Home of the Toxic Asset Racing Program! Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale about the misfit adventures of a derelict Toyota MR2 and the mostly ill-informed attempts to un-derelict the car in almost certainly futile attempts to run it in endurance racing.
Was looking up a few reviews of the Longest Day at Nelson Ledges, which is the non-LeMons endurance race that’s held at that track. Most of the good info is in different forum posts, like this one. One thing that becomes abundantly clear: the Carousel turn is taken at high-speed, and God help you if you get outside on it, especially at night. It gets covered with marbles, which puts you on the grass. And grass at night in the fall in Ohio is covered with dew. Which makes the grass as slick as snot. The only thing that stops your car at that point from becoming one with the trees is a tire barrier.
Lack of cornering discipline at MSR Houston led to few problems, if any. Maybe a bent door or a black flag, but that’s about it. Lack of cornering discipline at Nelson Ledges will likely cost you your ride. The Lamest Day is going to be the greatest endurance contest in LeMons history.
Race advice from the LeMons mail list, courtesy of “fishdood1234″. Read at your own risk:
“Me and a few friends wrote this “book” back in 2004 when we started racing off-road trucks and most of it applies to Lemons cars also so I thought I would post it here for everyone to see.
It is 100% true and it all happened over our years of racing….
In today’s edition of the LeMons Video Documentary Series, we see the footage that the Group of Foolz put together starring their e30 at the Thunderhill race. As you can see, there is plenty of foolery for the entire family! That course does look like it would be fun to drive, what with the elevation changes and all. MSR Houston looks like it’s about as flat as a schoolgirl. Cue the video:
Apparently one thing to bear in mind — scratch that — to etch into your permanent memory as the driver of a mid-engined sports car is that if you are in the midst of a high-speed turn, you don’t want to lift your foot from the throttle. Lift before the turn and at the end of the turn, but not right in the turn.
This advice comes from the same guy who did that video below. He was driving his Lotus Elise at a HPDE event at the road track in Reno and spun off the track into the gravel at 95 mph. Why? He entered the turn too fast and didn’t realize it until mid-turn. He lifted his gas foot, which causes a weight transfer to the front wheels, releasing the rear wheels at a moment when they’re already wanting to slide. Thus, the car rotates and leaves the track.
We really need to practice before the race. And to read up. And to pray. Lots of praying.
Free Range Racing, another MR-2 LeMons team, advises on their website that their radio setup was crappy; I’m trying to confirm that they were using a FRS/GMRS setup, and if that’s the case, that confirms our other intel that the cheap walkie-talkie method is insufficient.
Other sources confirm that a rock solid radio setup is the best way to avoid getting black flagged, as passing under the yellow is a black-flag offense but is often very difficult to know as a driver unless you have solid radio contact from a spotter telling you about the yellow flag.
Paul of Stick Figure Racing, a fellow MR2 LeMons outfit, emailed me with an excellent tip: we should pick up some electrical conduit from Home Depot and bend that to make template forms for the cage, then take that with us when we go to bend the DOM steel for the real deal. Should minimize bending mistakes. I’ll pick some up and bring it with me on Saturday when we move the car to Jesse’s shop, then we can fab the mock-up before going to the bender.
The V-RAM guys have a very useful Picasa gallery showing a lot of their roll cage fabrication, as well as some other stuff. I like the cherry bomb muffler install, we need to copy that when we cut out our existing cat and exhaust setup. Their blog also has some very useful background info (like to get to the track early to minimize stress.)
Also, here’s a useful site with some photos of another MR-2 roll cage fabrication. I’ll try to print these out in color (as well as with some of Paul’s photos), as that should be useful when we’re modeling our cage. One thing that I notice in looking at those photos is that this cage is not up to 2009 LeMons spec, in that it’s not a 6-point or better cage. But this at least gives us a good starting point on the main hoop. I think we’ll want a better door bar on both sides, plus we need the rear diagonal braces and the windshield hoop too. It’s encouraging to see that we’ve stripped out the interior of the TARP Special to a greater extent than this team did at the time these photos were taken.
BTW, the silver Snowspeeder car finished 17th at the LeMons race at Thunderhill in December. If we can keep our car running and on the track (a/k/a not black flagged for collisions), we could be a contenda.
Just got off the phone with a guy building a roll cage for one of the other MKI MR-2’s that is entered in the Houston LeMons race. He said that his best estimate is that the cage will use about 50 feet of steel, but he ordered 75′ in case he screwed up. And he said he did screw up the main hoop right off the bat, so there’s that. He suggested that we would probably be better of fabricating the cage from scratch rather than taking measurements off the one that they’re not using (which was my original plan), as that dis-used one is, as he put it, a “sloppy fit.” Thoughts?
Here’s some interesting video from Arse-Freeze-A-Palooza, the LeMons race that ran the weekend after Christmas. Let’s just say “hilarity ensues.” Enjoy:
By the way, I ordered our race seat and harness today, as we’ll need those to get the roll cage in correctly. Pretty soon here we’ll have ourselves a race car…
Reviewing the results from LeMons Thunderhill (a/k/a Arse-Freeze-A-Palooza 2008), it is pretty clear that FRS/GMRS radios are, in terms of racing communications reliability, a dumpster fire at best. Our partially-formulated plan to use those radios probably is, at best, a Plan B.
Plan A would be if anyone has access to 4-watt UHF radios, which is what “real” race teams use. I can get some off eBay, but I’d rather just borrow them if we can do that. So, Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?
Advice from another team that was getting their car ready for the Arse-Freeze in California at the end of next week that I thought might be pertinent to those who are thinking we might want to add a turbo to New Blue:
“A week from the race and our Corrado is still in pieces after a minor “detonation event” cracked the #1 cylinder in 3 pieces. Good thing it happened, because it turns out the piston skirts on 2,3 and 4 were broken off! Considering there’s no shrapnel in the oil pan, we’ll attribute the damage to the previous hooligan who owned this basket case. If I was a bettin’ man, I’d bet against Z Red Baron even making it past day one, but don’t tell my teammates!
A word to the wise - If you wanna win, much less finish, NO FORCED INDUCTION!!”
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