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...

forums.24hoursoflemons.com

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

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

1. 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"
2. The small hole we had in our portable gas tank is now about 2" long... Anyone know how to weld polyethylene?
3. 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
4. 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?
5. 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.
6. We still don't have a helmet for the race... seriously, does it take 3 weeks to ship a stupid square box?
7. Our track data acquisition unit is missing a transmitter... it's just money right?
8. 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"
9. 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?
10. Ohh yeah, the car leaks oil out of the drain plug... sigh

Our run at banned technology

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

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

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

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