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...

Sears Pointless Photos, Videos, and a Team Update

So my pops gave me the photos from the track photographer at the Sears Pointless race and they look really good. Though racing in the rain in our car was quite frightening, it sure made for some great photos.



There are also some good dry weather ones he took. You can see the photo album HERE

There is some video from the race, I have a good amount of video of me driving in the rain just putting around trying to survive. I have yet to edit any of it or upload it, I will get to it some day. What I was given is a link to Cem's video which is very good and shows off the Spitfire on the dry track. Check it out... (if you are on a mobile device and can not see the videos go to the bottom of the page and click "View Web Version")



My pops also put together some video of him in the car in the rain. He added some commentary and it shows some of the frustrations of racing Lemons in the rain, like all the yellow flags.



The biggest news is we have found ourselves a new teammate for the full 24 hour race at Buttonwillow coming up June 30th. He has more automotive knowledge then we know what to do with and is a nice guy. We met up with him Saturday while going over some minor things on the car and I can tell already he will fit in just fine. Now if I can just get the other two drivers singed up we will be ready for the registration deadline of April 21st.

We tooled around a bit, made the planned adjustments to the carburetor, checked out the Hella 500 head lights, cleaned up some rust caused by the rain, and looked things over. The oil is no longer milky, which means our issue from the December race of leaking radiator water into the oil was fixed. Pretty much everything seemed good. Will just need to get under the car and tighten everything down, but besides that we have no repairs to make, just upgrades to do. Our oil cooler adapter kit arrived so now we need to pick up a cooler. Any small cooler will do, even a transmission cooler. I would like to go down to the Junk Yard to look for one to save us some money. Also I have made a list of things we could look for while there that could be useful to us.

oil coolers - crown vics, volvos, trans cooler from large ford trucks or vans
gm alternator lates 70’s (lower amp is better don’t go too high)
78-80 ford Fiesta bosch alternator
lucas alterntors - (mgbs, austins, mini-coopers, triumphs etc)
tachs, or other gauges ..
tail lights - anything that would fit
fuse holders
starter solenoid - Ford solenoid from Mustang or F100
GT6- Diff - 3.63:1 more top speed(spitfire 1500 is 3.89:1)
light bar to mount off road lights
front lighting - fog lights, off road lights
any GT6 or Spitfire parts

The major work we plan to get done within the next two months is getting the motor swapped to the one with a Schneider cam. We plan to replace the bottom end bearings in this motor as well so we will be getting started on this soon. We also have ordered some custom built 14" wheels for the Spitfire so we have a wider option on tires. They should arrive in about a month and then we need to make sure they fit and modify the car so they do not rub.

A highlight over the weekend was getting my girlfriend in the Spitfire and having her drive it around the block. She has never driven a stick shift before but impressed me with how well she did. Now we need to find a cheap little car for her to drive around so driving stick becomes second nature to her. I hope to have her race ready by December for the LeMons race at Chuckwalla. With my pops now building the RX7 we are going to need all the drivers we can get. She is really excited by the idea and it would be cool to have her join in this madness.

There is work to be done...

Sears Pointless March 23-25th 2012

I will start off by saying, what a weekend it was. It is already over and it seems like it was one long dream. Just.. epic!

It started with the drive up, it went well thanks to my Dad and his RV. My girlfriend and I had a wonderful drive up to the track, and I am now completely comfortable driving the RV myself so the burden of the long drives does not all fall on my Dad's shoulders.



When we arrived it was a stellar day, and the track was breath taking. The rolling green hills, the sounds and sites of race cars. I was in car nerd heaven.

We got the car off the trailer and took it over to tech. One thing I took great pride from the weekend was managing the safety tech preparation of our Spitfire. We got right through tech inspection with out even a single recommendation or question. The head tech himself looked over our car and said we did a good job. All the time and effort paid off, and our car is now good to go for the rest of this year, safety wise that is.



I really wanted to get the bribed stencil painted on our car so I brought the infamous Judge Phil and his cousin Sam a few bottles of Manzanita Brew. I also enjoy sharing and passing on the word about the great beer my friends down in Santee, CA are brewing. Our team does not need to bribe the judges, when they see us Phil said, "Ah it's these guys, give me their sheet" and he marks us Class C with zero penalty laps. This is the benefit of running a slow class C car.



Now through tech and back at our pits we met up with our other two drivers, Rich and Cem. I have too say we could not have picked up a better two arrive and drive drivers. They never made a mistake, drove the car well and were great guys to shoot the shit with. Cem is also one hell of a race driver pulling our fastest laps of the weekend 2:20.38 which in our car is impressive. Rich knows his cars so having him there to help wrench if needed (though we did not) is a great benefit, he told me we needed to richen up our top and as well as lean out the bottom end on our carb. We knew the bottom end was rich but were unsure if the top end was lean.

I had a grand old time Friday night, with our car completely ready to go. I wandered the pits drinking beers and met some great people. I also spent a good amount of time chatting it up with one of my favorite teams, the Zombee MGB guys. Lemons races are just a blast even when we aren't racing, there is always someone to talk to and drink with. There were some great themes and cars out there, one of the themes was the Blue man group. I could dig up a picture of these guys, but really if you just find a picture of the real blue man group, that is how they looked. They did that good of a job on the theme. Once again, I neglected to take pictures of any of it. I was just living in the moment I guess....



Saturday was a wet rainy mess. The track was very slick, we had no windshield wipers and I did not follow the directions on the lexan water repellent so our vision was terrible. We were doing a lot of blind driving just waiting to see brake lights or objects on our sides to know when to brake. It took a lot of concentration to keep the car on the track and out of trouble, but besides one spin, we all managed. Having spent time driving the track on Forza 4 really helped me out. At least I knew where I was supposed to be going.... I have to say even though I was freaked out in the rain it was still something to experience and had it's enjoyable moments. On my second time out with a little bit better vision I had a good time, but just look at the windshield on our car...



It rained all night Saturday, so after partying it up Friday night and a chaotic wet race track, I just went in the RV and got a long nights rest.

When I woke up Sunday morning the rain had stopped and the weather actually had sun in the forecast. I was so happy to hear this, and it turned out to be correct. It did not rain once on Sunday and the track dried up nicely. Each driver came in with a huge smile on their face and had enjoyed their time at the wheel in the nice weather. Once again Sears Point was breath taking..



At the end of the day Sunday when I went out for the final stint of the race, I had the most fun I have had behind the wheel of a car. I also managed to make a big mistake and passed under yellow flag conditions. I was so pissed at myself, as I did exactly what I tell others not to do, and pass a car with out checking the flag stand first. This also cost me about 10 mins of track time and made our team look bad. It was my first mistake out of all the races I have done so far though. So I will forgive myself eventually.

We ended the race 4th in Class C and 50th out of 171 cars over all. That is pretty damn good considering our car, half the drivers were arrive and drive, and the weather.

The real winners of the race were team Oly Express with their Barracuda that they put a 170cubic inch slant 6 motor in. I was watching their build over Facebook and I had a feeling if they did well over the weekend they would win the Index of Effluency, the highest prize of LeMons racing. It means you took the worst, coolest car out to the race and did way better in the race then you should have. They beat us in Class C with 3rd place, and 44th over all. I would have personally picked them for IOE as well, so props to the LeMons crew for picking a great team for the win.



At the end of the weekend, I was able to drive our car right on the trailer, I think it could do another weekend with out changing a thing. Which is good because our next race is a full 24 hour race back at Buttonwillow and money will be tight, but we will be there.

That about sums it up. I will later add some more pictures and some in car videos as the team gets them uploaded and I find them on the net. As for now you can see the pictures I have from the race HERE One last photo that my girlfriend took of me just before I got out of the car at the end of the race on Sunday and only this picture can really explain how I feel about this crap can racing..



The true 24 hour of LeMons @ Buttonwillow is June 30th-July 1st, here we go again....

Final Prep (for Rain) 3/17/2012

Well we spent the day Saturday doing some final prep work for the race coming this weekend. My dad built a roof out of some drip pans and extended the front wind screen up. Hopefully this will help protect us from the rain. We do not have any windshield wipers so it's gonna be a pain to see if the rain is heavy. When we originally built our car, we never thought about encountering rain. Oh well what can you do?

I mounted on our new fancy rear view mirror that is nearly as wide as the car. We should have no problems seeing anyone coming up behind us.



After mounting a place for our fuel cell dip stick to go in the trunk, I changed the oil. What I found was milky oil left over from our last race, our head was loose and water was mixing in the oil. We have had the head off and replaced the head gasket so we hope the problem wont come back. I just dumped in some cheap oil and put on a used oil filter to flush this stuff out and will change it again at the track Friday when we put the new spark plugs in.



I got a bad bit of news while I was sick in bed last week, one of our drivers and friends wont be able to race with us. He is fine, just has work schedule conflicts. He also normally hauls our spare motor and transmission. We are taking on another driver from the Mazdaritia team who were wait listed for the race and Spank is kindly taking up our spare motor and transmission for us. So things are working out, not as planned but hey, if everything went as planned it would not feel like LeMons racing.

I have got myself plenty of practice on the Forza 4 Infineon Track, but I have no experience racing in the rain. Hopefully we can keep it together and finish this wet race. Even better the weather shifts and we get to pull this roof of and enjoy some dry track.. Realistically though, I have been told it always rains at Infineon so I am expecting a down pour.



The next post will come after the race weekend.. Hopefully it will be a good one. I can't wait to be at the track on Friday...

Short work day - 3/10/2012

Well as there is not much left to do so I had a little bit of fun and started the car up and drove it around again. You know to keep the cobwebs out... I then hooked up our door net, and did a little prep work on our spare motor. The door net was taken off because we decided it limited our visibility, but then we changed out mind for safety reasons. The spare motor just had the air lines on it from the smog equipment that we do not need so I pulled them off with a few other things.



I then spent a little bit of time modifying a work support stand I picked up to use as a cheap video game racing wheel stand. I originally was going to set up the wheel and Xbox 360 at my dad's house so we could practice the Infineon Track on Forza 4, but after his house flooded we never really got much of a chance. So now with this stand I can set it up anywhere there is an HD TV and any old chair. Works great in my apartment and the fact that I can fold it up and put it in the closet keeps it from taking up any of the limited space.





Sure sitting in a normal chair is not ideal and makes it feel more like your driving a truck with a bench seat then a low race car. But hey it is stable, portable, and the height is adjustable. For $30 and ten minutes of easy modification, it does the trick.

Next weekend is the last weekend we have before the race. It's time to make final adjustments, change the oil, replace the spark plugs, clean the air filter, get the last minute shopping done, and organize the tools and spares to be packed up.

Ten days left until we make the drive up to Sonoma! I guess we should remember to tighten the steering wheel back down as well.

Short Work day 2-25-2012

Well the car is together; the kill switch is tested, covered, and marked; drove the car around the block; and my dad is off for his vacation to play in the Colorado snow. Now I just need to keep myself busy for a few weeks until the race. With only a small amount of prep and shopping left to do, I will be going nuts for sure. My girlfriend is excited to have me for an entire weekend for the first time in awhile though.

I have found out that the next race we plan to do at Buttonwillow is a full 24 hour race. Now with the second car in the equation, the budget is tighter. So the original plan to buy and upgrade to a 14" or 15" wheel may not be realistic. So I have been looking into what is left of the 13" tire market and think there maybe something to get us by. These Nexen CP641s hopefully will be better then terrible and last the full race. We also will need to get some lights because the last time I drove the Spitfire at Buttonwillow in the dark with the stock head lamps, it was down right frightening. Looking into getting a pair of Hella 500s to mount on the front to help light our way.



Gotta get me some time on Forza 4 to learn the Infineon track better, and stop thinking so much about what we are going to do after the Infineon Race until after it is over.

Damn it feels good to be a crap can racer...