We fucked around and won our class

Then fucked around some more and won Halloween meets gasoline for theming ourselves with the car

Good weekend I guess

update to my last topic found here: I need a bigger truck

I reached out to my FIL to see if he wanted to lend me his F250 out of the kindness of his heart so that I could put 1600 miles on the odometer and keep it for a total of about 2 weeks. After some questioning as to why I was asking for this he agreed but I didn't feel particularly comfortable with the arrangement. Something about borrowing a brand new vehicle for a long duration doesn't sit right with me.

So I nixed that plan, talked to the teammate who was still planning to go and we decided to throw down a last ditch effort: Ask a stranger.

In general I dislike facebook but the Lemons communities there are quite good so I threw out the hail mary: If you can tow us from Raleigh to Birmingham you can drive the car.

I expected a bit of interest but what I ended up with was a bit overwhelming. First guy offered to pick us up on his way from NJ...he wasn't planning to drive the truck and trailer but had one he could bring, and would have room to pack extra stuff as well! A might fine offer. Next guy is one that I met at our first race, he just bought a full-ass RV and could pull our trailer, also picking us up on the way, also from NJ. If we could camp out with him this might have been a decent arrangement, but we are a bit out if his way already. A few more people inquired on exactly where we are and what plans we have, but then I got another message....

This is a guy I don't know but he lives about 10 minutes from me. He has a truck but no trailer (we have a trailer so that's okay), he wasn't planning to go as the team he has driven with in the past stuffed it in the wall at Road Atlanta in December, but he's interested in getting a seat anyway. This is sounding like the best plan, he's local and we can meet first. But then another guy pops in, he's only 5 minutes from me and races with yet another team, and this guy I know! His team had bail leaving him without a drive as well, he has a tow rig and trailer we can use. And both of these guys know each other!

Somehow in our little 3-ish mile radius there are 4 lemons drivers, 2 cars, and we drive for 3 different teams. Unreal.

I talked to both on the phone yesterday and there was no tangible way to decide between them. So we asked them both to join.

Looks like I better get this car ready, it now needs to support 4 drivers

In case anyone has missed the back story

Meet eddie
Slow progress on the old van
Eddie's going racing

With less than 2 weeks until the inaugural 24 Hours of Lemons race for Eddie, our 1993 Eagle Summit Wagon, the car is ready. Technically there are still a couple very minor things to button up but now it's game on. Entrance fees are paid, the car is caged, fire protected, and runs. I took it for a test drive Friday night and it's the most completely ridiculous thing I've ever driven.

But most importantly I can finally reveal the theme.

For the 2021 Southern Discomfort race at NCM motorsports park, team It'll Be Fine will drive the #'84 Eddie Van Hailin' car

IYKYK

@e90m3 FTFY

I'm sure you will all be tired of me posting about this soon but I'm still coming down off a high I've waited 20 years to experience. If someone, anyone, is not initiated here's the full back story on Eddie, the build, and our first race

Meet Eddie
Slow progress on the old van
Eddie's going racing
Eddie's ready
Half way through
Day 2 lemons live oppo

Warning: Long-ass post ahead.

In the end, how did it do?

GREAT!

Last Thrusday we drove about 10.5 hours to Bowling Green, KY to race at the National Corvette Museum track. All of us had been on track before but never like this, and none of us had ever raced wheel to wheel or even driven this car hard. It was a learning experience and hoo boy was there a lot to take in. On Friday we set up camp, hung out, met some teams, saw some cars, passed all our tech checks, and drank some beers

Day 1 started with a nice little rain shower an hour before the start. A wet track with 80 other cars is a fun place to learn to drive hard so we sent out out most aggressive driver and the visionary for the car so if he wrecked it he could only be upset at himself.

Did he wreck it? No. Did he blow up the freshly build engine? Also no! Not yet anyway.

He ran about 30 minutes then came in to swap drivers. Typically teams will run longer stints but this being our first time we wanted to get everyone out for a run so we ran short to start and swapped often. Second driver also did not wreck or blow it up, then it was my turn

There's no experience quite like running full throttle onto a hot race track with maybe 130hp at your disposal watching a line of much faster cars barreling to your inside. I let them pass, made my first turn, and officially declared that I am a Race Car Driver now.

I ran for about 30 minutes as well, the track was drying out a bit as the rain had stopped a while ago. Unfortunately learning how the car drives was a tertiary concern for me, first order of business was knowing where the other cars were at all times, second was learning to look at the corner workers to know what, if anything, was ahead or if they thought I screwed up badly enough to be punished. This is a lot to try to take in all at once when it's your first time out.

The rest of the day from there went pretty smooth. At some point the car developed a power cut issue on hard right hand turns and a stumble on full throttle in the straights, we spent some time in the pits trying to diagnose but in the end there was nothing to be done at the time so I hopped in for the last hour and a half and went full send.

As I mentioned in the day 2 live oppo Sunday started out a bit rough.

We thought the power issue might be a problem with the TPS and ordered a new one that we could pick up at 8:30, the time cars were getting on the grid. To prep for the swap we got everything else ready and went to fill the tank but on starting the car noticed all of the exhaust noise seemed to be coming from the engine bay, not the back. The culprit?

Blew out the flex pipe. Since we had a crew member at the parts store anyway we got a length of pipe, cut the flex out, welded a solid piece in, replaced the TPS, and were on our way about an hour late.

The good news was our full throttle stumble was gone thanks to the TPS. The bad news was that all day we were getting the hard cut on right hand turns. Not all rights but specific ones the problem was highly repeatable. We also had a heavy exhaust popping off throttle which I believe is related but we need to investigate more.

With the TPS working to give us full power down the fast sections each of us turned faster and faster laps as the day wore on.

Then it finally happened. At about 3:40 on Sunday, with 20 minutes to go until the checkered flag, Eddie's heart stopped beating. Our fearless leader was taking the last drive of the trip, attempting to run our fastest lap of the race, and the engine made a loud bang and died. I saw it happen as I was spotting from the roof, he came hot into a fast section then just coasted and I knew it was all over.

We don't know what happened yet, we only got home last night and haven't torn into anything, but I believe whatever caused the power cut finally stressed the engine enough to roast the top end. The block is still one piece and can hopefully be salvaged, we will know more in the coming weeks.

The end tally, we drove 164 laps with a fastest lap of 2:58:664 according to the transponder recordings. That lap was, amazingly, mine. I am easily the worst driver of our team but with some coaching, a bit of luck, and one perfectly put together lap I managed to run our fastest of the entire event. In what is either celebratory or heartbreaking news, our second fastest lap of the race was 2:58:757 on lap 164. Right before it blew it was still going as hard as it could.

After the race we pushed the car onto the trailer and headed to the awards ceremony where we were given the organizer's choice award for having a great car, a great bribe, driving well (no black flags), and turning lap after lap. This is a pretty high award in Lemons world and it was great to know that others appreciated the work we put in.

This is one of the most fun things I have ever done, and we will be back as soon as we can.

This morning marks my first day in over ten years that I did not wake up with the ability to drive a Mazdaspeed3 to my intended destination.

I got my first MS3, a black 2007 with a rebuilt title (in great mechanical condition) in late 2011. Despite a lifelong love of cars this is the one that launched me into the world of automotive modification and really getting down to a full understanding of how everything in a car actually works and how to modify. This car went through 2 suspension setups, 3 sets of wheels, got a bigger turbo and upgraded airflow all around. I learned to tune this car and without it I would not have the friends I have, I would never have gone to the tail of the dragon, and I would not have ever raced in Lemons. All of that is quite literal. I learned to really drive in this car and took it to the track a few times. Ultimately the engine started to go at 115k miles, 75k of those with me behind the wheel.

After that I needed another car. I mean, I had another car but an '05 TJ with 33s made for a terrible daily driver. I looked at a few options I liked at the time but ended up with another MS3, this time a 2010 in celestial blue mica (the definitively best color ever sprayed on a Mazda). I would not have lost any friends by getting something different but what I needed was reliable transportation in a car I enjoyed and I was not done enjoying Mazdaspeeds.

This car I largely left alone. It got a couple parts from my '07 and eventually a set of springs and Koni yellow shocks, but for the most part I just drove it every day without issue. This one never saw a track but took thousands of curves at the tail. It had been with me for just a week less than my now wife.

And now it's gone.

I have slightly mixed feelings about selling this particular car but in the end I just wasn't driving it enough to justify keeping it. Keeping it meant dedicating myself to getting it cosmetically in better shape and that's not the avenue I wanted to go down.

I loved this car. I loved the first one too.

For now I will daily the Jeep, as I have essentially been doing for months anyway. When the market cools I may look at a fun car that has no intentions of being driven every day, but that feels like it may be a year or more and for now I'm just....content. I have what I want to drive for a while and hopefully the blue car (as I so lovingly called it) is in the hands of someone who plans to care for it.

Today is not a sad day

We built a race car this way.

This year my only resolution is to drive my old truck, creatively and appropriately named Project Redtruck. For anyone uninitiated, this is a '56 F100 that my grandfather bought some number of years ago that never actually worked for him and after a few years of frustration he gave it to me. For over 2 years I have been in the process of fixing pretty much everything that isn't structural on it.

I had been lax in working toward my resolution this year but after my grandpa suffered a pretty serious accident earlier this year I decided to jump back on it - if he is ever able to come back to this side of the country I fully intend to have this truck on the road by then. My last post on the subject was finally getting the truck to run with the turn of a key after nearly a decade of that not working; today is one of those times where it is finally starting to look like a whole vehicle again, and it starts with the dash.

When I got the truck the dash looked like this

The cluster was basically original, possibly a repop bezel but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary for a '56. The gauges below, however, just make blood boil. Clearly the gauges in the dash didn't work or whoever did the pseudo-resto previously could not figure it out, but his solution as just so god damn sloppy. At the very least he could have made the holes line up?? No, apparently not. Lets take a closer look....

Yeah, that's no good. Not shown is the radio slot that's also a bit of a mess.

But no matter, I'm going to fix it. Eventually....

First step is acknowledging you have a problem and realizing you have to fix it. For this I ordered 6 new gauges - Tach, MPH, volts, oil, water, and fuel should cover it. In an effort to modernize I went with all electric gauges, no point in running hot fluids into the cab. The specific gauges are Equus 8000 series, they look somewhere between modern and retro and don't cost a fortune. Gauges are funny like that, they're either cheap and questionable or WAAAYYY too expensive for a project like this. I went cheaper, we'll see how that works out.

Gauges purchased and I have to start modifying. I gutted the cluster and trimmed the bezel to fit a pair of 3 3/8" gauges

I then used my powers of CAD and my little CNC machine to cut a test piece for fit inside the bezel

That fit pretty well so I made a couple adjustments, added some features, and made my final part

Then did some assembly

That'll do nicely

Next I needed to fix that irritating array of holes in the lower dash.. Some of them were original holes for fun knobs and switches but mostly it was a hack job. My plan, unfortunately, was to make it a bigger hack job then hide the evidence. But that hide job would be EXCELLENT!

So again we go back to CAD and the CNC. I designed up my parts and did another test cut, then mocked it in place.

Then a test fit of all the bits and bobs that it needs to house

That'll do

Again, I made a couple modifications but nothing that anyone but me would notice, and cut up some metal

And ran another test fit, just to be sure

Next I had to locate it in the truck to mark where to drill and cut

Then I drilled the 10 holes to hold it in place and make sure it would be self supporting

And then.....it got worse before it got better

Yikes. An air knife made quick work of the dash but the carnage is....well, it's carnage. Not my favorite thing I've ever done but the result is better than I hoped for when I started.

Not all the hardware is in at that point, and I promise the cluster is not crooked it just looks that way. If I may toot my own horn on this one it's a pretty stunning outcome especially when you consider where it started.

I spent the past couple days doing a bunch of wiring behind it all and sorting out the harness that's left in the truck. I plan to have that put mostly together this week.

Rarely when motivation hits me this hard do the results look so good

Day 1 of lemons in the books and it was about as good as we could have hoped. The team ran 75 laps which is good enough for 64th place.. part of that is purposeful short stints to get each driver on track, and since we're changing seats for one driver that takes time.

Didn't blow it up, didn't wreck, no black flags. We were spaying power steering fluid from the reservoir so disconnected that for the afternoon which made tight turns Hella fun. Found the reservoir was way over full so pulled some fluid out and reconnected the belt after the race, will see how that pans out tomorrow.

We do have a power cut on hard right turns and getting hard on the throttle, found the throttle position sesor has a dead spot and should have a new one in the morning just in time to run. We do have a spare but it's in a garage 11 hours away.

Tires are wearing well so the second set will remain unused until something unfortunate happens tomorrow. Brakes are ferocious

Everyone there loves the car, and we made the front page of lemons facebook

Tomorrow being Valentine's day and me being married I feel obligated to give a peace and love offering of some kind to my wife. Easy fallbacks are flowers, candy, and jewelry which are all, in my wife's opinion, wonderful but I like to do things a bit differently. And I like to make things.

This year instead of spending money on stuff to give her I spent money to cause myself a lot of work so that in the end I could have something to give her.. Apparently I took the children's lesson of "making gifts instead of buying them" to heart and now here we are.

I bought a small pile of wood and borrowed a table saw (I will have my own in due time...probably next week) and got to work.

Made some cuts, used some glue and clamps. Test fit some things then used a lot more glue and clamps. And cuts. So many cuts.

Then I made even more cuts and more glue and more clamps and forgot to document any of that so you really have to take my word for it.

Then I rubbed the whole thing with oil and spent about 4 hours figuring out how not to work with felt (note: I am not good with fabrics). But in the end it turned out pretty good.

Instead of jewelry I made her a box for the stuff she already has. CLASSY.

@Shop-Teacher how'd I do?

@john-norris I'm constantly amazed at how busy 2 or 3 people can be in the pits while the car is on track, even when everything is running well we are on guard spotting for a driver, making sure everything prepped for a pit stop, someone keeping track of time and making sure everyone has suits ready to go an is hydrated and fed. Plus keeping ready if the driver has to come in.

Absolutely stop by, and after the race once we have done our post flight checks and get ready for the next day we can chat a bit more.

The car that hit us was the Tiburon, not one that you'd expect. There are a few ridiculously fast cars that will shoot a small gap and we all know to just get out of their way. The one that got us was not one of the usual suspects but made an error and we paid for it.

@Shop-Teacher Indeed. The rebuild will take some time but I have plans now and we should come back faster than before.

@ash78 This track and facility are fantastic and we will absolutely be back. Great flow to this one even if a few elements are a bit repetitive (long right handers). The elevation change is tricky though and flag watching is critical over turn 4 where the crest leads into a long straight to the hairpin, if that backs up you can come up to a line of stopped cars in a hurry.

A few spots on this track can be very fast if you're brave enough and it took me a while to keep it flat through 10 and 11 but the car gripped and the runout is forgiving. I'll look forward to our next outing here.

@EssExTee Most of the crunch before this race was logistics which is wearing in its own way if not as much physical. Really we only spent a couple weekends getting it ready, mostly to swap a knuckle and an axle seal (while we're in there), the rest was the same as the previous race. After a year and a half of working on it the break was nice but now here we are again....

@Vondon302 It's not so much the damage but the time we put into it, and the time it will take to get it back. All of us are a bit short on time and our next planned race was 10 weeks out. Unlikely we make that one but we all may get a wild hair and do the damn thing. I think this weekend we will get the car off the trailer and check it all out. Not what we planned to do between races but this was always a possibility.

Woof. What a weekend.

Our race started a month out when one of the usual team mates couldn't make it due to work trips. This part has been covered here but for a brief recap: One member could not go and he has the only available tow vehicle so after some scrambling the other 2 of us found a couple local guys with experience to tag along and pull the car. This worked out incredibly well and I would have either of them back again.

Wednesday we packed up. Thursday we drove 9 hours in the rain from Raleigh, NC to just outside Birmingham, Alabama to a track 3 of us had never driven. Unloaded and set up (still in the rain) then retired to ridiculously uncomfortable beds.

Friday morning sprung us with temps in the mid-30s for our first ever track day in this car. Despite a few races under our belts we never did any testing, just sent it. This day was useful to get each driver a bit more seat time since our split was now 4 ways for the race instead of 3, and gave each of us to learn the track or car, or both depending on who we're talking about. During my first stint this day the car developed a nasty full throttle stumble that turned out to be a wonky connection of the MAF harness, some zip ties cured that for the day and the rest went off without a hitch. We weren't timing laps but since the track was wet to start and changed rapidly through the day it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

Unfortunately we had an issue at tech inspection with one of our belts being out of date. I had checked the belts prior but apparently didn't realize all of them were dated. We have 2 sets (for reasons) and must have mixed components so one expired in December (the others are good through June) but lemons teams are generous with their spare parts and we had a new one in in no time and passed on second attempt. Because of our class win at the last race we were bumped up to B, still no penalty laps (that would just be mean) but now we're in a much faster class of cars without any additional speed on our end. Expectations were low for the outcome but the car ran well and we were excited to see what it could do at this new facility.

Saturday rang in cold, 30 degrees when we hit the paddock. For the trip down we added antifreeze to....well, to keep the block and radiator from freezing in these freezing temps, and that had to be drained. We had the tools and materials ready, warmed up the car and flushed what we could. Tires pressures were set, fluids checked, lug nuts torqued, hood pins latched, driver belted up, music cranked as Eddie hit the grid.

Not long in the stumble returned. Our zip ties had not failed but they were not doing it alone anymore so we restructured and added a strain relief, this worked again and the problem did not return the rest of the weekend. We lost a few laps for this but it's a necessary evil. First driver ran his stint without issue, first pit was 5 minutes flat to dump 10 gallons and belt in the new guy, and he ran his flawlessly.

Now it's my turn! I love this part! Fuel dumped, belted in, key turn and....nothing. Car has power but will not even try to turn over. This is where having 3 additional guys over the wall helps though, they pulled the car back to get some running room, run me out on pit road and a clutch dump and gas smash later I'm peeling out toward the exit. Something in the starting system is borked but it bumped over fine. I had never had to bump start a car before but knew the theory and it came in clutch (pun intended). I ran almost 2 hours, came in for a final pit and one last clutch dump from driver 4 and we were ready to end the day on a high note.

Until he got motion sick 30 minutes later and rolled into the paddock without warning. Despite only one practice session (his first time driving the car at all) and only half an hour on track he set our fastest lap of the day, puked everywhere after getting out of the car, and couldn't return. I was set to resuit and jump back in but we gave the spot over to our other new driver who brought it home in style.

Saturday night we checked the brakes and decided they were done after 4 days of hard driving and swapped those in about 15 minutes. Both front wheel bearings had a little play but nothing that a couple braps of the big milwaukee couldn't seal up. Front tires were swapped to preserve what's left of the ones on the car, oil topped up. Oh, and that starting issue? The solenoid wire divorced its connector. A new connector and some strain reliefing of the harness got the key back as the primary mode of ignition and we were set for day 2.

Sunday started much the same, car on the grid and running off well. We ran reverse order on Sunday so the motion sick driver went out for a 2 hour stint. I was worried this would end quickly but he survived the entire ordeal and ran even faster, somehow. Part way through he mentioned a noise coming from the passenger rear that I wrote off as wires flopping around, I had heard something similar the day before. We told him nothing seemed out of the ordinary and to keep turning laps.

Barber has a quiet hour from 11-12 on Sunday, perks of being in the bible belt even though there is literally nothing around the track to disturb. I took the stint out at noon and immediately heard the noise when I hit the track. Try as I might to ignore it this was not the same as what I experience the day before, something was definitely broken. 5 laps in I called back to the paddock for a spot check and what they found was a broken shock. Not blown, and not lightly broken, but fully sheared from its mount and just banging around in there. We did not have a spare or the time to lose so the offender was removed and we raced with 3. Under hard braking this was a bit of an issue as the rear tire would violently bounce off the asphalt but everywhere else it was perfectly manageable. I set my fastest lap of the race on 3 shocks.

Driver 3 went out for a short stint (he did a lot the day before) when it all went sideways. Not literally, he did great. Unfortunately we were at the mercy of 100 other cars and one of them did not quite keep it on track. As our driver went to the left of a slow car (going around a left hand turn) another car tried to go right and dropped his wheels into the grass. What happened next is not quite certain but that car lost control, went sideways, and t-boned us in the passenger side. That shunt put the back corner in the wall pretty hard which would have been okay but the steering on our car was toast.

Hard to see in the 2 pictures I took but the front passenger wheel is pointed in all the wrong ways and the rear is bent pretty badly. The doors on that side are mangled and the flares are a bit torn up although they held up much better than I would have expected. Passenger side B pillar is now conformed to the cage. Rear bumper is shifted right a bit so the hatch is torqued.

The good news? Driver was unharmed. Car was still running afterward and he tried to drive it around but was prevented from doing so by the busted steering. No fluids leaking. Structurally it looks okay at first glance, the floor pan was not touched, front frame rails look straight, strut tower looks to be in place.

A full tear down is in order and we definitely need a few parts (some already in hand) but right now it looks salvageable. Honestly it doesn't look bad at all, not for a Lemons car at least. I can't say for certain that something isn't badly damaged but I am cautiously optimistic.

Huge shout out to @john-norris for coming out on Saturday to take pictures and talk with me for a little bit, I wish I could have spent more time with you but this racing thing takes a lot of effort. The pictures and video you shared are great and will be added to our rapidly expanding collection of race memories.

Overall finish was 64/117 (ish). Worst finish by position, not the worst on percentage though. Before the wreck we were up in 35th and something like 12th in class.

Work will commence and we will build eddie back better and faster, count on that.

I'll respond individually later but figured I should expound a bit.

This was not the smoothest weekend but we were out on track when it was hot except for about 15 minutes for a couple quick fixes until about 2:30 Sunday when this happened. First and foremost the driver was fine, cage and seat did their job.

From what I gather our driver was going left past a very slow car with plenty of room, another car decided to try to go right and dipped it's right wheels off the track going into a left turn. When that driver corrected the car shot across the track and t-boned our car on the passenger side and got the back left corner into the wall.

We will have to get it all apart to assess the full damage. Steering parts on the right are toast, axle is probably done too. Strut tower looks good, front frame rails seem straight, floor plan was missed. B pillar is out of shape but was stopped by the cage so it's not too far off. Sheet metal on the passenger side is all out of sorts but can be hammered out. Flares are done and 2 wheels are trash. Rear bumper is out of shape, not sure about the rear frame yet.

The bad news is we aren't racing for a while. The good news is I think the car can be saved

That's gone poorly

@Taylor-Martin I just looked up summit point's actual location, I knew it was in WV but didn't know where. Looks like it's only half an hour from you, that would be a great first race if they ever run it.

Looks like Summit Point was on the calendar up through 2013 so it's been done before...will have to petition to get it back

@CarsOfFortLangley Tavarish has entered the chat