The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Lemons Newcomers → New Texas Team officially started build on Friday Nov 13 2009
fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UxxH_mrzR0
Looks like a blast.
Soooo, interesting week. 5 Days, 2 drift events, 16 shredded tires, one broken hand, and one departed wheel adapter. . . .
Saturday the 28th of March the Brat was readied for the GSS road-course drift event the next day. Except for wheels. We had plenty of dumpster tires mounted on wheels, but most had a 4x114 bolt pattern instead of the 4x100 pattern the brat required. No problem, I have a Bridgeport at work with a DRO, I'll just redrill all those wheels for the correct bolt pattern. And the countersink? I didn't have the 60deg countersink needed to cut the taper in the wheels for the lug nut seats. No problem, Bridgeport to the rescue again, I'll make a countersink out of a lugnut in true Lemons fashion.
Sunday 29th. Wheels redrilled successfully, loading up to head out to GSS. Mike starts the car to put it on the trailer, and the accessory pulley falls off the front of the motor. Hmmmm, seems I forgot to put the bolts back in after removing the A/C, PS, and air pump pulleys the day before. Got the pulley back on, went to tension the alt belt with a pry-bar, somehow pinching Mike's left hand in the process. Ouch. Mikespeed's the angry type when having to endure a little pain and took a swing at the Brat, catching his fist on the edge of the fender, breaking a bone in his hand. Double-ouch. Way to go bonehead!
Hardcore. Mike's been like shaking uncontrollably from shock, we just load him up with pain killers and a bag of ice, finish loading up the Brat, and head out to GSS -- we're going drifting damit!!1
So I take the Brat out on it's first 25min session, not sure how it's going to behave. Its got an eyeballed alignment, sway-bars made from spare roll-cage tubing set up by pure guess-work, caster set somewhere "ish", and a few prayers it doesn't make a fool of us by breaking down first lap out. Aaaaaaand it worked GREAT!!! It handled well, had reasonable power, was super-stable, steering was light and responsive, didn't overheat a bit. . . . I couldn't believe it! There was a massive drivetrain vibration, which later turned out to be a pinion alignment issue, but other than that, it was rock solid! I beat on it for the full 25 minute session without a hiccup. The Brat was a blast to drive!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWpEDcMTxm8
After each 25 minute track session I gave the car a thorough look-over. Everything looked groovy, so we kept putting it back on track for more sesssions. Half-way through it's 5th track session in mid-afternoon, it happened. I had foolishly overlooked the rear wheel adapters as a possible failure point and never checked them, the bolts fastening them to the hub flange had worked loose. The left-rear wheel, with wheel adapter still attached, parted ways with the Brat at about 80mph entering turn 1. The car shot straight off track, flying 100ft before center-punching a pair of (full) plastic water barrels, catching 4 feet of air as it cleared them, slamming back down and finally coming to a rest. Doh! And nobody got it on video :-( It's difficult to decide what to think of this, really - a wheel falling off is no trivial thing and puts the driver and others at serious risk, not to mention it's somewhat embarrassing to have happen. But then the rest of the Brat's maiden track-day was an overwhelming success - it performed far better than anyone expected and experienced no other failures or issues in over 2 hours of hardcore track time. That's not something one may normally be proud of, I know, but just look at this thing! If Murphy's Law were to take physical form, it would be in the shape of this <$500 rotary/miata Brat thing.
Anyways, 5 guys were able to lift the back end of the Brat and maneuver it onto a trailer. Power of lightweightedness. Since the bolts simply backed out of the wheel adapter, there wasn't any real damage to speak of, except the radiator support was bent a little from riding over the water barrels. The Brat survived the incident with virtually no damage whatsoever! We called it a day, and I resolved to reconsider how the wheel adapter was to be attached to the hub flange. The Import Reactor drift competition was coming up the following Thursday, and with concrete barriers lining the main corner, the wheels have to stay on the car!
Fast forward a few days, I have the rear wheel adapters sorted, the pinion angle adjusted, the headlights wired, and the whole car thoroughly inspected - it's ready for the Import Reactor event. This is an invite-only spectator-oriented event held after dark under lights, where the drivers had to be decent and the cars had to look good (lol). I had been invited to drive - the Brat. This was going to be hilarious. With 13 other drivers confirmed, Vaughn Gittin Jr. of Drift Alliance fame coming down to serve as competition judge, J-rod "the voice of Formula Drift" booked to announce, this was going to be a massive event. And the Brat hilariously out of place.
(Watch for it 0:15 lololol)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoIPC3_FjO0
Practice went well, although the Brat was by far the slowest car there with <50% the power of the next car. Nevertheless I was able to make solid runs and consistently put the rear bumper within a couple feet of the K-rails, which would score really well come qualifying. But qualifying took place right after dark and the visual queues I was using to time my entries suddenly became harder to distinguish. Without the flexibility of excessive power, the Brat had to be drifted with momentum, and the timing of the entry was critical. I botched my timing in both my qualifying runs, and didn't manage a score high enough to continue into the tandem rounds. Oh well, I had loads of fun during practice and through the day, and the Brat was very well received by everyone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BllXPPGGAQc
Got Lemons at Eagle's Canyon coming up in a couple months, the Brat's shaken down, we're ready! Thanks to everyone who took photos and video of the Brat, we were too preoccupied (tying Mike's shoes for him, readying fire extinguishers, etc.) to remember to take photos and video for ourselves.
The saga shall continue. . . .
Looks like a blast.
Are you going to run the same tires you drift with at Lemons?
If you do we might not be the most sideways car anymore...
haha, we have star specs for Lemons, we just had random crap on the back for driffinz.
Why come we didn't see the brat at eagle's canyon? Or was I blinded by it's awesomeness?
I did not see the Brat. I asked Nick about it and I wanna say it was not registered.
I couldn't afford it, but we will be at Houston!
I hope you didn't mention that the BRAT is actually a Lemons car to Mr. Gittin. He feels that he received unduly cruel treatment from the Lemons Supreme Court at Thunderhill.
JR loves the brat, and he said Lemons was indeed fun. We talked to him for about 2+ hours after the event we were all at catching up (all of the old Bubba Drift team + Vaughn/Vaughn Sr.).
He said he had a total blast at Lemons, and JR is one of the most stand-up and be honest people I've met in the industry, and he was very adament that he had a total blast, and that him and his team-mates however were just not really having any fun mid-day sunday. Keep in mind this is a factory backed Ford Driver who has done a lot more than drifting at this point including some mid-tier w2w stuff where he has done very well.
Not trying to drag that back up, but JR had a lot of fun, and he vas very vocal about how fun it was, and I've never seen JR genuinelly have anyone ever ruin his fun, but he said by Sunday they were just ready to go after some crap that sucked fun.
I don't think theres any hard feelings towards Lemons, and the 3 Lemons events I have been to have been a blast, and on this forum yall're totally fun, but bringing this up 6 months after the fact seems like theres a bit of undue bitterness going on...happens to the best of us sometimes, but c'mon meow. JR is a way fun guy, and unfortunately probably will never do Lemons again even though he admittedly had a blast, and thought the Brat was the awesomest thing ever. Let's move past that and just have fun with cars.
Bump from the past.
After popping our original motor from forgetting the pre-mix (whoops), and I spent about $1500 on motors that sucked, almost ditching the rotary, back and forth ideas, we've got what we need to party.
Also my buddy sent me a link to a Brat on Craigslist. Now don't get me wrong, I love how AWFUL the car currently looks. It's terrible. it has no place on a racetrack.
Picked this thing up for $700, drove it on the trailer with a "blown headgasket", the bed FULL of Brat parts, and the bed of my truck full of Brat parts. We've got a hoard of FC spare parts, and I'm going to invest some time cleaning up the Brat a little bit. Don't get me wrong, its funny and all, but we'd like to make it a tad more presentable, and just a little more solid. It drives FANTASTIC, and I think it'd be fun to have it look a little meaner, but still keep the WTF factor of a Brat.
We're going to swap the later model front end on it, clean it up and paint it, and build a rig for the back so at Lemons races it can rock a sweet Juan Montoya Jet dryer theme. This will also help with adding some weight on the rear, and possibly a sweet way-too-serious-for-a-brat Aero package.
Pretty excited about 2012 and getting this thing to a Lemons event. It ran great at the events we took it to before getting to Lemons, but we broke it and life got in the way.
Heres our new pit cruiser after I removed the catalytic converter and drove it around for about 45 minutes in all if its glory with all 50 horsepower unleashed. I'm really hoping it would be able to pace the field at a Texas event, and it will be absolutely amazing to have our support Brat at the track with our Lemons Brat.
The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Lemons Newcomers → New Texas Team officially started build on Friday Nov 13 2009