Is there a rule on bringing a back up car? (Page 1 of 2)

I know what I would say but because this a "flame free zone" I won't say it.

Flaming........Hot!

I second Blacksheep1 in saying that I don't see what the harm is.  The guy wants insurance against being stuck on the sidelines.  The only thing that I can see that would cause a problem is jealousy.  The "rich" teams would have backup cars, but the "poor" teams would not.  I totally understand trying to guard against being stuck watching instead of driving because our POS racer chucked a rod on saturday morning.

I guess I would have no problem with having a second car if the team was willing to pay the addtional $500.00 per car for the extra insurance. I just don't see it being done in the spirit of Lemons. In my opinion part of these races is dealing with the hardship of keeping your car on the track. Not just replacing it with another one half way through because the first one doesn't work the way you want it to. I.E Heroic Fix Award...

If the 2nd car has a good working motor in it, and the motor in your primary car expires - feel free to take the motor OUT of the 2nd car and put it into the first one.  That'll get you back out there.

Just swapping entire cars seems a bit out of line to me.  I'd have you enter two cars, and you can't combine the laps between them.  Hell, if that's the case, I'll enter 3 cars, with 12 drivers - and accumulate one MILLION laps [Dr. Evil grin...] between them all.

We've debating bringing a complete spare motor to stick in - and so far, we haven't.  We only bring component parts (ie. cylinder head, suspension assemblies, gaskets, etc) - and we fix it when it breaks.  We do a lot of prep work prior to the race to give the car the best possible chance of finishing.  Even then, sh*t breaks - it's part of the event.

I have thought about this for local races.  For events farther away, that's more crap to get to the track and a more crowded paddock.

I have a car up my sleeve that could work but it still needs brakes and tires plus whatever it needs to actually be running..

I thought about it as a back up for our car or for guys who's cars blew up.  If you start loaning it out, that can get real tricky real fast.

I would not want to pay another $500.

Oh cry me a river!
Our youngest guy is 40 years old and our oldest is 60. You do not want to go with the age thing that will just piss a lot of the older guys like me off. Oops! sorry Flaming again

Okay then, Bender, have it your way.  I don't care how many miles you had to walk to school barefoot.  Us spoiled kids today want it easier.  We're bringing our damn ipods, and if we've saved enough money from our paper route to spring for a second $500 car fee just to make sure we're not spending the weekend underneath a car instead of inside it, what do you care?  MOM!?!  Why does Grandpa Bender have to live with us???

While I don't mind this plan.  I thought of a couple additional points.

1. Your #1 car blows up.  You are out of contention and bring in #2 to get seat time.
    If your first car was bad enough to blow up, what's stopping the second from 
    doing the same?

2. Building, preparing and transporting a second car is a large expense of both
    time and money.  Maybe it would be better to invest those resources into the
    first car to improve your odds of completing the race.

There seem to be two common causes of engine failure in cars:

1. Lubrication

2. Cooling

For teams that throw rods and suffer true catastrophic failure early in the race, there had to be some kind of missed warning sign.  Healthy motors don't tend to just died unexpectedly.

Do research on the car and driver train.  Thrown rods are probably caused more by a lubrication problem than anything else.  Since we are pretty much driving in circles all the time, that can cause oiling problems in a lot of cars.  A baffled oil pan may be the solution. 

Blown head gaskets are typical results from over heating.  Not all the time but a lot of the time.  Most cars seem to cool themselves okay with a good functioning cooling system.  MR2s on the other hand have issues with this.  So in many cases a good cooling system will prevent these problems.  Some cars may be prone to cavitation at high rpms and I don't know how to solve that cheap.

Crap Can or F1, we are trying to do things with these cars that they were not designed for (okay F1 cars are designed for this).  Add in the fact we want to do this for a long time and problems are likely. 

I keep plugging away at the problems we have had and at some point, we just might find a way to make a cheap, fast and reliable old Z. 

So maybe a better investment of a teams time is to work with what they have and try to find creative solutions to their problems.

The Lemons Experience (tm) is all about hardship.  This race was conceived to break cars and force their teams to fix them. 

I think I'd be OK with it if a teams car blew up after 10 laps, but if you got a whole day of racing... well that's more than we got for the first two races in which we participated.

Sounds like you guys need to recruit some 23-year-olds to do your wrenching.  Alternatively, put together a two car team with the understanding that if the #1 car breaks everyone splits time on the #2 car and vice-versa.  While you have to have 4 drivers on the sign up sheet, not all of them have to actually drive.  Drivers are also not restricted to the car they were signed up on.  So if you really want insurance, just sign up two cars and add some fake drivers to the roster to get up to your total of 4 per car.

You are going to spend $4,000 to prep a second car, and you are worried about another $500 for entrance fees?

for what it's worth, I listen to my iPod while swapping my motors

FreeRange, my whole point was that if I WASN'T worried about the extra $500, why should anyone else care?

You can always do what we do...

that way if ANYTHING breaks.. you are guaranteed to have a back-up