Work Day 1/28/2012

We had another productive work day on Saturday....

It was a windy Saturday and our welder friend was busy over the weekend so we decided just to finish cutting the tubes for the fuel cell protection and put off welding anything for another day.

We did very little with the actual race car it self, plugged some holes, and began making a cover for the back of our kill switch mount. Then one of our old team members came over and added some art work on the trunk of the car for us. I am a horrible painter so I am glad he wanted to do it, and it looks cool. I will just finish painting in the letters later. It is one of the Sex Pistol's album names, we just changed "Pistols" to "Pistons" as usual. Damn we are creative...




Then after he left, my dad and I decided to go check out the motor in the 3rd Spitfire. After charging the battery and hooking up a make shift fuel tank out of a 5 gallon fuel bottle and some spare fuel line, the thing started right up, ran smooth, and sounded good. So we drove it around to where the engine hoist is and I noticed the clutch and transmission felt really good. We worked for hours to get the motor and transmission out and we did it. This motor is now mated to one of the standard 4 speed transmissions and only needs a little bit more work done before it will be a spare that is ready to drop in. The Overdrive transmission that was in the car will go up for sale as well as other parts we won't use. Like maybe the windshield? Though I am not sure how the market looks for used Spitfire 1500 windshields... 

Here is the car now minus the motor. I will be pulling the diff out of it next week to have as a spare, because the more spares the better.



Here is the motor it has a Schneider camshaft, so we're told, and if it is anything like the motor we pulled from the other Spitfire (we got from the same guy) it will be in pretty good shape. The alternator is good, the water pump seems fine. We just have to finish removing the smog air lines and plug the holes those lines leave in the head then tighten things down and it will be ready to drop in if needed.



We had a few casualties during this work day, my dad tore open his knuckle pretty badly and I drenched my cell phone in old radiator water. Nothing some bandage, a popsicle stick, a blow dryer, some alcohol, and a slab of prime rib couldn't cure. You can figure out what cured what....

On a side note, I have started making myself a punk rock vest and some other things to help with our theme aspect. As the captain I have been lacking in that department, but I should be pretty punked out for the Infineon race. I will add photos of that once I get going on it.

There is more work to be done....

Work Day 1/22/2012

We got some of the updates for the new safety requirements started over the weekend. The kill switch needed to be moved to be within reach of a belted in driver, the seat back brace needed to be expanded and we are adding protection around the fuel cell. Most of this work was done by my dad and tacked in place as I do not know how to weld and work done on the car is not the time to learn. A friend of ours will come later and do the complete welds to make it solid.

Here is the new Killswitch location. We still need to add a cover over the back, mark the off position, and mark the area with lightning bolts.



This is the new expanded seat back brace to prevent the seat from falling back in the case of an accident. Our old one did not cover enough area.




I was wondering what year our car was as 1978 was only a guess. I found out we covered the vin/info plate when we were painting the car and we also cut it in half while cutting away the inside of the door.. But from what I can tell it was built in Oct 1979, so most likely it was sold as a 1980. What made this confusing is the way the cars radiator is mounted strait up and down and it did not have the electrical fan which I believe were added in 1979. It has the front rubber bumper so we figured it was after 1977. The previous owners could have changed the front end to have the older style large radiator with belt driven fan, or they could have added this body to the frame. I guess we will never know, but does it really matter?



I went back and took pictures of the parts cars, the first is the one we stripped down already. There is not much left but the front suspension and steering column. We already have the motor and the diff in the racecar, with the transmission and axles as spares.



Here is the third spitfire which a friend was going to try get it running as a street car but that never happened. We plan to pull the motor and use it in the race car eventually, and sell the over drive transmission to cover buying it back. Yeah he never even got it out of my dad's yard, and all we have taken from it so far is the rear rubber bumper that will go on the race car for the next race.



You can see in this car the way the radiators were mounted with an electric fan, which is why we were thrown off guessing the race car's year.



Next week we will be building the cover for the kill switch and labeling it; and getting help from our friend to finish up the fabrication and welding work. Then we will mount the ugly rubber bumper and possibly get the motor in the third car running.

Failure and Success

As mentioned before we have had our ups and downs with this racing team. I would have to say when we broke on the practice day before our first race attempt at LeMons Arse Freeze 2010, that was the worst. While sitting around today feeling miserable with a cold I got no work done on the Spitfire (sad I know) but I did manage to find the pictures from Arse Freeze 2010. Here are a few with the busted Spitfire on the trailer parked in the handicapped spot where we felt we belonged.





Here are the pics of the stripped hub and axle which was the cause of our demise..





The whole weekend was not a bust as we did end up enjoying ourselves though. The rest of the photos from that weekend can be seen Here.

From my point of view, I would have to say our highest point so far was the very next race, the ChumpCar race that was at Buttonwillow in June 2011. I dug around and could not find any pictures of that weekend I guess I was just having so much fun with everything going so well. We ran the entire 14 hour race with no black flags, no issues except for some leaked and/or burnt oil (4 qts worth). It was a great weekend with the original three team members and an extra driver. We finished 11th out of 27 cars and were awarded the Chumpiest Chumps award.



This award is still on display at my apartment and is a great reminder that things can go really well.

From the beginning. Racing for cheap and staying bellow the $500 car value.

So yes racing is expensive, the tires, the oil, the gas, towing, parts, nuts and bolts, safety gear, booze, costumes etc... but we have managed to keep our teams cost way down. Even though our car being a Spitfire, and can be given leeway for they are known for blazing speed and reliability (yeah right), we have stayed true to the $500 value.

Let me start from the beginning... I know, I know, the time line of this blog has been mixed up, sorry. It will start to be in order after this one, maybe....

The original car we started with was intended as a parts car for my dad's vintage Spitfire he was racing in VARA. He picked it up for either $100 or $180, he claims $100 I remember the later. Come to think of it, it was $100 after he sold the windshield maybe? Oh well it does not really matter, you get the idea, it was cheap.




After being in a Chump race together with Spank, my dad looked over this Spitfire again and asked me if I would be interested in building this thing as crap can racer with him. Obviously I said yes but at that point we had no idea what the team's theme would be about. I have a good friend I knew would be interested in this and invited him to join and that was how our team was born. We started ripping all the extra junk off the car, wiring, smog, interior, fuel tank and we stripped it bare. What we found was a car that had been some what restored and painted but we were unsure about the motor.



After we got it cleaned up added a battery, some fuel, and checked for oil, it started. The motor actually ran pretty smooth and sounded OK. So by default this was the motor we were going to start off with. We didn't even do any work on the motor as we now had to get the thing built to pass safety tech. This is were a majority of the cost came from. The metal for the roll cage, the racing seat, the new brake pads, brake rotors, fuel cell, fire extinguisher, tires, and countless nuts and bolts. I could not tell you what this ended up costing us (mostly my dad), but we did all we could to save money. We built the cage our selves following the rules then had a friend, who does metal fabrication and welding for a living, come clean it up and make sure it was solid. A good man who did it as a favor and for some beer.














Now these safety items do not count towards the $500 value of the car as per the rules. So technically we were still under $200 as we bought an air filter and some other misc things. 

One night while my buddy and I were having some beers we came up with the name for the team. We knew we wanted to do something punk rock, and He has the Sex Pistols British flag hanging on his wall. I am not sure exactly how we came to the Sex Pistons, but the following week he made up our team logo.





We then bought four decent 13" Sumito HTR 200 tires to race on and two cheap hard highway tires for spares.  Hooked everything up got it running and painted it black with primer spray paint. We drove it around a bit and were all ready to go. The rest was all fun painting on the car and making the rear brake lights using some skulls with red LED lights in the eye sockets.









We then took it to the first race, and that story is in the "Our Story and Some Pics" blog, but basically it ended before it started (DNS).

We knew we needed a new axle and hub so my dad found us a used one for $50 if I remember correctly. We are not sure if that counts as it is a direct replacement and does not change the value but lets say it does and that puts us at $250. Then my dad saw a craigslist ad for two complete Spitfires for $500 I mentioned in the last blog.  What I did not mention was he gave us an extra standard 4 speed transmission as well. After we picked them up my friend decided he wanted to turn one into a street car so we sold it to him for $250, putting us at $500 car value if you count spares. We then stripped the other one down for spares and did the ChumpCar race at Buttonwillow Raceway in June 2011.

We then swapped out the motor and overdrive transmission from the original Spitfire for the standard 4 speed transmission and the motor in the spare car. We sold the over drive transmission from the original car  for $250 on craigslist putting us back down to $250 again. My dad found a guy selling a motor, used webber, and damaged headers for a Spitfire 1500 for  $150. He picked those up and I decided to buy us an electric fan for $45 so we could have better cooling and take some resistance off the motor. So we were now at $445.

We patched up the headers and bolted them on with the webber and electric fan for our second ChumpCar Race which was at AutoClub Speedway in Fontana on October 2011.  After this race our motor still felt good and we fixed the transmission clutch arm pin problem for the cost of a bolt.

We ran this same set up at Arse Freeze Apalooza @ Buttonwillow in December 2011. We did buy new tires for $500 but they will last us two races, and we had the $350 of welding work done at the track. These are just expenses of the hobby and do not cont towards the car value, so we split the cost and had a great race. 

Now my friend who bought the other Spitfire from us never got it on the road. So the plan is to start stripping it down and sell the over drive transmission, windshield, and anything else we can. We are estimating to get around $350 for this, and we are only paying him back the $250. So it wont technically effect our car value.

The rest is all work we do ourselves so that cost is up for speculation. The thing is we are computer people by trade. My dad is a Sr. Computer Scientist and I am a Q.A. Software Tester. It's not like we are mechanics.  The next real cost for improvement is the head work, but it is only $50 in parts that really does not effect the cars value. It will still just be a low compression head for a Spitfire 1500 that has the smog holes we plugged with bolts. (Heads seen in last blog).

Should have pics of the 2 spare parts cars and we will try and find pics of the stripped axle and hub to add later.

We had a Productive Work Day 1-7-2012

On Saturday my father and I spent some time looking over the Spitfire and the spares. I was pleasantly surprised with what we found and what we got done. 
 



First of all when I arrived to work on the car my dad was already hard at work getting the motor in the car ready to pull off the head. This was exciting as we have yet to look any deeper in these motors then under the valve cover or the timing chain cover. We were not sure exactly which versions of the 1500 motor we had, all we knew was they were North American smog motors because we ripped off the smog equipment and plugged the air holes in the heads ourselves. When trying to finally lift the head off is when we hit our first snag. One of the studs was heavily rusted to the head and it took some PB Blaster, large flat head screw drivers, a crowbar, a hammer, and some serious torquing with vise-grips to break it lose. 
 





With the head off we saw rather clean piston heads and smooth cylinder walls, this motor was in really good shape, but sorry I forgot to take a picture. It seems we really scored with the two complete rat infested rusty Spitfires we purchased for $500 off a guy as we got this motor out of one of those cars. He told us he was once  building them with his twin sons so both were being built to run, but with how life works they ended up almost finished but were left to rot away for years in the yard. He was very pleased to sell them to us knowing they would be used to race. The other one of these cars we have yet to look at besides starting the motor and with what we have got off the first one so far; good motor, good transmission, good diff, spare axles, etc... I am betting the drive train will also be in pretty good shape but we wont know until we start it up again and pull it apart next weekend.

We then rolled the motor out of the shed that came in our Spitfire originally and pulled the head off it as well. This motor got us through a full 14 hour race but had very low power. 



As we expected it was not in that great of shape, we could feel a ridge inside the cylinder walls and the pistons heads were not as clean.  We then got to the reason why we were so interested in pulling the heads, were these the lower 7.5:1 compression motors or the higher 9:1 compression motors. From our first guess we thought the original motor was a 7:5:1 and the motor we currently had in the car was a 9:1 because it felt much stronger. Both motors obviously had the dished pistons and, with a chem lab looking device my dad borrowed from Spank, he measured the volume of the combustion chambers with mineral oil and determined they were stock for the 7:5:1 compression motors. So we have been running the slowest 1500 motors made for the Spitfires. We just saw a boost in power do to a lucky find motor, a used webber carb, and repaired busted headers we bolted on all which cost next to nothing. Very cool and now we know what we are working with.



We then pulled the front springs off the car to cut them because the front end sits a little higher then the rear. This is do to the spacer we put under the rear transverse leaf spring to give us more camber in the rear last year before the Arse Freeze Apalooza @ Buttonwillow. We only need a slight drop in the front end to balance the car and spending money on new springs or fancy adjustable shocks just would not be very cost effective. So out came the cutting tool for some high tech custom ride height adjustment. 



About one coil was cut off on each spring and back on they went still smoking from being cut. We checked using the very sophisticated methods of eyeballing from a distance and how many fingers can be fit under the front and the back end. It seemed to be almost perfect with very little effort and only the cost of wear on a cutting wheel.

Next came the brakes and I expected we would be changing the front pads, the rear shoes, rear drums, and the bleeder valves.  The front bleeder valves were jacked up really bad and one was stuck some how after bleeding them at the last race. 



So we replaced all four bleeder valves at a costly $15. Now I do not have a picture of the pads and shoes but after three full endurance races, they looked almost new. The Hawks black brake pads are awesome, they give us plenty of stopping power and are showing great wear life. They will last us at least two more full races at this rate, and most likely more. Things are shaping up to be a lot less costly then I thought, as we were able to put the new pads, shoes, and drums back in the shed and wont be needing them yet.


A good solid day, hopefully the remaining work we do before Infineon goes as well.

Thoughts about cost....

Got some good info from Spank about the cost of LeMons racing...


Spank has been giving me hints along the way about how to survive in LeMons racing which I have been listening to but not had to deal with thus far. This is because I am spoiled by my dad who pretty much covers everything from the towing, food, new/used parts, and the collecting and paying of the team/drivers entry. I have just been handing him checks for the obvious things like my share of the entry fees and main costs like tires and welding work at the track. Otherwise the only things I pay for are oil, spark plugs, and some fuel for the races. He has covered the cost of all sorts of parts that I have never kept track of and never added up the costs but I am trying to change this. I asked my dad to send me the receipts for the things he purchases for the Spitfire; I took on the responsibility to get our 4th driver for Infineon; and I am forking out more money this year.. hopefully. We were not sure what to charge a new driver so my dad said to ask for $400 which caught someone’s eye the day I posted the offer. The $400 is way better then we would normally have to deal with which is a loss of $230 by only having three drivers, plus dividing the other expenses between only three people. Though, after this new break down of racing cost that Spank sent me, I am realizing that in the future we should be charging around $500 for arrive and drive people if we want to break even. The driver we found has experience and if he drives well while paying $400 then we will for sure be happy. For the race after Infineon it will be a different matter as we are upgrading from a 13” wheel to a 15” wheel so we’re picking up four wheels and tires. Now of course this led me to spending way to much time looking at tires trying to figure out how much they will cost us but I found out if we can run a 195/50/15 tire that would give us the best prices and more variety. There is also the possibility that my friend will rejoin the team as well.


Well I took the cost break down Spank sent me and modified it for my own team and this is how it breaks down for Infineon, haha breaks down (bad racing joke)


$500 Car entry
$400 Driver entry ($100 x 4 drivers)
$390.00 Tow vehicle fuel for the RV (1028mi Round trip @ 10 mpg towing =  103 gallons @ $3.80/gal)
$240 for 60gal on track fuel of 91 @ $4.00/gal  
$35 Oil and filters  (6qts oil VR1 @ $5/qt & 1 Filter $5ea)
$15 spark plugs
$33 Brake pads - we have used the same set for 3 races @ $50 pair
$275 Tires ($500 for 4 tires $50 mount/balance and they last 2 races so price reflected is 1/2)

$1,888 Total
$472 per driver-- and that's just our obvious out-of-pocket expenses.

Hidden costs for a season of racing ???
These things I have no Idea what was spent or will be spent on them - Motor Seals, Gaskets, General sprays glues lubes cleaners, Brake Master cylinder, Clutch Master & Slave cylinders, Clutch Plate, Motor Work, Brake rotors, nuts, bolts and other random hardware.... 


So I am thinking in the future we should be charging $500-$550 for the arrive and drive people depending on where the race is located and what we have done to the car.  For the other people that race with us it will all depend on how much work & money they put into the car, and what ever else they do for us like hauling spare motors and transmissions for example. But for this next race at Infineon my dad is working out a deal with our current 3rd driver and we already offered a new driver the spot for $400. This will do fine though as they both have the LeMon's racing experience we are looking for and otherwise we would be losing the money. So having both of them will be great and no one said racing is cheap. This is just less expensive racing....
 

Sim Practice and the next race.

Haha, just going through the 24 hour of LeMons forums and found this analogy of the classes.

“I look at LeMons like it's a knife fight:
Class A guys bring guns of various caliber and capacity
Class B guys bring knives and fight fair
Class C guys bring spoons and beer”

Yeah we run C class, and I would say our Spitfire is comparable to a spoon, well one that has been run through the garbage disposal a few times. They also got me on the other point, I never forget the beer... ever.

We did a small amount of work on the Spitfire the throttle is fixed (it was sticking at the last race), I marked the Tow points, and found a few more useful things off the parts car. Soon we are doing leak down tests on the motors and getting some work done on the heads. The rest of the work is simple maintenance work. What we really need to do is get the motor in the 3rd car started so we can decide if that motor is good. We then can sell the overdrive transmission and take other parts as needed. Another big problem right now is how to get rid of the stripped down parts car, with no rear end it is a pain to move. might have to use a winch and a flat bed trailer to get rid of it. Oh well, we will have just under 3 months to get it done. 

We also got Forza 4 set up for learning the Infineon Raceway. There is no Spitfire in the game so I got the Datsun 510 set up to drive close enough to the way the Spitfire handles and about the same power to weight ratio. Should be plenty good to learn the track, plus it is Forza 4 gotta love it.  I am trying to get an idea of what track lay out we will be running at Infineon this year for our Forza practice.
There are 2 track lay outs they can pick and choose corners from. The Indy layout and the Long Course layout. The corners they can change are 7, 9 and 11. From what I have gathered on the forums it sounds like they use a mix of the 2, but every time they have used 9a from the Indy lay out, which is good and bad. The 9a corner is a tight chicane after a strait away. This means a tight fun corner and that people will be hard on the brakes and likely to dive bomb into the corner and t-bone people. I will have to bring this up with my team to watch out for this and maybe even suggest that we take the inside line away early, though that could be dangerous as well.  I guess there has not been many issues with it thus far so we will just roll with it. 




INDY COURSE


LONG COURSE


Recently I keep spending so much time thinking about things we can do to improve the Spitfire and forget we need to concentrate on the things we need to do to keep it running. I spent a lot of time reading on a guys website which is full of great information on the Spitfire that I feel we can find useful.



I got into another site where a guy was explaining a rebuild of the rear transverse leaf spring for $35, after which I was excited and interested in doing it. After I emailed it to my pops he reminded me that if we stiffen the rear spring it will take away some of the negative camber we added (or add back camber we took out, how ever you want to look at it). He was right of course and I remembered we just need to leave it alone as it handles pretty damn well, and if anything we can just cut ½ a coil of the front springs to make the car sit level. Really what we need to do is ignore it and focus on the motors. If we can keep the car running and have a good spare motor we will be much better off, lasting to the end of the race is more important then a slight improvement in handling or a few more horses under the hood.


Keep it simple...

In car video from Arse Freeze Apaloza 2011 @ Buttonwillow

 I was able to upload an hour long video to my youtube account. So I uploaded one of my entire stints from the Arse Freeze Apalooza 2011 at Buttonwillow. There are a lot of yellow flags, and a lot of cars passing me. I compressed the video from 5GB down to 350MB so the sound and video quality is not the best, but it will give you an idea of what it is like to race in a slow Class C car at a LeMons race.  I do some funny things like wave, point people by, give multiple thumbs up, yell, curse, and I think what appears to be dancing. Have a look and, if your bored with an hour to kill, watch the whole thing. You may notice the car shimmying back and forth under braking. This is do to our right front brakes having air that was taken in from a bad bleeder valve. We bled it a few times, and again after this day was over. We are fixing it before the next race. There are a few notable moments in the video. One of which  I remember thinking, man that guy could have taken me out. If you fast forward to about 26:50 and watch and listen, screeching tiers are heard followed by a car flying through the dirt. Not exactly sure what this guy was doing but he was obviously not watching ahead. Another can be seen if you fast forward to about 39:30 and watch the car in front of me blow the corer.  Anyway here is the video....

Our Story and some pics -

 Our crap can racing team is called the Sex Pistons which is a spin off of the British punk rock band the Sex Pistols. With our car being British and horrible, having a British punk rock theme doing a spin on the Sex Pistols was easy choice.  We had The flag  painted on the hood by my sister that says “God Save R Spitfire” and it looks amazing. This was a play on the Sex Pistols logo of the flag and their song “God Save the Queen”.  The point of this craziness is to participate  in 24 hour of LeMons and ChumpCar racing events.

We have a Facebook page for our race team, but have yet to put much effort into it.  You can find it Here. 

 I have to say that our team has had it’s ups and downs, but when we originally decided to start it was lots of hard work but plenty of good times were had between my father, one of my best friends, and myself. 

Before I get deep into the story, here are some pictures of the Car then the story of our racing team, from my perspective follows...


My favorite pic so far with me at the wheel racing against the Zombee MG.





The current motor set up.




The dash




 We even brought her to a car show and actually did get a lot of attention...





On track shot from an in car camera with my dad racing the Zombee MG.




One of our drivers ready and waiting with the car before the track opened in the morning.




And here is another shot of the motor right after a race, notice the oil..




And now for the story.....

The first race we attempted to do, Arse Freeze Apalooza 2010 at Butonwillow, did not go as planned. It in fact went horribly. We got everything loaded up and ready, we were going for it with the three of us, 1 driver short, but my father was willing to take the wallet hit as well as paying for himself and I already. Then while I was at work the day we planned to leave, I got a text or call (can’t remember which) from my friend stating that he would not be able to go do to personal reasons I do not feel is necessary to share. From work I met with him and unloaded the spare parts from his vehicle into mine and drove to my pops to give him the news and explain how it would only be the two of us. We were not going to quit and were still excited to go racing.  We got there late Thursday night, it was cold, dark and quiet in the pits, we relaxed, had a drink then went to sleep. When we woke up I went outside to find many teams with insane cars, it was like Disney Land for junk car nerds. We got the car through safety tech inspection with no problems  When the Bull Shit inspectors saw what the car was they had us pop the hood and just laughed. A Spitfire? Good luck! was basically the attitude, but in LeMons that means AWESOME! So we rolled away happy. 


I was paid the day before and Decided to spend some of the little money I had to test the car that day on track. After a good 30min run that was a blast and put a huge smile on my face, I came in and we looked the car over and then I went back out for another 40min run. On my way in on the last lap only a few turns from the pits, I felt a clunk and saw out of the corner of my eye the left rear wheel go flying away down the track. I kept the car under control and aimed it into the dirt. After being shamefully towed in we looked over the car. The hub had stripped the axle-hub key off the axle and was still bolted to the wheel. At this point I thought well some welding and we can make it work. Little did I know that these Spitfires have 3 types of metal between the axle, axle-hub key, and the hub. When the track welder took a look at it he said, I can not do this, and I do not recommend anyone try as it will not be safe on the track and someone will get hurt. We then made some calls, looked on the internet, and the closest axle and hub we could find was a racing kit that was $3500.00 way out of our budget and would be worth more then everything we put into the car so far. We went around the pits, got some suggestions on people to call. One guy was two states away at a classic car race, another was a 7 hour drive each way. We pretty much gave up. It was a sad feeling, but reasonably after all the money my father had spent, having only his old RV, and I having spent my last part of the budget, we were done. Sure many people came over excited, we can do this, but many realized the same thing, it can not be welded. We chose to stay the night Friday in case anyone responded to emails for our need. After seeing the crap situation we were in, the team camping next to us pointed out they had a keg of Arrogant Bastard Ale and told me to enjoy, which I thoroughly did.  We received no offers  reasonable on the parts we needed and knew we were done for sure. We decided to hang out a bit on Saturday and watch and just enjoy being there and we had a good time. My father then asked me that afternoon if I wanted to go home or stay for the next day. I told him, lets stay, camp, watch the races, and help out, we were going to be here another day anyway. So that is what we did and man I am glad we did. The racetrack pits were like a party that night, drinks, music, cars putting around, people wrenching, and movies projected on the building walls. It was cold, but not cold enough to scare people inside.

The next morning I awoke with quite the hang over after two drinking nights in a row. That day I got the feeling that my dad has been asking, or maybe begging, Spank to let me drive one of his cars he brought to the race. If I remember correctly he had 3, the Turbo Mini, a Moke, and this Citroen DS. Whether Spank did it out of pity, or to shut my dad up, ( really I know he did it cause he is a good guy) but he gave me some wheel time in the Citroen DS. What a pig this thing was, and it has a column shifter which I had to ask how to use. I got instructions from Gram, (who if I remember correctly is a classic Minni Cooper mechanic and has a classic English accent,) he told me something in the order of; “Fist is up, second is down, third is up and behind first, the brakes work well, now go out there and just drive the piss out of it until the over heating light comes on, then bring her in”. That was good enough and I went out and had a blast. The ride and brakes on this large car was amazing, and by knowing how to drive over the Phil Hill Corner I was able to pass much faster cars. When I brought it in after each of the 3 times they let me go drive(30 mins each), there was no water left in the radiator and once it was out of gas. We would just dump in more fuel and water and send the next person out. Oh and I forgot to mention, this Citroen ran on only 3 of the 4 cylinders. (Thanks again Spank) The weekend was a horrible failure for our team, but fun for me and filled me with the desire to continue this hobby. On a final note on that Citoen DS for those of you who do not know, Spank drove it out to the east coast to enter it in a race then I believe he gave it away.. haha classic. 


    The next race we planned to do, we ended up not having the funds for, the RV needed work, I was in between jobs again, and my friend could not make the event anyways. We skipped it, and waited until June 2011 for the Chump Car race at Buttonwillow when we had the Spitfire ready, had the money, the time off, and found a 4th driver to join us. My father’s neighbor had shown interest in our crap can racer and came along with his father to help out for the weekend. We had a great time, did some drinking mostly between my friend and I, and had a solid 14 hour strait race with only some oil leaked and burnt off. We used up an extra 4 quarts of oil but that low compression 1500 motor slowly got us around the track the whole 14 hours. My friend called me the Sunday driver cause I was limping the car around the track in the 98deg heat in the worst part of the day, while he managed our fastest lap for the weekend. I never wanted to push the car, I wanted to finish. Giving the car time to cool during my runs may or may not have saved the motor, but it felt like the right thing to do. Once it cooled down we all ran much faster stints. The last few, I might add, where in pitch dark and we had stock headlights. This lead to 2 scary last stints for my friend and I but we managed to do it. The Chump Races are great, but they are a different world from LeMons. Yes the cars are $500 before safety gear, but it is one class and normally only 25-40 cars. Nothing like the 120+ cars LeMons races have, with cars in our lap time range. In other words, our Spitfire does not compete in Chump very well. We did end up being awarded the Chumpiest Chumps award for our horrible car amazingly running the whole 14 hour race. Good weekend, we learned a lot and met the first goal of finishing the race while having fun.

Our next race we had to drop my friend as a driver as his license got restricted (another personal story I do not feel should be shared). We picked up my father’s neighbor who has been a great help and good driver, and a MGB driver my dad met from VARA. This was another Chump Car race but at AutoClub Speedway in Fontana during the month of October. For this race we put in a motor from one of the parts cars we picked up which seemed to have a little bit more power and we also dropped the over drive transmission for a standard 4 speed. We were not using the over drive anyway and people who build Spitfires for the road really want them so we sold it. Other additions for this race were a Weber carburetor, replaced the motor driven fan with an electric one, and replaced the stock catalytic converter containing exhaust for strait through headers and pipe. The car ran much stronger with this set up and with the strait exhaust sounded great. We started out running rather well and we were all were enjoying the day. Well it just so happens there is this drift pin in the transmission bell housing that the clutch arm pivots on and also holds it in. My dad had pointed out to me (while pulling the 4 speed transmission out of the parts car) that under race conditions it gets so hot this pin will just slide out. We agreed we would change it..... Well we didn’t, we forgot, completely spaced on it and  after about 5 hours into the 7 hour day the poor driver who we had on the track all of a sudden had the clutch arm slam into the clutch and lock the car up. We got it towed into the pits and after some wrenching and fussing with it someone figured it out. We grabbed our spare transmission and swapped it in that evening. While looking over the car we noticed we had a nasty flat spot on one of our tires.



So we grabbed the hard low traction spare tires and, by a vote of 3-1 against my dad, we mounted them on the back and put the good tires on the front, thinking it would be best to have the steering. We then had dinner, I had some beers and we all went to bed for the night. 
 The next morning we went out racing again, not the slowest car on the track mind you, and now with horrible rear tires, the first driver spun many times. Our second driver went out and got hit and these incidents lead to us being black flagged. The decision was made to swap the low traction tires to the front for a safe and manageable controlled push.  We ran a couple more hours then we started to hear this horrible knocking sound coming from the rear end. The car was also pulling funny but was still drivable so we just kept going. I have to say It was quite funny hearing that knocking sound from the pits as the Spitfire went by. We were eventually meat balled (black flag with red dot indicating the car has problems) off the track. The car was blowing oil on the track and smoking. We stood there and looked at it and thought we blew the main seal, and with the unknown issue causing the knocking sound, and only two hours or so left we called it quits. Not a bad weekend, not a great weekend, but was fun, we all got plenty of track time, made some passes, and we learned. 10 hours out of 14 was not bad for us. We did not win any awards, though I did not expect us too, besides that is not the point. 

Here is a video of the Spitfire going down the strait away, if you listen you can hear the knocking sound. Imagine how loud it would be in the car.

Once home and rested and a week passed we got to working on the car. What was that knocking sound? We got under the car and noticed some of the problems. One of the u-joints was falling apart and one of our rear shocks had busted. My pops said he would order the parts and next weekend we could replace the u-joints and rebuilt the others, and we can mount the shocks John from Chump Car gave us. We did exactly that, then when we drove the car around the back yard, I could still hear that clunk clunk clunk soud. We got the car on jack stands and spun the back tires while my dad watched and he noticed that only one wheel spun and the other shook. He then tried to stop the tire that spun and could not. We then realized that the diff was shot to hell. There was only power going to one wheel, the other sides gear was just skipping. This was what was causing the car to pull and turn better one way then the other and make that horrible clunking sound. I then said I will go rip the diff and leaf spring off the parts car and come back another night so we can swap it. This we did, and also added a spacer under the leave spring lowering the rear end and adding more camber. In the end it was all worth it. My dad got the front seal changed but noticed it was not that bad. He was kind of confused as to how all that oil got everywhere.

We got the car back together, and bought new tires but damn, I do not recommend anyone race with 13” wheels in LeMons anymore. With the tire selection allowed with the LeMons rules (190 tread ware or greater) your stuck with horrible highway tires, or struggling to find tires with good traction that will put you back over $550.00 for the set of four. In crap can racing spending that much on tires for us is not acceptable. Our plan for the future is to upgrade to a 15” wheel after we finish off these tires. As we were changing the oil, plugs, and tightening everything down, my dad noticed the oil filter was cranked down really tight and the rubber seal was smashed. I was the one who put it on, and I do believe, it was my fault. We could have finished that race if I would not have not over tightened he filter, or if we figured out where the leak was from at the track, but still the diff could have gotten worse and caused a crash. I still felt dumb about cranking down the oil filter, I must have not been thinking as I know better. We were now set for another attempt at Arse Freeze Apalooza Dec. 3-4 2011, and man was I excited. We had 3 drivers, plenty of spares parts, and high hopes. 

My dad ended up selling his classic VARA racing Spitfire and put the money towards a new motor home and at the last min decided to move everything over from the old motor home so we could take it to the race. It is a nice ride, we managed to get everything we needed to the track with us and it was nice to sleep in. This selling of his classic VARA racer gives my dad more time, and having the newer motor home, the eagerness to drive and tow the Spitfire further. This means more LeMons races! So no Chump races are planned for 2012 only LeMons which I think is awesome, I enjoy Chump Car, but LeMons I enjoy so much more.

Now once we got to Arse Freeze Apalooza ‘11, we hit a snag in a form of not passing safety tech inspection. My fault mostly, as team captain it is my responsibility to check the rules. So we went there under the wrong assumption that because we passed last year, and we passed ChumpCar’s tech all year we would have no problems but oh we were wrong. The new rules required stronger roll cage mounts, and after there being a pretty bad wreck at a different LeMons race earlier this year still in their minds, they failed us. We needed to buff up the spreader plates on the bottom of our cage and add more padding around the driver. We did not have a welder with us so we wheeled the car down to the race shop and the guy quoted us $300.00.  We decided it is not worth trying to scramble up the metal and welder from someone in the pits and handed over the car. We were not the only ones, many teams faced this problem. The shop was backed up, it took him six hours to do a max of a three hour job. What frustrated us, is the guy wanted to charge us $100 an hour he had the car not just for the actual work time he put in to the car. My pops worked it out with this, eh hem, gentleman, and we ended up paying $349.00. This was just one more thing we did not need to be paying for but we were there to race and race we did. I later paid my dad for half this expense though, being the way he is, he was not going to ask me for it.  With the car back and safety tech closed till morning, all we could do was hang out. So we ate, and put back a few and relaxed. That night got so cold. We were outside drinking and people were playing pool, yes pool, on a table Spank’s team brought as a bribe for the judges. We awoke early Saturday morning, ate breakfast, got the car started and warmed up. I decided with my dad being frustrated the day before, with the whole tech failing and money situation, that I would take the car to tech and handle it myself. We did what they asked and Jay was going to pass us, but I could tell he was not at ease with our car, he pointed out that the fuel cell is very close to the rear bumper, and this old shit can has no modern impact crumple zones. (This is what led me to recently email him pics asking what he would like us to do for 2012 so we wont face a tech failure again). But he passed us, I thanked him and we got registration done. We put our other driver in the car to start the race and off he went things were looking good. But then he came in early because he was black flagged for passing under yellow then debated with the LeMons judges which is a no no. This sucks, but was partly my fault. This is his first Lemons event and I forgot to give him a heads up on how crazy it is on track with 120+ cars and also how to behave with the LeMons crew. When he came in he mentioned the car was still pulling to the right under braking, a problem we thought we had fixed but the car was drivable so we just dealt with it. I got a good clean stint done then handed the car over to my dad. He went out and soon also got a black flag for passing under a yellow flag. I was off watching the race with my girlfriend and her friend as they had just arrived. I noticed the Spitfire was not on track so I went back to the pits and found my dad cooking food and not driving. He had to make them lunch because of it being our second black flag one of those strange punishments in Lemons. While our other driver was on track, just shit luck, he was rear ended and LeMons has an “all fault” contact rule. So of course we were black flagged again and received a one hour penalty. I was kinda frustrated and at this point told my other drivers “We are slow, there are only like 3 cars on that track you should be passing, if you are passing any other cars, your doing something wrong. Don’t pass unless you can see the flag station and there is no yellow flag.”  This is something we should have discussed before we started as LeMons racing is chaotic, you need to be very aware. Now I know my dad knows better but he has been doing lots of short sprint racing in his classic VARA racer and the mentality is different so I was not mad, just frustrated. I sat out there with the car in the penalty box until the judges came to me. The said they were going to forgive one of our black flags and let us back out on the track, but if we get another its a 3 hour penalty and a 4th we are finished for the weekend. I explained to them what I told my other drivers and they laughed and said it sounded about right. They realized I was the driver with no incidents yet and said go out there and show us a clean hour. I did just that, then we finished out the day clean. We worked on the car some that night to get the brakes as even as we could for Sunday, then had dinner, drinks and watched some live punk music. I ended up getting pretty loaded and swapped some stories with this English guy who was racing on one of the Camaro teams. The next morning I went out first and we had a great day, no black flags, and only one issue when the throttle got stuck open which was no big deal. Good times and a great day to finish out our weekend. Now we originally were up for the big prize in LeMons racing which is call the Index of Effluency but with our rough start on Saturday, and with some other wild, crazy, and funny moments by other teams, we were out shined. They gave it to Spank and his four car twelve person team, no surprise there. His cars are horribly awesome and the group did a great job with less penalties between four cars then we did with our one. We ended up finishing fourth in class C and 61st out of 131 teams over all. I was happy with it. A notable team was the winners of class C the Zombees, seen in the pics above. They drive this beat up 70s MGB made up to look like a bee and racing with them was a blast, they had more power and we had better handling.  Once again our team learned, improved and had a great time. 

Here is a video from the tower at Buttonwillow

After that weekend it brings us to now. Our next race is Sears Pointless on March 23rd-24th 2012 at Infineon Raceway. We have a list of things to do and I believe I have found us a 4th driver for this one as my friend won’t have his license back until April. Things are looking good and I can’t wait to get back in the car again.

My story - Team Captain - Colin

I have found myself completely obsessed with this crap can racing project my father and I have gotten into. Along with this has come working on the car, racing, writing documents for drivers, compiling a list of things to do on the car, constant reading and posting on the 24 hour of LeMons forum, and a little over a thousand dollars so far. My pops has dumped in a much greater amount of money as when we started I was between jobs, but I am working to get it as close to a 50/50 effort and expense as I can. Though sometimes it can be difficult as my pops is much better with cars, has the thing stored at his house where he is free to work on it as he feels, and he is the one with the motor home we tow it with. The racecar is a piece of shit late 70’s Triumph Spitfire 1500, guessing it is a 1978. Don’t get me wrong, I lovingly call this car a piece of shit. It has been one of the best hobbies, projects, learning experiences, and ventures I have participated in during these strange 30 years of my life. The thing is an absolute blast to drive and is a simplistic car that I can wrap my head around. I am in no way a mechanic, car guru, or professional driver, so it is perfect for someone like me. The whole thing is also great for the father/son bonding, though I won’t drag that out too much as I do not intend this writing piece to be mushy. But with out him I never would have gotten into any of this and I will be forever grateful. Here is a pic of him which is very suiting..

The other guys and gals involved in this nonsense are some of the greatest people I have ever met; though with my horrible memory for names and my tendency to get drunk when the track goes cold, I can hardly name any of them. My apologies... For starters there is Mike aka Spank. This guy is absolutely nuts for the true meaning of this LeMons racing. He comes out with the most horrible slow cars that are but some of the coolest things on wheels I have seen. He was the one who started with my father into this crap can racing when they built the Mr. Bean classic 60’s Mini Cooper (Now the famous Turbo Lemon Mini) with some others from their Mini Cooper car club. This was also the fist crap can car I raced in at a Chump Car race in Fontana. This was the event I really learned how nuts Spank is. As my poor memory serves, we blew 2 motors that weekend over the 14 hours, one of which when I was driving.  After the first motor blew, Spank scrambled together the spare motor and we swapped it in. Most of the work he did himself. The second motor died later that day, and he had us prep the motor to be removed while he made a 4 hour round trip drive home to grab another motor that he put together and installed while we slept. Truly a crap can racing hero. There are plenty of others out there with stories and comments on this guy I am sure, so I will discontinue glorifying him.

A notable duo is Crazy Mike and his girlfriend. I have met them at 2 races so far and they are just classic. They drive a VW Vanagon to tow behind it a LeMons racer VW bug. He races when the bug runs, and his girlfriend collects money and cooks for everyone. Without her many of these wrenching nuts would never eat but maybe a candy bar over the race weekends. They are very hospitable fun loving people. Being passed by this guys bug on the track just cracks me up. He also gave me a detailed explanation of what it sounds like driving inside this LeMons bug and it was something in the order of a garbage disposal, machine tools, and having a colander pot on your head while a child bangs on it with large wooden spoons. I am sure that description is not what he told me exactly, but to the effect makes the point.

The organisers, most of the other racers, and their friends and families at these LeMons events are great. People will always lend a hand or tool, and there always is someone willing to throw back a few with you and bull shit about how the hell you ended up in this nutty racing league. The chief perpetrator of LeMons, Jay, appears to love what he has created and from my experience he is never trying to be a dick when he fails you in tech inspection, he just wants your crap can racer to be as safe as it can. Currently he is working with me via pics and email to get our Spitfire to an acceptable level of safety for his head safety tech, as they were only minimally satisfied with it at the last race. Jay's judges for “Bull Shit” factor and punishments are a riot. They know their stuff when it comes to cars and do a rather good job classifying these vehicles and humiliating those who do break the rules. I have seen guys strutting down the pits doing the YMCA dance in their underwear while the tune blasts out of a stereo on top of the safety car that is escorting them around. Why the hell do I not have pictures of this? Personal note, always carry a camera when at the 24 Hours of LeMons events. The stories are endless and I would just have to recommend, if you have any interest,  that you go to one yourself. No other way could you understand the insanity involved in these events. Have a look through the forums if you have the time and start HERE 

Here is a pic of myself at a great racing weekend. Don't let my expression fool you, I love this shit.

To be continued...