So how did we do at Nelson Ledges? (Page 1 of 7)

More Guilty Drivers

Us Judges were pretty shocked at the sheer volume of INNOCENT drivers at Nelson Ledges

Out of about 275 black flags, maybe 50 people actually owned up to what they did.

Interestingly, the phrase of the weekend was, "We got punted off the track." As opposed to the usual, "We got knocked off the track." The slight difference in verbiage eluded us at first until we realized that most racers at Nelson Ledges are Cleveland Browns fans, and they hold the concept of punting very near and dear to their hearts.

I owned up that I screwed up in my first incident. My second black flag though was either put a driver off very hard at 13 or go four wheels off. and I got whacked way too hard for that one. So much for our get out of jail free card....
Oh, and to the Browns comment...it means nothing to me. No, I'm not a Steelers fan. I just find it easier to root for the Clowns to lose and then I'm not disappointed. And yes, they lost to Cincy this weekend...

Even though we spent more time laying under our car than on the track, we had a great time!  Thanks to Bryan and all the Lemons and Nelson Ledges staff.  I sure hope that we have a Lamest Day 2010!

Our poor old Z car's axle broke early in the race.  We pulled the entire rear suspension and driveline and had the Snoopy Van weld our spider gears in hopes of salvaging the race.  4-1/2 hours later, we were back on the track, but unfortunately, the bearings had already overheated and we only ran a handful of laps before it died completely.  We thought about parking it, but that's not what Lemons is all about.  We would have brought a spare diff, but the 260Z uses a R180 diff and all my spares are R200s from 280Zs.  The R200 is physically bigger and is stonger, but uses different driveshaft, halfshafts, and rear diff mount.  We had three choices...  Park the car, drive 4 hours each way to Detroit and back to get ALL the parts we needed to swap the R180 for a R200, or go to my dad's house 1 hour away and get just the R200, driveshaft and halfshafts, but no "mustache bar" which is the rear mount about 30" long and 1/4" thick steel.  We chose to get the "local" parts minus the mustache bar and modify our's to fit.  We started tearing it down for the second time at 10:30pm . We took measurements and got the mustache bar cut and welded around 3am.  Everything fit and we were back on the track by 8am.  We were still running at the checkered flag, but we were also fighting ignition troubles the whole race.  That's what happens when you buy a 35 year car after it spent the last 15 years in a mouse infested barn.

The BRE inspired Dawn of the Zed WILL be back and will live through the night!

Congrats to all the competitors fo a fun weekend!  I haven't slept since Thursday, so it's time to crash...

I had a great time and thought the track was awesome.  The safety workers were incredible, everyone I met from both the Lemons and safety and Nelson Ledges groups were great.  Organization was fine, being able to just throw down stakes anywhere was great.

If I had to make suggestions, there would be two.  One, the announcements were very hard to hear.  We were at the opposite end of the paddock from the pits, and it was basically a murmur in the background.  The broadcasting of announcements over 90.1 FM was perfect, but we didn't have anything to receive it on.  Either an additional speaker setup or just tell people ahead of time to bring boom boxes would make a huge difference.

Two, and this one is bigger to me as a total racing newbie: Lighting.  The Lemons info page on the event said "properly aimed OE headlight systems are generally up to this task."  That was certainly not the case for us - especially as a racing newb I found auxiliary lighting to be a must.  We ran out to Wal-Mart and bought some driving lights.  (Unfortunately the car blew up before we needed them in the actual race ... sigh.)

But but but!  Those were very minor issues and I would absolutely love it if you guys did Nelson again.  It was awesome and I hope to turn a lot more laps there, Lemons or no.  It would just be 10x more awesome if Lemons did 2010!!

Also, since we got so many cars, any chance of two Ohio races in 2010?  (blink, blink)

Bryan, no worries, keep in mind my perspective is that the Friday night practice was my first time on a track, ever.  So take that for what it's worth.  And I'm psyched to come back, so you obviously did something right. :-)

For future reference, the PA announcements at Nelson Ledges are broadcast on a low power radio transmitter (FM 90.1 ??).  A small battery powered FM radio is a handy pit accessory.

Well,  Awesome weekend - even though we finished 105th due to oil pressure loss and it didnt really matter where we finished.  We managed to accomplish a few things. I think we were the first to lose a wheel on the track.  We managed to fix that..  We were able to get everyone in the car before the motor went south. 

Well the track was awesome, the people were awesome, the atmosphere awesome!  We were pitted across from the snoopy van and we got to watch these guys working hard on that van, they were quite possibly the nicest people I have ever met. And very dedicated, I have never seen a motor built in the grass but they did it.  They came to our aide and helped us through the whole 8 hours that we managed to survive for.

I think our best time was when one of our drivers had a pass under yellow black flag and we had to pickup garbage for 30 mins, we had a blast and enjoyed the penalty! 

We just enjoyed being there, and already are looking forward to next year!

I wanted to say thank you to everyone who helped us this weekend,  we did the best we could to race everyone fair and drive smart on the racetrack. 

And in the end after the race we managed to find our lost wheel and tire in the swamp, that just made our weekend.

It was nice to see the teams and meet the people from this forum.

Big thanks to Jay and team, and the track team, you guys put on a heck of an event, it ran smoothly and was very entertaining, even from the sidelines! 

Cheers,

Joe

Doing CommunityService here.

We wish we had black flags to complain about! I really wanted to get "Don't Cry for me Argentina" as I wanted to do "Like a Virgin" over the track PA. One of my drivers wanted a chicken on the roof so badly that I think we are going to make him one just to shut him up.

We spun a rod bearing 2.5 hours in! The Junk Player Special guys came to our rescue with a loaner engine, which we dropped in (in 3.5 hours) only to have our ECU crap out 6 laps later! What a trip. I did promise my team the full Lemons experience.....

The only corner thing we would like to mention is that when our ECU died, our driver sat off the track waving his glow stick for about eight minutes. He was around the back side of the carousel out of view of the two closest corner stations. We actually noticed that we had not seen the car for a while. He counted off ten minutes before someone got to him and called a truck.

Please don't take the above as a criticism, just know that there was an invisible spot and be aware of it. Our driver was safe and sound in the car and we all enjoyed the track immensly. It's like a fast version of our pet track - Grattan.

We're definitely in for next year, hopefully back at NL. The track was great, staff were great, and we had a total ball.

We donated our spun con rod, big end cap, and piston to the trophy-building team. We figured, hey, why not live on in infamy?

Hey, I'm not claiming I'm innocent.

I went 4 wheels off.  It was due to a lack of talent. 

All I'm saying is that it is possible that the far black-flag station heard "five-<garble>-one gray, 4 wheels off" due to a problematic radio or track noise at that station being too loud or something, and had the wrong number on their board.

It is also possible that they were trying to call #51 in for a higher-priority offense, in which case everything is fine, and I just would have gotten called on a future lap.

The biggest issue I had was the yellow flagging.  is it full course or not?  I would go by a station, steady yellow flag.  Mmmkay.  I'd see the next station-no flag.  Green green green.  Then the next station-another yellow flag.  Then no flag.  The ANOTHER yellow flag.  No, I didn't see any localized issues that would account for the inconsistencies.  I was scratching my head wondering if I was going to get flagged for passing under yellow.  It was very confusing from the driver's seat.

Rain sucked, track was a lot of fun, and I'll be back next year hopefully in a car that can actually make it until darkness. We didn't finish prepping the miata until an hour before tech closed Friday and it showed on Saturday.  Car was okay when it ran, but certainly not a heavyweight. 

Good times, thanks Nelson Ledges.

Hey Troy
Haha, thank god that didnt happen to me.  I was just happy to get it off the racing surface without getting into anyone.    I was sayingthat i think i was the first guy losing a tire at The Lamest Days event itself. 

I was just happy we survived it and didnt lose it in a high speed corner...

That NL track is badass... I want to go back!

Joe