TARP Blog

We got a lot done on the car yesterday, despite a minor setback on our major goal. I don’t really see this as a good news/bad news post because the setback was just that and not really bad news, per se. But I’m going to start with the “good news” anyway. For a full view of what’s done and what needs to be done, team members can log onto our Google Docs spreadsheet and take a look.

I got a little later start than anticipated yesterday owing to the slow kick-in of the coffee. Yeah, I’ll blame the coffee. But I’d failed to load up the truck on Friday night, so I had to do it in the morning before leaving. After packing my tools, warm jacket, work boots, etc., I decided to go ahead and throw the 6 new tires, 4 race wheels and 4 race wheels in the back of the truck too. That put me late over to Brad’s house, which led to a phone call from him advising me to “get the lead out.” The Missus took that phone call and relayed it to me as I was loading the wheels and tires into the truck. It occurs to me now that perhaps Brad actually said “get the Led out” because he wanted me to get to work on squeezing this LeMon car. Although if our MR2 drips juice down my leg, I’ll be really, really concerned. I sure hope our blog audience is familiar with that Led Zeppelin song or else I’m just going to seem to be really out there.

Brad and I finally got going and actually made really good time out to Jesse’s shop in Granbury. In fact, we made such good time that we arrived there before Jesse. He advised us to make a donut run, and we took that advice. We decided to maximize our effeciency and dropped the tires and wheels off at the Hood Tire Shop to have them do the mount/balance on all the tires. We left all that gear there and proceeded to pick up the donuts at a Korean donut place in half of a former Dairy Queen space. The other half of that space is occupied by a sushi joint. Call me crazy, but a sushi joint in half a former Dairy Queen in semi-rural Texas is probably not the place I’m going for fresh fugu.

Grayson arrived a little later than the rest of us and between Jesse and Grayson, they got the rest of the work done on the perches. This was very welcome, since basically none of the roll cage work could proceed until the perches were done. I took some photos with the camera on my phone, but they didn’t turn out very well. I mistakenly left the memory card for the digital camera at home, no doubt due to Brad’s hectoring me to hurry it up. Just kidding, Brad. Here’s the driver’s side front perch:

And the rear one:

And here are the passenger side front and rear perches:

After completing the perches, Jesse and Grayson got to work bending conduit to form the template for the main hoop, while Brad worked on removing the rear bumper cover assembly and I worked on fabricating some custom hood pins from aluminum rod. I’d never used a die set before, so that was interesting. One thing that I found out is that it’s pretty easy to torque aluminum rod when cutting the threads by hand. I wonder if there isn’t a better way to do that. I just couldn’t bear spending the kind of money that hood pins cost at retail, and I’m not sure that they’re long enough for this application anyway. Regardless, we now have all the custom hood pins we need to hold down the engine cover, trunk, and the hood. We got the pins fit for the trunk and engine cover, with only the hood left to go. Here’s what they look like on the trunk and engine lid:

We’ll probably want/need to safety wire the pins to the car in order to pass tech inspection. These hold downs will make it much easier & faster to get working on the engine should it need any work during the race. As several of us have learned, it’s basically impossible to do any substantial work on this engine with the engine cover on the car using the factory hinges. Plus the thing always wants to slam down on your head, which I can testify is not a fun thing. In that top photo, you can also see the work that Brad did on the taillights, which wee decided against removing. Our rationale was that if the extra brake lights prevent us from getting rear-ended and having to spend repair time in the pits, that’s probalby worth more than the marginal weight saved by removing the lights. In compliance with LeMons rules, Brad applied sturdy, clear tape to the outside of the taillights so that in the probably inevitable event of a rear-ending, the light covers won’t fragment all over the course.

Brad also took care of getting rid of the turn signal and cruise control stalks on the steering column, which is a very good thing. With that thick steering wheel that came with the car from the prior owner, I couldn’t even turn the wheel without the back of my hands running into those things. Grayson welded the headlight covers to the front of the hood so that doesn’t look so empty now. The welds need some grinding and there are some gaps that could be filled with caulk, putty, or bondo, but I’m not sure that I care enough. I kinda like the rough look, although we’re going to have to do something about the faux-Egyptian paint job that Grayson added after the fact:

 Unfortunately (here’s the bad news part), the pipe bender that was at the shop was not up to the task of bending the steel for the roll bar. All it did was kink the bar instead of bending it. That’s not going to work for forming our roll cage. But Jesse and Grayson have a plan for acquiring a better bender that can get the job done. Everyone is on the same page in terms of getting the cage done next Saturday; I really want to get this car back to Dallas by the end of next weekend. We need to do the coolant flush & refill and we can’t do that unless we have a ready source of running water. With no running water out at the ranch, that means we’ve got to get it back here.

With the chance to get the car on the track sometime during the second weekend of February, we’re getting awfully close to having only 2 working weekends left. Although we have a lot left to do, I think that we can get it done. Heck, we don’t have any other choice; we’ve got to get it done.

MR2, Race Prep Author: Pat