Chuckwalla - Arse-Freeze-Apalooza 24 hour of Lemons Dec 7-9th 2012

Well the race is over, lots of booze, lots of laughs, and lots of track time. It was a great weekend!

The highlights included my fiance, Cynthia, driving in her first race, eight different people driving the Spitwad, a great fire pit, a punk rock band, the old Ford making the haul, and the Spitwad pretty much just ran all weekend.



Cynthia completed two 30min stints without issues or giving up. She also watched the Super Snipe flip, and that means, we might have it on video... Speaking of video, I have around 9 hours of it to go through so that will come later.

The list of drivers were, Cynthia, Paul, Cem, Justin, Jerry(my pops), Chris(he earned it), Denise, and my self. Cynthia, Justin, Ron, and I were the original drivers. Ron had to drop out due to a move, and we picked up Paul, Cem, Jerry, and Denise because the Willy Wankel Rx7 hardly ran all weekend. Chris earned his spot by helping my pops work on the Rx7 for hours.




Paul, who races a vintage MGB, brought with him a nice fire pit and lots of knowledge of the track. Gave many of us great tips and his fire pit brought many people around for drinks and conversation. Thanks Paul!

Justin raced multiple stints over the weekend and really was a team player. After some kinda harsh driving at the last race, Justin drove a calm and clean race this time around with no black flags. He also was driving while Judge Phil was snapping photos.



Cem, who raced with us back in March, was there to race in the Rx7.  Since that wasn't going so well, he hopped in the Spitwad for a few stints and drove great as always. Him and his wife Amanda are great people, always a welcome addition. I snapped this shot of him driving.



Though they got shut down hours early do to noise complaints before 9pm, (WTF honestly?) The Mice came out again this year to rock out in the pits. They came along with one of my favorite teams, If It's Not Punk It's Junk. I snapped a few shots of the band and the team's car.





There is so much I could go on about from the race. What I saw, how much fun we all had, the ups, the downs, and the Spider Man story... But I really should get back to work. I had a great weekend, racing, partying, and taking pictures. I will just end with a link to my pictures from the race and a great shot of the Cow Driver working away.

Link to My Photos from Arse-Freeze-2012



Oh yeah, and my Dad! In my version of LeMons in a nutshell..



Spiderman Out!

Final Prep for Arse-Freeze 2012 (Early December)

So here we are, it has been since July 1st 2012 that we have raced. Things have changed, drivers have changed, another car has been built, and life has gotten more complicated. The one thing that remains unchanged is the childish excitement that builds up the week of the race.

There is a bit of anxiety about whether or not the tow rig will make it, how my fiance will do at her first race, and of course did we remember everything? Even with all the spare parts, tools,the extensive packing lists, and our multiple race experince... it just lingers in the brain. I know I am forgetting something and what is going to go wrong? Oh well.. we will do what we gotta do. This is what it is about, seeing how much you can get out of rust bucket junk racer your team built, everyone being safe, and having a freaking blast!

Things have not worked out perfectly, they never do. One of our team members has to move across the country and won't be able to make it. Another has a Hawaii vacation and will be showing up just about the moment when the green flag drops. Well no worries, I will be there to start the race in the Spitwad and once I do... nothing else in that moment will matter. It's just that much fun!

With the lack of help and my lack of motivation, I did not get the spare motor completed yet, but as long as tech goes smoothly I have plenty of hours on Friday to get it finished up. All the parts are there, just need to bolt the head on properly, install the rockers, and put the valve cover on. The plan being not to need it of course.

While taking pictures at the F1 race in Austin, Texas with my cell phone and $100 point and shoot digital camera, I found myself wanting to dive into learning photography and spent a chunk of change on a Nikon D5100 with 18-55mm and 55-200mm lenses. This is my first SRL camera ever and I am just starting to learn the basics, but I decided I would try to get some fancy panning motorsport shots at the LeMons race. I spent some time practicing and came up with only a couple photos that the car was even somewhat in focus.



Hopefully things will run smoothly and I will get plenty of time to play with my new camera. Maybe even (and this is a stretch) I will end up with a couple shots to be proud of. This photography thing is all secondary to the racing and mentoring my fiance through out the weekend.

Well here goes nothing! Will be heading out to Chuckwalla in 3 days!

Work Days - 10/27/2012 and 11/3/2012

Well we have been working on the car every weekend as usual. Got a lot of little things done. We got the windscreen mesh securely mounted, we got a shift light installed, we are working on getting the spares together, and my Fiance has been practicing driving.

The car itself is pretty much ready to go, besides simple maintenance like an oil change, fluid checks, bleeding and adjusting the brakes, spark plugs, and swapping the front brake pads. The rest of the work is just getting the spares built and sorted. The spare left rear axle is proving to be a pain, I am having trouble getting the broken drive hub off even with the hub pulling tool.

On November 13th my Pops and I hop in his RV and head out to Austin Texas for the Formula 1 race which is going to be awesome! The only problem is it eats into prep time for the 24 hour LeMons race coming soon on Dec 8th. Totally worth it though.



I have a few videos I made playing with my GoPro and the video editing software on my Mac. You can see the shift light and our circle track windscreen mesh. The main reason I made them was to show the difference in the air noise with and without my homemade wind noise reducing cover. The first one is using no windscreen in the normal GoPro case and the second has the homemade windscreen cover. You can really tell the difference when at speed. The cover currently is just foam and tape, but when I am done it will be made from fake fur, foam, and will be held on with velcro.





(if you are on a mobile device and can not see the video go to the bottom of the page and click "View Web Version")

Video from Arse-Sweat June 2012 - 24hr @ Buttonwillow

Finally I have compressed and uploaded one of the videos from our last race. It was the best one that we had. It is of my teammate Justin driving from daylight into the night at the Full 24 hour race - Arse-Sweat-Apalooza @ Buttonwillow raceway June 2012.

It is about an hour long, sorry I did not take the time to trim it down. Enjoy!



(if you are on a mobile device and can not see the video go to the bottom of the page and click "View Web Version")

Safety Upgrades - 10/13/2012

With the ever evolving safety rules in LeMons racing and a few major crashes that occurred this year leading to "Proper Enforcement" of the rules; we had to make some upgrades.

While reading over the LeMons forums I found a thread about cars that failed tech at recent races that had passed earlier in the year. They are failing as a reaction of stiffer rules due to crashes this year since our last race. Though safety is a good thing, it would have been very annoying to show up at our next race thinking we are set for the same 2012 rules from our last two races this year. There was no notification from the LeMons organization about this, so lucky for me I read the forums often. Anyways.. I sent the Evil One (John the head safety tech in LeMons) some pics and asked about it, he replied,

I would prefer to see square tubing or angle iron over the perforated shelving angle that you have in there.
In a 70 mph collision that cell will exert somewhere around 4000 lbs of force on the metal you have there.... Is it ready for that?

If you can flex the top of that seat backwards, it will fail. Grab it and put back, if it gives much, it'll need to be braced. Most single shoulder harness hole seats fail this test.

Um no... our fuel mounting is not ready for that. The first upgrade was bracing for the Fuel Cell so we don't catch fire when the Spitwad gets punted by some knucklehead who came in too hot sending us rolling end over end through the dirt. Seen bellow, it is simply an angle iron halo around the top of the cell that is braced to the vehicle. I have to admit when I took the cell out and looked at our original mounting I did not feel so good about it. I feel better about it now.



The second was the need to brace the head rest of the racing seat if it flexes, so I grabbed it and pulled and yes ours does give, so we needed a brace. I guess in an accident someones head rest folded back at a 90 degree angle which is probably not so good for the neck. Some teams made some fancy braces but I just kindly asked my pops to weld up a pipe behind the headrest which does the trick.



Good thing my pops had a windshield being installed on the RX7 and was available to help. I can't fabricate or weld worth a damn and my other teammate was just returning from a work trip and was out of commission.

After this work was finished I found myself thinking more about safety. A complete rookie to car racing is racing the Spitfire soon and she needs to be safe. Time to reinspect the 5 point harness mounts, the seat mounts, put larger washers on the fuel cell straps, and go over the car and tighten things down. Then maybe I can move on to the fun stuff like the shocks and the shift light. Oh and I need to finish mounting the windshield mesh.



There is always more work to be done, parts to order, and oh yeah GoPro HD Hero 2s have gone on sale $199.99 for the outdoor bundle. Gotta get me one of those so we can get video from both cars!

Work Days 10/5 and 10/6

So my Pops helped me get the tow hook ups done on the truck and I took it for a test town run. It tows pretty well and should get the Spitwad to a few races.

My friend and teammate, Justin, came over and helped me out. We got the oil cooler back on and ran the motor a bit to get the cobwebs out. This will be the 5th race on this motor. It just keeps running, and I hope it will for another race weekend.



We then got the new mesh windscreen built and opened up the motor that failed at the 24 hour race. The fly wheel mounting bolts sheared right off. The motor it still good but it will take some work to get this back in running shape. So we will have to bring one of our other motors as a spare for the December race.

Quick Update - 9/10/2012

So the $63 pair of Monroe Air Adjust Shocks came in the mail. Did not get to mount them on the car yet. They could work... or they could blow out.. Who knows. Will keep the old worn out Konis as back up just in case. The idea is we can make a little bit of ride height adjustment with them to compensate for the Spitfire rear sag. It is ill advised, you should rebuild your spring and use proper gas shocks for racing, but when did "ill advised" stop anyone else in LeMons racing?

The first design and execution of Circle Track Mesh in place of the Lexan windshield was a failure. To weak, not enough support, and not enough mounting points. There are other ways I can design this and I just need to figure out a strong one. I was given some stronger metal mesh to work with, and this time I plan to build a frame for it to make it strong. It will then be mounted to the car using U-bolts. Safety is important.

Taking the old '88 Ford Truck in for the smog check this week, pass or fail, it needs to get done. I plan to use this thing to haul the Spitfire 3.5 hours each way to Chuckwalla in December and 7-8 hours each way to Sonoma Raceway next year. If it fails I will get a 2 month temp registration from the DMV and will keep throwing money at it like a it's a stripper till I feel it will make it on these hauls.

Saturday I plan to work on the Spitfire a little... and Sunday I am off to Puerto Rico for a two week work trip. Should be interesting....

New Team Driver - The Girlfriend

So it is official....

These emails from LeMons and Car and Driver are really cool. I never get them because I am the team captain.

Short work day - 9-1-2012

Well Justin came over to help me do some work on the Spitwad on Saturday. Pretty much I took off and cleaned out the Oil Cooler and he cut down our scratched up hard to see through lexan windshield and put on some steel mesh. At our last 2 races we had vision problems and this was the quickest cheap fix I could come up with. Also last race we had to swap the motor and stupid me forgot to hook up, take off, or plug the oil cooler. We then ran 14 hours and had a few off track excursions so the oil cooler was full of dirt.

With life being busy I took the time to speak to my teammate Ron, who is planning to turbo charge our 1300 motor for the next race. I told him I have a lot going on and I know he is a busy man so if he does not get the turbo charge set up done, we can just run the motor we have, or run the 1300 without the turbo.

We need to keep it simple and just go out and have a good time. This will be my girlfriend's first race and a new track for all of us. The only things we really need to do on the car is maintenance on the brakes, put different shocks on the rear, get the oil cooler hooked back up, and get our spares in order. I drove the car last and it was running fine.

I guess the shift light would be a good idea since my GF is learning how to drive stick... and damn, I could go for some good bacon right about now...

Off Season Summer 2012

So it has been awhile... I have not done a thing to the Spitfire since the 24 hour race at Buttonwillow. Hell.. I have not even helped my pops work on the RX7, though he has got some work done on it alone. Have only spent 15mins looking at the race video.. never even got any of it uploaded. New job is taking up a lot of my time with travel; but damn the pay, benefits, and job security are great to have. $$

What I have done is pick up a cheap truck to help haul the cars, and make it easier to pick up parts. Well actually Spank picked it up while both my pops and I were out of town and he dumped it in my pop's driveway. A '88 Ford F-150 XLT Lariat V8. It is a deal though $500 for the truck and $390 to bring the registration up to date. So for under a grand, I got a useable truck that can easily haul the Spitwad or the RX7 plus a truck load. It runs really well, well maintained, and 120K miles. Just some fun quirks like it wont start in park only in neutral. The passenger side window regulator is broken so the window just slides down. Over all I think it's awesome, kinda old, beat up, loud and clunky. Great crap can race car hauler.

The picture makes it look nicer then it is, the paint on the other side is pretty jacked up. I could paint it primer flat black with spray cans like the Spitwad, but that would be only if I can find the spare time. For sure though a large LeMons racing sticker is going in the window.

This weekend I will be heading up to the house to do a little work on the truck and the Spitfire... with all my work trips and my pops working on the RX7, time is limited.

I am also looking for a street legal stick shift car for under $1900.00. This is help get my girlfriend more comfortable with driving stick shift.. and to be honest, give me something fun to drive.

Arse-Sweat-Apalooza true 24 hour June 30th - July 1st 2012

Well it was one EPIC weekend. We finished the full 24 hour race. It only took an axle swap, a full motor swap, and some tuning to solve overheating at 3am to get it done, but we did it.

Honestly I have no idea right now were we finished.. but the Limo beat us hahah. That last one hour stint to finish the race was amazing. I managed to even pull our fastest laps during that last hour. It was a hell of an experience running a true 24 hour, and I am not sure if we will ever do it again, but I am sure glad we at least did it once. That is something I will never forget.



After I collect all the good pictures and videos and find out our results I will make another post, but for now it's back to the real world.....

Work Day 6-2-2012

We now have our numbers painted on, all six of our headlights mounted and wired up, and the car is pretty much ready to go. I managed to fry a relay by hooking it up wrong, but lesson learned. It did not damage anything and all that happened was the lights just stayed on. I bought more and better relays and the lights are all working correctly. When all the lights are on and the electric fan comes on it feels like we are turning on an air conditioner in a street car. 410 watts is a lot for the little Spitfire.

The Numbers were painted this time by one of my team mates, he did them up a little funky but with the lights, the rear gold flared fenders, and larger rear wheels, I think the it looks awesome.







I am very impressed with the Hawk Black brake pads we run. They have lasted us through all of our races so far and appear to only have worn about 1/3 of the way down. The car is really light but still very impressive. We did mount new brake drums on the rear as the original ones were starting to break down.

The rest is just tuning and maintenance. The only big thing left to do is hook up the air sensor and get our carb tuned. Less then 4 weeks until the race!

Work Day 5-19-2012

We had a productive day, was great having all 4 of the original team members working on the car on the same day! My dad, Ron, Justin, and myself. Thanks guys it was great. We got our lights installed and are almost done modifying the rear fenders to fit the new 14" wheels. We decided for simplicity to only run the 14" wheels in the rear for now and continue running the 13" wheels and tires we have on the front.





My pops cut out the blinker light holes to fit the halogen lights I bought to aim outward as apex lights.



Those lights combined with the pair of Hella 500FF lights we should have much better visibility. We still need to get them aimed better but we did a little test run and they work really well.



The left rear fender is pretty much finished and looks rough.. I like it.



We have some more work to do on the right rear fender, we need to clean up the wiring, and then get started on the brakes. Our progress is coming along nicely.

Oil Cooler Install - May 7th

Well.. I got sent on a two week work trip up to the Bay Area and while I was gone my pops installed the new Oil Cooler Kit.



It looks cool and, with the install location, should keep our oil temp down which will keep our oil pressure up.

He side mounted it so it would be out of the way of the motor if we needed to do a swap, and to protect it from debris that could kick up if anyone goes off track.



He made some high tech mods to radiator cowling giving it some air flow as well.



The total cost of this add on was $200. Kinda funny for what is supposed to be a $500 car, but hey, we were given a $5 residual so with everything we are adding on we are still bellow $500. None of this makes our car any faster.. We are just trying to help the car survive a full 24 hour race in the summer heat.

Residual 3/28/2012 $5.00
Oil Cooler Kit $140.00
Alternator $75.00
Alternator bracket and belt $25.00
larger belt $17.00
Oil cooler and fittings $60.00

Lemons Value $322.00

Motor Swap 4-28-2012

We did a full motor and transmission swap in preparation for our next race. It took us four hours but could have been faster. We ran into two issues with the water pump. The newer water pump has a larger pulley so we needed a larger belt we did not have. The other issue was the water temp gauge we had would not seat correctly and we had to switch to an electronic one.

Here is a time lapse video of the swap. The camera died 30mins before we got it started. If you pay close attention you can see some confusion and me driving off twice to buy a belt. The first one was too big.



Once we got it started and the timing set it sounded really good. It sure does sound like it has some work done (lumpy idle from aftermarket cam) and feels strong.

Here is a video of it right after we got the timing set. Sorry it is a bit jumpy.



Once the wheels come in and the tires are mounted we will be running it some more, then after installing the lights we will be driving it down the dark roads near by for some testing. That all should be enough to get it broken in and shaken down. If anything goes wrong we will still have just enough time to swap the old motor back in.

Update - Short Work Day 4/21/2012

Well we spent a few hours prepping the car for the motor swap planned for next weekend. I removed the transmission tunnel cover, packed up all the lighting install stuff I left laying all over the car, and my pops installed the new GM Delco 63amp one wire alternator. He did nice clean quick job with minimal modifications so that the stock alternator can easily be put back in if needed.

He used a generic curved alternator bracket we picked up at O'reilly's, cut shorter and bent to fit. Then used a Y connector to connect the two main lines to a single wire to the alternator. The belt is also a bit longer than stock to accommodate the large diameter of the alternator. It works great, the volt meter is showing a steady 14 volts and will provide plenty of juice for the off road lights.



Also, our application for the Arse-Sweat-Apalooza has been set accepted, so it is official. We are going to try and do a real 24 hour strait race in the Spitfire. If we can finish the race it will be our greatest accomplishment so far as a team. I can not wait for June 30th..

Score! Short Work Day 4-14-2012

We totally scored! The 3rd complete 1500 motor we have, that came from one of the rat infested parts cars, is basically a complete fresh rebuild! I am not even sure if it is broken in yet. So stoked!! but anyways...

So it started out a normal Saturday morning, but with expected AM showers, I was not in much of a hurry to get up to my Dad's to work on the car. I had a little bit of me time and just played some Dirt 3 for a few hours.



I got my lazy ass up and got to my pops and he was just pulling the third motor out of the shed. The plan was to tear this motor down and replace bearings, gaskets, and put on the rebuilt head we ran at the last race. We got the motor onto the stand and turned it upside down...



Black water came pouring out of the water pump... If looked nasty and at first we thought it was dirty oil mixed in the water, but after close inspection we realized it was dirty and not oily, so no biggie. At this point I realized, in contrast to the rest of the motor that the fuel pump looked quite new.



My pops then removed the oil sump and started unbolting the connecting rods so he could inspect the bearings. While taking these pictures, I was noticing how new everything looked inside the motor as well.. When he got the first bearing off he said that they were new and are not stock. It appears the motor is bored out .020, which is what the bearing marking indicates. He inspected the rest of them and said, this is all new and he will just put a new gasket on and close it back up. I snapped a few more shots of the inside of the motor. Even the Pistons look new, and you can see only a minor discoloration on the inside of it.





We then flipped the motor over to take the valve cover off and inspect the top of the head, and what we saw were a lot of new parts..





This motor appears to be completely rebuilt from the bottom up. We knew it had a cam, but we had no idea how fresh it was. So we scored this gem for free with just some time, labor, and parting things out of those rat infested cars. This will save us some money and time spent rebuilding. We also do not have to include the cost of bearings in our car value for the next race. This motor will be great for the upcoming full 24 hour race, and if we are good to it, we should have no motor issues the entire race.

My pops then closed it back up, we put it back on the wooden cart, put the clutch & pressure plate back on, and bolted up the transmission.



I then looked through everything I had bought to prep for the race and piled it on the Spitfire. We have plenty of lights, wiring, fuses, relays, new fuel cans, reflectors, etc..

The plan forward is to just spend a little bit of time this next week prepping the car to have the motor and transmission pulled and then the weekend after make the swap. We will have the new alternator by then and the wheels should arrive around that time as well. By mid May we will be testing everything out and have a hole month to relax before the 24 hour race on June 30th. We can use the extra time to do some work on the RX7.

This could not be going better! Who could of thought this ugly thing is a gem...