Thanks to everyone at MAM

Team Short Bus would also like to thank everyone!  The coner workers were on the ball; we had some really clean racing; staff was fun and very easy to deal with; every team I spoke w/ was more than friendly, and willing to help out!

Special thanks to 2Z for letting us use thier welder, and Clueless for a bunch of random little things.

Filthy: if you dump the neon let me know, i can always use spare for my road race car......did the extra "ducting" help the car?

On behalf of the Zombie Squad (ZS/#25) I have to give a ditto to all that was said.  I had a blast, and I really hope that Lemons comes back to MAM.  Hopefully next year, our drivers will stay out of the penalty box and the car won't blow up with 18 minutes left in the race!

Confessions of a "Heroic Fix" Winner

Please pardon my long winded-ness.

My wife, daughter, and I planned to leave for Omaha Thursday by noon. We didn't get out of town until 5pm. MapQuest says it's just under 7 hours to Omaha. We made it in 8 1/2 hours and camped out for the night at the Bellevue Wal-Mart after shopping for supplies. I got about four hours of poor sleep in the driver's seat of the Suburban before we headed to MAM. At ten AM I heard from my teammates that some family problems were forcing them to stay until early afternoon. They finally left Oklahoma City at 5pm on Friday.

Our car missed tech on Friday because I had to drive to Omaha to buy a correct harness, along with many other issues, such as plugging the gaping PCV hole at the front of the motor. Saturday morning my teammates showed up about 7:45, we took the car to tech, and failed the cut-off switch test. We thrashed and got everything fixed. As soon as I took the car out on the track I saw the green flag waving. The car was smoking, but there was plenty of crap on the exhaust from our work. Two laps later we got black flagged because the car was smoking and leaking a stream of oil onto the track.

We pulled the car into the pits and decided the plugged PCV port was causing the crankcase to pressurize and spit oil out the front cover. We engineered a PCV fix involving F4 tape and fuel hose. We also decided to reseal the front cover of the motor because of the sheer amount of oil dripping out of it. We tore down the front of the engine, puckeyed everything, and couldn't get the front cover back on because the huge, inflexible cast aluminum oil pan pinched the front cover upwards into the head gasket. We cut one of the dowel pins in half, cut off the part of the head gasket that extended over the front cover, and re-puckeyed everything. Once we had it reassembled we filled the radiator and sent the next driver out on the track for ten laps. We had decided to do ten-lap stints so that everyone could get a chance. After everyone else did 10 laps each, I took the car out and started hammering it. Once I got comfortable with the car I could hang with anyone in the turns, and I could outrun some cars on the straights. Then I noticed the temp gauge hitting 120*C. I wasn't sure of the conversion, but since that's on the east end of the gauge I pulled into the pits. As soon as I shut the car down we could hear the water boiling. The car took a gallon of water. That's when we realized we hadn't filled the radiator with the car running and thermostat open. Having been in too much of a hurry we cooked our head gasket. We spent the rest of the race doing 10 lap stints, filling the coolant at every stop and mopping up oil to keep it from seeming like we still had a leak.

Jim took the car out for the last stint of the race and did about 16 laps, putting us at 106 laps total. The gauge pegged (about 135*C) on his fourth lap, but the stock Jaguar oil cooler kept it from cooking the rings. We put the car on the trailer, collected our "Heroic Fix" trophy (even though we really hadn't succeeded in fixing anything), and headed for home.

Karma hit my family about 8:30pm on the outskirts of Lawrence, Kansas. We were driving through a construction zone with concrete barriers on either side when the temp gauge on the Suburban started climbing and we started smelling coolant. There were already a few cars behind me, and I had to stay on it for two miles until the side of the road opened up to a pasture. The temp gauge was pegged at over 260 degrees. We pulled over and put a jug of water in the radiator. Moments later it came out of the motor, but it was too dark to really see where. Once the engine cooled down we drove a mile to the Lawrence exit and coasted engine-off to the toll booth. We limped the truck to a Rodeway Inn, and early yesterday morning I limped it around town until the fifth shop I stopped at told me they could look at it that day.

The lower intake manifold gasket had blown out at one of the coolant passages. $710 and it would take most of the day, but since the motor had never siezed up (I can limp some broke $#!+ around) they said if we were lucky the motor would be okay. The Rodeway Inn was okay with us leaving the Jag on an open trailer in their parking lot for everyone to see, and were even nice enough to let us check out two hours late.

We got back on the road about 4pm and drove on into Oklahoma. At 8:45pm a mile from Perry the trailer started shaking. I stopped and discovered half the tread missing from the front left trailer tire. We pulled into Perry and I got the spare Jag tire out. I had carefully eyeballed the spare and thought it would fit on the trailer if we had a flat. Wrong! The Jag stud spacing was less than a 1/4" off, but that's one of those places close doesn't count. The Perry Wal-Mart didn't have a tire center. The Stillwater Wal-Mart's tire center closed at 7pm. The truck stop we were at had a number for emergency tire repair, but nobody answered or returned voicemail. We secured the trailer, jacked up and removed the wheel, and headed home.

A mile outside of Perry the Suburban shudders and the gauges go black. Then everything comes back on. Repeat. Repeat. Ahh! A problem we recognize. GM's crappy attempt at proprietary battery technology - the side-post terminal, has a tendency to work its way loose in bad circumstances. The last time this happened I was deployed to the mid-East and my wife was driving in a foot-deep snow storm. We ended up getting home at 11pm.

Today I grabbed one of the old tires off the Jag, drove to the local used tire shop and had the 215/70R-15 installed in place of the P205/70R-15 trailer tire. BTW, WTF is up with "P" sized tires? What a load of $#!+. "I'll sell you a tire at 10% off... of the tire's size, not the price." Anyways it fit just fine on the trailer and I towed the Jag the last hour home.

Trip.From.Hell. I think we'll stick to the nearer races next time.

Special thanks to TeamLemon-Aid for loaning us tools, giving us food, and loaning us the battery cable that I forgot to return. How can I get that back to you or repay you?

Special thanks to Kevin of the Psychotic Monkeys Hopped Up On Meth who helped us out even after they blew their engine in practice.

Big thanks to everyone else who stopped by and gave us help, moral support, admired our car, etc.

Edit: BTW, the Jaggernaut will return, with Cadillac power!

Our team would also like to thank everyone for a fantastic weekend, this was our first race and we all had a blast.  All the racing was good and clean, the staff was excellent and the car held up better than we thought, at least it ran hard right up to the point it melted 3 of the 6 spark plugs. 

I hope the race comes back to MAM next year, we already have plans to fix the probe and come up with another more silly entry.

I'd like to thank Lincoln AssassinVIIItion for the 8 gals of fuel.

Team Time Travelers of Doom want to also thank everyone for a great time.  It was our first race and it was awesome.  I was a little worried that our little Fiero wouldn't last, especially after pretty much EVERYONE told us it wouldn't.  All weekend people would come up and say something like "cool car, what is it?"  Then they'd cringe after we told them what it was.  The engine was without fail, and the transmission only gave us a tiny bit of problems.  The only two problems we had was a busted rear wheel bearing that was brand new before the race (that cost us two hours in tracking down an auto parts store that was open and had the part), and we also ran out of gas with about 2 minutes to go.  So close!

Everyone was very cool to talk to and very awesome on the track.  Thanks again!

I have to echo what Hermit said.  This is the first race for this team and we found the learning curve pretty steep.  Except for some fairly minor problems and deficiencies, the car was good.  Saturday saw us getting towed in several times with a dead throttle and a brake problem.  Those problems behind us, the car marched up the standings from 22nd to 14th on Sunday.   Then, just a few minutes from the end, our Honda blew a head gasket.  Big surprise there.  All in all, we had a blast and I cannot wait for next year.  The folks at MAM were super and the Lemons folks were really great too, even when we were getting penalized.  We vow to learn our lessons about race conduct and do our very best to avoid all penalties next year.

Though I've been a fan of road racing for some time, I never prepared a car for this kind of racing before.   It was a heck of a journey and one I'll never forget until the Alzheimer's kicks in.

P.S. To the 24 Hours of Lemons folks:  I have a feeling the low turnout this year will not happen again. I don't know how many people I spoke with that vowed to prepare a car for next year.  Also, there was another crapcan race in Hastings, NE (Just a few hundred miles away at MotorsportsParkHasting) on the same weekend.  Perhaps with some cooperative scheduling, both races could benefit next year.

Erik, I'm the guy you first met from Team Lemon-aid (Chris), and am I glad you got that car running.  You worked so hard, we were quite pleased to see you lapping on Sunday.

The food was great!  Thanks to Johnny's Steakhouse for donating it, we were glad to share.

The battery cable was a gift.  No return necessary.

Sorry to hear about the trials on the return trip home.  You're do for some good Karma.

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Thanks, got our lap info.