TARP Blog

No, don’t freak out or anything. Our MR2 will be fine for the race (so long as we can run down this starter problem or rewire the electrics, which probably wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway since we’re probably carrying 40 pounds of extra wire around at this point).

But we need a second car for the test day next Sunday. Anybody got any leads on this? It needs to be a manual transmission. It would be very nice to have a second car so we can each get some significant seat time. Bueller? Bueller?

Logistics, MR2 Author: Pat

Enough got done on the car yesterday that we opened it up for a driveway testing session. Caroline supplied her own helmet:

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MR2, Race Prep Author: Pat

From looking at the coverage of past LeMons races, it’s clear that this event is half auto race, half costume contest. The teams that have well-exeuted themes (like TARP, or so we hope) seem to have more fun and evidently get better treatment from the BS judges. Which, of course, means fewer penalty laps or (sometimes) bonus laps added to the ticket.

Along those lines, I have been picking up bits of costume for our drivers and crew to wear during the BS judging portion of the event. Most of them I’ll save for the day so that you can enjoy the surprise, but I had to share this find. Punchline after the jump:

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MR2, Team Strategy, Tomfoolery Author: Pat

Not that the headline above is setting the bar too high or anything; I don’t want you to misunderestimate me.

To paraphrase Ron Burgundy in the greatest film of all time, “Anchorman,” this past weekend was kind of a big deal for the TARP Team and the TARP Special (a/k/a “Tarpy”). For those of you out there who are executives, here is the executive summary: we got a lot done on the car. It’s not totally ready to race yet, but we could put it on the track today if we had to. Now go back to doing whatever it is that executives do. Execute, I guess. For the rest of us proles, here’s the update (now would be a good time to hit the bathroom and refill the coffee).

To start with, let’s recall what the car looked like when it went out to Jesse’s shop early in January, and then I’ll begin the tale of the long weekend past:

(continued after the jump:)

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MR2, Race Prep Author: Pat

At Pat’s prompting, I asked a company called Isaac Direct to loan us a head harness called, fittingly, the Isaac. It’s like a shock absorber that hooks to our helmets. We can turn our heads in normal situations, but if we crash, the device locks down. We need only one; it unhooks and stays in the car while we come and go.

Anyway, Greg Baker, the Isaac guy, agreed to the deal, and plans to ship me a medium sometime this week. He said he’d let us keep the Isaac if our camera donors gave us a dashboard camera that shows the driver. Apparently, the Isaac logo is prominent.

MR2 Author: Brad

Well, I’m excited as he-double-hockey-sticks to get going this weekend. Here’s the plan, Stan:

The bender and notcher are scheduled for delivery to Jesse’s house today. He was planning to go out to the shop yesterday to get some setup done for where he wants to mount the bender to the floor and where he wants to set up the floor drill press that will run the notcher. Don’t know if he made it out there or not.

Once the gear is delivered, Jesse is going to phone me and I’m going to drive out to the shop to meet him there and help him get the new gear set up so that we’ll be ready to work come Saturday morning. I might tinker around on the car some, too. Or maybe just put the seat in it and make racing sounds like the dad in Breaking Away. I’m going to rack out at the shop overnight tonight. Hopefully the sound of my snoring will keep the coyotes at bay.

Tomorrow will dawn bright and beautiful and we will get the roll cage done! As well as pretty much everything else on the list that’s not done already (except for the coolant flush/fill) that would prevent us from running the car on the track on the 15th.

BTW, I made up a big pot of Texas Red that’s sitting in the fridge right now. I’m going to bring that out for us for lunch on Saturday. After it sits in the Crock Pot for a few hours it’ll be good to go.

Logistics, MR2, Race Prep Author: Pat

Jesse called on the phone earlier today and informed me that he and Grayson have worked it out so that we will have a new tube bender at the shop on Saturday. This is what we in the industry call very good news! Jesse also said that while they were at it they picked up a specialized fishmouth rig. This is not used to catch bluegill in the tank outside the shop, but rather works to cut the ends of the tubes where they meet. I didn’t get all the details about manufacturers, etc., as I was so relieved to hear the news that everything will be delivered by Friday. Heck, if Jesse would let me I would go out there on Friday to help get the new equipment setup and just sleep in the shop overnight so that we’re not working on tool setup on Saturday but rather can jump right on getting the cage done.

In other news, I re-ordered the seat mounting hardware today; it’s being shipped from someplace in Oklahoma so it’s a lock to be in my grubby hands before I go out to the shop on Friday/Saturday.

Not to get too optimistic or anything, but we could have this thing running and on wheels by Saturday night…

MR2, Race Prep Author: Pat

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.

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MR2, Race Prep Author: Pat

Success!

One of my jobs was to find a sponsor for those stickers so our car will look like a TARP NASCAR. Today, Steve Brom of Doozywraps agreed to help us out. (Hat tip to Pat for pointing me in Doozywraps’ direction from the get-go.)

Specifically, I asked for two types of stickers:

1) Ones of logos of bailout companies–namely, Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial Services Group, U.S. Bancorp, GMAC Financial Services, Chrysler, Capital One Financial, American Express, and Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

2) Ones of the car’s number. In this case, that could be $700 Billion or $700,000,000,000. That, I think, adds up to $700 billion. Those stickers would go on the doors and the roof.

We should be able to get these by mid-February.

MR2, Race Prep Author: Brad

Two of the six new tires were delivered today. One look at them reveals just how worn out are the tires that came on New Blue. The tire on the left is the least-worn of the 4 old Azenis, the tire on the right is the new one.

MR2, Parts Author: Pat