Wish me luck

I am getting ready to head down south for my first 24hrs of lemons race this weekend. I will be part of team silver bullet in a redneck RX-7...

The paint has been updated since the above photo was taken. I will post more pics when I can (probably after the race) since I am not sure if buttonwillow Ca has internetz (or electricity) yet...

Any of you guys have advice for a Lemons Newb ?

Sweet it looks like some of my teamates took some pics with it on the trailer.

Do the mountains turn blue when it is cold?

Good luck

EvanB wrote: Do the mountains turn blue when it is cold?

The funny thing is we were joking about finding a way of making that happen. Since it is supposed to rain this weekend we were talking about painting them blue and then coloring over that with some water soluble paint....

In the end we decided that would be too much trouble

Can't give you any advice specific to a Lemons event, but just remember to concentrate, hit your marks (have you had a chance to run that racetrack before?) and just be consistent. And get some sleep between your stints.

G'luck!!

Keep it clean out there. The last thing you want is to have the Grille of Damocles looming in front of a rotary's radiator!

Keys to having fun at Lemons: -Don't drive like an ass. It is an endurance race, it is not going to be won by driving 10/10ths every lap, and will certainly be lost by driving 11/10ths just once
-Be friendly. Other Lemons racers are great people. Be willing to help anyone and everyone, and if you need it, you'll get the same treatment. Be sure to make time to walk around and hang out/chat/turn wrenches with the other teams, you'll have a great time.
-Drink a LOT - mostly water to stay hydrated, but the evenings festivities are fun, too. Try not to be too hungover, as that makes you a sad race driver. We had two guys this year that overindulged more than the rest of us, and they spent all of saturday sleeping in the A/C of the RV, not in the car racing like they should have.
-Actually getting to race is just the whipped cream on top...this is crapcan racing, the car will likely blow up and everyone needs to understand and accept that. Try to cycle everyone through with short stints first so everyone gets a chance to drive, then build more of a strategy to keep the car on the track as long as possible.
-Bring spares...even if you won't need them, someone else might.
-If you get in the penalty box, do not use excuses. Just say "I'm sorry, I screwed up, I won't do it again" even if it isn't your fault, as this is the fastest way to get back on the track and stay in the judges good graces. If you put 4 off, just go in. If you see a blag flag, just go in, say you are sorry, and you are good. Try to stay out of the penalty box in the first place, unless you are there spectating, that is fun! -Don't take it seriously. Have fun, relax, don't get your panties in a bunch. Enjoy the moment, and remember that this is all just good fun.

Reliability is king.

Be kind to your tires and brakes. They need to last a long time.

Ducting helps keep the car cool. Cardboard, plastic and duct tape are acceptable.

Watch your mirrors - aka - be aware. There is a huge difference in speed between the true crap cans and faster cars with experienced drivers.

There are many drivers out there w/o race experience. Don't expect them to behave like an experienced racer.

Don't take things too seriously; have fun. Walk around and meet lots of people.

Be careful refueling. Learn the rules and follow them to avoid penalties.

Sonic wrote: -Don't take it seriously. Have fun, relax, don't get your panties in a bunch. Enjoy the moment, and remember that this is all just good fun.

Quoted for Truth ... And one additional comment...

See the water pouring out of the fender?? This is right before I roasted the head gasket .... Bring every gasket and consumeable that will stop the car from running laps ... Oh wait your bringing magic spinning triangles?... I can't help you!

Capt Slow wrote: I am getting ready to head down south for my first 24hrs of lemons race this weekend. I will be part of team silver bullet in a redneck RX-7...

Love your car! Good luck.

And I would argue that there's no such thing as a redneck RX-7 unless it has a SBC in it.

I figure you're a cinch to win. Keep oil and coolant in that Wankel and it'll run all day at 6000 RPM.

Bring sunglasses, as I'm pretty sure that sun glare is going to be an issue!

Good luck.

Thanks guys we amazingly it appears that there are interwebs here in buttonwillow.

I now realize that we made a major error. We elected to stay at the hotel, it looks like camping at the track is the way to go...

We didn't incur any penalty laps at the B.S. inspection. Though we got close, not because of any question of cost, but because the inspector was displeased with one of my teammates ill advised attempts at bribery...(don't bribe with coors, even if it fits with your team's theme)

Some last min adjustments nearly requires the entire team

These guys are a few slots down from us in the pitts. This is a sweet little ride.

We did some on track testing... We cleverly discovered ensuring all the ingition wires are plugged in can lead to some impressive gains in power...

This sucker had a knarly sounding V8 in it.

This appeared to be some kind of mid mounted motorcycle engined monstrosity.

Whew its over. We placed 60 of 173 entries which isn't too bad for a bunch of rookies. Saturday was pretty smooth sailing with no major incidents and only one unscheduled pit stop at the end of the day.

Sunday was a different story... Our second driver of the day got whacked by the star wreck crew when they lost their brakes on track. The guy who got hit was our most experienced driver and he got nailed on his first lap out, he had been driving a wide line through this corner to try to stay out of everyones way. He was hurting and elected not to race for the rest of the day He did go get checked out by a doctor later... The guys who hit us were pretty cool about it they came by and checked on our driver a few times, I am pretty sure that that incident ended their day.

We busted out the precision body working tools (sledge hammer) and got the door "fixed" with the aid of a borrowed tie down strap. I was amazed by the level of support from the teams in our area. I am not sure of the names of all the teams that helped out but I know saabsgonewild was one of them. Thanks Guys!

After getting back out on track with our next driver we got whacked again, this time it was due to somebody moving unexpectedly. It was more of a glancing blow and all we had to do was hammer out the front fender a little to stop it from rubbing.

We put our least experienced driver out next (middle of the day) figuring it would be the closed thing to a lull we were going to get. He did a good job of avoiding contact but he did get a little happy going over the grapevine and spun the car. Though he did not go off track he still earned us a black flag and we needed to do pennance for our misdeed.

After that I went out for an extended session since they ran the course in the reverse direction Sunday and I had never been on buttonwillow in the reverse direction before I was a bit of a wuss. I was really focusing on not collecting any other penalties or having any contact. After a while I got warmed up and started having a little fun out there. Unfortunately the car started getting a little warm too and I had to pit for more coolant, we never figured out where the coolant was going, only that we would run out of it every once in a while.

Since we were way ahead of schedule on driver change up we put our first session driver out. He didn't have any issues though it started to rain towards the end of his time.

Our last driver was the guy who had done the most wrenching on the car. The team felt it was important that he was the one who collected the checkered, despite the fact that he was going to be out there for what was undoubtedly the craziest session of the day, thankfully the rain stopped 1/4 through his stint and he was able to bring the car down the home stretch without incident.

Here is a pic of the damage from the first incident. After our "precision" body work.

Fun!

I gotta do one of these one day!

Nice! Thanks for sharing!

Yea that was a lot of fun

When I put the team together there were a few members who wanted to do it once just for E36 M3s and giggles, on the ride back everyone was plotting a way to improve our performance "next time". So I think the entire team had a pretty good time.

We were figuring that we could get about an hours more time on track if we used a better pitt strategy (works out to approximately 25 more laps) we were off track with repairs and penalties close to 1.5 hours another 37 or so laps that would have put us a lot closer to the lead.

Supplement that with some better driving (for most of the team it was the first time in traffic) and maybe a little more power (we were way too slow on the straights despite being fast in the twisties) and I think we could be competitive.

The wife is going to be pissed...

Glad you guys had a great time. I loved racing at Nelson Ledges and we're currently building our second car.

We may do a rotary swap down the road in our Chevette so I'm curious what you guys did to get the motor ready. We have a 12a that is the candidate. Did you guys run the beehive oil cooler?

Congrats on the finish again, that's no small feat.

I am kind of an RX7 noob. I am not sure what the beehive oil cooler is. Though judging from the name it is probably not what we ran. The car had a rectangular oil cooler that fit down below the radiator. From comments that others have made we have to be careful with the torque we put on the oil cooler line nuts or we will damage the oil cooler...

This was not this car's first lemons race we purchased it from another lemons racer and he had done most of the engine prep. We have not cracked open the engine as it seems to be running passably. All of the smog equipment is off the car and the exhaust seems to be relativily free flowing...

When we first got the car it was a DOG. hard to start and slow. Having nobody on the lemons team that knew RX7 hurt us since we didn't realize that there was something wrong with it. On one of the test days we couldn't really get it started and after doing some checks of the ignition system we discovered that the leading coilpack/igniter was unplugged,.We realized significant gains in power and eases of starting after we plugged that back in...

We also wired up the linkage on the carburetor such that the primary and secondary throttles were mechanically operated. Though nobody could feel the difference, the traqmate indicated it was good for a few HP

Glad to see y'all had fun and made it through with no major losses. I'm definitely doing one of these one day.