TARP Blog

Infineon T-Shirt Designs

January 9th, 2010

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Ok, here are 2 designs that I’ve come up with for the back of the Infineon t-shirt. I’m still working on the front design but I wanted to get some votes on which back is better. We’ll refer to them as Draft 1 and Draft 2. I’ve got them showing on white t’s because those are the cheapest to get it printed on. I think it looks best on white, but of course a white shirt gets dirty easily and shows grease immediately. We could print on a grey t-shirt, which is better for the dirt/grease, but the graphics don’t pop quite as much. It’s up to you guys. Click on each to see a larger view.

Draft 1:

Draft 2:

Race Prep Author: Pat

Happy New Year, Deathmobile

January 1st, 2010

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Stevo and I are planning to drive with Paul and his Stick Figure Racing crew out at Infineon in early March. We got our acceptance into the race earlier this week so now it’s time to start working on the car. Unfortunately for me (and probably fortunately for the Missus), the car is out in Salt Lake City, so my ability to do much wrenching on the car before the race is fairly limited unless I grow some really long arms.

As a result, my pre-race contribution will be more on the ideas and design phase. Our theme for this race is a tribute (or, for you snooty LeMons fans, an “homage”) to the Deathmobile that wrecks the annual Homecoming Parade at the end of Animal House (click the photo for a larger version):

To that end, I spent the better part of New Year’s Eve (after the Missus had sacked out) watching the end of the movie and getting some screen captures to help guide our efforts to recreate the Deathmobile and its float, Eat Me, as if they had originally been built on the chassis of a clapped out 1988 Toyota MR2 instead of a 1963 Lincoln Continental. We just might run into some issues of scale. More

So, if anyone out there in blawgworld has, for example, a bust of Emil Faber that we could borrow for the race, that would be great. I suspect there is going to be a lot of papier mache in our near future. Regardless, here are the photos that should help define our mission:

More photos after the break:

We Make Jalopnik (Again)

November 9th, 2009

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Over the weekend, Judge Murilee wrote a post for Jalopnik chronicling the penalties of the Yee-Haw It’s Texas LeMons. Of course, our haiku penalty made the photo-essay! For those who don’t know, when our second driver looped the car (this was before the first engine blew up), we got this penalty. Stevo and I had to compose a haiku poem (fortunately, we were already familiar with the form — in fact, at one point we’d contemplated doing the entire TARP North application for Nelson Ledges in haiku), then paint it on the back of the car. We wrote the draft out on the roof of the car to make it easier to paint rather than trying to compose on the fly. Check it out:

It’s kind of hard to make out, but here’s what it says:

Car loops many times/Driver error always, why?/We are dumbasses.

The funniest part of it was that after we had it painted on, Judge Jonny came by to check our work and said that the last line didn’t have 5 syllables, until we pointed out that “dumbasses” is 3 syllables. Then he slunk away and let us get back on track.

Misty Watercolored Memories of the Way We Were Author: Pat

Oh the Humanity!

November 6th, 2009

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So here are some photos of the carnage that is the dead smallport motor. Based on these photos and some gripping narrative from yours truly, Senor Lamm agreed to give us a $75 residual value for the next race. So at least we can go out and get a motor for the car now. Enjoy the photos, most of them are clickable for larger size views:

That’s Stevo standing in the engine bay after they’d dropped the smallport motor out of the car on Saturday afternoon. Dad and I were well on the way to Fort Worth at this point. More after the jump:

Heroic Fix Trophy

October 27th, 2009

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Here it is, in all its glory, the 2009 Yee-Haw It’s Texas LeMons Heroic Fix Trophy:

Misty Watercolored Memories of the Way We Were Author: Pat

Thanks Giving

October 27th, 2009

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Our team was awarded the Heroic Fix Trophy at Yee-Haw It’s Texas LeMons 2009 last weekend at MSR-Houston. It was a team effort, but it was really more than that. I suspect that Hillary Clinton will never have a book ghostwritten about the experience, but if she did, it could be called “It Takes A Village to Successfully Swap Motors on an MR2 in Less Than 6 Hours.” So I want to take a minute to thank everyone who helped us out.

For those of you who don’t know the story, here’s the brief version. On Friday during Break and Tune, we determined that we were getting compression of ~170psi on cylinders 1, 2, and 4, but only 25 on cylinder 3. We were creating excessive crankcase pressure, leading to a lot of oil mist coming out of the intake valve cover. We knew that if we didn’t do something, the oil smoke from the car would get us black flagged over and over again on Saturday, an outcome we wanted to avoid. So we decided to pull the spark plug and injector control wire and run on 3 cylinders for as long as we could. It didn’t last long like that (roughly 8 laps total over 3 drivers) before we developed an obnoxious rod knock. Pulling the spark plugs revealed about a 1/16 clearance on our rod bearings on the 1 & 4 cylinders; when we pulled the bottom end, the rod bearings on both ends were flat and burned, the crankshaft scored, and the motor was done. Turns out the #3 cylinder had a really nasty hole in it. See dramatic photo after the break: