ChumpCar has pulled it off!

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!

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

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

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

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

And we know how to roll in style!

See you all in Reno!

Test and Tune

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...