BS laps... (Page 1 of 2)

I actually thought you had a cool theme.  The SE-R made a great E30 clone.  Most SE-Rs get laps, but like doctawife said, get your residual from Jay and go from there.

Yay, thou hast suffered the wrath inflicted from on high!  Thine is a weapon both coveted and cursed.  The SE-R, like the infamous Miata and E30, is a plague upon many a team that, when mentioned in hushed tones, inflames its competitors and is derided amongst cries of "Cheater!" and "Blasphemer!" 

Hark, my son!  All is not lost! 

Allow me to share the parable of those prodigal sons and daughters from the land of Los Angeles, The Mother Cluckers/Team 1-Up. 

Their's was a story tangled with penalties and purgatory, much like your own, for they too wielded the SE-R.  Early in their trials and tribulations, they were struck down by those with powdered wigs for their looseness with silver and gold. 

Despite such perils, the team returned.  Though they brandished the same SE-R, it was now devoid of hedonistically horrendous headers and superflously supercillious suspension summations.  Yay, listen to my words and heed them, child!  They reverted to stock components and climbed more adeptly than ever before!  They were thusly praised, awarded and welcomed with open arms back into the Lemons fold!  The fattest calf was slaughtered and their images were graven upon the Wall of Blame!  They are honored on high, just as you may some day be! 

But I beseech you, take caution when treading the perilous ground of any one of the trinity of supposed cheater cars!  I too have walked this ground, suffered persecution and become stronger through it.

Now go!  May your tires stay planted and your turns be apexed.

lol, what if WE don't realize what crappy drivers we are?

It was hard not to walk away from BS inspection without disapointment on our faces, I'll be honest.  But we had a great time after we got over that initial shock, don't know if the judges knew that or not, I hope so.  We got a couple black flags that resulted in penalties that I didn't even have to look back on to laugh, they were funny then and there.  Our Bob Ross painting is a particular source of pride.  We're going to clear coat it to preserve it.

Yeah, I realize we can't buy our way out of serious laps with bribes, but we didn't really put much thought into our baksheesh either, I'll admit.  We just grabbed a 12pack of decent beer b/c we thought that's what we were susposed to do, rookie lesson learned.  Next time through we plan on having the package deal; a good theme and something unique that will make the judges smile and tie into our theme as well.

Awesome.  Heart-click

Put a wiener on top of it.  They'll stop laughing at you long enough to give you 0 laps, no matter what suspension you have.

the one with the 25th fastest lap time?

http://www.mylaps.com/results/showrun.jsp?id=1339917

Mebbe I got the wrong Nissan.. Was a quick one at Gingerman..

More people get attacked by sharks...On land!...each year than those who win Lemons.

We're never going to win. We accept that reality!!

KT

The SE-R is a solid Lemons racer....but just like miatas, E30's and Porsche's they attract attention....which NEVER HELPS

Porsches?

Porsches are the antithesis of a "solid Lemons racer."

Porsches break the hell down with rhythm.

In fact, like Datsun Zs, we don't even care about Porsches.

While I might argue semantics over the use of the term "hella", yeah we got too many BF's.  Three on Saturday had us (especially me while driving the last stint, even though I was the only team member to be not receive a BF all weekend) living in fear of the fourth, weekend-ending BF. 

Please don't be the mean professor who doesn't give any partial credit for the work-out problems, though.  Saturday night the driver that got two of our three BFs that day told us at dinner that he finally got it - even though he thought he knew how easy it was to rack up BF's in Lemons he didn't truly understand it until he got out there and started driving.  The other drivers agreed. 

On Sunday we got a BF on the third lap due to our stupidity - we loosened some strut bolts to put loctite on them before the green flag Sunday, and figured "Oh, the alignment's FINE, we didn't change anything..."  Of course we had just sent the car out with massive toe-out and the driver promptly spun.  The following four driver's stints were 100% clean the rest of the race, and I have faith that the next race will be the cleaner now that we have this experience under our belt.

And man, we thought we were smart back in 2009 for picking what we thought was a quick car that didn't have the e30/miata stigma.  Looks like we out-smarted ourselves into a worse situation. 

So what can we do?  We just don't have the facilities or tools to build a mid-engined Geo or other mis-mash of cars that would be smiled upon.  We built our car in a tiny, rotten shack that barely qualifies as a 0.75 car garage.  3 out of 4 of us have to drive 3 hours from Ann Arbor to Akron to work on it on the weekends.  We welded the cage after hours (1, 2am) at a garbage dump by calling in a favor to borrow the welder for a night.  As far as I saw, we were the only ones there that towed their car on a Uhaul trailer; some teams had tow rigs/trailers that easily cost 10x what our entire combined budget was (the car, the entry fees, the weekend, everything).  This guilty-until-proven innocent thing is no fun. 
[/whining]  Sorry for breaking rule 2.4, I’m done. I promise it won't happen again

Don't give up on your car!  Take a deep breath.  We have a car that was a 'cheaty' model in earlier races - Neons can be hella suspicious.  There are a TON of racing parts out there for Neons, just like SE-Rs.  Neons were considered so cheaty and were so hated that the judges declared all Neons to be Fiats, and spray painted all Neons accordingly.  Our team got scrutinized very closely, and one of our Neons (the now-defunct Margarita Neon) got its fair share of penalty laps.  Now that the judges know us and remember our car, we don't get too much flack during inspection.  Furthermore, Neons have somehow fallen out of favor with the 'cheaters' and we've lost our bad rep.  So just be persistent.  Next year the new cheaty vehicle might be, I dunno, a resurgence of Miatas or a sudden influx Ford Focuses.

Here's what you need to do:
1) GET YOUR RESIDUAL VALUE FROM JAY!!!!  This has the potential to fix ALL, yes ALL, of  your problems.  DO NOTHING until you have your residual!  I cannot stress enough how important this could be for your team.
2) Take another deep breath.
3) Don't whine.
4) Bring good rum (nothing from Bacardi or any other well-advertized mainstream brand) to the next BS inspection.  Do a little research, it won't hurt.
5) Don't mention your forum name at BS inspection.  That way you won't be associated with this thread.
6) Take another deep breath.
7) Continue to work on your car.
8) Go enjoy the race.