2014 Southern Discomfort

While the original February time of the CMP race often lived up to the name, you really can't call May in South Carolina "Southern Discomfort". The weather was beautiful. Highs were in the 70's, nights in the 50's and besides some sprinkles on Friday, was sunny for the whole weekend.

Thursday

We got off to an inauspicious start. Pulling the car onto Todd's open trailer I gunned it a little to make sure it didn't hang up on the ramp. It didn't. It ripped the exhaust out from under the car like a fish getting gutted. On the way out the exhaust bent the shift linkage and knocked off the rear swaybar mount. Also hanging low before pulling onto the trailer (but not after) were the submarine belt mounts. There were big washers on the bottom to prevent them from pulling up though the floor, but nothing but the eyebolt head to keep it from being pulled through the bottom. The only bit of good fortune is that it happened right in front of the shop, so we had access to all of the tools to put it back together again. Needless to say we left for CMP about 4 hours later than planned. We arrived late Thursday, had a couple of beers with the Bees and the Tunachuckers and went to bed.

Friday

Friday was spent setting up the dome. We got it done in about 3 hours thanks to the new hardware. Turbo Schnitzel's biggest fan stopped by to throw her bra at the dome. Sabine had found a 911 bra cheap and brought it to use on the Turbo Schnitzel.  Craig's keeping it.

The new hardware allowed us to pre-build the hexes and pentagons that made up the dome on the ground and then quickly connect them at the corners. Taking it down on Sunday did not go as smoothly. Tech was smooth, though Jay did hassle us about our on-off switch. We will probably redo it when we rewire the car.

Saturday

We sent Kevin out first so that he could circulate under yellow before the race began in earnest. He managed to stay out of trouble during what can be a chaotic session with many formerly untested cars getting wrung out by new drivers. Craig went out next and turned in some solid laps, moving us up in the rankings to 11th place. I got into the car afterwards and after a very long yellow behind a very slow driver, I was presented with a clear track. Taking full advantage I set our fast lap...and then spun. Tracking out wide on the carousel the wheels got into the rumble strips. The car was a bit upset and refused to be placated until it was facing the wrong way. Phil sent me back out quickly, but as soon as the car was back out on the track the repaired exhaust popped off. One noisy lap later and the car was back in the pits for a 20 minute repair.

The rest of my stint went smoothly. I followed the Radioactive mustang for a dozen laps and they managed not to hit me when the car got a bit wobbly as I tried to pass at the kink. Todd took the car out next, but managed a black flag for passing under yellow and got a somewhat sterner lecture from Phil. He went back out again, but came in early with some vibration in the front. A quick inspection showed that a tie rod end was missing its cotter pin and was working its way loose. A quick repair.

Kevin hopped in for the last stint of the day. He had to dodge a pair of cars that were each trying to out-brake the other into the corner and ended up 4-off. Phil was characteristically unsympathetic as it was our third offence for the day, and gave him a scavenger hunt list of selfies to take.

Sunday

Craig took the long morning session. His duty was to make the fuel last the full two hours until the 11-noon quiet hour, which with the help of a large number of yellow flags he was able to pull off without breaking a sweat. He reported some engine roughness and had lost some gauges when the oil pressure gauge worked its way loose, so we spent quiet hour checking out the wiring.

The loose gauge had shorted the wiring and blew a fuse that was easily replaced. I took the opportunity to check the grounds and added a valve cover ground that had gone missing during the last engine swap. We also checked the cap and rotor to see if it had any contribution to the roughness, and somehow dropped a screw. We jacked up the car to look for it in the sandy floor of the dome. The jack slipped off the front subframe and managed to bend the radiator like a magician flexes a deck of cards. We were somewhat mortified to say the least.

The pressure tester showed that the radiator seemed to somehow not be leaking even though the plastic upper and lower housings were flexed about an inch. That's when we realized that the hood would no longer close. Two stacks of washers under the hood pins was our temporary fix.

I strapped into the car and rolled towards the track entrance. The car was about 100 feet away when Craig reminded me that it had no fuel. In all of the excitement over the radiator we had forgotten to put fuel in the car during the quiet hour. I made a circuit of the track and they met me at the fuel pumps on track. Mike was there fueling up cans for the 39 car and graciously allowed us to fuel up on his credit card so we didn't have to wait for the pump's credit card authorization modem to sync.

Finally getting out on track the car was doing well. The tie rod end being fixed gave me a bit more confidence going into the kink (it had felt weird over the hump on Saturday) and I was able to follow and eventually get a point-by from the Monza. Todd hopped in the car and almost made it to the end of his stint when he felt some wobble. Bringing the car in we found that the front passenger side shock had pulled through its grommet and was only casually connected to the car. It was probably repairable, but the rear wheels seemed to also have a fair amount of bearing play. With about a hour and a half to go in the race we called it and focused on tearing down the dome.

2014 'Shine Country Classic at Barber

Friday

We finished putting our suspension together and the car on the trailer at 4am on Friday morning.  Dick Anderson had found a set of beat up shock bodies that he was able to modify to fit in OLPD (Thanks Dick!).  We had the "new" shocks installed that were incredibly stiff and the upper a-arms that had been shortened by 3/4".  The car looked almost silly coming off the trailer with the wheels tucked up into the fenders and what we estimated to be 6 degrees of negative camber.  We unloaded it from the trailer at Barber Friday night and tried cruising around the paddock.  The steering was really wonky, as we realized that shortening the arms also affected the toe by almost 1-1/2".

After adjusting the ride height to something a little more reasonable, we decided that we should go back to the stock a-arms.  The stock arms gave us a much-more-reasonable 1 degree of negative camber.  Not the 2-3 that we would have preferred, but closer than the 6 or so that the shortened arms were giving us.  The toe also was shifted back to about 1/16" of toe out in the process, so we didn't need to adjust it.  We put a pair of the new RE11a's on the front and the partially worn Azeni's on the back.

Time not spent on the car was split between seeking shelter in the heated RV and assembling the dome.  My teammates then banished me to the trailer to sleep because of my snoring.

Saturday

Saturday started out well.  Mark went out first and racked up some extremely fast laps.  We were running second for a little while after the flag dropped until some of the faster cars started to catch us.  Mark got us a black flag with a spin, but we got a wave through since it was our first.

Britton went out next and managed to go 4-off about halfway through his stint.  Our penalty was singing "Sweet Home Alabama".  There was a news crew filming.  My apologies to anyone that dares listen.  We're at about 1:15 into the clip.

Chase and Nate fortunately had relatively uneventful stints in the car.  My turn was next, and after many laps of getting used the the track I was able to start putting some faster laps down.  I parried for several laps with the #150 Porsche, which we seemed evenly matched with.  The shifting had seemed difficult when I got in the car, and seemed to get progressively worse as I was on the track.  By the end of my stint I was running the track entirely in 4th to avoid shifting.

Barber is a very different experience than the handful of other tracks I've driven on.  The "line" seems much less rigidly defined, with lots of room for alternate approaches.  This makes passing easier as going off the line didn't seem to carry as big a penalty.  The track feels much more fluid.  You can carry significant speed through most of the corners.

Todd went in for our final stint of Saturday.  He'd been humbled a bit by getting a pair of black flags while driving the Turbo Schnitzel Integra earlier in day.  His turn in OLPD went smoothly.

We were fairly exhausted, since the car ran pretty well in 4th we figured we'd try bleeding the clutch and other troubleshooting in the morning.

Sunday

We tried bleeding the clutch to see if the shifting improved.  The pedal had week return, but it did seem to be pushing the clutch arm.  Mark went in the car and reported that the shifting problem remained.  The clutch was only partially disengaging and shifts required good rev matching to pull off.  There was some light rain which gave Mark a huge advantage over the other cars before the pavement began to dry out.  We had put on the 4 remaining New RE11a's for maximum rain advantage.

Here's some footage of us coming onto the track from the rear facing camera on the Diesel Chevette.  We show up about 2:30 into the clip:

We continued with the same driver order.  Britton finished the morning session before the 11-12 quiet hour.  Chase and Nate drove without incident, with Chase making good use of heel-toe to make smooth shifts.

It started to rain towards the end of my stint, which was fun before the windshield started fogging up.  After a few laps of following brake lights I brought the car in.  Todd hopped in along with a generous helping of Fog-X.  It didn't help too much as he made it to the checkered by wiping the windshield with his glove to see.

We ended up 18th in the final standings.  Relatively respectable for us.  No major downtime, but long and frequent pit stops were our liability.  We weren't aiming for a podium spot, so we switched drivers so that everyone got some seat time on each day.

Preparing for Barber

The big change for the South region schedule for 2014 is the addition of Barber Motorsports Park.  I'm excited, as I've never been to Barber.

The car ran well at the last race.  We had no serious mechanical issues.  So for Barber we can focus on making improvements rather than repairs.

Shocks have been a sore point since the beginning.  We swapped the springs fairly early in OLPD's racing career, but the shocks are still original.  This is most evident in the way the car can hop sideways through certain turns.  We found a set of beat up shocks that we think we can repair/rebuild.  Hopefully we'll get a dispensation from the powers-that-be, but we'll face getting some penalty laps if we don't.

Also needing to be addressed is the aero "package".  In addition to the wing, we also have removed all of the glass, so drag the car sees on the straights is significant.  The open windows also tend to suck some of the exhaust into the car.  The guys that run the Magnum PU Prelude had enclosed their back in a hatch-like fashion using a sheet of 1/8" polycarbonate, some 1" square tubing and lots of rivets.  Vincent was kind enough to send me step-by-step photos of their process.

We are planning to follow their construction technique, but with one difference.  Because our rear window slope would be much more severe with a sedan, we are going to make it Kammback ala the CRX.

It's what all the cool hypermilers are doing.

2012 Lemons South Fall - Sunday

Britton took the wheel of the newly repaired car for the 2 hour morning session before the Sunday 11-12 quiet hour.  A little more than an hour in he was black flagged for contact with the 124 Fiat.  He had been getting a bit too aggressive going into turn 1 and now our front bumper was left out on the track.

We made it over to the judging area before him and were waiting with Jay, Phil and Mary.  I cringed as I saw him come off the track and start to turn through the off-limits spectator area to get to judging.  "NO!, NO!, NO!" I screamed over the radio before he gave us a black flag double-whammy.  He froze and eventually figured out the correct path to navigate.  The judges were amused with our "self-policing" and let him back on the track with a promise of no more bad behavior.

At an hour and 45 minutes in, the car was sputtering as the gas ran out.  Britton came in and we weren't yet ready, so we sent him around the track once more.  The second time he drove right by us and went straight to the judging area.  He had ignored the blend line when he came back on the track and they had black flagged him.  They gave us a warning, he went around again, and we finally got to put fuel, and Dave, into the car.

Dave finished out the session and resumed it after the break.  He actually made the gas last for 2 hours... because a big chunk of it was spent under yellow.  Dave himself was almost wrapped up in one of them.  Here's the video that the Thing 112 car captured:

He managed to keep his tail intact, and I went into the car with ~2 hours to go.  The herd had thinned, and I was able to drive fast.  We had to make a stop to put a few more gallons in, but the car drove strong up to the end. We had packed up during the day, so there was little left to do once I hopped out of the car.  I was able to take a quick show, we loaded the car up and started the trek home.

Our overall standing was 18th place.  Not bad considering we had lost a chunk of time on Saturday and had accepted a 5 lap penalty (we would have been in 15th place without those laps).  No awards, but we did get a mention in the wrap up video:

2012 Lemons South Fall - Saturday

After a snarky remark at the driver's meeting got us an assured last place start, I started out in the car.

Jay: "Black flags will be shown at 9 and 12"
Me: "What should we do 'til then?"
Jay: "We'll be throwing the green right behind these guys.  Whoever wants to be first should line up behind them"

While circulating under yellow there was some slight wobble in the front. Brought it in and we had some looseness in the drivers side front wheel. Removing the wheel we thought the problem might be a bad upper ball joint.  It seemed minor enough, but we would want to fix it if we could get the parts. Not wanting to miss hours of racing in the interim, the wheel went back on and I got back on track.  The green had flown a couple of laps before, but the whole track was under yellow as cars failed under the first few applications of full throttle.

It was only a couple of laps later when I was brought in for a black flag.  Phil informed me that I had passed under yellow.  Our usual policy is to immediately own up when we're in the wrong (which is pretty much always), but I was incredulous since all I had done is circulate in a line at 30mph for two laps under a full course yellow.  Phil believed me and sent me back out, but the next two hours were spent stewing over how I could have possibly gotten the flag.  The only car passed during that period was one that had pulled off line and slowed down with (presumably) a mechanical problem.  Perhaps it got back in line somewhere behind me and made it look like a pass to the corner workers.

The rest of the stint went better, and Britton was to get in the car next.  Unfortunately I got directed away from the hot pits around a stalled car and had to do an extra lap to get back to the hot pit area.  Other than that, the driver switch and the rest of his stint went pretty smoothly.

We brought the car into the pits to switch out Britton for Leslie.  Going from a 6+ foot driver to a 5 foot driver is a pretty big adjustment.  We had decided earlier that the seat moved enough that we might have to adjust the length of the anti-submarine belts.

Dave got in for the next stint.  He had contact with the 411 car almost immediately.  They had been passing pretty aggressively with Leslie taking slower laps in the car.  Dave was a bit more reluctant to give up his line and it cost them both a trip to the penalty box.  This was our first "real" offence, so they let him stay in the car.

I went back in the car with around 2 hours left in the day.  Fuel was running out with about 20-30 minutes left.  We put Britton in the car to finish out session, but he brought it straight back to the pit with a bad wobble in what felt like the front right wheel.

Jacking the car up, the passenger side wheel felt fine.  The driver's side wheel, however, virtually came off in my hands.  When the wheel was removed we saw why.  The end of the axle had broken off and the hub was working it's way out of the spindle.  We needed a new axle and hub bearing.  I set to work removing the spindle assembly while Dave and Mark located parts.  They set off to Columbia, where there was an O'Reily's that had the bearing in stock and a Harbor Freight in case we needed to buy a press.

Knowing they were also running Honda's, I lugged the spindle over to the Terminally Confused camp for insight.  Craig immediately knew what needed doing and how to do it.  He advised that a large hammer should be able to get the bearing races out of the spindle.  No press required.

In practice it was a bit more difficult.  We spent the next couple of hours using NSF's vice to try and pound out the bearing.  The first hour was trying to remove the snap ring, which was now wedged in pretty tightly.  I was ready to give up and head to the Pull-a-Part in the morning for a complete spindle, but Dick Anderson wouldn't let me.  A longtime racer and engineer, he had come to the race to watch the Turbo Schnitzels and relax, but he couldn't resist a problem that needed solving.  We eventually freed the ring, but the outer race wouldn't budge.

Craig came to the rescue again when he related a mechanic's trick he had heard about: lay a bead of weld around the inside of the race and let the cooling metal pull the bearing in.  It worked like a charm.  Meanwhile Britton and Dave swapped out the axle.  Unable to get it onto the splines of the intermediate shaft, they realized that the inner cup spline count was different on the new axle.  We swapped the cups and used safety wire to keep the boots on.  Our repairs wrapped up, we took a break to drink a couple of beers and watch Speedycop's Merrimac and Monitor cars fight an epic battle using roman candles.

2012 Lemons South Fall - Friday

We've been working on a new theme for a few weeks. Friday morning it all started to come together as the printed graphics went on to the car. It was a thing of beauty.  Stephen put together the side graphics in exchange for lunch and the promise of future car repairs. He also created the t-shirt designs which are equally stunning.  Dave did the hood graphic and figured out the lettering. We got the full set printed at Meteor. Fortunately they were able to turn them around in a couple of days.

The afternoon was a little less relaxed than I hoped.  Lemons has started doing their own tech inspections and there were quite a few cages that failed tech despite being CMP veterans.  We were no exception.  The front cage spreader plate welds had gaps at the corrugations of the sheet metal floor.  We borrowed a spatter welder and were able to throw enough metal in the general direction to get the car to pass tech.

This year was the third time that the BS judging was held in Camden's downtown.  It's a fun event, where the cars are towed down and then driven in a parade to a 3 hour block party.  It's a fantastic way to see the other cars and racers, since it forces everyone into closer quarters.  Unfortunately the area designated for parking the trailers was far too small.  We ended up about a half mile away as ~100 trailers lined up along a side street one after another.  A bit of an inconvenience, but worth it.

We managed to talk Phil into giving us the same class as the Turbo Schnitzel.  He offered us either class A with 0 laps, or class B with a 5 lap penalty.  We took the latter.

First Trip to Little Talladega

We took Our Lady to Little Talladega (Talladega Gran Prix Raceway) for a day of amusement.  I downloaded Harry's Lap Timer for my iPhone on the way there and took some video with the CountourHD.  The results, after some composting were pretty cool.

We ran the car with and without the wing.  We got a little faster without the wing, but I'm not convinced that it wasn't just me learning the track and getting more aggressive with the braking zones.

One thing I did notice without the wing was oversteer!  I spun it a couple of times as the back end started to come around in the turns.  It added a new dimension.