NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER! Speedy's guide to success in adversity (Page 2 of 3)

We both persevered, and gave up, during the same race (Skankaway)... it is perhaps sage advice that "practice is a bad idea", your car will blow up early.

I know it seemed that way when on Friday morning, the Coupe blew its clutch to a haze of evil-smelling brown smoke, right in front of the stands. (Driver gave me a thumbs-up just at that moment, he couldn't see the cloud roiling out from under the car yet. My response- "WOOHOO, you durn blowed it up real nice!" Back to the pits and begin a tear down, but first, a push (yes) to the BS and tech inspections. I wanted those out of the way. I had a bad feeling about this. When we found that we had one spare clutch disc which would fit our FW, and that the splines were absolutely jacked up, I wasn't feeling great about the chances. Spent much of the day coaxing that danged 5-speed out from behind the 5-cylinder. And something you should know about the Audi Coupe- that 5 is put in there in a manner befitting a backyard swap, not a factory install. If you've looked carefully at one, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Whoever loaned the triangular finish files that let me coax the clutch splines back to straightness- thanks. It's true- someone always has the tool you're after in the Lemons paddock. The Clutch Gods smiled upon us- first stab, using brute forearm strength, and the trans slid home. I've never seen anything like that, and I probably do 10 clutches a year (I wrench professionally) for the past 15 years. The Coupe was back in business.

And she ran like a jet, through 4.5 of the 6 driver stints. When the wheel bearings came apart, cooking the brakes, on Sunday afternoon, we bled the burned fluid out, and staked the hub nuts, which got it out just in time for driver #6 to witness the final act of the original 1982 gearbox. There may be a functioning piece of 2nd left. I'm not sure. If it had been 3rd or even 4th, I think we would have headed for the checker. But 2nd is just too slow. Our race was over.

First world problems defined: When your motor runs well enough that you bust everything in between the flywheel bolts and the tires.

So Fleming95 explains my journey of that race/build I started this wagovan on Sunday with 5 days to race day.

This part is really funny so I pick Speedy up on Wednesday morning we go to IN N OUT burger California tradition speedy does when in California . We get to my house and we walk up to my honda wagovan with 1/2 a cage suspension ,brakes,tires done. But motor and trans sitting in front .
Speedy looks at me and says you racing this ?
In my disbelief I couldn't believe Speedy of all people would say that . I was thinking if anyone was going to give me support to get it done was him . In my mind "its on like donkeykong" so if I remember right 2 hours later I had motor in car and then worked on cage til 3 am . So thursday Fleming 95 came out and did some quick wiring so I could start it and yell over to Speedy with his non running Volv8 DEATHCAB " you hear that haha "
So I plugged away Thursday til 4 am in which Speedy left my house at 1am with a fallen branch off my tree in the roof of his car for a 530 tv news crew .I woke up at 7am to go pick up my 4 car trailer got back @8am to finish cage finished 11 so I loaded 4 cars on my trailer and got to the track .
The mazdav8dualley still needed the clutch master figured out got to infineon by 2 unloaded all the crappy cars and got people working on getting cars thru tech .I left the easy/annoying stuff that should be easy left like kill switches on the Wagovan   and the mazdav8dualley plus clutch issue  which Anton x-args figured out . Kill switch done in Mazda then wagovan by now it's 11 pm WTF so I messed with kill switch til 1 . I almost duct tapped some drunk teammate of mine because he was bugging the crap out of me .
Woke up at 7am rolled over to tech and Mazda was dialed just a quick seat brace fix and done ,then wagovan went to tech and passed no problem . I did I built 2 Lemons cars in 2 weeks .
My stories are always before race never give up never surrender.
So race begins not even 1 hr in the mazdv8dualley is being towed in with the back bumper packed with mudd and motor overheated . Apparantly I should have thrown the slower older driver than this guy who was complaining of truck bouncing around corners,which next driver went out and was fine and then 3rd driver went out to be be towed back and the motor was stuck at 16 laps. This was parked 6 ft from Speedy Volvo marathon . So I left it alone let it charge on charger so we wouldn't have to winch it on . So Sunday came and Jay said class c goes out first so I decided I would take it out and she what she could do and it handled great then as I decided to push it and haul ass the motor stopped and then I got rear ended by that POS tow truck driver as he smashed the back of my truck to get me off track . So I guess I could have been next to Speedy swapping motors forever but no thx .

Never give up happened at 07 thill we blew our trans mission up near the end of day 1 and forgot spare trans mission. So Ryan (excavator guy) jumped in his company work truck and drove 150 miles to my house to grab every trans I had and was back in 4 hrs . In which he was pulled over for throwing cigarette out the window and going 97 mph .
Officer said you threw a cigarette out the window Ryan replied while scooping his chew out of mouth to throw out in front of cop "cigarettes will kill you ,I chew it's safer "
cop "you know how fast you were going ?" Ryan replied "yep 97 mph truck governor goes off at 98mph" cop walked off
Any how Ryan gets back at 12  tells his boss the "truck only goes 98 or i would have been sooner" So i have trans out and can't get clutch aligned then we hear a big slamming noise and Ryan boss is destroying broken trans with 5 #sledgehammer and 1 minute later hands me the input shaft for alignement tool . Trans back in by 230 and took off down driveway out of thill and it worked . Raceday2 we run all day  no problems and got organisers choice and $500 in nickels

So I got a story for both .

One of my favorite "never give up" photos comes from a typical Speedycop adventure.

NEVER GIVE UP!! NEVER SURRENDER!!

Also, a well-timed bag of cookies does wonders for morale.

I've done both. First race ever was NH. Black flagged on lap 3 or something like that, too much smoke. Spent all day saturday chasing oil leaks, finally got on track and emptied the oil pan. Most of my team gave up that night. At sunday's drivers meeting it was just two of us. We decided to keep working. We got it done, and got some laps. I heard some terrifying noises after lap #18 and parked it. There were only a few hours left so i had no qualms with calling it an event. Loved that event.

We came into stafford with problems. Engine came out while everyone was going through tech. Replaced the trans input shaft seal only to find out that wasn't the issue. Fixed the real problem (turbo oil line draining into the bellhouse inspection hole. seriously, what are the damn chances!). Went to tech, in tech heard some beautiful rod knock starting. By the time the sun was down we had discovered our bearings were the wrong size, and we didn't have enough correct ones to fix it. If anyone remembers that was the weekend in july that it was 100+ with insane humidity. We were just mentally done. We called it quits. Part of me wishes i had tried something to get it fixed, but we honestly just weren't ready for that event.

2012 will be different. I don't mean that i don't expect teh car to fail, i mean that i'll be prepared. I know what fails now, i'll have spares. I know how to swap an engine in under 4 hours on this car at this point. We'll go out fighting at every event. It's going to be awesome.

BACON

I do give you guys props for not setting that car on fire yet. Good luck in 2012!

Thanks for the reminder Doug. I need to get the complimentary supplies...

You are welcome.

Also, the wife surprised me with 4lbs of bacon yesterday... and it's not even Christmas yet!!!1!

Going to make bacon caramels and other naughty piggy-bits.

We're that team in New Orleans!!  The Grem was pissing me off ROYALLY.  I had just rebuilt the motor, I had spent a week trying to get it to start and we had spent 24 hours at the track trying to get the motor to run only to find that oil wasn't getting to the engine and in the process of trying to get it to start, we had flooded the car so bad that gas had made it's way to the oil and destroyed it.  Engine was toast.  We still had a parts car with a running engine, but we tried to fix the other one first rather than swap.  At about 8 pm (during a 24 hour race) we decided to engine swap, but the donor car was a much newer, much more complicated version of the AMC 4.2, complete with awd system and miles tubing and wires.  Speedy came over near midnight and leapt up on the engine of the donor and starting ripping $#!@ off willy nilly.  Or at least it appeared willy nilly.  He may have had a plan.  Or he may have just been having fun.  That got us going on the engine removal, which took ages because of all the back woods twisted brackets that Kenosha thought were a "solution", and got us going again.  We ended up finishing the swap (thanks to Hoonatic too) and getting out for FIVE laps and took the checkered for the first time. 

Speedy is awesome and has crack addict energy, but he needs to slow down on all the awesome cars before he uses the all up!!  I want to get my Jensen Healey on track next year, but, just like HIM, I don't want to do something that's already been done.  Focus on the Aztec!

In what kind of terrible condition are these Jensens anyways?  Also, I read you had a Jensen GT as well.  I'm curious about them and their conditions.