The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Lemons Newcomers → Bringing a semi nice LeMon'scar
Our Team missed the last race in MSR due to me getting cancer, and the treatment is postponing us even more... Problem is we have a German on our team that has worked for Porsche, and a whole bunch of race teams, and with the down time he's keeps making the car nicer, wants to paint the car nice!! He says he's not racing a piece of crap!! He has big time skills!! will tell more as this goes on.
I've heard of this affliction. It doesn't always come with Chermans and can be easily cured by a liberal dose of penalty laps.
Though If the paint is housepaint no one will complain.
...and as long as he didn't actually Buy anything for it.
(sorry to hear 'bout the cancer though)
1) Cancer sucks. Kick it's @ss.
2) Restrict him to using rollers. No spraying of any kind, and all stencils must be homemade. Also: no vinyl, unless acquired for free.
He says he's not racing a piece of crap!!
Maybe he's at the wrong party then.....
Seriously though, I think it depends a little on what exactly he's doing. I think there ARE 'nice' Lemons cars. At least in the sense that they LOOK good. BUT its all about theme here and what underlies the pretty paint. I'm thinking cars like the CheVolvo, Bavarian Ranchero and even TinyVette (though I know rollers and Rustoleum were involved, the result still looks great). I'm a west-coaster so I'm more familiar with those cars-no awesome cars from other parts of the country intentionally missed. Those cars embody the Lemons spirit in other ways. We are a far cry from these guys but we are aiming for this type of LeMon with our Poorvette (240SX with a C4 bumper) as well.
And yeah-give cancer the what for.
Good to hear that you are on the mend, here's hoping you kick it's ass completly. As far as a "nice" car, be careful. One of the reasons tossed around for cursing Team Dragon Somethin's 944 at nelsons was the car looked too nice. And that car was completly done with rollers and stencils. Our car was painted with bathroom paint and electrical tape stencils. Good luck!
go ahead and paint it nice. we'll fix your paint in turn 1. both sides of the car at the same time.
Be strong. [And yes, even the strong cry some times.-- At least that's what I kept telling myself when my wife was going through it :~) ]
Isn't it nice to have Lemons as a break from reality?
back to the topic: As I'm sure you know, a nice looking car attracts an awful lot of negative attention unless it's absolutely ridiculous otherwise. Emphasis on "car". There were some r-e-a-l-l-y nice looking cars (civic and miata) at Thunderhill that had nearly everyone muttering "cheater cheater" and I'm sure people avoided introducing themselves or being friendly to them simply because of the appearances.
But if it doesn't look like a car then you're fine. ,Nothing lowers affective filters at Lemons like having a crappy looking car, or a beautifully executed piece of crap.
Since 95% of the headaches we get from pain-in-ass Lemons racers come from Porsche fanatics, rubbing our noses in the sanitary Porsche-ness of your car won't make a good impression on us. Of course, you can make your car look nice by giving it a custom-van-style metalflake aquamarine-and-vermillion paint job with a mural of St. Ferdinand escaping from his French jail cell in 1946. We'd like that.
OOH phil, you've won my heart...
...though what color is the shag carpet, and would you need to "fully tape" the mirrors on the headliner?
I'm like that too, want to make it better, but usually from reliability standpoint. I like my engines nice and clean and well sealed. I buy plenty of Superclean and use it. Its nicer to work on things when your not dealing with an 1/8" of oil and grime. I mean what else are used toothbrushes for????
a couple suggestions.
a. tell him to go do an arrive and drive at another track, that will keep his head in the game and keep him busy, elsewhere.
b. he can work on the engine and suspension as long as all the work is just work, and no new parts. Plenty of hack job welding and cutting and bending, keep those creative wrenching fabricating juices high.
c. No touching the paint job
d. Have him come up with a new body scheme for your P car. Like make a 914 look like a 908 bergspyder, or a 924 look like Alfa 33, or ????
e. have him redo the wiring harness for just what you need for racing, including wires and plugs for front lights in case you ever run the car in a 24 hour race.
e. have him redo the wiring harness for just what you need for racing, including wires and plugs for front lights in case you ever run the car in a 24 hour race.
THAT is a fantastic suggestion. Electrical stuff always breaks, and it's a bitch to repair on site. (It seems like the voltmeter / humanoid logic circuits always break when the track is live. What is with that?) We've spent ridiculous amounts of time with our wiring rig... and I'm sure we'll still have problems. Extra time? That's time to find electrical gremlins!
And kill them. Kill them dead.
Electrical stuff always breaks, and it's a bitch to repair on site. (It seems like the voltmeter / humanoid logic circuits always break when the track is live. What is with that?) We've spent ridiculous amounts of time with our wiring rig... and I'm sure we'll still have problems. Extra time? That's time to find electrical gremlins!
Why do people (not saying that you did though) always want to eff with the factory wiring? We watched (and helped where we could) the team pitted beside us at the fall CMP race work on their car ALL DAY on Friday, Saturday, and half of Sunday. They had hacked up the (perfectly fine) factory wiring and it was not good. They ended up finding a short by accident that finally got their car running. Had they left the wiring alone they wou;d have been running when the green flag dropped.
I re-wired our ignition switch because it had an issue when we bought car, not because I thought it would be fun. The only other re-wiring we have done was to move the battery to the trunk, and even then I was nervous about it not working for some reason. Luckily it has been fine, so I have left all the other wiring as is!
Why do people (not saying that you did though) always want to eff with the factory wiring? We watched (and helped where we could) the team pitted beside us at the fall CMP race work on their car ALL DAY on Friday, Saturday, and half of Sunday. They had hacked up the (perfectly fine) factory wiring and it was not good. They ended up finding a short by accident that finally got their car running. Had they left the wiring alone they wou;d have been running when the green flag dropped.
I re-wired our ignition switch because it had an issue when we bought car, not because I thought it would be fun. The only other re-wiring we have done was to move the battery to the trunk, and even then I was nervous about it not working for some reason. Luckily it has been fine, so I have left all the other wiring as is!
Similarly we left the majority of our car's wiring untouched-- disconnect something, tape off the end, and zip-tie it out of the way. Until now we had kept modifications to the same as you (work around cruddy ignition switch, relocate batter) and had to repair two severed factory connections (radiator fan and alternator (!) )
The scads of time doctawife alluded to recently have been spent wiring in lights on Tetanus, and it's been slower work than one might expect specifically because we didn't want to mess with the factory wiring-- I put in a fresh fuse holder, relay, and separate wire for the lights so we wouldn't have to even touch the factory harness. It's had a hard enough life.
Most potential Lemons cars have completely butchered wiring to start with. I've seen some scary speaker-wire-and-masking tape hacks that teams just left in place. Usually better to bite the bullet and make your own wiring harness from scratch.
The scads of time doctawife alluded to recently have been spent wiring in lights on Tetanus, and it's been slower work than one might expect specifically because we didn't want to mess with the factory wiring-- I put in a fresh fuse holder, relay, and separate wire for the lights so we wouldn't have to even touch the factory harness. It's had a hard enough life.
As did I. The wiring I have added (switches for fans, cool suit, amp, lights, etc) has all been done in a very orderly fashion so it would be easy to track down any issue with those systems, while leaving the factory stuff alone. Basically I have two terminal strips; one for ignition powered functions, one for battery powered ones. All the added wires get power from one of those two locations with fuses for each of course. The only splicing I've done has been into the factory parking light circuit so our LEDs and related night time bling comes on via the factory stalk-mounted switch.
Thanks for the support!! since were jagerbomb racing, car is a 1985 Bmw 535i that we got for free, before it got towed off by the city. He wants to paint the front in Jager colors, then blend it into the red bull colors for the rear, He made us a cool old time spy vs. spy bomb for the roof.. He does all the carbon fiber work for Hennessey, so all the spoilers and such on their 2010 camaro he did. How to we get approved for stolen parts on our car????
Why do people (not saying that you did though) always want to eff with the factory wiring?
If your car is fuel injected, leave it alone. If you're carbureted, build your own harness. We removed some wiring and components from our Jaguar, and then realized we had some stuff plugged in wrong and had to reinstall the trip computer. We have three avionics technicians on our team and it still took us a couple of weekends to figure out what all was wrong (or maybe that's why it took us three weeks). Now we're switching motors and going with a carburetor. All that old wiring is coming out!
Our Team missed the last race in MSR due to me getting cancer, and the treatment is postponing us even more... Problem is we have a German on our team that has worked for Porsche, and a whole bunch of race teams, and with the down time he's keeps making the car nicer, wants to paint the car nice!! He says he's not racing a piece of crap!! He has big time skills!! will tell more as this goes on.
You'll make it with the cancer! You've got a positive attitude and are thinking about the future.. the real key yo success in that area!
As for paint..
Well I'm going to be with you.. MY car is black. spray can black could make it look pretty decent, but I happen to have more than a little black left over from past projects and I'll bench mix it all together which should give me plenty. It's cheaper (free) than spray cans and I can't help it if it winds up looking nice..
I also have some nice decals left over so they will go on.. (as tidy as possible)
On the other hand it's a 34 year old Jaguar so people will know that I'm not too serious.
My theory is if it won't go, make it pretty! 
We removed some wiring and components from our Jaguar, and then realized we had some stuff plugged in wrong and had to reinstall the trip computer. We have three avionics technicians on our team and it still took us a couple of weekends to figure out what all was wrong (or maybe that's why it took us three weeks).
Lucas > Knowledge of electrical systems.
Why do people (not saying that you did though) always want to eff with the factory wiring?
I wasn't suggesting re-wiring because the car needed, I was suggesting re-wiring to give the overzealous guy something to do that would be potentially useful. Less wires = less weight. Less wires = less wires to look at when something does go wrong. l and yeah, less wires or new wiring means better reliability.
Since I was the guy who wired the Death Cab V8olvo from scratch (back when it was the Black Metal V8olvo; that's me, second from left in the photo above), I can say that it's a major job but totally worth doing when you have even the slightest hint of flakiness in the factory wiring... especially when the car is going to spend its between-races time sitting in someone's back yard with no windows.
^ ^ ^ Nice work Judge Phil! I disagree about the tach being a useful instrument though. Who has time to watch a tach with 100 cars on a 1 mile track like CMP? We have the factory tach, but never look at the thing. I wired up this shift light with a super bright LED that can be seen from space….
I like your use of the side markers for warning lights, but as my team will tell you I have somewhat of an LED fetish so I had to use a few. Oh, I also have a fascination (not an obsession, as my team claims) for use of a label maker. Here is the switch panel I built for our car…
We use trailer lights as idiot lights. They're cheap, easy to see (even for dummies on no sleep), and mount easily to the dash.
That's a nice gauge panel too.
Idiot lights? Gauges? Wow, I'm doing this all wrong.
I like the music switch.
The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Lemons Newcomers → Bringing a semi nice LeMon'scar