Free Range Racing

Portland Race Prep

2010-10-11T14:22:00.001-07:00

It's been a while... trying to get back on the horse on this blog thing.

So Erik and I spent this past weekend working on the MR2, trying to get it ready for the Portland race at the end of the month. In Spokane, we were battling an electrical gremlin that we were blaming the ECU for. Come to find out, the large ground wire that attached to the frame was NOT the ground wire for the ECU... we accidentally disconnected the ground for the ECU when we were trouble-shooting our kill-switch issues. Comedy of errors.

Well the car ran ok, but the fuel cut-out all the time... so it went around the track.. but not very well. We raced it anyways, welcome to ChumpCar.

A couple months have past since that race and we really never spent any time diagnosing the issue until this weekend. This is when we found the ground strap issue. I was worried about the motor after running it for 14+ hours with fuel management issues. The #3 rod bearing is notorious for going out first on the 4AGE motors, so I pulled the pan off.. and found this!

Not good.

Luckily, we were able to track down a new set of rod bearings at the local autozone ($32) and install them with the motor still in the car. This little "gem" got us thinking about a spare motor for Portland. In every race we've gone to (11 so far), we've had a spare motor (except Streets of Willows, but that's another story). We put a new motor in the car for Spokane and apparently ruined it. (NOTE: People.. when I say NEW motor.. I mean we spent $80 on an ebay gasket set and honed the thing with a Makita..) So I picked up a parts car a few weeks ago as a donor.

Parts car looks better than the race car

After a quick inventory of motors / parts.. we determined we might have enough stuff laying around to salvage a spare motor. Sure enough.. with the 5 motors we had laying around, we were able to scrounge enough parts to make something that resembles a rebuilt motor. We're still going to get new rod and main bearings... and maybe rings.. but the rest of the stuff should be good to go.

4AGE yummies... 5 motors, 4 transmissions, 3 heads

This is our rod from Buttonwillow 08. We never got around to diagnosing the failure, we just shoved the blown motor in the back of the shop. Since we were in scrounge mode, we disassembled all our motors and found that bad boy. Coming soon to a ChumpCar trophy near you!

Sorry Erik, had to. Erik stripped the tensioner bolt with a 12-pt socket... so our came the vise-grips. What could possibly go wrong? This was somewhere in the neighborhood of beer #7 or #8. by #11, we were playing darts. By #13 and #14, we were throwing them at each other. Erik should post pictures of his thumb. :unsure:

ChumpCar Streets of Willow 24 hours

2010-02-22T08:56:00.000-08:00

Just got home from yet another great ChumpCar race. This event was held at Willow Springs Motorsport Park on their Streets circuit. The track is about an hour north of LA. It's a 14 turn 1.8 mile road circuit. Lots of great banking with some moderate elevation changes. It's pretty busy. You only get about 15 seconds of time to check your gauges on the front straight and the rest is pure white knuckle turn carving. The event was held as a full 24 hour race with two one hour breaks to switch between the day and night course lay outs (there were concerns about people falling out of the "bowl" at the end of the course and be out of sight of any course workers). I ran this event with Free Range Racing (not to be confused with the team we are building that is talked about on this blog).

We had been planning to run this event for some time so a plan was hatched to leave the car down in California between the Infineon and Streets. With a couple of favors called in and favors for these favors we managed to get a place to put the car after the race. It was kept outside behind a nice locked fence. Unfortunately the fence didn't keep out the rain.

There was silt, 3 week old "lunch" that was lost at infineon, and several inches of water.

The lunch has matured a fine mold. Goody.

Our chariot! Pete from Killer Bee Racing (http://killerbeeracing.blogspot.com/) is a good friend of the Team's and offered to help us out. He did a lot more than help us out though. He brought Brownie (The word's greatest crappy RV) and called in favors to get the car stored and to get a trailer for us to use for the weekend. Add in all the driving he did and a full two days of crewing and his efforts count up to be truely great. Thanks for all the help pete, this just simply wouldn't have been possible without your help.

Since we flew down, all the spare parts we had were stored in two plastic totes and whatever we could stuff into the trunk and passenger seat. You will also notice the exposed air filter pointed straight up in this picture. We were pretty concerned about the massive rain storms California had been experiencing over the last couple of weeks. After the quick load up we headed south for the track. A quick stop for food and a sham wow (lol scam wow) gave us some confidence that the seat would be usable.

We made it to the track at 1:35am saturday and tried to get some sleep. The green flag was going to drop 8 hours and 25 minutes later and fter sleeping we had to change the wheels/tires, de water the intake, change the rear brake pads, change the oil, and a number of other prep things to the car. In addition to all of that, a couple members of our team are ChumpCar staff now and had obligations to get the race ready for everyone (I got to help with the timing!). We really could only afford 2 or 3 hours of sleep.

It was pretty cold over night. The daylight also helped us notice some details about the lack of maintenance the car had been getting recently. The weeks of weather have not treated the car well. This master cylander for example was a brand new reman 3 weeks ago.

Concerns for the intake turned out to be unfounded. Just touching the key fire the car right up. It was even able to idle on its own! That has traditionally been a big problem for us. Turns out the start/alt/o2 sensor that we installed during the infineon really was needed. People slowly started to trickle in.

Llyod and big Dave doing their thing teching the Krider pizza delivery car. I had brought a bunch of wireless network gear to try and get living timing out to most of the pits. Unfortunately the junk I brought was not working as designed. We only got about 100ft of coverage around the timing trailer. Ohh well, next time we will figure it out.

Some local drifters came by to put on a little show for us. This fellow had just lost his bumper and got out to tuck it back in his hatch.

Before we knew it the race was ready to get started. Our first driver was Gabe (the other person posting on this blog from our team, Apex of Failure)! This was his first real race ever but we were confident that he would do well and he did. The brakes weren't doing great but they came around after some use. He managed to get his full 2 hour stint in.

My biggest competitor is my nerves. I would say I had a 5/10 on the nervousness scale. Enough that I was starting to doubt my self. A good 20 minutes in the car cured me of that though. It turned into one of the better driving experiences in my life. This is my fourth race with this team and this car and I'm really starting to understand this car's language. I built up enough confidence to really push it beyond it's limits and get into trouble. You can't find the car if you don't cross it some times ;). I had the back end coming out and more than a couple off road excursions. Llyod even mistook my driving as matts (our fastest driver). I'm pretty happy about that.

My rallycrossing wasn't without cost. As my stint was ending the car kept getting louder. Louder in a bad way. We have a 92db noise limit. I started getting really concerned when I could feel extra heat from the engine bay (behind me, MR2's are mid engine). Fearing a fire, I radioed in for instructions. The radios were down, again. Freaking radios. Some day when I'm rich, I'm going to pay someone to make perfect redundant radio systems for my race team. After a series of failed attempts to communicate I told them to stand on the bleachers and wave if I needed to pit. I managed to spot three of them waving and came in. It was determined that the exhaust manifold had cracked but there wasn't really anything they could do about it right now and I was sent back out.

The awesome new noise this car was making now was pushing me even further. I got about 20 minutes more out there before POOF. Cloud of smoke coming out of the back of the car. Luckily it happened on the turn before the pits and I was able to dash in real quick.

I got out quick fearing fire but we were lucky (kind of?) and it turned out to just be a CV boot ripping and flinging oil at the exhaust manifold and burning off.

Sum total of things that were probably my fault:

Huge hole in the exhaust manifold.

Broken wire to the fuel sender, causing us to dump fuel into the engine

Broken/loose motor mounts which cause the engine to move around tearing the cv boot

Broken CV (due to boot failure

Matt gets an exhaust manifold from Racey Diva from their dirt camaro. This is reportedly a very lucky part. He cuts a section to use as a patch for our car.

Llyod even jumped in with his fab skills and helped get this patch on! Thanks again llyod.

All better! Pete jumped in and applied his electrical talent and got the fuel sender hooked up again. The CV was another story. We had blown the passenger CV during the last race and had to replace it with our spare. I'm pretty sure this spare came from a field car and was in unknown condition. Knowing this coming down here, we had a brand new CV shipped to pete and brought down with us. Toyota in their infinite wisdom decided that they needed to make about 15 different CVs for their 4age cars in the late 80s. That means its nearly impossible to get the correct part for your car (I know, I tried once for 2 months to get the correct part for my sister's corolla FX16 before failing and having a shop do the work). Our new spare was wrong.

Close, but totally unusable. We had to take what spares we could get our hands on and make a new CV.

A great team effort here with just a little help from our friends (more like a lot!) got us back on the road again.

All the cars were called in at 5pm for a one hour break. They needed to reconfigure the course for a safer night layout. It also gave the teams a great safety break. Everyone started preping their headlights.

Metro gnomes had some old BMW headlights with retrofitted HIDs.

Eyesore out does everyone again :).

It's 6pm and the race is back on, without us. The generic CV boot we had sent george to get turned out not to fit.

An hour after the night race had resumed we had something together. Erik hopped in the car and got his first stint. He had to pit 10 minutes in with badly aligned headlights. A quick pit got him back out. While erik was driving for this race, I had been shanghighed into running timing. I spent a pretty good ammount of time in this shack staring at a laptop.

At least there was a heater in there :). During erik's run, two coyotes showed up at turn 12 and gave the course worker a good scare! They had to run and hide in their car for a bit. This really is out in the middle of the desert. Since we had 4 more driver's after erik's stint before mine, this was as good as time as any to get some sleep. Boy was I tired. I got almost 5 hours! That's way more than I would have ever expected.

During my sleep, George, Matt, Dan, and Gabe all got stints out there. Some pretty aggresive pavement and some locking of the breaks got us this nice flat spotted tire. It was changed with a spare. During George's stint he hit the passenger door of Racey Diva's Z TWICE IN TWO LAPS. Were not sure what happened but they were ok. They aren't too happy about their door though. George got about an hour at night. I was woken up when gabe went out to get ready. I suited up and wandered around the pits for a couple hours getting ready to race at night. Night racing is another whole level of stress for me. We don't have great headlights.

When gabe came in (radios were down, so all all pits were pretty much unannounced) he had no forward motion anymore. We were lucky he made it far enough to not need a tow. I had to wake matt up. He had gotten maybe an hour of sleep. Yup, another CV. I was pretty sure our race was over but no! Matt fixed it again. This time we salvaged parts from the spare driver's CV and we got another good passenger CV for the car.

Only took an hour to fix it this time. Were getting better at this (or I should say, matt and dan are). I got us back out on track at 5am.

I lasted about 45 minutes. It was enough time to get used to the changed course and start building up my confidence again. Turn 14 onto the front straight was especially iffy. It was a 180 degree right hander over a skid pad. There was no point of reference. You had to turn in without having any idea if you are going in the right direction and hope that you got it right. I had 3 or 4 offs due misjudging that.

Then in turn 3 (a double apex left hander coming from a downhill with pretty decent camber ending up hill) all of a sudden the car wouldn't turn anymore. Smack and SPARKS. Sparks everywhere. No power. I was safely off the edge of the road, but in a moderate danger zone. I couldn't do anything but make sure my safety gear was on tight and hope no one else made the same mistake while the tow truck came for me.

The truck reported that it was I had hoped, a bad axel. They asked me if I wanted to take it back now or if we were done. They said it wouldn't be very safe to take it in now. Matt had left instructions that we had exhaust all our CV parts and more and if it broke again, he was not to be woken. This surely meant that we were done. I took them up on their offer to get a ride back and we pulled the car off the track more and I got a ride back in. As I got out of the car, I fully understood the situation. The driver's rear wheel had FALLEN OFF. The wheel bearing had failed sending the wheel, outer part of the wheel up, and the center section of the wheel hub flying off into the darkness. We couldn't even find it. The car was sitting on the frame with its little brake caliper still clinging on to the brake rotor surface. We weren't just done, we were REALLY done.

So there our car sat till the 7am break when we could safely tow it back in and inspect the damage.

Major props to the car recovery team at this event. Two guys staffed our entire race (and MORE on sunday!).

Matt says, "I can fix it!"

This would make a nice clock. So we weren't done yet. We had full spare suspension corners and could theoretically replace this whole side. Work started to make that happen.

What gets damaged when a wheel hub breaks like that? Yes thats right, THE CV AXEL! We had to Frankenstein A THIRD CV. Since we used parts from out spare driver's CV to fix the passenger CV, we had to perform a similar maneuver on the driver's CV now. This was cake for us now. Hilarious failure cake.

Our spare wheel hub was from a 85 mr2. Apparently these were inferior with slight different mounts and smaller brake rotors. There was no way to make the spare unit fit on the car. We had to salvage the old wheel hub. Yes, the same wheel hub that had flow apart and sent me off the track. We had to remove the wheel bearing from the spare hub and install it in the failed one.

Dave, a big shout out to you here buddy, thanks for helping make this happen. It sounds crazy, but we actually made that happen. Other than the smaller rotor (which cause the brake pad to overlap the rotor surface) theoretically everything should have worked.

Fearing the danger of this setup, matt took the duty of putting it back on track. The first 10 laps were slow making sure everything was ok but matt was able to turn of the screw and get us back on pace. We were even putting in good times! George got another run after matt and erik was sent out at 11:30am to bring us home (Checkered flag was at 1pm).

Erik pulled in at noon with a problem so big that we really couldn't do anything about it. Rod knock. The engine was done. That was it, we were done. I finished my last stint working timing and rushed over for awards. Final results:

We even got a trophy! It's like they knew what was going to happen in advance. This is the "constant variation" award. For constantly having the same problem in different ways. Get it? CV award? I love it.

A big congratulations to the winners Eyesore (First place AND best theme!),

2nd place Punk racing

3rd place B-Team (I pitty the fool who underestimates their consistency)

What a race! Even though we didn't finish, everyone got at least one stint and everyone who wanted a second got it as well.

Everyone was eager to get home, shower, and sleep but we couldn't leave just yet. At some point we had lost our transponder. A $450 little blue box that triggered the start finish line recording your official time. If we couldn't find it, we would have to buy another (since we rented it). We all sighed, grabbed some walking beers and headed out to the track to find it.

We were lucky and on turn 3 dave saved the day again!

Matt got dinner for everyone in celebration. We headed back north to make our flight out of oakland on monday.

Our drama was not over though. A driver mouthed a warning that we were loosing parts off our trailer and we pulled over right away. A wheel had escaped. We back tracked to see if we could find it. Pete spotted it and we pulled over. Erik and Matt must have been too sleep deprived to think properly and ran across a busy 5 lane california freeway to recover it.

It had another good flat spot on it (it matches the rest now :P) but the wheel is still good.

The car is now safely resting at a friends house in the bay area with, 4 bad wheel bearings, 2 bad axles, completely worn out breaks, starting a bad mold habit, a bad motor, an iffy fuel sender, and badly needing a light upgrade. She is a very tired race car. The plans for the future? Someone is going to have to go down and get it. Looks like this might be my last drive before we get Apex of Failure up and running. That's a long time to the next race, maybe I can find another seat at VIR or something.

I noticed today that my racing shoes are visibly worn. I think I can safely call my self a racer now. Boy that feels good.

A big thanks to ChumpCar, PETE WHO IS AWESOME, Dave, all of our friends, John, FreeRange racing and well everyone. See you all soon!

------------------

Gabe, who also had a guest seat with Free Range at this race wrote up his own perspectives over on our Team's blog at http://roadtochumpcar.com/24-hours-of-streets-of-willow-newcomer-perspective/.

------------------

Links related to the event (updated as I find things out there):

More pictures from John: http://gs163.photobucket.com/groups/t294/N96T5636WU/
"Just got home thread": http://forum.chumpcar.com/index.php?/topic/558-back-from-the-24-hours-of-desert-dysfunction/
Another thread: http://forum.chumpcar.com/index.php?/topic/556-thanks-for-a-nice-event/
More pictures: http://forum.chumpcar.com/index.php?app=gallery&module=cats&do=sc&cat=27+
Eyesore's Twitter feed (the winner): http://twitter.com/EyesoreRacing
More pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/caroscuro/sets/72157623205694503/
More press: http://jalopnik.com/5460783/the-ghettocharged-eyesore-racing-miata-claims-another-trophy

The schedule for Streets of Willows... as spoken by Pete

2010-01-27T19:29:00.000-08:00

Friday 3~pm, shake hands and say how's the flight?
Friday 3:15 mighty 440 comes to life, small children cry.
Friday 3:45 Mr Deuce freed from Magnolia Prison
Friday 4:00 Children again cry, epic quest for the Holy Gravel commences.

Hours of mindless 7 ton pole position and salami sandwiches. BEER!!!

NOISE.... darkness and chili, followed by sun and checker flag at 1:00pm.

Sunday 2:pm we stuff carcass into trailer
Sunday 2:30pm we drive into the sunset with much stench towards Morgan Hill.
Sunday 3:45pm Stop, look for smoke, continue onwards in due haste.
Sunday 10:pm dump wreckage in master chump's lovely driveway
Sunday 11pm ditch trailer in Milpitas
Sunday 11:45 Knock on Padrid-o-peeps door in Oakland, small children again cry.

Subject to wind variables.

The Golden Gate Petrolium Story

2010-01-14T09:03:00.000-08:00

The Golden Gate Petroleum team is more than just a bunch of nice people, it's a great story. I don't think anyone outside the team knows their story, so I'd better tell it - after all, when I asked their captain Pat O'Keefe if he had a blog he replied "I've never blogged before!"

Lets go back in time. It's the holiday break, and everyone in the ChumpCar world is getting ready for the Infineon race. We've wound down our marketing efforts assuming we have all the teams we're going to find, and we're working on our cars and organizing for the race. On Dec 22nd I get the word - we have two new teams signing up. And they don't have cars. And they've never road raced before. Enter Golden Gate Petroleum.

The V.P. of Golden Gate, Pat, had heard about us through his friend and our Marketing Director Cathy. They got immediately excited and dove in head first. I got updates every few hours for the few days surrounding Christmas: we're in the junk yard looking at a Datsun 510 and a 280Z, my neighbor has this Mitsubishi Turbo laying around, sheesh there's a lot of $500 cars on Craigslist.

Nearing the end of the year, the updates got a little sparse. A note about mad dashes to install cages (three of them, they were working on the Racey Diva car too), tales of woe over poorly running cars, a lot of silence. With my experience being what it was, I was 90% sure they weren't going to make it.

On Jan. 7 the word came in: one car was dead. They were only going to bring one car for their seven drivers, and were sharing with Racey Diva and her seven drivers. 14 drivers for two cars in a 14 hour race. It was a disaster in my opinion. They'd literally dumped hundreds of hours into the dead car over their vacation, only to fall short. What a bummer. "What car is it" I asked.

1989 Mitsubishi Mirage Turbo. DOH!

It's no surprise to anyone in the car world it didn't run. It wouldn't rev over 4000rpm and had no power. I encouraged them to bring it anyway, as I had an ace in the hole.

Race day comes. These guys storm the garages with a huge crew and two cars. A yellow RX7 dressed up as a cab, and the Mitsu looking like a delinquent cop car. Pat came over and shook my hand, thanked me for all the encouragement and last-minute registration. As a thanks he offered to sponsor our Free Range MR2:

The guys over at Golden Gate Petroleum showed up to the race with a special delivery for Free Range Racing...
A case of Joe Gibbs XP6 racing oil. For those who know oil, this stuff is the best you can get! It was more than generous and will keep our motor alive for the next two races. Since our car is stuck in Cali without any way to get supplies except the local parts store, this is a life saver.

So it was time to fix their car, my 'ace in the hole'. I called on our race steward, Ron Cortez, who raced Mitsubishi turbos back when they were new. He had lived the car inside and out back in the day. He didn't know, but grabbed his phone and called none other than Fred Lux of Lux Performance, who had been the Mitsubishi Crew Chief. Fred said 'check this' and 'check that' to no avail, then one of the Golden Gate guys mentioned "hey, this all started after we washed it". Fred laughed, said "check this connector buried right here". Sure enough, full of water and corroded. A little WD-40 and they were running like a champ. Sometimes there's no replacement for experience.

One last thing to mention about this team: they were sponsored by Les Schwab, the west-coast tire dealer. Their local Les Schwab had put new tires on all three cars (including Racey Diva). Sadly, they had put what amounted to hard-as-rocks all season radials on all three cars. They raced on ice skates all weekend! If I could recommend one thing for the team - new tires!

These guys were hilarious ALL weekend, great competitors, and all around nice people. They even opened the Mitsubishi up to some of those less fortunate teams who blew up early AND the Chump Tech Assistant, Big Dave. I truly hope ChumpCar can attract more teams like the guys from Golden Gate Petroleum.

If you're in the area, or hell.. just need some oil. Call these guys, and tell em ChumpCar sent you!

Day 2... Rain? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

2010-01-13T21:13:00.000-08:00

We awoke Sunday morning to a dense cloud of fog over the entire track. I'm pretty convinced it didn't actually rain overnight, but the track was SOAKED! Dennis pitched a fit the night before because he didn't get any track time.. so he MADE SURE he was first out on Sunday. I think he was kicking himself when he woke up.... wet track = slow laps!

Dennis out. With Dennis' track record, I was expecting the car to blow up in the first 10 minutes.. but much to my amazement... it was running great! Dennis was going toe to toe with a local Portland tuning celebrity... and winning! Team Produnk and their Miata were putting the pressure on our little MR2, but in the end... Dennis held him off and Produnk spun at the entrance to T11!

We had been trying to call Dennis in for the last 10 minutes, but there was an issue with the radios... so we had to just sit and wait for Dennis to come in on his own. 15 minutes or so later, the MR2 heads to the pits.

Well just as Dennis rolls to a stop, I notice something was wrong. REALLY wrong. The next 10 minutes or so is a blur.. even now.

"Dude, I don't feel so good"
"WTF?"
"Yeah, I puked all over"
"WTF!?!?!"
"Sorry man, I tried to hold it"
"OMGWTF?!?!?!?! Get the f*** out of my car!"

I spent the next 10 minutes with a roll of paper towels and a wet shop rag... cleaning bits and pieces of breakfast from the harness and the seat.

Dennis IN, Dad Out... in dirty harnesses. ugh. Dad stays out for an hour or so since we had 5 stints to get through on the second day. The was possibly the most entertaining 45 minutes of racing I've seen. Dad and John's Miata were head to head for at LEAST 20 laps. From our vantage point, we could see about 1/4 of the track.. and the lead was exchanged at least 7 or 8 times. Way to go Dad!

Dad in, Matt Out. You know those people that talk about those moments in your life where things just "click"? For about 45 minutes of my life, everything made sense... True, I drive a POS car in a race for amateurs.... but in these 45 minutes, I felt like I could take on Tom Kristensen at Le Mans. I managed to set the fastest time of the day across the entire field, and had the time of my life!

Matt in, Dennis back out. This time Dennis lasted about 30 minutes before coming back in the pits. "WTF are you doing?" "I have no brakes!" "ugh". While I was out having the time of my life, apparently I managed to cook our brake pads. You know those people who feed their baby, shake em up real good and hand them off to an unsuspecting grand parent? yeah, that was me. Into the garage for a quick pad change. 30 minutes later and a full tank of gas we were back on the track.

Dennis out, Leo in. Leo had family in the bay area, so they made the trek up to Infineon to watch him race. As they showed up, we were franticly trying to replace the pads that DENNIS cooked. Leo did great and managed some great tight quarters passes in the final minutes. Checkered flag drops, and we finished!
Congrats to team #112 A+ Trailer Trash Racing for a ChumpCar victory! Can't wait for Streets of Willows!

It's ALIVE!

2010-01-13T21:04:00.000-08:00

Beer and parts in hand.. we had a quick bite to eat and started work on the car.

Luckily for us, we had a resident electrical wizard on hand to make the repairs. Enter Pete (aka Killer Bee Racing)(also AKA Zom-BEE).

Pete and Leo made quick(ish) work of the new battery install with matching terminals. Dad and I got to work on the o2 sensor, starter and alternator. 2 hours, 12 beers, and about 2 gallons of diesel through my 75k BTU heater and we had a running car!

It was now time for Beer Pong brought to us by the ever-popular Krider Racing. Rob Krider is a lemons veteran and now an official Chump. As part of the festivities, Krider Racing sponsored a nifty graphics set from Figstone Graphics to entice the Beer Pong entrants.

Conveniently enough, while my team was working away at getting our car back to track-worthy... Erik was over in the corner winning beer pong! Thanks to a last minute drop-out in the finals, Erik and Charles were awarded the vinyl graphics set. New professional numbers here we come!

Race Day!

2010-01-13T20:38:00.000-08:00

Sleep? Who needs sleep? It's race day!

Up early for an 8:30am drivers meeting, the rest of the team gathered around the car to do final inspections. Leo and Dennis screwed with their data acquisition systems, Dad got ready to head out on the track and I was double checking our braking system. T-minus 30 minutes until the start.

Dad decided to go out first to get a handle for the track. Leo, Dennis and I had all seen the track in video games our whole lives... did it help? Probably not.

In theory, our car would be measuring telemtry through two on-board MaxQData systems and recording video on 4 webcams placed throughout the car. We had never really gotten them to work, but were determined for this race!

Dad goes out and the rest of the team huddles in the grandstands to watch. With only about 27 cars on the track at race-start.. there was going to be LOTS of open track after the first hour or so.

1 hour and 45 minutes later, Dad came in with the biggest $hit eating grin on his face i've ever witnessed. "How was the track Dad?" "****ing fantastic!". Hell yeah! Historicly, I have tagged along to my dad's hunting and fishing events with all of his friends. I have a GREAT time, but racing is really the first activity that I've roped my Dad into... I like to think he has a good time at these things

Dad in, Leo out. Leo took a few slow laps to get used to the track format and started to put on the gas. At this point we were sitting at about 7th place with 5 hours of driving left to go. Lots of time for lots to happen. Entering turn 1, Leo decides it's a great idea to dive in late and suddenly realizes he is NOT going to make the chicane. He does the right thing by going off track, but the car stalled out and would not start. Bad battery? Bad starter? Who knows.. get him in the pits and push start his a$$. Back on the track!

Leo in, Matt (me) out. Turn 1 coming out of the pit lane was REALLY steep... sure I knew you could take it at a pretty good clip from the Gran Tourismo laps... but I was not prepared for the ridiculous incline. I shifted to 3rd up the hill and the car just fell on it's face. Note to self... keep it above 4500 rpms. I was out for about an hour and a half and managed to climb us a couple positions, even with our crap DZ 101 tires.

view from the grand stands at the base of T1

Matt in, Dennis out. Poor Dennis.. it turns out that Dennis would be the butt of all of our jokes for the next 48 hours. You see, if you follow my blog... you know that in Portland our brakes caught on fire with about 40 minutes left to go. Dennis was driving and refused to get out of the car when I told him the front brakes were ON FIRE. He simply looked at me and said "well put it out, I want to go back on track". Remember this? Yeah, that's Joe putting out a fire and me trying to get Dennis out of the car.

Dennis lasts about 2 laps before bringing the car back in with a broken CV. I hear the following over the radio "Uhh, I think I just blew up the motor". F*#@. Back in the garage, Dad and I worked together to get the replacement CV in the car. 22 minutes later, we were pushing the car out of the garage and Dennis was to go back out on the track. PUSH! No battery, no starter... it worked last time! 15 minutes later, we could not get the car started... we tried pushing, we tried jumping it, we tried bypassing the starter cylinoid. Nada. We were done for the day :(

Upon further inspection, we figured out that when the CV exploded it wrapped itself around the O2 sensor wiring and pulled the wires clean out of the harness. With no O2 sensor, our ECU was running an open loop and DUMPING fuel into the combustion chamber. No wonder it wouldnt start, we were running pig rich.

To Sonoma!

New battery, starter, o2 sensor (90 bucks!), and a quick alternator test and we were back on the road to the track. Did I mention we got more beer?

Playing Softball at Yankee Stadium

2010-01-13T20:10:00.000-08:00

As you are well aware, I am not a veteran racer. Nor am I a crew member of an existing race team.. looking for my chance behind the wheel. I was not born into a family that enjoyed racing. I was not karting before I turned 10. I am simply a guy that has always been in to cars.. and always wanted to see what I could do behind the wheel. But mostly, I am a gamer.

Enter crap-can racing. My rotating door into racing. Finally, my opportunity to drive a REAL car on a REAL track.

Last weekend, the nut cases at ChumpCar (www.chumpcar.com) ran dual 7hr endurance races at the world famous Sears Point (Infineon). For those who are not in to cars.. and not in to racing... Infineon is probably just a word you can't pronounce. For us gear-head gamers... we've been racing Infineon since the introduction Gran Tourismo for playstation. It's been a staple track for the Sony game for the last 10 years. I can't even begin to count how many pixelated laps i've driven on this track. And they were going to let ME drive MY race car on INFINEON? epic

As we arrived, I was literally choked up taking in the awesomeness of Infineon. Leaded 118 octane via an onsite 24 hour gas station? Check. 10+ onsite buildings that house cars worth more than I will make in a lifetime? Check. Billboards the size of Texas? Check. Rental garages that housed some of the most famous racers of all time? Check. Seating for 50,000? Check. Sheep wondering around to keep the grass down? WTF? Really? Check!

Weather was marginal with a layer of fog covering the nearby hillside. We were running a little behind schedule thanks to my genius 'shortcut' to avoid Oakland traffic. It turns out that hwy 121 is straight on a fold-up map of the west coast...

But hell... we made it! And tomorrow we get to go racing!

The night time brought bench racing stories of events past, and lots (and lots) of drinking. We had some work to do to get the car prepped for race day... but NONE of us were touching the car sober! We managed to install a new brake master cylinder (thanks Leo) and install matching new front brake lines (nice work Dennis). Prior to the race, we installed new front and rear rotors and inspected the brake pads to make sure we had enough to last. The car was ready! And I was drunk.

But at least i was warm!

Thunderhill 09

2010-01-11T19:37:00.000-08:00

1. We placed in the top 25
2. Pete's team rolled their MG
3. Pete drove the MR2 and did great!
4. Jeff was sick, so we drove with 3 drivers
5. Nothing broke

Boring, I know.. but it's been a LONG time since then, and I want to blog about the Infineon race.

Thunder Hill 09

2009-11-19T14:46:00.001-08:00

Off to ThunderHill for the 2009 running of the ArseFreezeApolooza 24 Hours of Lemons

Wish us luck!

The Team

2009-11-05T10:44:00.001-08:00

Thanks to:
Leo "OMG THE BACK END IS SLIPPERY" Clark
Dennis "Better late than never" Healy
Joe "Why am I still awake, and I'm not even driving" Thompson
Doug "I hate Volvo's" Updenkelder
Matt "Can I get a Liter of Cola?" Updenkelder

Not pictured:
Erik "I am too important for my own team" Torgeson
Michael "Yeah, peace out" Ericksen

I had a blast guys, congrats on 13th, and the ugliest car award.

ChumpCar aftermath

2009-11-05T10:29:00.000-08:00

Man, what a great time! Overall, our team did very well with all things considered. We finished in 13th out of 39 cars and managed to keep our lap times very consistent. We had a couple snafoos

I will detail our failures, and what I attribute them to. Erik and I have invited a couple of the drivers from the PIR race over this weekend to get the car back together for the Thill race... while they may not be too excited about it, they have graciously offered to help.

1) Sometime throughout the night, we lost the C-clip that held the shift linkage in place. We lost 2nd and 4th midway through Erik's stint and attempted to fix it with zipties. When the first ziptie broke about 20 minutes later, we quadrupled the number of zipties and it seemed to be holding. As a precaution, we started wondering the pits for someone with an MR2. We found a donor car (someone's daily driver) to borrow the c-clip out of, and changed it out at the next driver change. We have a spare, so this shouldnt be an issue

2) We developed a pretty nasty oil leak with about 2 hours left in the race... we were losing about a qt an hour through a small hole in the oil pan. It's on the back of the pan and I'm pretty sure its right where I welded the baffle back together. I'm a welding nub, so im sure I weakened the metal enough that it finally gave way 23.5 hours into the race. We have 2 oil pans, so we will either have Dave fix this one.. or put a stock one back on.

3) Our tires were awesome! Not as grippy as the RT615's, but lasted the entire race! I'm pretty sure we could get 48 hours out of a set. They are predictable like the TOYO's, but half the cost. We had 4 mounted and balanced for about $225. We ran Dunlop DZ101's. For the money, I was very happy with them.

4) Dave, your race pads in the front are GONE... we went through the pad, went to metal and metal and finally threw the pad across the track at turn 10. This caused us to lose the piston out the back as well.. causing fluid to leak all over the inner wheel. Dennis pulled in the pits with the wheel literally on fire with 45 minutes to go. We put out the fire, got Dennis out of the car and made sure everything else was looking alright. We then pushed the car all the way back to pit-out and shoved Dennis back in the car... On the final lap, Dennis went out for one more lap with no brakes.. just to get the checkered flag. We finished!

Upon reflection, I still woudlnt have changed the pads during the break... i thought we had plenty of pad to finish the race, i was wrong.. but only by 30 minutes :)

At least we won a trophy, although it's not the best award to be known for. We pulled off the "ugliest car on the trailer BEFORE the race"

Friday down... Race day here we come!

2009-10-31T07:16:00.000-07:00

Holy shit it's cold... and wet

Friday went off without any notable hitches. We ended up with 39 cars showing up (2 didn't show).

Highlights:

I've seen many shark themes... MANY.. and this one takes first place in my book for creativity. The whole front end of the car was custom molded!

What crap can race would be complete without a star wars theme?

What to do with that damn parts car that's gathering moss in your backyard? Make a BBQ out of it of course! Nice work guys!

And yes, that's a Fiat X/19

Off to the races!

2009-10-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

It's 8am... and were headed to the track!

Expanded coverage of the race will be posted here! Stay tuned!

Test Drive! Wow it's loud...

2009-10-25T15:51:00.000-07:00

Ignore the first 2 minutes.. this is the first time i've gotten our camera to work.. Turns out HDD cameras don't like being in cars. Scored 2 8 gig memory cards for my DCR-SR85. Success!

ChumpCar Portland: T-minus 10 days

2009-10-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

The inaugural ChumpCar race at Portland International Raceway is now 10 days away... and are we ready? Yeah right...

Current items on the To-do list:

-Fix oil cooler (JB Weld?)
-Finish motor break-in
-Install radios
-Mount / balance spare tires on spare wheels (yes, we bought spare wheels for $125 on craigslist)
-Diagnose and fix water leak? (Erik fails at soldering)
-Mount lightbar
-Wire headlights
-Tape headlights
-Change oil
-Bleed brakes
-Finish windmill 2.0
-Install "boost gauge"
-FPR?
-Find another windshield wiper
-Replace wiper blades (because if we don't, its going to rain)

Teaser

2009-10-19T20:00:00.001-07:00

For anyone that actually follows my blog, and give a shit about what I post.... this is for you

Windmill 2.0 Teaser

IT'S ALIVE!

2009-10-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

Holy crap it runs... sorta...

Actually, it runs pretty well above 4k rpm. With the "aggressive" valve job performed by Erik (wait, let me clarify that neither of us had a CLUE what we were doing... when I say aggressive, I really mean Erik didn't know when to quit removing material), the car basically falls on it's face under 4k. I guess it's a good thing we run between 4k and 7k at race speeds.

We found 2 coolant leaks and diagnosed the wrong size o-rings... it turns out that removing the water pump takes about 10 minutes when you have giant holes in the side of your car.

Today, the car developed a pretty severe oil leak... it turns out our oil cooler was smacked when the motor was installed, so we have to go on a hunt to find a replacement. Our old one was a tranny cooler from an 87 Saab 9000 (anyone have one laying around?).

I hope no-one asks how we plan on "breaking in the motor"... because it might involve driving it up and down the road at full throttle. Break-in shmak-in

More progress

2009-10-19T19:30:00.000-07:00

T-minus 1 weekend until the first ChumpCar event in our backyard!

Background: Remember our motor blew up at Buttonwillow? The block is toast. Fail. So we set out searching for a replacement motor, since our spare motor that we limped in on burned about a qt an hour. We found 2 4AGE's growing weeds at a dude's house in Clatskanie (read: BFE). For $300 we got 2 motors in "ran when pulled = who the hell knows" condition, and a spare transmission which I shortly thereafter needed a tetnis shot just to get the thing out of the truck. Who cares, this is crap-can racing!

2 ebay gasket sets later, we had 2 "rebuilt" motors. We had a die-grinder party with the two heads and made some low cost, high value performance upgrades! (port match, valve grind). Nothing professional, just sticking with the budget. A Makita cylinder hone, and a Makita valve lapping rounded out the remaining work on the two motors. Luckily, the internals were salvagable out of the two motors, so we didn't need to buy anything except the gasket sets. I wish I could tell you all this took place in a weekend, but with my travel schedule.. it took Erik and I about 3 weekends to do the poor-mans-rebuild.

Here we sit with 2 motors, 0 miles, and NO idea if they are going to work.

Windmill 2.0

2009-10-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

Alright, the windmill powered supercharger was certainly interesting. The fan spun which charged the battery via an alternator which powered an "electric supercharger" which shoved air in to our intake. Overall performance gain? maybe 1/2 hp at idle, and it probably restricted our intake at WOT. Awesome? Yes! Effective? Not even close.

Enter Windmill 2.0

Details of this new engineering marvel have yet to be released (aka we're probably not sure what it's for yet). But I'll tell you one thing... It's twice as mean and twice as dangerous. I'm pretty sure this one would take off a finger at full speed.

ButtonWillow aftermath

2009-10-11T22:35:00.000-07:00

Wow... It's been umm... 5 months since buttonwillow? And I haven't TOUCHED the blog.... why?

Because Buttonwillow sucked.. big fat hillbilly ass...

Let me start by saying that Buttonwillow, CA is a LOT further in reality than it seems on google maps. Hell, it's only 300 more miles than Thunder hill... Holy crap the commute sucked! Since the weather forecast was set for a blistering 102 degrees on both race days, Free Range Racing came prepared! Thanks to Erik's grandparents, we were able to procure a 34' 5th wheel to take down to the race. AC? check! Water? check! Beds? check! would we have time to use any of those things? Nope..

It all started Friday afternoon during practice. Erik, Dave and I all had pretty good sessions on the track for warm-up but when I pulled in... we noticed a slight "ticking" coming from the top end of the motor. Assuming it was just valve noise, we send Christopher out on to the track. 20 minutes later... BOOM. Shit... really... shit...

Christopher managed to get back in to the pits, but the damage had already been done. What was the problem? No idea... It just didnt want to run anymore. We assumed the worse and started pulling the head about about 4pm Friday evening. 2 hours later, we had a visably blown motor. 18 hours until green flag.

Now the remaining 18 hours is a complete blur... Dave got way too drunk and passed out, Christopher braved the late night to keep Erik and I company, and to assist with the parts car motor pulling. I pulled the blown motor out of the car with help from the drunk passer-bys. I'd love to fill in all the lovely details about how much it sucked... but it's such a blur that I don't really care to recall it. We went to bed at 3am and were up by 6am back under the car.

Green flag! We're still in the pits.... at this point we knew the motor ran and we knew the timing was at least good enough to limp us through. 10am green flag, and we were out on the racetrack by about 11:30am. Hour and a half down... shit. Less than 10 laps later, Christopher came back in with a cooling issue. These MR2's are notorious for getting bubbles in the collant, so we assumed it would take a few laps to iron out the bugs. By 12:30pm, we were running strong(ish) and limping through on the unknown parts car motor. 83rd place. Awesome

By the end of Saturday, we worked out way back up to the 50's and managed to keep the car on the track for the rest of the day. At each driver change, we were putting in about a qt of oil in the car so we obviously had a HUGE leak somewhere.. Where? who cares... At the end of day 1, it was time for celebration.. not wrenching. Erik and I wondered around the pits, heckling anyone we came in contact with. Poor Metro-Gnomes.... sorry for pissing you off that night :)

Sunday came and went, Christpher had a couple black flags that landed us in the penelty box but overall we did pretty well. At the end of the race I think we were 36th. Considering we sat out about 2 hours in the beginning and were in every 10 laps for at least anohter 2 hours, we were happy. OK, maybe happy is not the right word... Content? Neutral? Pissed? Livid? OMGIWANTTOKILLSOMEONE? yeah, that one

It was fun, it was long, it sucked ass

ChumpCar has pulled it off!

2009-07-14T16:29:00.000-07:00

OK So there is a new <$500 car series that is currently being established, and their first stop is freaking PIR! (Remember, PIR is about 3 miles from my house). We have been PLEADING to have a lemons event there, but I guess the track is too fast. Not for the ChumpCar guys!

Kudos to you ChumpCar, and we will see you in October!

Welcome Christopher!

2009-06-04T14:28:00.000-07:00

So Jeff has decided to step down for Buttonwillow... something about the 112 degree weather wasn't enticing... old men /shrug (no, he wasn't thrown off for black flags.. as much as Erik probably wanted him to be)

Enter our stand-in
"Racecraft" Bender - Driving Gladiator

Final Day

2009-06-04T13:47:00.000-07:00

It's amazing what a difference it makes when you DO NOT get black flags!

For most of the second day, we remained black flag less..

Due to a drastic decrease in tire tread.. the car was a pain in the a$$ to handle. Our multiple race TOYO's were on their last leg, and we wondered if they would even get us through the afternoon.

Erik started out, flawless

Dave hopped in, flawless

I got in, flawless

Jeff got in.... well, you can see where this is headed. 30 minutes in to the "final" stint of the weekend, Jeff pulled ANOTHER black flag for contact.

First words out of Jeff's mouth "Someone hit me! Someone always hits me!"

We figure it has something to do with the fact that he loves to dive in, late brake and steal the apex away from the cars in line. While this in fact is an effective (although dick-ish) way to pass.. this is NOT how you win an endurance race.

This time the judges were all-to-familiar with Jeff and his antics.

"We want chocolate!" barked a man in black robes

So legs were caution taped, direction were given... and Jeff and Driver X set off together to fetch chocolate.

30 minutes, 4 chocolate cookies, and a Hershey bar later.. Erik was in the car to finish off the day!

Checkered flag... WE FINISHED! Tires SHOT, dehydrated, tired, hot, sore.... who cares. We did it!

At the awards ceremony we were keeping our fingers crossed for the banned / dangerous technology trophy.. as I had painstakingly prep'd the 9th grade science project poster board the night before I left.

Quote from Jay "We've had a lot of motorized wings in Lemons, but we have NEVER seen a windmill powered supercharger"

Score!

Peep the trophy on the trunk lid!

Nice work team Free Range... now time to prep for Buttonwillow in 2 months!

Day 1

2009-05-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

So Friday night we did a half-day test at RFR and all of us were 100% glad we did. With all the blind rises and odd-ball apex's... it was well worth the 200 bucks for all of us to get a chance to drive it.

Around 5pm or so, we wondered over to tech with our KERS reader board (ala 8th grade science project). The KERS system had held up for about 4 hours of 80% driving on the track... would it hold the whole race??? yeah right...

Flew through tech and BS with flying colors... especially since we hadn't dont anything to the car except add the KERS.. which did absolutly nothing to the power of the car... but it worked! :)

Had a couple beers with the Sharks, and shot the breeze with a couple of the e30 teams as we wondered around the pits looking for signs of life. The wind of howling, it was cold... and I'm sure John C. was enjoying his heated motorhome... bastard... At least there was a nice sunset

Saturday morning came, and once again we had communication issues. The CB radios we bought were working "ok", but the ebay chinese headsets were NOT. Solution? Rip out the headsets and yell REALLY loud at the radio zip tied to the shifter linkage. ghetto? yeah... Effective? no... it's lemons.. close enough

First driver out was me (Matt). The theory was, enough teams did NOT see the track on Friday.. so we were going to push for the first few laps to see if we could climb our way to the top. Again, yeah right.. I was in the car for about an hour and a half.. and about 70% of it was under yellow. Turns out the "slide" corner was a bit too much for some of the teams. Good thing Dave popped a spare tire on it Friday.. so we all knew to watch out.

Mid-way through the first day and we were sitting pretty good... until the second driver (Jeff) got our first black flag. Thanks to a bribe the day before, we were let go with a slap on the wrist and a driver change. Erik's turn!

Flawless for about an hour and a half and it was Dave's turn in the car. Another flawless session got us back in to the top 20's. My session went black-flag free and I think we moved up in the teens. That is until Jeff stepped in the car again... 8 laps later he was following the orange vw van around the pits for passing under yellow. 20 minutes later and a new driver.. we were off to finish the first day.

2 black flags, 30 minutes penalty time, 28th place.... better than last year

We have arrived! barely

2009-05-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

What 24 hours of lemons story would be complete without the "we broke down on the side of the road" element?

Certainly not any of our stories anyways...

Our truck is a 1999 Ford F250 with the 7.3 turbo diesel.. bulletproof right?? Well... in our case, the bullet came in the form of a pop'd intercooler hose. I got a txt from Erik at about 11:45pm on Thursday night "umm, our turbo just went pop".

WTF does that mean? Pop goes the Turbo? Erik and Dave managed to coast the truck without boost the remaining 7 miles to Reno and parked the truck in a hotel parking lot. The next morning, we all met up to assess damages. Minimal. Awesome.

10 minutes, 6 "sh*t"s, 4 "f*ck"s and a few "god damnit"s and we were back on the road. It turns out they designed that particular hose to be REALLY easy to get to with the battery out... but they did NOT design the battery to be taken out in less than 10 minutes.

So yeah, we hit the track at about 11am to find a clusterf*ck of teams saving endless spots. When life gives you Lemons, Bribe the judges! A few kind words and a cuban cigar later.. we had a great spot front and center :)

Car ran great, track is a travesty and were a little worried about our tires lasting the whole race but overall it was a productive day. Did I mention the Thunderstorms yet?

And we're off

2009-05-21T08:39:00.001-07:00

And we know how to roll in style!

See you all in Reno!

Test and Tune

2009-05-19T22:35:00.000-07:00

So with all the bugs shaken out (ok most..), we drug the car down to our local track (Portland International Raceway) to give it a running before we leave for Reno. Dave is a Sr. Instructor for the Porsche club, so we only had to pay for one of our members, and we got twice the track time :)

I decided to take the bait, and strap up for the track-day. This being my first "official" track day, and my first time on PIR at speed... I was excited to get out on the track.

We started out in Dave's 450hp supercharged NSX beast... I learned lines at PIR, and focused on technique.

Later in the afternoon, the NSX got meatball'd for being too loud after 5pm, so it was time to bring out the Lemons car! 4 sessions of 25 min each, and everything was flawless! Although we didnt have the KERS system installed... I guess the guys in the GT3's didn't feel that a 40lb alternator suspended by 2 brake cables and leftover aluminum from an old furnace. What could possible have gone wrong?

Mind you, this was the same Porsche club that kicked us off the track last month for almost losing the hood at 90mph down the front straight.

Details...

forums.24hoursoflemons.com

2009-05-15T15:29:00.001-07:00

I fail at forum BS. Totally fail. That is all.

2009-05-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

List of failures in the last couple weeks of car prep:

Apparently weld slag got all over my bubble blower, so the tray that hold the bubbles is no polka dotted with tiny holes. I think I used about half a tube of silicon to get it "sealed"
The small hole we had in our portable gas tank is now about 2" long... Anyone know how to weld polyethylene?
Did I mention the hood flew off at a Porsche Club track day? Methinks we wont be invited back to that one.. at least the hood is umm... "fixed" now
Our crystal sucks... like BIG time... it totally misses the entire look I was going for.... what did I expect for gathering the supplies at the Dollar Tree?
Our new communication system has different plugs than the last one we tried... therefor all the headsets we had last time will no longer work. I know! Ill get an adapter! to ebay! Direct quote from the place i bought it from after I complained "Please send it back to Fire Fox, and Put in your name, address, and telephone and when it arrives at the warehouse they will send out a new one immediately. Sorry for the problem.
We still don't have a helmet for the race... seriously, does it take 3 weeks to ship a stupid square box?
Our track data acquisition unit is missing a transmitter... it's just money right?
We were so happy to have the windmill mounted, we sort of forgot it has to be removed for the drive down... It's really not designed to be "removable"
We still have no way to power the video camera. I zip tied a power inverter in the cockpit and hooked it to the battery, but who knows if our alternator will be able to keep up with it. Turns out they don't make 12v power sources for my DCR-SR8... anyone smarter than me have a better idea? Erik, I know your opinion and I don't like it. Next?
Ohh yeah, the car leaks oil out of the drain plug... sigh

Our run at banned technology

2009-04-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

KERS: A regenerative brake mechanism that reduces vehicle speed by converting some of its kinetic energy into another useful form of energy. ...

Motorauthority writes: "Following the problems encountered by teams in the development of KERS systems for 2009, it is now suggested the voluntary debut of the technology might need to be delayed."

Free Range Racing is READY NOW!

Ok... we do realize that KERS isn't BANNED from F1, but it is currently not being developed and adopted by some teams... and technically it is banned in most other forms of racing.

KERS essentially takes the energy dissipated during braking and stores it for later use (VERY high level description). We have taken a slightly different approach for the 24 Hours of Lemons 2009 season due mostly to the ENORMOUS costs associated with harnessing braking forces.

Free Range Racing is all about renewable resources! Since our car will be hurdling down the track at a top speed of about 100 (Thill 2008 when the second chicane was wide enough)... we figured we may as well utilize all that air we displace. What better way to convert air to energy than with a multimillion dollar windmill? Well we here at Free Range Racing think that an alternator painted white and plastic fins bolted to the old pully is a MUCH better plan. luckily Dave happened to have some bicycle brake cables sitting around to act as our guy wires. Currently tested at 70mph and about 12 amps @ 14 volts.... we have officially generated power!

Now what to do with our newly trapped energy? The F1 guys use a "hybrid system consisting of a combination of electric motor and generator, the requisite power electrics and an energy storage module". This sounds too complicated for lemons... I dont even know what that means.

We have power... we need horsepower... to ebay I go. Electric Supercharger?? Wow, people are really that stupid? It's PLASTIC!! Wait... this is Lemons... you mean I can install something that runs on electricity, can break in to millions of tiny pieces and essentially ruin my motor in a matter of seconds?? PERFECT!

Enter our electric supercharger (aka 2003 Mercruiser bilge pump, rated at 250 CFM). A few ABS fittings, a few POUNDS of epoxy, a cheap cone filter and a spare piece of tubing laying around... We have an electric powerhouse!

P.S. For those out there thinking there is NO way this is going to work. You're ABSOLUTLY right! But why not?

OK so to review, we have a windmill generating about 12 amps at full speed and a supercharger that takes about 12 amps to run... that doesnt give us enough power to keep the thing running through the whole race.. How do we get a few more amps out of this equation?

SOLAR! Luckily Harbor Freight has a POS solar panel that's rated at about 14 watts @ 12 volts. 14 / 12 = 1.16 amps. Meh, good enough. On it goes!

This is a picture of all of our "crap" attached to the back of the car.

Of course our beloved spotted owl mascot is making the 24 hour trip around the track with some additional material added to the wings (he was in pretty sorry shape after the first race).

The $20 question on your mind right now is probably "will all this crap stay on the car?".. the answer is umm.. probably?

See you all in Reno!

Throttle body and such and so forth

2009-04-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

I'm officially claiming -Erik is done working on the race car-.

Yesterday I pulled the throttle body apart and figured out why our idle was so radically erratic. Then, strangest of strange, I fixed it. No our car idles at 800 smooth RPM.

We also took the car up the road to see if the windmill was going to implode. I was pushing as hard as I could on our ice-skate parts car tires and got up to 70. Dave followed lazily in his NSX and said it looked totally stable, even with me sliding around and braking/accelerating hard. So, win.

On the lose side, those tires we were counting on as spares are total, total garbage. So, more $$$ output.

But as I said at the beginning, everything on -ERIK'S- list is crossed off, so I"m done. Now if the rest of the team.....

New Paint

2009-04-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

Erik's been busy.. sadly, I haven't done sh*t

New paint job... our last attempt at "flower power" meant cutting the wives loose with cans of pastel Krylon. While we scored many (much needed) points with them, we were a bit embarrassed to show up to the track. Who would have thought they would have taken "flower power" literally?

Our new application promised a more "menacing" look.... I'm not sure if this qualifies, but it's better than pastel in my book.

Also installed the windmill... Solar panel and supercharger are next

Reno Prep

2009-04-08T14:08:00.001-07:00

So our entire team (ok, not really Erik) has had a case of the 'I don't really want to work on the car' for the last few weeks. We have a laundry list of item to address, but NONE of them correspond to actually making the car run. The car runs great! We've been out to a few local auto-x events and even managed to get kicked out of a Porsche track day at PIR. Apparently they look down on hoods that fly off at 100mph on the front straight.. who would have thought?

We are heavily focusing on how to make our car stand out... REALLY stand out. Sure we had an owl flying over our car, and had random bits of bamboo pasted to the car... but that's not REALLY what lemons is about. Our goal for the first race was to build a great car, with a mediacore theme. After returning from the madness, we were able to reflect back on our horrible driving, and horrible attempt at recognition. We did a lot of things well, but nothing we did was exceptional.

Enter Reno: We have some BIG plans for the car this year, and all of them revolve around the theme, and making our car stand out. Although, we are still reluctant to screw 200lbs of plywood in the shape of a train on the top of our car, but that's because we are too competitive in nature to completely forego our chance of winning.

Plans:

New paint job
Lemon's approved KERS system
More 'environmentally friendly' power generation... who needs an alternator?
Improved bubble output
Crystal relocation to maximize glowing effect
Re-vamped Owl in a new-ish location

KERS teaser

Reno or Bust!

2009-03-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

Were in!

Hi, Team Captain:

Good news--I think. Your team has officially been ACCEPTED for LeMons Goin' for Broken, at Reno-Fernley Raceway on 23-24 May 2009. We got tons of crappy entries for this race; yours was just enough crappier to be selected. Nice work.

Current list of things to do before the race:

MAKE SURE OUR COMMINICATIONS WORK!
Procure new SA2005 full-face helmets
Re-wire the bubble blower and crystal (with wire that is actually flexable... no more solid copper BS)
Check the oil
Re-paint it
Re-weld the owl bar
Fix the hood (it flew off during a track-day)
Re-install fire extinguisher and remove passenger seat
Install super-secret charging system!

We did it!

2008-12-31T08:31:00.001-08:00

The results are not so good, but we learned a ton about racing.. and just how crappy our radio setup was...

Ended up 70th overall, and were forced to trailer the car 2.5 hours early due to too many black flags.

Upgrades!

2008-12-22T21:56:00.000-08:00

The loading of the second car didn't go too well last time, so Dave and I decided to "upgrade" the ramps.

We added a platform of 1 1/2" plywood across the back (screwed directly into the trunk of the parts car... hope we dont need that part). Then re-inforced the ramps a bit.

Holy Ice Batman

2008-12-22T06:50:00.000-08:00

So mother earth has decided to blow her nose all over the Portland area.. and the metropolitan areas are a TRAVESTY... why can't people learn how to drive in the snow?

Quick updates:

- Modified ramps completed to avoid losing the front end of the race car over the side of the parts car.

- Drank beer

- Installed coolant overflow tank

- Installed hard-wood floors in the passenger side

- Drank beer

- Installed windshield wipers and fixed squirters

- Drank beer

- Relocated wiper switch to accomodate HANS device

ummm Drank more beer?

Hope I can get out of town in the crap..

my e30

Final Touches

2008-12-17T22:25:00.001-08:00

So Erik is out of town, so Dave and I decided to add a little "spice" to the car and to the theme. The wives were excited to break out the spray pain, and we were excited to play with more bamboo!

This is what we came up with... Flower Power!!!

Our first roadtrip!

2008-12-15T10:54:00.000-08:00

So this weekend we wanted to do a dry run with most of our gear loaded on the trailer... needless to say, it was quite an experience. 2 12' cars on a 20ft trailer. I guess it's a good thing we dont care about the body of the parts car! On the drive down to the allignment shop, we put the front bumper on the back end of the parts car. We tried a different technique on the way back.

Special Thanks to Bob at Superior Performace for allowing us to use his high-tech allignment rack.

This is what we did on the way home... scary as sh*t driving it up on the trailer. The theory was to put the front wheels of the race car, ON TOP of the trunk of the parts car. All was perfect, until my aim was a "little off"

How much does it cost to run a LeMons race?

2008-12-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

Well, let me tell you!

Team Total
$ 3,139.26

If you have 4 people, that's $784.81 per person... which does NOT include lodging once you get there, personal safety items (suit, shoes, gloves), and any other useless crap you end up buying at the track (we all do it...)

The bulk of our budget came from the ridiculous gas prices, and multiple trips to Seattle to pick up the car and the parts car (I wish prices were then, what they are now). Tires, high-end brake pads, Spare head gasket, and diesel for the truck to drag it 500 miles each way played a huge part as well.

Miraculously, we are $128.27 UNDER BUDGET for the car... It turns out parts on the 88 MR2 are worth quite a bit of money on ebay. We sold the interior for $125, and misc trim pieces for about $90. and that MOMO steering wheel we got in the purchase? $120 on ebay.

2008-12-11T20:23:00.000-08:00

Who is bringing the tools? You are, I am, Dave is, Jeff is. Jeff is bringing hand tools galore, we're bringing whatever specialty/automotive tools we think we'll need along with the generator and compressor. Jeff is bringing a wire feed, right?

Who is riding in what car? Down: Matt Jeff Erik in truck, Chris Rhi Tyler Tiffani in Chris' car. Up: Matt Erik Tiffani Rhi Tyler in truck, Chris Dave in Chris' car.

What tools do we need? None. Dave needs to bring his puller kit thingie and we need to decide who's bringing the wire feed.

Who has the radios? Where are the batteries? You have the radios and the batteries, from your dad.

Do the radios even work?? See last question

Where did I put my race suit that I bought 4 months ago? WOW... Maybe I should dryclean it? Uh...I think it's in the shop, actually. Didn't you already clean it? Maybe it's just you that stinks...

Does the car run well enough? No.

Did I forget to weld on that last hood pin support? Yes.

What time should we leave Portland to make it there in time to drive on Friday? Leaving will be dictated, unfortunately, by my aunt's diner schedule. At this point it's looking like start at 3pm and I can skeedadle by 6ish, on the road by 7, so lets say we're rolling by 8 after I've totally redone all the car binding you guys mess up.

Can we afford to drive Friday? No. Will anyway.

Did we ever get the mounting hardware for the HANS device? On dave's plate, he has our helmet.

Do the micorphones for our Chatterbox fit on a 3/4 helmet? See question way the fook up there that say it's your problem.

Should we park close to the track, or close to power? Life's about compromise, and we'll grab whatever spot looks sweet in our delerious drove-through-the-night state.

Will we even have power? We have a generator and propane, we're set for worst-case-scenario.

Where the F are we doing to put the welder, engine hoist, floor jack, aircompressor? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no idea. Probably in and on and under the cars as much as possible.

Whos idea was it to buy a 1975 camper that wont fit any of our tools? You had no part of it, fuck off.

How the hell do we fit 2 MR2's on a 20' flatbed. 2x6's my friend, and a fearless heart. And foolishness. And beer.

Once we get the MR2's on, where are we going to put the rest of the shit? You already asked that. Are you drunk?

Do we have enough power in the Ford to pull all this crap over the pass? Power? Yes. Everything else? No.

Gas is HOW MUCH?? Less than rediculous.

Logistical Nightmare

2008-12-11T15:46:00.000-08:00

We have spent so many nights working on the car, and discussing what needed to be done... and yet I feel like we are SO far away from being organized for the race.

Who is bringing the tools?
Who is riding in what car?
What tools do we need?
Who has the radios? Where are the batteries?
Do the radios even work??
Where did I put my race suit that I bought 4 months ago? WOW... Maybe I should dryclean it?
Does the car run well enough?
Did I forget to weld on that last hood pin support?
What time should we leave Portland to make it there in time to drive on Friday?
Can we afford to drive Friday?
Did we ever get the mounting hardware for the HANS device?
Do the micorphones for our Chatterbox fit on a 3/4 helmet?
Should we park close to the track, or close to power?
Will we even have power?
Where the F are we doing to put the welder, engine hoist, floor jack, aircompressor?
Whos idea was it to buy a 1975 camper that wont fit any of our tools?
How the hell do we fit 2 MR2's on a 20' flatbed
Once we get the MR2's on, where are we going to put the rest of the shit?
Do we have enough power in the Ford to pull all this crap over the pass?
Gas is HOW MUCH??

/braindump....

I'm getting stressed, but totally excited!

We have a parts car!

2008-12-10T14:21:00.000-08:00

Thanks Erik for making the trek BACK UP to Seattle to pick up ANOTHER car...

I'm glad you didn't break anything when this happened

Now to figure out how to put two MR2's on a 20' flatbed trailer, while towing the 10' camper in the background.

mmm diesel trucks

Updates - Car is safety ready!

2008-12-10T14:10:00.001-08:00

Well it's been a LONG few weeks trying to manage our meager existences, while attempting to earn enough money to satisfy "the man", and ohh yeah.. trying to hold our marriages together.

But we have progress!

The cage is in, and most of the welds look like they are from a Kindergarden "Welding Day". I thought we had someone that did this for a living on our team? I guess it's hard to get a lot accomplished (and pretty) if you have a fully stocked kegerator sitting 10 feet away.

Special thanks to Dave for supplying the bottle of Black Velvet that led to an almost loss of finger, marriage, etc. etc. My wife still hates me by the way.... Happy B-Day to me!

Other random things we got done.

bubble blower is installed (and functioning beautifully I might add)

Amazingly enough, our vision of a "0 emissions, free range organicly grown race car" have come to fruition... Our highly secretive process of converting the earths natural "chi" into a harnessable force using the largest organically grown crystal in the world is now ready to catapult our car past the competitors. (Don't tell Jay, it still runs on gas)

For clarification, we have a switch in the cockpit that turns on a bubble blower that will shower our opponents with soapy grossness out the back of that rather farty looking tailpipe. Realistically, we will probably only be able to run it in the pits, but it's still pretty cool!

On another accomplishment note: We have a Mascot!

Meet Khundahlini, our resident spotted owl who will watch over our team to ensure fair play!

I wish I had time to wire red LED's to his eyes, but we only have a couple weeks left, and the car doesnt even run...

Hot Gawd Damn this blog is a Failure

2008-11-25T09:15:00.000-08:00

Yup, we're actually spending our time working on the car instead of talking about it. We've almost got the cage totally done, I'm a battery mount away from having the wiring done, and a belt or bigger alt pulley and the motor will be ready to re-fire up. We have a seat. We have most of a steering wheel. What else could we need? Oh yeah, our rebuilt brakes won't build pressure, weird. more bleeding in my future. Both brakes and me.

But what I wanted to talk about was my dissapointment in other teams that are obviously cheating. The attractiveness of this race to me is that for very little money and a lot of hard work I can compete in a very real way with other racers. That is, of course, if they follow the rules. We have been following the blog of another certain race team here in portland that is BLATANTLY cheating, and then blogging about it. With $500, you just can't buy a car and then rebuild EVERYTHING. Let alone TWO of everything. It makes me very angry. We're putting our faith in a 215k mile motor, because that's the spirit of the competition, and these guys are building not one, but two motors and transmissions, not to mention 'borrowing' lots of expensive race parts from their real full-time race car. I guess if you bought it for $400 a year ago and then used it for a year, it's probably totally worthless now, right? It's BULL SHIT. Even if we could afford to cheat, I wouldn't. Not that we can afford it, you understand. In the end, we may not win this race, we may not even finish, but these guys are going to have to know that however they do it wasn't an honest effort and they don't deserve any good that happens to them. They've already earned my vote for people's curse. In fact, I may just pass copies of their blog around the pits to ensure they get votes from others, as well.

I need coffee. And beer.

Progress

2008-11-25T09:07:00.000-08:00

Since I was extremely lazy, and didn't really want to start blogging until we GOT IN to the race... I'm going to do a quick photo montage of the progress thus far.

Step 1: GUT IT OUT

Before

After

STEP 2: MAKE THE CAGE

Main Hoop

More to come...

The Car

2008-11-21T10:16:00.000-08:00

So I am posting all the past stuff that we have done on the car, and trying to not leave out all the crap that I have probably forgotten!

I located an ex auto-x car in the Seattle area that had been in a front end "fender bender"... as it turns out, it was more of a "frame bender", but who's counting?

The stats:

1988 Toyota MR2 w/ 232k miles on the odo

The good:

Tokiko adjustable struts
Poly bushings in the rear
Header
List of stuff that we can sell!
It runs.... kinda
Pretty wheels!
$400 bucks!

The bad:

It runs.... kinda
Bent frame
Resonctructed title... not once, not twice, but three times. It's been BEAT
Tires are SHOT
Demolished windshield
Throttle cable is hanging on by one thread
Brakes are leaking badly... need a caliper rebuild badly
230k miles on ORIGINAL tranny... /cry

Motoventure Who?

2008-11-20T11:16:00.000-08:00

So I was approached by a very good friend of mine about midway through the initial planning sessions. He was / is a producer and owner of a local film company, and he was extatic about the race.. and the chance to film it! Enter Brian and Thor...

Brian (owner) Thor (star) have done a couple motorcycle adventure movies in the past, and were thrilled at the chance to be a part of the craziness that we all know as the 24 hours of lemons. Brian contacted Jay Lamm about doing the film, and everyone agreed that footage would be ok.. with a small possibility that ALL footage of the race would be copywritted (I dont understand this part, but this leads us to losing our sponsorship, and our chance at stardom!).

4 weeks ago, Motoventure films was responsible for the fiming and producing of a documentary of the Mt Hood Rally Moto (in partnership with BMW, and a few other companies). Well it turns out that this race took a serious toll on the finances and equipement of Motoventure films... (namely, they shattered two HD cameras). Erik and I received a friendly but dissapointing phone call from Brian stating that they were out for this year's race... oh well

Enter Dave and Jeff (i actually found Dave through craigslist... I was looking for steel and he offered to help with the cage).

We are now:

Matt
Erik
Dave
Jeff

Brian and Thor who?

history of Free Range

2008-11-20T10:12:00.000-08:00

I have been told I should do some team history, so here goes.

In 2007 I was part of a car forum (carfreeks.net). Within the forum we tried, and failed, to organize a team to enter a car in the 24 Hours of Lemons at Altamont. The seed was planted in my brain, however, and I had made some contacts who were also interested.

Mid-October 2007 I was selling the stock wheels off my wife's Subaru Legacy. Some dude showed up and was more than happy to pay for stock steel wheels. I couldn't imagine why, so I asked. "We're building a cheap race car, and it's likely the wheels will get hit. Steel wheels bend, not break", he said. "what kind of race could that possibly be", was the obvious reply. You know the answer; LeMons. I told him I had tried and failed to get in, and lo-and-behold he had a spot open. Two, in fact, and needed the cash. So I was in, and set him up with my contact from the car forum who had worked with me in our previous attempt. That guy was Matt.

So, turns out he only had one spot available, as a long-shot friend came up with the cash last minute. Matt was out, and pissed, but he and I started talking about entering another day, and acutally hanging out and working on cars. I had a garage, he had ambition. Good combination.

December 2007 I ran with team Festivus (think Seinfeld) at the initial 24 Hours of LeMons Thunderhill. The team was headed by someone else, organized by someone else, and yet the car ended up in my garage and I did a massive amount of work on it. Despite having six team members and only getting a little under two hours behind the wheel, it was a total blast and worth the approximately $600 total it cost me for the experience. However, at the end of the race, on the drive home, the original organizer made it clear that I actually had NO investment in the car, that he owned it, and that I could go pound sand. Needless to say, that left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.

Matt and I vowed to get into Altamont 2008. He had a car already, a Talon TSi he had been sitting on for years. It was a turbo. It was AWD. It hadn't run in years. It was perfect. We had no team members, we had no money, but we had a car. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to write an application and, after getting the car running and roping in another team member, we didn't get in to the race. We did, however, sell the car for massive profit (assuming it was worth next to nothing when we started working on it).

We learned something from that failed application (mostly because I asked the organizer, Jay Lamm, why we failed and he told me) so we knew we were set for getting in to thunderhill. Matt and I spent some time turning wrenches after not getting into Altamont, had good team mate understanding going on, and we were ready for the next LeMons opportunity...

Keeping track late in the game

2008-11-20T10:04:00.000-08:00

HI! We are free range racing, a grass roots race team participating in the 24 Hours of LeMons at Thunderhill, 2008. We are building a $500 total investment race car to compete against other $500 cars. The process of building this car is pretty intense, and is definitely a major part of the fun of this competition!

Our Team:

Erik (ME!!!): team captain, general tight wad and mechanical hack

Matt: Accountant and project manager. No real skills. (From Matt: Erik, yer a douche)

Dave: Fabricator and High Performance Driving Instructor. Clearly we drugged him and tricked him into joining the team

Jeff: Our California Connection. Financier and driver, won't see the car until he sits down to race.

As time permits, I'll fill in all the details of the car, the build thus far, the drama, the race, the finances and every other aspect of getting this project from the thrill of actually being accepted to the race to putting tires to tarmack.