I’ve been working on getting a new windshield installed on the TARP Special. Why do we need a new windshield, you might ask? Well, the car was sitting innocently in my garage a couple weeks ago when I went out through the garage to take some trash from the house to the curb. When I pressed the button on the automatic garage door opener, a loud clatter arose. Immediately I thought “whatthehellwasthat!” Turns out that the cover on the GDO was poorly secured and fell from its lofty perch above the car. Right onto the windshield. Where it promptly spiderwebbed the windshield.
How a 1 oz. piece of 20 year old plastic managed to do such severe damage to a 20 year old windshield is beyond me. Maybe in the world of the 1980’s, they were natural enemies, like hawk and mouse. Since this second spiderweb on the windshield wasn’t really in the driver’s line of sight, I was tempted to let it go and just drive the car in the race with it in its flawed (and thus LeMons-appropriate) state.
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Race Prep
Author: Pat
Well, all the banks are paying back their TARP funds, so we’ll need a different theme for the next LeMons goat rodeo in October. I’m working on an idea that will be long on paint and short on performance, a/k/a LeMons Appropriate. So we’ll maintain the TARP abbreviation and simply transition to being the Tobacco Advocacy Racing Program! More details to come soon, but here’s our logo for this race:
Race Prep
Author: Pat
24 Hours of LeMons Chief Perp Jay Lamm sent out the acceptance emails for the Yee-Haw It’s Texas LeMons race at the end of October and by the hair on our chinny-chin-chins we got into the race! Someone else snagged the number 7 before I could get to it, so we will be number 20 for the next race.
Cheers guys! More details to come.
Race Prep
Author: Pat
We filed our application earlier this week for the October iteration of LeMons in Houston — entitled “Yee Haw It’s LeMons Texas” — so keep your fingers crossed that our application gets accepted and we get to try it all over again.
The race in February — the Gator-a-Rama — was run on the 1.7 mile track at MSR-Houston, cutting out the two long straights on the backstretch. The 2008 Yee Haw race was run the same way, with the main goal of the short, twisty track being to keep down the speeds. The unfortunate side effect of having 100 junkheaps all on a short track is that it gets pretty crowded, which leads to a lot of banging and full-course yellows.
A rumor is going around the LeMons forum that they are going to let us use the full MSR-Houston course this fall! That would be a lot of fun. Two longer straights (the “Front Straight” and the “Back Straight” plus a nearly hairpin turn get added to the track, and it converts the “tires” corner into a really tricky and entertaining chicane called “Bus Stop.”
Keep your fingers crossed, but it sounds like there’s a great chance that this will happen this year. Nic Pon, LeMons right-hand man, commented thusly: “It’s a definite possibility pending an agreement with the racetrack and a few trial laps to make sure it’s still safe. You Texas boys have come out in force every time, so we’d love to make room for more of you.”
Tally ho!
Knowing Is Half of the Battle!, Race Prep
By: Pat
If you’re reading our blog for the first time, it’s pretty likely that you’ve gotten here (directly or indirectly) due to the article “Lap Dogs” that was written by our own Brad Cope and published in the August issue of Spirit Magazine. Brad dropped an advance copy of the article off at my house the other night and I was entertained and thrilled with the article. I’m sure the rest of the team will be too when they read it. And obviously if you’re reading this now, it’s probably a fair bet that you found it interesting too.
Due to the limitations of space and time, Brad was only able to include a sliver of our LeMons experience in his article. Please feel free to surf around our blog, which chronicles our experience from the very start all the way through the race. I’ll post some more updates soon about what’s coming up for the team as well as some additional memories that didn’t make it into Brad’s story.
If you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email. My address is patrick mulry at gmail dot com. Maybe putting it down like that will keep the spambots away. Cheers and welcome!
Pat
Driving Tips, MR2, We Need Parts
Author: Pat
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