sounds like a box of rocks.

[Crab Spirits]

[Crab Spirits]

Another dream-crushing Lemons race coming this weekend. Probably going to stew in our own juices again, as it promises to be a hot one. Rob is on board this time.

First order of prep was to change out our spent transmission. This took a full weekend of labor by myself and Aaron. Entire drivetrain had to be pulled and it sucked. Sucked bad. Car needs to be on the lift, then the subframe supported on 2 pallets along with a floor jack to angle it out. Then you can forklift it out of the way, and watch it slip off the pallets and smash the coil pack. Crack open the incoming trans and prep the fragile taurus diff for abuse...again. We were cursing the entire way, whoever was responsible for constructing such a car.


During the winter, we store this thing at Aaron's farm. Some mice had a great time in it, chewing on the sparco and building a canteloupe-sized house in it. What kind of dumb fucking animal pisses and shits in it's home? The pungent stench of mouse piss still didn't prevent us from entering it in a car show. We won "Best-Engineered" and some dudes got mad. We pulled the seat and I bombed it with a few gallons of hot Zepride, then pressure-washed it.


Thanks to this crash, caused when a camaro had their bumper-mounted kill switch disabled during prior contact, the rules mandated a driver operable location.

Moving it wasn't just a simple modification in our car.

During the relocation, we fixed the source of a stupid charging issue caused by excessive wiring. The alternator feed has to be cut after the switch or the car will run off the alternator. A new addition is this 100A continuous duty solenoid off a golf cart. Now the feed can run straight to the starter lug.


We're running in a new class this year. Prototype, for crazy engine swapped cars. Needed an appropriate decal to cover the old kill switch stuff.


Ohhh little MTXIV synchros, please stay strong!

[Crab Spirits]