Topic: Thunderhill thoughts

Mmmh, not many posts on last weekends race.

Surprising.

It was definitely much much warmer than expected. The 145 or so cars spread out evenly making it a pretty clean race, at least from my perspective.

I was a little bit disappointed in the lack of party atmosphere on Saturday night. Maybe everyone was to far spread with not that many people there but it felt that by 10pm everything was dead quiet and not the usual fun atmosphere.

We finally won B for the first time as the Neon Pope. That is certainly our highlight. Discovered a busted fuel hose that we didn't get fixed until 1 hour before race start in addition to fixing the leaking oil pressure sender we had to buy at O'reilley's same morning.

We went entirely on fuel strategy. Only did a one stopper on Sunday. We were averaging 3:57 - 4:05 lap times and it seemed that the teams chasing us either had incidents or black flags every time they came close even though they were running in the mid to high 3:40's.

Anyway, it worked, we are excited to finally and permanently join the A class.

Our next race will be The Ridge in Washington.

See everyone then...

Kai

'96 Dodge Neon, a.k.a. "Neon Pope" - 20 Lemons races - 1 Class B win

2 (edited by billybobster 2017-05-23 12:04 PM)

Re: Thunderhill thoughts

Sorry For (not) Party (because) Racing (when too hot).

Pooped.

25X Loser - Delinquent Racing - '86 Rust-Tite Merkur - 9 years (when do I get to stop?).

Re: Thunderhill thoughts

Glad to see you guys win B! Gives us hope that with clean racing and long stints our little 140hp 240sx could do similar things at Sonoma or Thunderhill.

Also thank you so much for the donation of your winnings to Alex's Lemonade Stand. It might be the first time that all three class winners all donated their winnings to the charity of the race. Jay's checks went to ALSF in yesterday's mail!

Bert One - 1981 Volvo 262c Bertone | Ernie - 1990 Nissan 240SX

Re: Thunderhill thoughts

Congrats to the Popes!

Old Crows were in their pit Sat nite with Kill Bill2 on the big screen and homebrewed booze provided by RustyCockRacing. Minimal methanol-induced blindness resulted.

Our race was fair but still fun as the usually trustworthy Shagstang seized a brand-new $50 Autozone PS pump Saturday after making it up to P2 in B-class, which interrupted the lunch hour, then spun a front wheel bearing Sunday, also spoiling lunch. Got back on track both afternoons, tho, and avioded contact for once. Benefit of 3hrs in the pits, I guess. Tires will be good for another race, also.  Had lotsa laffs.

Congrats also to Cerveza and big thanks for loaning us their bearing puller!

Gary
Old Crows
#171 Austin Powers Shagstang
#907 Goldmenber Jensen Healey (completing a 1-yr sentence on Trumped-up charges)
Santa Rosa, CA

5 (edited by billybobster 2017-05-24 08:00 PM)

Re: Thunderhill thoughts

billybobster wrote:

Sorry For (not) Party (because) Racing (when too hot).

Pooped.

And I forgot to say, probably because still Pooped...

Definitely Congrats on the Class B win! And congrats on doing it clean w/o BFs. As a current Class B resident, we aspire to win while being clean.

25X Loser - Delinquent Racing - '86 Rust-Tite Merkur - 9 years (when do I get to stop?).

Re: Thunderhill thoughts

redzed wrote:

Congrats to the Popes!

Old Crows were in their pit Sat nite with Kill Bill2 on the big screen and homebrewed booze provided by RustyCockRacing. Minimal methanol-induced blindness resulted.

Our race was fair but still fun as the usually trustworthy Shagstang seized a brand-new $50 Autozone PS pump Saturday after making it up to P2 in B-class, which interrupted the lunch hour, then spun a front wheel bearing Sunday, also spoiling lunch. Got back on track both afternoons, tho, and avioded contact for once. Benefit of 3hrs in the pits, I guess. Tires will be good for another race, also.  Had lotsa laffs.

Congrats also to Cerveza and big thanks for loaning us their bearing puller!

Gary
Old Crows
#171 Austin Powers Shagstang
#907 Goldmenber Jensen Healey (completing a 1-yr sentence on Trumped-up charges)
Santa Rosa, CA

Now I know what pit to hang out in on Saturday nights...

Who was your driver on the last stint on Saturday? We had a good run together in those last 2+ hours and it was some very clean racing. Eventually you guys got away from me when I got hung up in traffic.

Good times.

Maybe the judges put us in B again???? LOL

Hopefully the Shagstang will remain in better running condition next time.

'96 Dodge Neon, a.k.a. "Neon Pope" - 20 Lemons races - 1 Class B win

Re: Thunderhill thoughts

We broke just before the end of Saturday's racing.  It was the one part we'd never had problems with, the diff. The engine, not ready until Friday at 2:30, did fine except for over-heating. I need to figure out why that happened. Normally we run under 190F even on hot days.

It was still fun, and breaking on Saturday meant we had more time to cruise the paddock and visit people. We need to break more often. Actually, we broke at Sonoma, too, so maybe we need to break less often. Anyway, it was interesting watching the B-Team get the Chotus back together and return to the race. Our pit neighbors were helpful in diagnosing our over-heating problems, and the Toyoda team had just lost their third engine in their two Lemons races and were still having a good time.

I never got to drive but reports I heard were there was plenty on stupid driving, our guys witnessing cars on several occasions trying to insert themselves into spaces that were never going to open. They also spoke of great driving and fun extended dices.

Our new guy in his first ever race did good. A bit off the pace but that's OK. He had fun and will be back.

Jay seemed short-staffed. Few seats on the Supreme Court were filled and hardly anyone was cruising/policing the paddock. The Restart Racing folks (white Ford Ranger) told me about a few things they saw that should have been stopped, like fueling violations.

Spank did a great job with the awards presentation, although he may have let the power of his office go to his head at one point in the weekend and Restart Racing suffered for it. They finally had a C-class win in their sights but an arbitrary 1-hour penalty put them back in 3rd. They fought back and were in second and less than a lap behind Cory's Buick before the race ended.

I heard more than a few people say they were done with the Thunderhill heat and would not be back at Arse-Sweat because of it. I want to come, it's the classic Thunderhill track and will be the start of our 8th year of racing, but we'll see.

The Ridge is looking good for us this year. Normally I can't get my guys to go that far. Something about having to be back at work on Monday or some such excuse. Well, our new guy is a pilot and owns a 4-seater plane and now everyone wants to go. It looks like another solo hallucination-inducing 15 hour haul for me.

Mike

P.S. Here's our full story - http://teamtinyvette.kstreetstudio.com/ … 170521.pdf

Re: Thunderhill thoughts

The Chotus had high hopes and small problems.  Unfortunately, the latter spiraled and took out the former.

We were wrenching most of Friday, Saturday from 1pm on, and Sunday until about 2pm.  We had the intake manifold on and off no less than 5 times - replacing the intake manifold gaskets 3 times (there's a longer, less interesting story here, but I'll spare you). We replaced a set of head gaskets, had one lifter disassemble itself and lightly bent a pushrod.  We killed a battery somewhere along the way.  We also lost all of our gauges by the end of day on Sunday, and, to add insult to injury, part of our exhaust fell off with less than an hour to go (not a huge deal - just another thing).

To us, it looked like a normal race weekend - a greasy, dirty, burned-knuckle, fiberglass-splintered mess.  smile

In the 4-ish laps I got to drive the car (on Sunday at around 2), I thought racing was surprisingly clean.  We put down some good lap times, just not very many of them.

The Chotus will be back... in October.

For this race, we also brought the original B-Team car - the Kill Phil Pussy Wagen E30.  While its problems were less numerous, it was also off the track quite a bit, then ended up being pushed onto the trailer by the end of the weekend after the water pump failed late Sunday.

Side note: I think I was behind the OP in line at Oreily's on Saturday - just wasn't in a chatting mood.  Congrats on the win.

BTeam Racing
#72 "Pussy Wagën" E30
#74 "Llama" Lotus Elite, aka Chotus
http://www.facebook.com/bteamracing | http://chotus.org

Re: Thunderhill thoughts

That wuz Clif Saturday 430-6pm.
Here's 7 minutes of following you after you passed us on the back straight. He eventually sneaks by you just after a yellow flag. He's good at that. No rearview camera this race.

https://youtu.be/EhxGTuKo-0E

Gary

Camerlengo wrote:
redzed wrote:

Congrats to the Popes!

Old Crows were in their pit Sat nite with Kill Bill2 on the big screen and homebrewed booze provided by RustyCockRacing. Minimal methanol-induced blindness resulted.

Our race was fair but still fun as the usually trustworthy Shagstang seized a brand-new $50 Autozone PS pump Saturday after making it up to P2 in B-class, which interrupted the lunch hour, then spun a front wheel bearing Sunday, also spoiling lunch. Got back on track both afternoons, tho, and avioded contact for once. Benefit of 3hrs in the pits, I guess. Tires will be good for another race, also.  Had lotsa laffs.

Congrats also to Cerveza and big thanks for loaning us their bearing puller!

Gary
Old Crows
#171 Austin Powers Shagstang
#907 Goldmenber Jensen Healey (completing a 1-yr sentence on Trumped-up charges)
Santa Rosa, CA

Now I know what pit to hang out in on Saturday nights...

Who was your driver on the last stint on Saturday? We had a good run together in those last 2+ hours and it was some very clean racing. Eventually you guys got away from me when I got hung up in traffic.

Good times.

Maybe the judges put us in B again???? LOL

Hopefully the Shagstang will remain in better running condition next time.

10 (edited by redzed 2017-05-27 08:12 PM)

Re: Thunderhill thoughts

Here's our scumpilation video. Not nearly as many bloopers as usual due to all the clear track, plus spending >3 hours in the pits fixing the car. Can't get in trouble that way.  Had to fill out the video with a few minutes of good driving. Apologies.

https://youtu.be/3mqnhtZvkj8

those few of you interested in other rare examples of relatively clean driving by Old Crows can see our best laps on the oldcrows racing YouTube channel

Gary
Old Crows
#171 Austin Powers Shagstang
#907 Goldmember Jensen Healey (finishing a one-year sentence for bad behavior in Class C, now on probation)


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4jag … -5GtTlEblA

https://www.facebook.com/oldcrowsracing/

Re: Thunderhill thoughts

Thank you for the video.

Nice!!


redzed wrote:

That wuz Clif Saturday 430-6pm.
Here's 7 minutes of following you after you passed us on the back straight. He eventually sneaks by you just after a yellow flag. He's good at that. No rearview camera this race.

https://youtu.be/EhxGTuKo-0E

Gary

Camerlengo wrote:
redzed wrote:

Congrats to the Popes!

Old Crows were in their pit Sat nite with Kill Bill2 on the big screen and homebrewed booze provided by RustyCockRacing. Minimal methanol-induced blindness resulted.

Our race was fair but still fun as the usually trustworthy Shagstang seized a brand-new $50 Autozone PS pump Saturday after making it up to P2 in B-class, which interrupted the lunch hour, then spun a front wheel bearing Sunday, also spoiling lunch. Got back on track both afternoons, tho, and avioded contact for once. Benefit of 3hrs in the pits, I guess. Tires will be good for another race, also.  Had lotsa laffs.

Congrats also to Cerveza and big thanks for loaning us their bearing puller!

Gary
Old Crows
#171 Austin Powers Shagstang
#907 Goldmenber Jensen Healey (completing a 1-yr sentence on Trumped-up charges)
Santa Rosa, CA

Now I know what pit to hang out in on Saturday nights...

Who was your driver on the last stint on Saturday? We had a good run together in those last 2+ hours and it was some very clean racing. Eventually you guys got away from me when I got hung up in traffic.

Good times.

Maybe the judges put us in B again???? LOL

Hopefully the Shagstang will remain in better running condition next time.

'96 Dodge Neon, a.k.a. "Neon Pope" - 20 Lemons races - 1 Class B win

Re: Thunderhill thoughts

Late response,great clear racing. B +8 pretty much took us out of contention right away, lost water pump cost a bit of time then we blew a head gasket, 4 hours later we made it back in track. We are coming back in August, I mean how much hotter can it really be...

Scion XB Toaster
71 Datsun Z