This fell off the to-do list before the race, but now it’s ready to go. Run to Printfection (just click that link) to get your Officially-Licensed Toxic Asset Racing Program gear! What says “I Love You” on Mother’s Day more than a TARP Cami? Well, probably about a million things, but at least these aren’t already stained with rear axle grease! All proceeds (such that they are) will go to support the TARP team. Here’s a sample of what they look like, now go get your own!
Parts
Author: Pat
…when I write only in generalities. But I’ll risk being specific to say on behalf of us all: Thanks, Pat, for pulling together the TARP crew for this insane project. Without you there would be no we. And we led that race for a chunk of day one, not to mention having a lot of fun up to and even past when this “half-shaft” ejected itself from the car. And even then if the junkyard would have been open or one of the other MR2 teams could have helped us out…but I digress.
Thanks, Pat.
Engine Trouble, Logistics, MR2, Parts, Race Prep, Team Strategy
From: Brad
The stickers that our great sponsor DoozyWraps printed up for us were delivered to Mr. Cope today and he just brought them over for me to see. At the risk of setting your expectations too high, I think they look really good. We’ll have a sticker party either Thursday night in Houston or at the track on Friday before inspection and judging. I can’t show them all to you, but here’s what the main hood sticker looks like:
Those of you who are particularly fond of crapcan mid-80’s mid-engine cars might recognize that bird as the MR-2 Screaming Chicken.
Parts, Race Prep
Author: Pat
Pat asked me to get Sampson Racing Communications to agree to loan us their “Expert Package” radio system plus the crew package for free. They said, “Sure…except for the part that bolts into the helmets. Once you put those in, you can’t use them again. Each helmet setup will cost you $140.”
So, the question is, do we want to pay that?
Note for the hygenically minded: It’s not as nasty sharing helmets (from a radio perspective) as you might think: Sampson would give us sets of ear buds for each driver. That’s the part that actually goes in your ears.
Logistics, Parts, Race Prep
Author: Brad
ChaseCam, one of our many generous sponsors, agreed to send the camera equipment early so that we would have it in advance of our track testing day. Pretty exciting stuff for a technodork. Anybody know any of those around here? It’s a whole brown box of really cool equipment. Thanks again, ChaseCam!
Logistics, Parts, Race Prep
Author: Pat
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
Courtesy of our first official team sponsor (well, first official team sponsor other than MulryLaw.com), the TARP Special will be sporting some innovative Formula One technology come race time. ChaseCam produces an awsome in-car camera video recording system that utilizes two bullet cams and a solid-state recorder that pushes the raw data onto a memory card for later editing and playback. As certified MR-2 nuts, they’ve agreed to loan us one of their 2-camera setups In exchange for ridiculous stickering of the TARP Special and the use of whatever video we produce. Awesome! If you go to YouTube and search for LeMons and Chasecam, you’ll find some of the videos produced with their equipment. Really very cool.
Thanks to Randy Noll and the folks at ChaseCam for getting on board the TARP train. You won’t regret it! Or at least you won’t regret it as much as we do…
Now we just need to get to work at finding sponsors to loan us radios and race driver suits/gloves/long johns/socks. My limited experience indicates that in-kind sponsorships may be easier to find than cash sponsors, although that would be nice too.
Parts, Race Prep
Author: Pat
Just went out and hooked the battery up again to see if all of our lightness-adding activity had negatively effected the starting and/or running of the engine. I’m proud to say that it still started right up and idled just fine. Looks like the accessory gauges all still work too, including the tach. The speedo cable isn’t hooked up to the transaxle, so no speed. But honestly, it’s the other stuff that we’re really concerned with, isn’t it? We could always clamp a datalogger on the car to get the speed stuff, G’s, etc.
Also got the brake master cylinder bled of the nasty old fluid that was in there and flushed out the front brake system. That got a little messy as I hadn’t tightened all the bolts up front quite enough, but nothing that a little oil-dry kitty litter stuff can’t handle on the floor. Got the front brakes bled out and the wheels back on. Still haven’t changed the rear pads or bled out that part of the system, but I’ll either do that tonight or we can work on that on Saturday in Jesse’s shop.
In related news, the race seat, mounting brackets, and racing harness all arrived yesterday, so that’s good news. I just learned that Recaro makes some sliding racing brackets that allow for re-positioning of the seat for different driver heights. I put the factory seat back in the car last night in prep for driving it onto and off of the trailer on Saturday and realized that we should probably look into that, since our heights are pretty varied. I’m just about 6′0″, maybe a little under, and it would be less than ideal for me to be sitting the same distance from the wheel as my 6′5″ brother. Or however tall he is, he still needs it further back than I do.
MR2, Parts, Race Prep
Author: Pat
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.
Advice from Other Teams, MR2, Parts, Race Prep
Author: Pat
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?
Advice from Other Teams, MR2, Parts, Race Prep
Author: Pat
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