Got back yesterday from the Sears Pointless trip at Infineon. In a word, it was awesome. I don’t have videos or photos of the car in action (yet), but should have some soon. There are lots of stories to tell but I’m still too worn out to document them. Here’s a picture of the team as we went through tech in our Animal House costumes. The judges loved our theme and said that although several other teams had done it before, nobody had done it as well as we did and nobody had ever dressed in costume for it before, either.
(L-to-R) Judy as Mrs. Dean (Marion) Wormer; Paul as D-Day; yours truly as Bluto (popping out of the turret with sword in hand); Bill as (?), and Stevo as Stork. Stevo’s drum major baton is topped with the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch; the theme for this car at its last race was a Holy Grail theme, so this was keeping some continuity.
We ran all day on Saturday and almost all day on Sunday. By the end of the day on Sunday, we’d picked up 7 black flags, all but two for non-contact driver errors. Stevo got one for contact when he was gently punted from behind (!) early on Sunday, and then our last black flag of the weekend was for minor contact, although the driver claimed to not have made any and we couldn’t find any new paint scratches. I got a solid body check to the entire driver’s side from the Krider Racing team late on Sunday but didn’t get flagged for it; I’m waiting to see video before I proudly claim it was all their fault. 
Although we had a couple of very minor mechanical issues during the weekend (right rear brake was sticking necessitating a caliper and pad change, small coolant issues, etc.), nothing major crept up and we spent most of the time out on the track. Other than the 1-hour penalty when Stevo and Paul combined for 3 black flags in 15 minutes mid-day on Sunday. Paul and Bill and their crew in Salt Lake City did a great job getting the car ready to race this weekend and they should be (and are hereby) soundly commended for their car prep. It was great to go a whole race without major failure. This is what we need to replicate!
The track was awesome and the racing was a lot of fun but extremely crazy toward the end of the day on Sunday. Way too many cars making way too many bad choices. Except for us. When it was all said and done, we ended up in 89th place.
Misty Watercolored Memories of the Way We Were Author: Pat
Stevo and I will be flying out to SFO on Thursday this week to participate in the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Infineon Raceway, formerly known as Sears Point. Thus, the official name of the race is “Sears Pointless.” We are driving with my friend Paul and his Stick Figure Racing MR2 team (of course) based out of Salt Lake City. Paul and his guys out there have been working furiously on turning the MR2 into a compact replica of the “DeathMobile” featured at the end of the movie “Animal House.” I’d post photos of the car but Paul has sworn me to secrecy. I hope he won’t kill me for saying that it looks great!
We were hoping to also create the float “Eat Me” from which the DeathMobile emerges in the parade scene in the movie, but time and space prevented that from happening. Maybe next time?
I’ll try to update the blog while we’re out in California, but probably mostly via the Twitter link (or you can follow me on Twitter directly, my ID there is pmulry. You probably didn’t see that one coming, did you?). There is going to be a lot going on in our few short days out there. We have 4 on-track sessions on Friday to learn the track, plus we have to take the car through tech. I’m linking up with a couple other guys to try to get a wireless timing & scoring system setup so that teams can almost always know how crappy they are doing in the race, because for some reason, teams want that info like a crack junkie wants the rock. We have the race all day on Saturday, then a Pinewood Derby race afterward, for which Dave and I have been building a special car. Then another race day on Sunday, pack up the trailer, and head back to the airport for the redeye home.
A fun weekend is anticipated!
Race Prep Author: Pat
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
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:
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Race Prep Author: Pat
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
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:
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Misty Watercolored Memories of the Way We Were Author: Pat
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
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:
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Misty Watercolored Memories of the Way We Were Author: Pat
We won the Heroic Fix Award! I’m so proud of how our whole team pitched in & gutted it out all day even when it looked like we were hosed.
Twitter Race Updates Author: Pat
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