Stick Figure Racing

Bring on the Chaos

2012-01-05T15:36:00.000-08:00

This weekend will be the official start of the new season of wrenching for Lemons racing or as some people call it "Utter Chaos" and to make matters worse we are joining forces again with our sister team VRAM. Yes that's right Billy! Larry and I are going to resurrect the MRolla for another run at greatness. What's that Sally? Well sure we are going to have other drivers! Why we are going to have some of the best drivers money can't buy including the likeness of Jim Hall, (Pat Mulry from Texas) Shirley Muldowney, (Judy) and an unknown driver who goes by the the name of Wil who is most famous for being Peddle car champion of 1968-1969.
O.K. enough of the silliness we are contemplating racing two cars in the Sears Infinion race this year. Thanks to Ruben we are seriously thinking of having a Triple Suck weekend at our first race. We will be at the Ponderosa this weekend to actually do some wrenching and pulling of motors, all are welcomed. Stay tuned for more....

Infinion or BUST!

2011-08-12T18:16:00.000-07:00

No really it will be or BUST...
We have got a lot to do before Infinion this year. Luckily we have a great team of drivers lined up and itching to get some seat time in the Fiat. So Larry and I are going to go back into the shop and make a plan of attack for finishing up the car. What's left to do you ask? Well a whole sh*tload to be exact. We need an engine, master brake cylinder , master clutch cylinder, wiring harness, brake lights, tires, wheels, roll cage, kill switch, racing seat, and I of course still need to finish the floor panels up front so we can install the front suspension. Since the last time I posted this is what has been done.
First I painted the new steering rails and parts of the fenders that will be covered under the suspension. I then proceeded to pound out new floor pans for the front. Here are a few photos of the progress including a reminder of what it use to look like.

Need brakes part 3

2011-07-17T11:54:00.001-07:00

With all the comments I have been getting about the project (at least 5) I felt I should put the brake issue out of its misery. So here is the actual finished product ready to be put back on the Fiat subframe that will soon be finished with a nice coat of Pour 15. One suggestion don't get that shit on your skin, or put the brush in your mouth like I did, I think my lips will be black for a week. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
Final Photos.
First the new brake brackets drying on the back porch.

Second. The brackets mounted to the steering arm/spindle.

Third. The caliper assembly fitted into position.

And Fourth. The final product ready to be installed.

Need Brakes Part 2

2011-07-16T08:04:00.000-07:00

After working on the possible disk brake set up the next thing to do is to check for clearance between the suspension and brake caliper. With the front sway bar removed and a small chunk taken out of the suspension the calipers will now have the clearance to ride in the suspension pocket on a full turn.
As you can see without the cut the bottom stud of the caliper would shear off on a left or right hand turn. Not a problem in Lemons since all we do is drive in a straight line. Not to worry though the steel that was cut out has been replaced with
more structural steel making the car even heavier.

Here is the mock-up once the notch was taken out. I think it's going to look cool with disk brakes.
Of course I can't allow the rust survive, and it's really getting on my nerves. At this point I just want this part of the project over. As you can see it's on everything!

After a whole lot of wirebrushing grinding and acid washing and lots of showers in between (Thanks Judy for not getting too mad!) here is the end result, with a little help from paint.
Before:

After:

Some new shocks, rotors and calipers and they can go back on the car.
Eric wrote: "You are a lot insane". Ummm...yeah a little too much at the moment.

Brakes! we need them.

2011-07-12T19:41:00.000-07:00

Once the amputation was over there had to be decisions made about which direction we would be able to go with the suspension, original, MR2 or aftermarket? After building a strut assembly and working it into the front suspension I realized it would not allow for the correct clearance for the driver and passenger seats.
What most people don't realize is that the driver is literally siting directly above the wheel in this car, there is no room for adaptation of struts into the drivers compartment.

Fortunately there was only a loss of $100.00 in parts and lots of labor to find this out. (Does anybody need a 86 mr2 front strut suspension with a 4" drop?)

Once I was forced to go back to using my brain, I realized that the the aluminum brake drum was actually riveted to the front spindle.

This is a unusual set up Fiat used to make the front end lighter which kept the car under 1600 lbs. Of course the original engine was putting out an eye splitting 26 horsepower. Not quite enough to kill the bugs hitting the windshield, only maiming them. This cruelty had to stop, and of course with the addition of the 4age motor the car needed to stop too.Once the front spindle was separated the next issue was to find a rotor set-up that would be adaptable to the control arm that would fit both a 14" rim and be hub centric on the spindle.
Once again the 87 MR2 steps in as a likely donor. The rotor was within 1/16 of an inch. I just happen to have a special tool from my woodworking days that I was able to shave the extra metal off the rotor.
The back of the rotor fit perfectly within less than a 1/16 of an inch so the hub fits snugly in the pocket of the rotor flush against the plate.

The next process entails creating a backer plate that will hold the Brake caliper on the rotor

Back in the Garage.

2011-07-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

Everyone and no one is probably wondering what's been going on in the garage for the last 3 months. Well the truth of the matter is that all projects were on hold while we finished the MRolla and got it off and rolling around the race track at Reno. Then there was our race with the Killer Zombies in high plains Oregon, an awesome time, track and friends. We couldn't have asked for more. The next race will be Sears Infinion in October and the plan is to get the Fiat on the track.

So now on to the latest progress.
As those who who have been following the blog know the Fiat came into our stable in very poor condition. I have been able to rebuild the rear of the car by fusing half of a MR2 sub-frame to the shell of the Fiat. No simple task in itself but quite a good fit for what I am attempting.
The front end is a totally different beast though. With the extreme amount of rust eating away at the frame I had no choice but to amputate 90% of the front end.

Once the amputation was over there had to be decisions made about which direction we would be able to go with the suspension, original, MR2 or aftermarket? The next process was to rebuild the front chassis to handle the additional braking power and weight added to the front end. In this process as seen in the photographs there was really nothing to work with. I wanted to keep the front end as original as possible to keep the car looking as ugly as the day it left the assembly line so many years ago. This is no easy task, what most people don't realize is that I have no machinist background, no special tools other than my trusty wire feed Lincoln welder, a craftsman 12 speed drill press and a Makita 4" grinder. I of course see no problem with that, most of my racing comrades have been using those tools to keep cars on the race track for the last 3 years. So here is the process I used to build new front I beams for the Fiat, staying within exacting tolerances so that the steering and suspension would actually be true and continue to have years of trouble free driving.

The suspension has been upgraded to 11 gauge metal throughout so as to have more structural stability and lets not forget the ability to withstand a slightly bigger impact to the front end.

Yes that's where your feet will be in a crash.

Sears Pointless....Awesome! (Sorry 2 weeks late)

2011-03-29T09:25:00.000-07:00

For those who didn't know, we had another race last weekend. For those who did, here is the rest of the story.

The week started with a big show at work, so everything was Damn stressful, but thanks to having a great boss we were underway on Wednesday morning at 7am. The trip was going well until we passed Reno and were caught up in a hellish storm on Donner pass.
$160.00 bucks later and two sets of chains for the tow rig, we were on our way again. Of course there were a couple of Ass-hats that thought they were impervious to weather with their O'so Special cars - I am talking to you people with Hummers and Audis. Your cars are not and I repeat "NOT" any better in a snow storm than anyone else's! Thanks to those people, a couple of other cars and their drivers had a very bad day.
Plus a Little added weight.

Anyhow back to the story. We met up with Ruben at the hotel and spent all day Thursday drinking in wine country, awesome!
We went to the track and dropped off the car and saved a couple of spots for teams we thought were worthy of special treatment. Larry was suppose to meet up with us on Thursday night but he was caught up in the storm we went through and they closed Donner pass before he could get through. He ended up going south around Lake Tahoe, and finally made it to the track on Friday.

Friday morning we woke up to rain, not too much but it was cold and dreary. We were not looking forward to driving in the rain but knew it was inevitable. We arrived at the track, met up with Pete (Killer ZomBee's) and Joe (Snowspeeder) and unloaded the car. We did some prepping and going through the checklist to make sure we had everything. We changed the oil and filter, checked all wiring, seat harness, added some more stickers and proceeded to get ready for tech. Ruben dressed up as the inestimable "Lucky" our mascot for the Unlucky Charms theme and off we went to be berated by the judges for showing up and wanting to go through the ordeal of racing in Lemons all over again.

Tech almost hit a snag when the inspector didn't like the mount we had for the fire extinguisher. I explained it was a factory mount welded to the car and lasted 7 races without once being an issue, he realized the bracket was high quality and decided he was just a little to aggressive when he was yanking on the bottle.

Ruben was sitting on top of the car through the whole inspection, making rude comments and gestures to the other teams as they passed through. A perfect little drunk Leprechaun if there ever was one! Judge Jonny was very pleased with the theme change and commented that it was one of our best. I think the bottle of Irish whiskey and cereal has a lot to do with that comment. Of course I was in true fashion; I had on my Chump Car shirt which raised the eyebrow of the judges and was promptly painted over while the shirt was still on my back. They didn't believe me when I told them we were atrocious and losers just like ###### ### Oh well..

We skipped through Tech with no penalties and no additional work to do on the car so we were all happy.

Racing started at 10:00 am on Saturday morning. Rube, Judy and I arrived at 8am to find that the car would not start. It ran exceptionally well the night before but decided it wasn't going to in the morning. After 5 minutes of going through the "Oh crap" process of hunting down the problem we found that the rotor had decided to chew its way through the distributor cap. The only thing I could decide was that the cap and or rotor were flawed from the factory. After changing plug wires, cap and rotor the car ran to perfection once again.

Ruben took the car out for the first stint. Of course it was raining, and with the rain tires and Rube's amazing duct tape job on the passenger door and the window deflectors, he seemed to have a good time. I took the second stint and of course it was raining, nothing special to report other than lots of cars were going off the track. Judy was next, she did really well in the rain being that it was her first time on a wet track. During her stint Pete's car spun out and slammed into the tire wall and then was hit by another car. Fortunately car and driver were fine, and after a good hammer job, his car was back on the track.

Saturday was bearable and tolerable and we at one point were in 26th place, proving that a fast car is not a winning car in wet conditions. Saturday night, Rube changed out the tires in hopes of having a dry day on Sunday.

Sunday we arrived at the track at 8am (it's not raining!) so we could get to the drivers meeting at 8:15 and of course the car wouldn't start. This time the battery was dead, the kill switch had been left on during the night, everyone on the team verified the car was put to sleep the night before with all accessories off. We even had confirmation from our neighbor Pete that the car was indeed off when we left for dinner. So we had Gremlins visit us during the night, just like on Friday night. After getting a double jump from our spare battery and Bo's jumper pack, we were back up and running. Rube took the car out and put the car through some rigorous maneuvers to see what kind of car we really had. I am happy to report that the electric water pump did the trick and the car was a very happy car as was Rube. I took the second stint of the day and pushed the hell out of the car, Bo (team Snowspeeder) and I got into a little competition and I found out that our little car was so in tune that it was able to perform as well as theirs with about 65 less horsepower at the wheels. It is lots of fun putting pressure on the team that's pitted next to you.

Judy was next and she went out and tore up the track, at one point she flew past Larry (Snowspeeder) - it was awesome. Later Larry would comment that he was really impressed with her driving, Rube and I pretty much said the same.

Ruben had the 3rd stint and went out and got our best time at the track 2:19.697. Right after that, the exhaust came off the car. Rube called in and commented that the car was a lot louder, I pretty much agreed since it was hard to hear him over the background noise. I told him to do a "drive by" so I could inspect the car. Sure enough, the whole exhaust had come off at the manifold collector and was hanging on by one support brace. Ruben brought the car in on a mechanical black flag. This was our only Black flag of the weekend and the car got it which means we drove a perfect race. After losing the whole exhaust in the pits (our friends over at Eyesore were great sports, they helped out and threw it on top of the car) We managed to put the system back in under 10 minutes. We lost a total of 23 minutes with the issue and we were back on the track.

Ruben finished up the race and we finished in 34th place. We were on our way to a top 20 finish but the muffler stopped us accomplishing that. I would like to say that we did finish in the top 20 percentile, based on the total amount of cars that officially ran in the race (173 cars.) Thanks to our team, our pit stops and fueling ran between 4 minutes and 9 minutes per session. Those are awesome times for pit stops since we had to do all our stops in our pits. This is the reward for the guys that finished first. $1500.00 dollars worth of Rubles in two garbage bags.

Great job to all and thanks to our pit neighbors for being so much fun!

More Progress

2011-01-26T21:07:00.000-08:00

The latest progress on the MRGOOOZIE.
As you can see when we last left you we had no floors for the passengers. This can be quite a problem, not only can small animals and screaming children be lost on the road but all of that precious food and fine wine can also be lost. As the Italians would say " Diomio! Che disastro! Miseria!" (my God, what a disaster! what misery!)

I don't know about you but some of my cargo is very precious so I went about fixing the problem.

Another issue was tying the old part of the Fiat door jamb into the new floor while making sure the doors would shut in their normal but rusty position.

Now that the passengers are somewhat safe it is now time to move onto the drivers floor, even the driver isn't safe anymore!

Support for MRGOOZIE

2011-01-19T20:40:00.001-08:00

For those who are following the blog here is the latest on the project.
One issue that came into play is where to put the gas tank. The original actually sits in a tray just behind the rear passengers head and is inside the vehicle, something I am not really a fan of. The Idea is to use the MR2 fuel tank in its original placement which is mounted outside and in the middle of the car under the center rail as I call the hump. Here is the progress of tying the Fiat into the center rail.

I needed to cut the last 18" of the rail into two pieces in order to get a fairly accurate measurement so that I didn't cut into the steering arms that are just under the old rail.

Once I positioned the pieces back into place I tack welded the top to secure it. I then cut off most of the tabs I was using to hold the tunnel in place and welded the rail in place from underneath to have a cleaner finish.
Next was getting the old Fiat framework to line up with the MR2. The biggest issue is that the Fiats front main support skids that tie all of the front steering together really don't exist anymore thanks to RUST! I needed to build a new support structure that would allow me to move the car around and also replace those skids at a later date without having to do more unnecessary cuting.

Not my greatest welds but anyone who has worked with a welder will tell you, RUST is pretty much impossible to work around. After cutting out what I could this is the support structure I came up with.

Now that both sides of the center support structure are finish this will allow us to lift the complete car off the ground so we can work on the fuel tank and suspension.

Next on the list are the new passenger floor boards, the old MR2 pans were cut out, Why may you be asking? Well of course more RUST!

The MRGooozie has arrived!

2011-01-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

So for those that follow the progress of the MRGooozie as Larry calls it, here is the latest. Saturday morning I went into the shop and started marking the areas that may be an issue with getting the Fiat to drop down over the MR2. Larry arrived and I gave him a marker and we went to town. Surprisingly we found only a few areas that needed trimming. The strut towers needed to be trimmed back about an inch and a half so that's where we started.

Towers are welded back in place so that the structural integrity was not compromised.

A simple but effective fix to make it fit.

At this point we started lowering the Fiat down, taking great care so we didn't smash any thing that might still be in the way.

At this point we had to maneuver the rear of the fiat over the frame in order to drop another four inches.

We are so close so we decide it's lunch time.

After lunch Larry and I did another inspection to find what might be hanging up the last two inches of the project. At this point Judy makes some rude comment about another two inches! Thanks to Judy by the way for being totally patient and awesome, she took some wonderful pictures while we were puttering around in freezing conditions.

We found one culprit, the internal frame of the Fiat door jam needed to be trimmed back about an inch on both sides.

Grinders are so cool! until your fingers get in the way, fortunately not today.

We are trying to save the original MR2 center column and incorporate it into the design. This would be an engineering marvel if we did. This would allow us to use the original MR2 fuel tank in it original placement which will give us 5 more gallons of fuel storage over the the original Fiat gas tank.

Welding in some 1" straps to temporarily attach the body down so we can move the whole car as one piece.

The plan is to create a step side entrance for the passengers in the back of the car.

One thing I didn't expect is that when you blend a Fiat Multipla with a Toyota MR2 you get a Volkswagon Beetle on hormones...

Stat tuned in for the latest. Also look at Larry's blog in the next couple of weeks to see the second project we are creating.

The latest on the Fiat

2011-01-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

Over the last two day's Andy and I have been cutting and measuring and re-cutting areas of both the MR2 and the Fiat. Here is the latest.

The first thing that needed to be done is separating the back of the MR2 from the front. Here you see a bonafide rickshaw in the making.

Here you can see the cancer being removed from the patient.

More trimming of the rust.

Flintstones eat your heart out!

Still more trimming.

Removing fenders and wheel wells for the sub-frame removal.

The Multipla with the rear sub-frame and suspension removed.

More trimming to make the panels fit.

The rear fenders will be tied into the existing body, and then flared out to make a seamless panel.

The body fits over the subframe, at this point it is a matter of trimming to match and then spot welding the two pieces together.

So here is the latest on the Fiat 600 Multipla Abarth X2S

A new car coming!

2011-01-01T17:36:00.000-08:00

So Judy and I visited Jeff at his work. His Boss is designing a new 3 wheeled car and Jeff, Blaine and a couple of other design engineers get to build them. Lucky @#$$@#%'s

Jeff showed us the original mock-up and three new concept designs that he gets to work on. It was interesting to see how the concept has Evolved from a square tubed frame that weighed close to 700 lbs. down to round tube frame that is closer to 300 lbs.

They all have motorcycle engines, they originally were going to be chain drive, now they will have a direct drive shaft with paddle shifters on the steering wheel. One design has a Porsche front end and a couple of others are designed off of BMW steering components. All have Willwood braking components with huge disks up front and a smaller rear disk.

Jeff says a thousand will hopefully be produced, they will all be leased and even though they are licensed as a motorcycle they will all have airbags. WAY COOL!

Pictures would follow but since this is still under development, Jeff and the team are sworn to secrecy. Once they put them on the road I will post some really cool pictures.

In the chop Shop

2010-12-18T20:55:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don't know, we here at Stick Figure Racing are pretty crazy!
For our latest endeavor we will be chopping up a perfectly good Toyota MR2 and trying to squeeze what we can under the Fiat Multipla body. For most of you that is a travesty but for us it make perfect common sense. :-) It was a sad day when we brought our little Multipla home and found that there is no frame left, which meant the body is literally the only thing that can be saved. So here are the first steps in our Plight to revive one of the very first Fiat 600 Multipla Abarth X2 's

As you can see Larry is in one of his moods and cannot be bothered at this time.

After about 30 minutes this is what has been accomplished.

An hour and a half into the project and after going to Home Depot for more Sawzall blades the top is removed.

Here is Larry explaining the rear wheel drive features of the MR2.

Tune in next week for the chop shops latest damage that will ensue when we get our hands on the Multipla.

Last of Animal House

2010-12-08T09:26:00.000-08:00

Buttonwillow raceway was the scene of the 3rd and final part of the trilogy we called Animal House. I would have to say that this year was all around our best performance so far in the 24 hours of Lemons endurance racing. To wrap up I would like to say Thanks to all who supported us in our endeavors.
Andy: For all of the electronics expertise, willingness to get in and get the job done at crunch time.
Bill: Working on the car on every weekend even though you missed out on the last two races. Getting us Parts at cost, that was awesome. Racing at Sears with us and keeping me from killing another driver on purpose.
Larry: Helping on the car even though for two of the races you were on your brothers team. Racing with us at Thunderhill and willing to dress in a Toga and looking like an idiot like me and Pete.
Pat: For sending me a plethora of invaluable info on the MR2. Allowing me to come out and race in your car to get a better feel of what the MR2 can really do. Racing with us at Sears and keeping me from killing another driver on purpose.
Stevo: For flying all the way from Indianapolis to drive with a bunch of idiots and not complaining about how tight the car was to get in and out of. Oh yea and keeping me from killing another driver on purpose.
Pete: For being a real stand up guy and racing with us at Thunderhill. Dressing up in a toga and enjoying it a little too much!
Ruben: For joining us at Buttonwillow and driving the hell out of the car. Committing to race with a team you had no previous knowledge of and being a real stand up guy.
Judy: For all of your support financially, mentally, and most of all your willingness to get your hands dirty without any complaints. Also thanks for being the only driver on our team who had "0" black flags for the whole season...Way to Go!
Bob: For doing most of our Logo designs, theme designs, and working on the car even though we never got you out on the track.
Team Snowspeeder, Killer Bees, and Free Range Racing for supporting us in the pits.
Thanks to all of you. Next year will be bringing a lot of changes to Stick Figure Racing. As most of you know we have a new car in our stables and another that we will be building in collaboration with Team V-Ram so come out and join us in all of the fun.
If I forgot anyone please forgive me and thanks for your help. If your reading this and have a tingling feeling in your pants and want to race with us let us know. We welcome all people and sponsors and cash.

New Theme?

2010-11-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

We have yet to announce a new theme for Lemons 2011 but we do have some Ideas.:-)

For those who don't know, Stick Figure Racing is working on a two front approach to racing in the new year.
We will be joining forces with Larry and his team V-Ram in designing and building one of the most wanted, dependable, powerful, and of course best looking race cars of 2011.
Larry will be posting the threads to this most ominous vehicle once we get back from Buttonwillow.

As for the second theme for 2011 we have gone into the shop and started inventory of all the super, great, ludicrous, and powerful parts that will make our car impossible to beat in the new year.
During this process we have found the following.
One 4x4 toy with real moving wheels....

One jack stand that can also be helpful in frame support.

without frame support...

The car doing its part.... Loosing as much weight as possible so we won't have to worry about qualifying under the 4000lb. rule.

And of course one slightly used 21 Hp powerhouse that some say may actually be worth it's weight in gold!

Buttonwillow?

2010-11-28T09:35:00.000-08:00

Well it's that time again....
A time when family gets together the sound of buzzers going off, the fresh smell of Turkey in the air and promises of no more eating after the holidays, and of course Racing!
Buttonwillow is the last race in the trilogy of Animal House dementia that started with the Death Mobile at Sears Infinion, the Toga party at Thunderhill (Thanks for coming by and drinking the beer) and will now finish with the all important Cake.

I am real sorry to say that the original plans for creating a full size cake float that would be driven around on the track have fallen gravely short. We will have some cake to eat on Saturday night for all to enjoy, along with beer and champagne because we know cake and champagne go so well together. So all are welcome to stop by and get their buzz on and join us in the hysteria we call Lemons. We hope to see you there!

Latest and Greatest

2010-11-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

Yes I know it has been a long time in coming, so here is the latest.
We have been accepted to Buttonwillow, so as usual the date has been coming up fast.
There are only two weeks until the car hits the road for the infamous trip to Bakersfield California, that's where I tell everyone the race is at because Buttonwillow is a craphole town nobody knows about.

Judy and I have prepared the car for it's long journey and are excited to welcome Ruben to the team, he lives 2 hours away from Buttonwillow and knows how to get to the track, a nice plus, I don't have to explain how to get there.

So here is the latest....
I was invited to Race with Pat Mulry and the tarp team at MSR Houston so Judy and I flew out there an did a little clowning around. During the process we had a little rain and Pat had created some very ingenious rain guards that deflect the rain away from the drivers body. As you can see I stole the design for our version of Pats design. Thanks Pat.

So on to the "greatest" at least I think so....
This is the new design element to help us maneuver the engines around at the track.

I had been talking with Bill and Larry for a long time about designing an engine stand that would allow us to move motor around the shop and still be portable enough to take with us to the track. It had to have the ability to roll under the car. Elevate to the right height of the chassis for mounting purposes and disconnect quickly enough to get it out of the way for final motor installation.

The design also allows for easy loading and unloading from the truck.

The big plus for this stand is that allows for great maneuverability around the shop because it utilizes the footprint of the engine and doesn't snag up an anything.
It is also capable of just carrying the motor without the transmission.

So the race car is loaded, parts are inventoried, nerves are frazzled and new projects are on the horizon. Our plate is full and I still feel like I am missing something.

Infinion Results

2010-03-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

Well, we did it again!
For the second consecutive race, we finished without any major mechanical failures.

Sunday morning started with the team replacing the rear brakes. The passenger side rear was still dragging so we replaced the brakes. The rear caliper on the drivers side was showing a damaged rubber seal so we replaced that too. We finished bleeding the system just after the drivers meeting was over. The drivers meeting was interesting because Jay talked about the roll-over that had happened on Saturday afternoon. The driver ended up having a cracked vertebra and will be out for some time to come. Our prayers and hopes for a speedy recovery go out to him.

The links to the accident videos are here:
in-car and car following

The race started with Judy in the car. As usual, she was the only driver on our team that went on the track, drove 45 minutes and came off without getting black flagged. We continued our quest to finish the race with Bruce up next in the drivers seat. We decided to go to a longer seat time and it seemed to work in theory until he was flagged and had to come off the track. 15 minutes later, he went back onto the track and drove another 5-6 laps before ending his stint. Stevo jumped into the car and drove for 45 minutes clean and then he got into trouble, black flagged. Judge Jonny was nice and let him go back on the track - he lasted another 15 minutes and received a second black flag, this time we had to do a drivers change. I was up, I got into the car, drove less than one lap and spun out in turn 11, black flagged and the penalty this time was a 1 hour time-out.

During that time, we had a little time to talk about the car. Stevo was feeling that the car was still not braking to its full potential so after our penalty was over we brought the car into the pit and did a front brake overhaul. Nobody timed us but I think we did the front brakes in less than 15 minutes, not too bad for novice racers. I took the car back out and ran clean for an hour, the brakes were still not up to 100%, they had a little chatter going into the corners. Pat jumped into the car and drove the "hell" out of it, he did really well until he came in for his black flag. The car was missing a mirror and the whole side of the car was scraped up. I asked him what happened, he started to tell me how he got his flag and I stopped him and said wait a minute, you're not flagged for impact with another car? His comment was nope that damage was done in an earlier incident where a car slammed into the side of him and no flag was called. Well "hell" we have no mirror and the car needs a new paint job but Pat was flagged for going 4 wheels off in turn 9A! The Judges were nice to us again but told us if we come back we are done. Pat takes the car back out does one lap and Santa Claus throws a hissy fit and Pat gets flagged again. This time Pat is not a happy camper! The judges don't know why he is back in so they let him out with another warning. Time for Bill to finish up the race, we are all so happy that our car is running so well and we will get the checkered flag - until Bill gets the final black flag with 6 laps to go.

Dammit! Bill pulls into the penalty box where the judges proceed to take our manliness away from us. They stripped us of our window sticker and pulled our wrist bands off! We were sooooooo .... close. We finished 89th out of 146 cars that made it onto the track and had one hell of a fun time doing it.

Next race Thunderhill May 8-9th, hope to see you all there.

Sears Infinion the first Day

2010-03-06T21:51:00.000-08:00

So day one is done......

The car did really well, we had only two issues that were very minor. The swirl pot vent tube broke free during Bruce's stint and sprayed water everywhere, Bruce came in and we fixed it right away. Pat had a similar issue except that the Brake and alternation light came on and when we went to test the alternator we found the cable had come loose from it's terminal and lost connection. Bill had contact with car 88 which left some door scrapes and ruined our professional paint job. All of the drivers ran pretty clean today, Bill and Bruce received the only black flags and they were minor. We are currently in 79th out of 152 so we are siting in the middle of the pact. We just need 78 cars to blow their motors and we will be sitting pretty. We have had one roll over and one car hitting a concrete wall, both drivers were O.K.
More news as happens or watch the face book page....

We need better tools

2010-02-16T10:50:00.000-08:00

So it's less than two weeks before we have to load the car and get on our way to Sears.
In the closing moments before we go we realize we could use some better tools.

I think for our application we might just have the best tools money can buy.

What's your best improvised photo?

Center for Disease Control Warning

2010-02-11T12:50:00.000-08:00

The Center for Disease Control has just issued a new warning about Swirl Pot Disease.
The center is claiming that the new Swirl Pot is stronger and better engineered than the last one leading them to believe that this Swirl pot will be around for a long time to come. Here are some of the symptoms of the new Swirl Pot.

As you can see the worst case symtom can be appendages that you really don't want.

As a precaution take everything you can away from the pot to prevent spreading.

The best case is to have a pressure gauge and drain valve in place to prevent seepage. Now back to your normal Lemons programing.

Special thanks to Jefferson Bello for the awesome welds he did for us.

Counting down

2010-01-30T12:21:00.000-08:00

5 weeks to go until Sears Pointless! Geez, we'd better get going on the thematic portion of this event...

Paul and Bill are putting the motor back in after going through various sections, and replacing the water pump. The plans that Mulry came up with are 'in the mail' and we should be getting those any day now (hint hint). Tonight we'll watch the movie again (or for me, the whole thing) so we can remember some of the ... 'finer' details!

Do you realize we have to have our entry in for Thunderhill/Goin' for Broken by Feb. 27? Hmmm...

Which T-Shirt Front?

2010-01-11T09:45:00.000-08:00

Ok, so which front do you like better? Don't let the fact that there are literally tens of hours (ok, maybe not tens) in the illustrated one and only about 60 minutes of finding the right font in the other one. Just vote on which one you like better.

Float:

Text:

Happy New Year?

2010-01-01T11:03:00.000-08:00

Here's to wishing everyone a Happy New Year!

Now on to the important stuff. We have officially been recognize as a race team by the Judges appointed in creating the Sears Pointless race, part of that ever growing series called 24 Hours of Lemons. We are now "Stick Figure Racing/The Animal House Death Mobile." I personally want welcome two new-comers to the team for this race, Pat Mulry and Stevo to the team. These guys come to us from the TARP racing association out of Dallas, Texas. They come from similar stock as we do, broken engines, blown head gaskets and heroic fixes. So they are well seasoned racers capable of dealing with the stresses that are the Lemons series. Pat and Stevo will be doing their part by working on the theme, design and a limited amount of build based on the fact they are over a thousand miles away from the car (minor details!). We will be linking our blog with theirs so that everyone can stay on the same page. Pat has already started working on ideas, so here is the link: tarpblog.net

During the next two months we will do our best to make this theme come alive. Bill, Kirby, Judy and I will start work on getting the car prepped. After all, this is a race and not just show and tell. We have something to prove and that is that we can really compete with the rest of the crazies that are willing to throw their personal lives out the window to make their dreams happen.

So from all of the crazies that make up Stick Figure Racing / Tarp Racing,

Happy New Year!

More photos from Thunderhill

2009-11-26T13:46:00.000-08:00

More photos are up now
EDIT: link should be working now, sorry about that!

Thunderhill ARSE-FREEZE-APALOOZA Wrap-Up

2009-11-26T12:02:00.000-08:00

Arrived in Willows CA about 6pm PST, got checked in after a bit of kerfluffle at the Days Inn, ate at the Black Bear. Bill, Bruce and Larry started out from SLC about 6pm, arrived in Willows about 4am.

Got up Friday morning early, and drove over to the lineup waiting to get in the track. Gates opened at 7am, Pete Peterson was in line already and got in to the pits to save space for our team, Free Range and Snowspeeder. We were 2nd to arrive, and set up next to Pete and the Killer Bee. Got the car out and tarp up before the rain came, and changed to the rain tires. Since it was still fairly early in the day, it was decided to pay to run the test-and-tune on the track. As we were walking back from the main office after paying, it began to rain. Rain, oh my. Not sure what the total amount was, but it had to be about 3 inches. Felt like it, anyway…

Bruce took the car out to see how it did. This was going to be the first test of this swirl pot, and we all were keeping fingers and toes crossed. The car was doing great, and Bruce reported all was well with the gauges. After about 45 minutes, we figured we had better go through tech in case there was something that needed adjusting etc.

Due to the weather, we did not dress in our theme costumes for tech, but it turned out ok anyway. The judges were extremely busy and didn’t have a lot of time for joking around and enjoying themes, although they did appreciate many clever ones there.

Jay came around first and looked the car over. All seemed fine, until he wanted to see the tire rating…looked and looked, Paul finally discovered that the info was on the inside of the tire – they’d been mounted backwards (that’s the way they came with the car). Sheesh. Anyway, that was ok, just not the Way It’s Done.

They were running 4 lines of tech inspection, and still the lineup to go through was pretty long. We waited for our turn; someone was taking their time (or not passing the inspection!) but finally they got to us. The three inspectors looked and fussed and discussed, asked questions, asked for clarifications etc. One of them was not happy with the wiring, so Andy had to run back to our paddock for zip ties. Did I mention that we were at least ¼ mile from LeMons HQ? And he had a horrible cough? At any rate, they were procured and wires were ziptied. This is the same wiring that has passed twice before…

The BS Judging was next, with Judge Jonny and Judge Murilee. This is normally where bribery enters the picture – we had shirts for all, but didn’t really have much time to talk to them. Murille did look at front and back of the shirt, gave an appropriate mention of appreciation, and promptly went and put them in his Crown Vic so no one might make off with them. Mission accomplished!

Back to the paddock – Bruce took the car out for about an hour, until they closed the track for the day. He came back without one windshield wiper – it was somewhere on the track.

All of our other friends made it through tech ok as well. It was fun to see them again, especially after getting to know a couple of them better online.

Paul, Bill and I attended the Driving 101 class that was offered that evening, very much worth the $20 fee. We learned about various flags, passing/being passed and general good driving techniques, as well as information specific to the Thunderhill track.

Dinner that night was at the Mexican restaurant. Big margaritas that didn’t seem to have much tequila in them… oh well. Probably just as well.

Saturday dawned nice and clear, blue skies! Got to the track about 7:30am, made sure the car started etc. and got dressed. Paul built the Death Cart, replete with branch-with-skull, Black Knight and blowup doll dressed in the Stick Figure tunic. Straw was a nice touch too. Paul had his peasant outfit on, I had the peasant dress and headcloth, Bill wore the monk outfit with a Toyota hubcap he’d made for the “neck cross”. Andy had his executioner outfit, Jen her maiden dress. Bruce wasn’t into the costume thing, so he just wore a driver suit. We strolled down pit row, Bill and Paul crying “Bring out yer dead!” Everyone LOVED it, some made Monty Python references, to which we would answer in character. It was quite the show!

Drivers’ meetings ensued, then the lineup to go on the track. At the last minute, a small water leak was discovered, most likely from the water pump. Too late to do anything, let’s just watch the water level. Bill was up first, for the yellow flag transponder check, then green flag. The race is ON.

Morning racing had a few yellow flags, and it was time for a driver change and water level check. Added some water, but it wasn’t looking dire for a water level issue. This was getting fun!

Rotation/water checks continued throughout the day. Bill received his first black flag – the judges proclaimed that “your driving stinks!” and proceeded to douse the passenger side with cheap Wal-Mart cologne (fortunately not TOO strong!)

Andy was out next, was going great until the car suddenly quit. No steam coming out, that we could see, he wasn’t sure what happened… our first tow back to the pit! Turns out it was an air intake hose, it just split. It was suggested that we repair it with duct tape, so repairs were made, all the crew folks in the vicinity thought it should work fine – guess we’ll see!
Holy moly, it was my turn. Yikes. Never been on this track, and I didn’t have the luxury of a yellow flag to make a couple of laps. Damn they’re going fast. And there’s a lot of them too. After a couple of laps, the excitement really happened. I’m on the back side, coming down the blind curve on the hill, and look ahead down the track. Why is that car kind of sideways, and oh crap, it’s the Bee! I’d know that color yellow anywhere. HOLY !@#% it’s in the AIR DOING BARREL ROLLS!!! Who’s driving? Are they ok? NOT THE BEE!! ANYONE but they Bee!

All sorts of brakes going on, no one hits anyone else (that I see), but we’re all thinking the same thing, that could have been me. As I go by, I see the driver has climbed out and is sitting on the poor car, as the emergency crew gets there. I had a thought that I should stop and see if he’s ok – oh wait, we’re not on the highway here, can’t do that, just gotta hope and pray. Back to racing…

Between that and just not getting a handle on the track, I came in early as I wasn’t feeling really comfortable being out there. I figure we have guys that are having a blast driving, so let them!

Track time ended at sundown, about 4:30. The swirl pot was doing exactly what it was designed to do – no overheating! All the drivers had a blast (poor Paul had a migraine and couldn’t drive that day) and were stoked for the next day’s run.

Dinner at the Black Bear again, and all fell into bed like the dead.

Sunday dawned a bit overcast – it had rained some during the night. The ground around there has a lot of clay in it, making it extremely slick (or it grabs you and doesn’t let go, especially if you’re a tire). Drivers’ meeting again, the usual cautions were mentioned, and it was time to race.

Paul led off under yellow transponder check, needed to get a handle on the track as he hadn’t been on it yet. Green flag! Gogogogo!

Bruce, Bill and Andy got their turns – one more black flag that came with a 30 minute penalty… not much fun there. Back out, then boom, another black flag. This time, Judge Jonny spray painted the time we could go back out on the rear trunk. 1:46. Nuts, an hour. I will say it’s quite entertaining to watch the parade of offenders come into the penalty box – some/most accepting their punishment, but some thinking it would be a good idea to argue with the judges. NOT a good idea. NEVER argue with those judges!

Back in the paddock, the NerdHerd team (another MR2 team a few paddock spaces down) was experiencing overheating problems. Paul took over the 2nd swirl pot, which they installed, and were able to finish the race. They didn’t want to give it back, so they bought it for $40. More than covered the parts cost, but not the time spent building it – that’s the way it goes some times.

We offered Pete Peterson (Killer Bee owner) a stint behind the wheel, but he declined as he’d driven that day for the Free Range team, and it was close enough to the checkered flag that (I think) he didn’t want to be the one driving at the end (that’s an honor that should go to the team.) Andy ran the car through to the checkered flag, it was DONE! We finished!

The car ran like a champ, Paul’s swirl pot did its thing in keeping the overheating issues at bay. We just have really lousy drivers, so that’s what we’ll really need to work on now!

It worked!

2009-11-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

The Swirl Pot really works.
After making a enchilada can into something more useful than a memory of last nights dinner gone bad and boy am I paying for those enchiladas I ate, our swirl pot worked.
We finished the race in style and along with that we helped Team "Nerd Herd" by loaning them our back up swirl pot half way through Sunday morning so that they could finish the race. When I asked for the swirl pot back after the race they insisted on buying it from me. $40.00 dollars later they are the proud owners of technology that is somewhat still a mystery but works really well. More news on our incredible race when I get pictures to go with the story.

We have "Swirl Pot Disease"

2009-09-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

Racing at Buttonwillow was pretty challenging for us.
The car was about 4 inches too high which caused a lot off excessive wear to the tires, not to mention the tread was wearing off sideways. The car also had a issue with bump stop when you turned all the way to the left or the right, the last inch or so didn't exist so it was like waiting for the steering to recognize that you really wanted to turn back the other direction.
The big issue was overheating on the track. The track was long enough that when you did overheat you ended up driving another mile or so before you could get off the track and back to the pits. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the overheating issues and we spent a lot of time at the track dealing with them. My friend Pat had suggested the trick that Carroll Smith had wrote in his book Prepare to Win.
A simple but effective way to separate air from water moving through the engine.
I was a little skeptical at first, how could a little tank pull air out of water and keep it from going back into the engine? Well after working on a couple of mock up designs based off of his theory I decided to get serious and see if the thing actually worked.
Yes that's an enchilada can!

The finished product.

The new reservoir tank that allows water to replace the air as it moves through the system.
The finished unit in place waiting for testing.
On Saturday our new team member Bill, myself and Andy hooked up the system.
Using a clear tube to go from the swirl pot to the reservoir we watched as the swirl pot literally pushed air out and into the reservoir and pushed fresh water from the reservoir back into the motor. This doesn't sound like a big deal but when you spend so much of your time at the track trying to get the air out of your cooling system, this little guy is a miracle worker. It works and it works really well. We now need to test it at a constant high RPM on a regular road surface to see if it can handle the pressures that we see on the track.

Buttonwillow Photos

2009-08-20T09:06:00.000-07:00

Photos are here

The Trojan Rabbit!

2009-08-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

So this is what you do if you really want to impress the Judges, you give the ugliest, shittiest most worthless bribe you can think of.

And yes there was "BEER" in it.

Buttonwillow is History

2009-08-16T16:44:00.000-07:00

O.K. To wrap it up we succeeded to doing what we first attempted to do in Reno, "We Finished!"

We started out Saturday morning in really good spirits. We arrived at the track and readied the car for the track. Jerry was first out on the track. About 45 minutes into his stint, he came in with an overheated motor. We cooled the motor down and Andy took the car back out. 15 minutes later he brought it in running really rough. The Black Night has exacted his revenge again. We had blown our top! or better said, we blew our head gasket. Time for a team meeting, do we put in a new head gasket or do we put in the spare motor? We opted for putting in the head gasket, so at 12:15pm we started our work day. At 5pm we finished the gasket replacement and Andy took it back to the track. At this point we were in 90th place, Andy brought us back to 85th and we were looking good, except that the overheating was still a problem. Jerry finished the night and we drove away feeling pretty good about what we had just accomplished.

Sunday morning was really early, we had to get up at 6am and try to get to the track by 7 to work on heat repairs. The drivers meeting was at 8 am and we needed to fill the car with fuel and get the radios ready for the next stint. At this point we called on our secret weapon to take the car out on the track (Judy). Yep that's right, a girl!

Judy took the car out and we were really shocked! "Damn she can drive and really well!"
She put the car through its paces and in one corner, the car broke free and the back of the car started to swerve. Most of the cars that lost control in that specific corner went off the track, somehow she pulled the car back into control to the shock and dismay of the four other cars that had to adjust their line to compensate for the car that they thought wasn't going to be there in about two seconds. Way to go Judy.

Now came my turn, I was nervous about getting in the car and for good reason: I knew I was going to be cold and slow. The car performed really well, it is a little top heavy so it cornered a little sloppy but that's for another race. No excitement - I didn't go off the track or hit anyone. The car was overheating again, time for a driver change.

Jerry took it back out and 45 minutes later the car was back in for another temperature problem. We started the cool down process and restarted the car. The first time it started, the next time nothing. We couldn't get it started again, the water-steam had gotten its way into the electrical. After replacing parts and using starter fluid to dry out the connections, an hour and a half later we started it back up and put it back on the track.

Andy took it out and finally got his wish: another car clipped the front of the car and he was able to put on his sticker, "It's only a flesh wound" It looks good on the car. I finished the race uneventfully with the checker flag. The car that was in first place rolled his car with one lap left.

First Day of Racing

2009-08-15T22:43:00.000-07:00

Buttonwillow Friday 12:30pm
We arrived and Larry and the guys had saved us a sweet spot straight across from the exit ramp off the track. We went through tech and almost passed but they said our mounting points for our seat belts were to tight and were not compliant. We moved on to the judges and pleaded our case, to great happiness they accepted us with open arms. We presented them with the Trojan Rabbit to which they could do nothing more than laugh. We were very happy campers. After working on the seat belts for another two hours and twice more through tech we passed. 4:15 pm and too late to go out and test the car so we walked around and checked out the competition.

Here we go Again!

2009-08-11T15:17:00.000-07:00

One more day before we load up the car into the trailer and start the long drive to Buttonwillow. I finished the special bribe for the judges last night. I think it will be one of the ugliest bribes they will ever see. I know once we turn our backs they are definitely going to want to throw it away, I sure as hell don't want it back.
Pictures will only be available after the race, so if your not there to see it you will have to come back to the blog after the race is over.

We have air in the trailer, we have a car that is in good running condition and hopefully we can keep cool heads and cooler bodies at the track. Andy and I did the final touches on the car on Sunday which included a fan in the cockpit, enlarging the fuel door opening and painting the roll cage and back panel. Spare engine and transmission are done, just need to load them in the truck.

Judy and Jenifer have been working out the logistics so that we all meet in Vegas on Thursday night. Jerry has worked it out so he will meet us at the track on Friday.

Looking forward to having a good trip, lots of fun at the track and doing some real racing.

On a good note we heard from Pete and he said a oil line broke spraying oil into the distributor causing the engine to die. The Killer Bee lives to race another day.

Our Comrade is Down!

2009-08-11T08:03:00.000-07:00

Bad news everybody Pete with Killer Bees took his car out last night for a nice drive on the freeway, and now his car is Kaput! http://forums.24hoursoflemons.com/viewtopic.php?id=986 We all know he won't be joining us for Buttonwillow but let's all give him support in getting his car back in drivable condition for Concours d'LeMons next weekend. Pete if there is anything we can do let us know.

There's cool-aid in our poison!

2009-08-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

If anybody ever asks you if we are crazy, yep we are. At the last minute Larry our comrade from team V-ram convinced me we needed to do a test to see if our car was ready.
So what do we do? "Well hell we go test". This time we went back to our original test location out at SeaBase diving facility, a little known place that is at the edge of the salt flats and has a small runway for airplanes and anything else that might want to drop out of the sky. This is the perfect place to test a car, salt as far as you can see, temperatures hovering a 100* plus and a surface that is to put it lightly slick as snot!
Just put up 50 bucks total and you too can try to corrode all of that precious metal off the car. We call it extreme X-testing, cause we never know whats going to happen next.

We needed to test our radios and of course we didn't get the antenna I had ordered weeks ago, so it's another yup I guess it works moment. Although our cool new/used Nascar head gear works really well, you can't hear anyone complaining about you when you have the bright yellow cones of silence on, just ask Andy.

After doing a visual inspection and going through our check list.
1.Has 4 tires!
2.Engine looks pretty!
3.Numbers are legible!
4.Mice have left of their own accord!

Houston we have a problem! someone let a girl get in our car and she won't get out.
I don't know if any other guys have this problem but you definitely better be careful what you say because there were more standing in line.
All kidding aside the test went better than I had expected. The car was running on the cool side, oil pressure was above normal and the suspension was reacting really well during a lot of drifting moments. Thanks to Andy, Jerry, Jennifer, and Judy for hanging in there and getting us to the next level of craziness.
I want to give a special thanks to Bob and Bob T who won't be joining us on this trip you guys were great. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to come down and help rebuild the motor and put fresh numbers on the top of the car.
Also a plug to Pat Mulry from team T.A.R.P racing who has saved us some $change$ on our equipment.
Hope to see everyone at Buttonwillow next week, we have "Otter Pops" and we aren't afraid to give them away. They taste just like cool aid only better!

30 days till Buttonwillow

2009-07-16T06:55:00.000-07:00

So everyone knows what happened to the Black Night at Reno/Fernley.
We have been working at a feverish pace to try and get everything ready for Buttonwillow. The Black Night now has a semi-rebuilt motor and it does run, with a total of 5 gears to move it around the track. We have not taken it out and really tested it yet but we are confident with a spare motor we may have a chance.

The temperature at the track is going to be our biggest threat, we are working on that one. We have a few things in the mix to try and keep the hot-heads cool so we won't have to haul anyone off to the emergency room.

We have some new headgear for our radio system and I hope it helps with in-car communication. I am looking into antenna systems to give us a little more radio range,
I understand your not suppose to do that, cause it makes the radio police angry.

Buttonwillow in 30 days, ICE, WATER, and lots of PRAYING are our best hope for a great time. Hope to see everyone there.

News Flash!

2009-06-16T07:51:00.000-07:00

As first seen on the News at 11. Yes the "Killer Rabbit" did get loose from the Nights of the Round Track. The first reporter on the seen verifies the sighting of the Killer Rabbit trying to cause havoc on the Killer Bees.
Though no actual battle was engaged the trauma it caused to Pete with Killer Bees was irreversible. He has now claimed that due to loss of memory he will not be able to join the fight at Buttonwillow, it is a very sad day indeed. We have fresh evidence that the Killer Bees are not the only team that was traumatized by the rabbit. Possible electrical problems to the Snow Speeder Association, and overheating to the Volatile Ram may have caused by the antics of the Killer Rabbit.
Knights of the Round Track are very sorry for the problems our rabbit has caused, we have now recaptured him and he has taken his place back a-top the Black Knight. We will be working very close with Free Range Racing to harness the energy of the Killer Rabbit and utilize it in our quest at Buttonwillow. After all we know it's only a Bunny!

Forget the Past!

2009-05-31T14:52:00.000-07:00

After nursing the wounds, we are back at it.
Andy and I spent our Saturday morning at "pick and pull" retrieving a 5 speed transmission out of a 89 mr2. We almost pulled the motor but then we noticed a lot of water deposits running down the side of the the block that started right under the head. Checked under the radiator cap hmmm... oily, no go. I have been online and reading a lot lately, doing searches on rod bearings and mr2 engine components.

I now realized if we had replacement bearings, we could have done the work while the engine was still in the car, it probably wouldn't have been much fun in the dust storms but it was possible. I also realized we could have stolen a transmission from another team in the middle of the night, it would have taken us about 30 minutes to get it out. Damn and there were a lot of teams at the track that were candidates, I could only imagine their surprise when they opened up the engine lid to an engine hanging off one mount. I could also imagine that would have meant an automatic spot for peoples curse with a full expulsion from future 24 hours of Lemons races.

The plan of attack will be to get back into the shop and see if we can rebuild the engine without sending it to a machine shop. This can get expensive real fast and I don't think Jay will give us a $0 value on our car to do a complete rebuild. We are also looking at a 500 mile break-in period to get the bearings rings and such to seat correctly based on the rebuild manual. Maybe I can talk the guys into taking turns babying a motor while we break it in. I did find out that there are quite a few cars out there with the 4age motor in them including Geo Storms, Geo Metros, and Geo Novas. Now just to find the right year, with a motor with low miles on it. (Yea Right!)
It's great to get so much support from the other teams. After hearing some of their horror stories I don't feel so bad about ours. Get over it! Pick up the pieces "literally" and move on. Cheer's, and hoping every ones dreams come true in Buttonwillow.

Pics are up!

2009-05-25T19:21:00.000-07:00

Pics from Goin' for Broken are up!
Check 'em out, and if you can help identify cars/teams, please post here or under the pic in the comments area.
Thanks, and enjoy the photos!

Nursing our wounds

2009-05-25T19:18:00.000-07:00

So it wasn't the greatest of weekends. As everyone knows we did a test day last weekend and found out we didn't have a second gear. Andy and I tore into the car and replaced the transmission on Sunday, everything was looking up. We spent Wednesday decorating the car and Thursday we loaded it into the trailer and we were off. We arrived at the track on Friday at 11:00am. Matt and Eric were there to greet us with a sweet parking spot, right next to the judges tents. We parked the trailer and met with Eric, Matt and his team Free Range along with Pete and the guys from Killer Bee's, these are the kind of guys that make racing a lot of fun. We decide to get it in gear (Really bad Pun!) and go through tech, all the guys were great sports they dressed up in their gear and away we went, we didn't pass. We had forgot to cover the kill switch with tape. We Begged to meet in front of the judges because the costumes were hotter then hell! Just ask Jerry and Bob.
So we got on our knees in front of Judge Jonny and beg to be allowed to race with our fellow brethren. After Jonny's being impressed with our begging and our gift of a shrubbery, he allowed us to pass. He made the comment that our shrubbery was the lamest bribe they had ever gotten, we were so happy! Little did he know there was a bottle of fine whiskey imported from a little distillery right in our own back yard, I mean Park City, Utah. So I went back to let them know what they had, The shrubbery was on the ground and had been kicked around, I grabbed Judge Jonny and showed him what he really had by peeling the burlap back from the bottle, the expression on his face was one of pure horror! He gently opened the bottle and took a big sniff and gently put it into the precious Bucket "O" Bribes apologized profusely and thanked us again.
We went back, fixed the car and went through tech one more time, yes we passed!

We decided to do the afternoon test and tune session, so after throwing our money down I had Andy jump into the car for a spin. Half way around the track I hear him on the radio saying things were bad, what do you mean bad? He comes back over the radio saying that there was no third or fourth gear. Enter your comments here (..........)
After going through all of the linkage and doing some hand shifting from underneath the car his suspicions were verified, no third or fourth gear. Damn! We are so screwed, I decided to have the guys drive the track and see what they thought of our options. They all came back saying the track was mostly a second gear track and that they could deal with the straights in fifth gear but the car was sweet in the corners so if we kept our noses clean with no black flags we could compete. I sent them out to push the car a little more to see what we could get. Too much running at the edge of the red line in the corners, Andy brought the car back in sputtering and choking, at first I thought it might be the igniter and coil, I changed it out, the car still wouldn't run. I switched out the computer module thinking maybe our oil cooler had overheated it, nope still no start. After spending half the night trying to figure it out what the problem was I turned the distributor about ten degrees and it started to a loud slapping sound of what I thought was valves smashing into the pistons. I went over to talk to Randal from Snow speeder association, the only guy at the track who really knows these motors in and out. He told me that it would be pretty close to impossible for the valves to hit the pistons if the timing belt had jumped one or two teeth. I went back and took of the timing cover and sure enough he was spot right, the belt had not moved or broke. 10:30pm and I finally decided to pull the oil pan, I had drained the oil earlier to see if there was any metal in it and there wasn't, so this was the last thing to check. Sure enough when I pull the windage tray off, there were shavings all over it and the number two and three rods were loose and wobbly, Shit we are toast!
Saturday morning I made a ton of calls no-one carried the bearings and the earliest was Wednesday to get them. Andy and I went to "pick and pull" which happened to be down the street from the hotel, and left the girls waiting in the car while we did a little shopping. We had decided that if we were going to do this we would have to get both a transmission and engine to make it work. The first MR2 we come across was an automatic with oil in the water jacket, second MR2 engine looked fairly good someone had taken the cams out but everything else was there. I got under the car and tried to move the axles, nothing, solid as a rock. At first I thought the brakes were frozen except for the fact that someone had taken the calipers off. I disconnected the linkage and tried to manually disengage the trans, linkage wouldn't move I took a piece of steal and wedge it on the clutch fork, axles still frozen, so as a last resort I tried to hammer the linkage with the steel, nope nothing, the only thing I could think of is that water had gotten into the trans and rusted everything together. Back to being toast!
We left there bummed with two ladies sitting, waiting for us in a hot car, they are the best! We got back to the track and explained what we had done and the team accepted reality, we are toast with no butter or jelly to go with it. I will post the rest later but that is our misadventures in racing for the moment.

Mister Salty

2009-05-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

We finally found the time to go out and test the car. Larry had taken the time to get all the info on going out to the Bonneville Salt Flats, so we chased him out to the middle of the desert.

Our newly acquired used trailer towed incredibly well. Probably the first time I actually enjoyed pulling something behind me. The car fits nice and snug, so we now are stuck with little cars for racing which is not a bad thing.

Andy and Larry drove out to the the selected spot and started putting up a road course for us to practice on. I actually think everybody had more fun going as fast as they could and doing a little drifting.The car handled fairly tight but was really a blast to push. So we found out the engine is strong the suspension is nice and stiff and the transmission is close to toast. The car shifted fairly nice for about a half an hour and then it started doing the busted knuckle grind going into 2nd gear. "SHIT" oh I mean Darn! As the test progressed it started showing signs of doing the busted knuckle grind going from 3rd gear back into second. I guess this is why they call it a test.
I will be working in the shop tomorrow pulling the engine and trans and putting in our back-up tranny. Hoping that it will do the job. Geese only five days till the race and I am back to work, I guess my break will be at the track. Those beers Larry left in my cooler will taste nice on Friday night.

Our team of very experienced salt lickers, ready to tear it up in Reno.

Some people think it's heresy to wash a Lemon, I was thinking that we could leave all of the salt on but I don't think it will pass tech or the judges although it looks pretty cool to have the claim and proof of going through the desert forty days and forty nights to compete with our brethren in Reno.

It's Alive!

2009-04-26T17:52:00.001-07:00

OH! Wait, Not Bob! The car is alive!

The two Bobs came over on Wednesday and did the best Earl Scheib paint job I have seen in quite a while. They used only the best paint $2.99 can buy and used a whole six cans on our black beauty. Their professional attitude toward the job and the serious attendance toward detail has paid off. The car is now black and not any black but "Satin Flat Black". They will be doing the top secret stuff on Monday, Sorry no Photos.

Andy came over today and we went through and put in all the liquids.
We finished installing the "Kill" switch and tried to start the car. we heard a click and then smoke, not the good kind of smoke either. I was concerned that the previous owner had really screwed the wiring up which he had. Andy did some splicing and I got under the car and pulled the starter, after a few miracle adjustments and a prayer it started. Andy is going to to come over one night this week and trace down all of our wiring issues.

Work Continued

2009-04-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

Bob T and Andy came over on Saturday and worked on the car. They were lucky to get to the shop because of the Marathon that was going on that day. It took Andy an hour and a half to go the twelve miles from his house. We lost power shortly after they arrived and it was off for most of the day. We surprisingly did get a lot done, Bob and Andy were successful in pulling the motor from our street car and prepping it for installation into the race car. I finished most of the cage and took the two five speed transmissions over to the car wash. It was not a pretty sight when I came back with black clutch carbon all over my face and clothes. Larry came over for some parts and to bring me a piece of exhaust we need to make our car complete, and we wrapped up the day.

Sunday was a quiet day at the shop, the weather couldn't have been any better.
Progress on the engine started a little slow. I went to Napa to pick up a throwout bearing for the transmision, later to realize from everything I could see there is no throw out bearing for these engines. God Please don't email me now and tell me there is one because the engine is in and everything mated up and went together nicely.
The throw out bearing they have listed is too small to fit the shaft and the shaft is the same size as the hole in the crank shaft.
I looked in the book and could not find reference to one anywhere, so the engine is in the car. My buddy for the day was the hydraulic jack shown in the picture, he made the install go very nicely. The next project is to find out why the previous owner cut a lot of wires to install his bastardized alarm system. This may take a while since he cut two main connectors completely off that come from the CPU. More study of electrical this week.

Roll Bar continued

2009-04-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

Here is the latest on the roll cage.
A few of you were asking if I as going to skin the doors and run the bars out into the panel. Well I have to tell you this is probably the most difficult task in building the cage for me. I think I got lucky the top bar sits nestled in the groove of the of the door card. I chose to keep the door card for additional strength just in case we get T-Boned. I think it will work just fine. So now I have a question, Per the rules of roll bar padding on areas around the driver, do the door bars need to be padded?
I will be doing the cross bar that goes under the steering wheel as a last addition.
The whole thong should be done Saturday so we can get some other things done. Like a Motor.

Fire In Da Hole

2009-04-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

O Yea! and one other thing. When things get hot down "there" sometimes that's not a good thing!

Latest Progress

2009-04-11T17:50:00.000-07:00

40 days left till Reno, and this is the latest.
Thursday I got all of the gear together and started the roll cage.
Things started out a little slow, I guess I was dreading doing another cage.
I started with the dreaded main hoop, one miscalculation and I'm screwed and the DOM pipe isn't cheep. My first try and all is well!

I decided to move on to the Pillar Towers and get them in place so I could size up the main hoop. This takes too much time, in my opinion. Both Pillars are in and the boys came over to inspect the work.

Bob, Bob T and Larry their friend came around to look so I didn't get much more done. I would like to welcome our 5th team member to the group, Bob T.

Day Two: Friday
Today Bob and Bob T joined in the celebration, it was nice to have some help working on the cage. I think we got a lot done. Thanks guys!

Bob went through and put the rubber coating on all the sharp edges so us "dumb asses" won't get hurt when we are crawling around under the car.(Mainly Me!)

Day Three: Saturday
Andy joined in the celebration today and again it was nice to have help with the cage.

We are very close to having the cage done. I hope to finish the front pillars and have the door bars done tomorrow. then the only thing left will be the harness posts and cleaning before we paint it all up.

Next week the engine and decorations. Thanks again guys!

Two day scramble

2009-04-01T17:18:00.000-07:00

So Monday and Tuesday were my first two days off in 17 so I needed to get something accomplished and fast. Monday started out wonderful (NOT) I spent 3 hours dealing with the DMV trying to get the trailer licensed to to no avail. It seems that the bank and the DMV have different rules on how the title is suppose to be presented. Gosh I wish It could be like the Peoples curse where you take the one that pisses you off the most and crush them. In this case it would have been both!

Anyhow I needed to destroy something and fast, so our little car was the victim.
I started with cutting out the battery holder, hmmm starting to feel a little better.
I then moved on to tearing out the interior seats, carpet, console and dash, feeling better.

I then moved to take out the rubber sound insulation that goes along the floor and up the firewall behind the driver. Pat with Team TARP racing told me about using an air chisel to break it all off. Thanks to his info and an hour of venting here are the results of day one.

I'm all better now!

Day two

Day two started by me renting a plasma cutter from a friend. I have never used one before so i didn't know what to expect for results. I started with the sunroof top, it got ugly quick. I could not get the cutter to start up, a phone call to Jeff and adjusting the air pressure and some more adjustments and bamm! it worked. I then proceeded to get carried away, I found out I can't draw a straight line to save my life or yours. It started to get ugly again, my little compressor that I have had for years didn't like pumping life into the plasma cutter so it's little engine died.
Well out to the new trailer to tear out the compressor it has. A half hour later and I was back up and running. I learned that by using a straight edge I could do some real quick work of cutting out weight.

I then tried my hand at doing circles with mixed results but results just the same.

Second try is always better than the first.

Well that's it! I think we are back on schedule for the race, next week will be a full roll cage with an engine thrown in somewhere along the way.

Update

2009-03-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

So our first week into this craziness went pretty well. I was able to acquire a trailer with all the goodies like a generator, compressor, tire rack and cabinets.
Bob worked on sponsors and our new logo for the race, when we get stickers we will send them to our followers. After saying quite a few choice words and grinding and cutting for a couple of hours the front suspension is done except for shortening the coils and alignment. That will come later once we get the car running. Here are some of the latest pics.

Notice the notch I cut into the frame trying to get the bolt out. Only to find out later that I didn't need to do it. It made for an easier time when I cut the bolt out of the passenger side control arm.

Nice Pretty red bushings. I know the Judges will see them right away but you have to give them something to bitch about or they will be just bored as hell with our entry.

We are in!

2009-03-16T19:41:00.000-07:00

We received our acceptance letter to the Reno/Fernley race today, and it couldn't have come at a better time.
Bob and I decided to do a work day today and well let's just say more things got broke or were broken than fixed. The engine we pulled last week has a couple of nice holes in the side of it, I think it's broke. We decided to work out some frustration because we hadn't heard anything about the race, so we started putting the new Polyurethane bushings in. Needless to say after shearing the nut off the control arm, and a lot of cussing, Judy called me with the good news. Now I have to figure out how to get the rest of that bolt out of the frame. (Anyone with any Ideas?)
Just wanted to thank everyone who made this "hell" possible and to say I will see you at the track! O Yea! and Bob didn't break anything, I did it all by myself.

Let the fun begin!

2009-03-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

Well we did it, we started something that's going to be hard to stop now. We got together to do a little engine thrashing and photo taking to officially set the wheels in motion for the Reno race. We know we still have not been accepted for the race but at this point I don't really think that matters much. We are a team and that's a good start.
Bob and Andy did some more crazy work and pulled the engine out of our little racer. I think we will be good enough at pulling engines that if it ever comes to pulling it out of the car during the race we could probably do it. It may take us a couple hours but now we know it can be done. I think we got some of our inspiration from Larry's brother Joe when team Snow Speeder Association attempted a full engine replacement at the track at Altamont in 08. Here are a few pics of us working on all the wiring and such, notice the nice layer of sand on the motor and around the top of the engine compartment. I think I learned the real reason you wear safety glasses and keep your mouth shut when you under the car. I used an impact wrench to remove an engine mount and the car fought back the only way it could, with sand and lots of it. Lets just say when you take the car to wash it, you do your best to get the damn engine hood open! Having said as much we did really good for the first 6 hours of work on the car.

Jerry joined us for the team photo and Bob said something about using the photos to persuade some sponsors to give us some much needed moolaa...

Here are some pics of this weekend, Judy of course had to pic us at best or in some cases our worst poses. Enjoy and thanks to everybody for their support including Judy our "Official Photographer"

Hanta Virus

2009-01-19T08:53:00.000-08:00

Last weekend Bob and I drove up to Vernal and picked up a spare parts car. The owner had told me many times, that the car was pretty scary and that it wasn't worth much, now I believe him!

This weekend Andy, Bob and I got together to do a plethora of damage to the car. Little did we know that the whole interior, trunk and fronk of the car was full mice urine and feces, a perfect breeding ground for the Hanta Virus. Well I do feel muscle aches, especially in the large muscle groups-thighs, hips, back, and shoulders. No Wait that's how I feel every time I work on cars.
With guts, determination and lacquer thinner to kill the smell and hopefully the virus we persisted in our quest. I am very impressed with Bobs determination to learn as much as he can about cars. We let him loose on taking the engine out of the car, Andy explaining a few details about the wiring harness and axles, and between Bob and Andy they had the complete engine and transmission out in about 3 hours. I got the wonder full job of taking out the interior, trunk, and fronk junk out. The mice had stolen insulation from the farmers house and filled in areas of the car to create nests. I compared it to being on a version of "FEAR FACTOR" waiting for mice or even rats to start invading the shop, didn't happen. The engine will need to be taken apart, it seems that the previous owner had taken a spark plug out and never put it back, I wouldn't be to worried except for the fact that the car has been sitting in the high desert for the last 4 years. The car was covered with a nice coating of red sand.

So what did we get done?
The engine and transmission are out, trunk, engine and fronk lid are off.
Interior carpet, seats, console and garbage gone.
Doors are off and a list of parts started for future Ebay consideration.
Fluids drained and radiator removed.

What's next?
The suspension needs to be labeled, taken apart and boxed.
Master brake, clutch and slave cylinders drained, removed and boxed.
Draining the gas tank and removal.
Removal of dash gauges and other possible sale-able parts.
Front clip including fenders removed and stored for possible damage replacement.
Last but not least, taking out the saws-all and going crazy on the rest of the body for recycling.
Anybody that may need parts let me know, I will check our list of needs and wants to see if we can possibly do some trading or gifting.

Lunch with Larry

2009-01-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

So Larry from team V-ram/Snow speeder and I had lunch today so that I could pick his brain about the Thunderhill race. Larry said there was no comparison between T-Hill and the previous Altamont race. T-Hill is nice and open, and you have less chance of playing bumper cars, which equals less car damage overall. The track was a lot faster and you really felt more competitive, although he did say there were quite a few more yellow flags. Having said that, he has a few good suggestions that we will be following at Reno.
Fueling was a big issue for us at Altamont because all we had were the 5 gallon store bought tanks that ended up being sloppy and a little dangerous because of spillage. Larry suggested using a 35 gallon tank with a hand pump to fill with, he said it was quite a bit quicker to fuel with and a lot safer.
Overheating, During Altamont we had major problems with overheating due to not getting all the air out of the system. I think we have resolve that issue. Larry did mention that having a separate switch that turns the radiator fans on manually does make a big difference in cooling while on the track.
We will be trying to park next to Snowspeeder, V-Ram and Free range racing at the Reno event.
Larry thought that having teams that drive mr2s close together helps a lot especially when one team runs into trouble. It's all about being a team and assisting our bretheren when they are in trouble. Thanks to Larry for taking the time to share the input.

Time on my hands

2008-12-17T15:07:00.000-08:00

I had lots of it this afternoon (time that is) so I started looking for other Lemons blogs and came across this page.
I am impressed, but sad at the same time. If these stats are accurate, and I am definitely not going to question them, cause it hurts my brain, our little Toyotas are just a little better than average in competition. I for one think that we are definitely going to get a lot better results in the races coming up, 'cause we are all out of excuses. Thanks to "wastingtimewithmikeandari" for more useless information.

Looks like we have a mechanic

2008-12-12T06:51:00.000-08:00

First team meeting

2008-12-11T08:09:00.000-08:00

Last night we had our first team meeting, it started out great with news that there are a total of three races next year, within driving distance. We have lots of decisions to be made but now everybody has seen the cars, the garage and what's ahead of them in the following year.
We won't start doing anything until after the first of the year. We will at least get our team entered into the races, praying to be accepted, "cause we all need acceptance"(somehow I don't think that was such a great statement). We have to put our money where our mouths are. Speaking of money we don't have any, "sponsors" "sponsors" "sponsors". The guys didn't seem too upset when I mentioned money, I think that's a good thing.

Team:
Paul: mechanic, welder, safety, clean-up
Andy: electronics, mechanic, driver
Bob: apprentice, mr2 guru, driver (Bob owns two mr2's) he's got a beautiful 87' he said we could use for parts!
Craig: mechanic, design engineer, driver (the man with the connections)
Jerry: Token foreigner, back-up driver (just don't ask him to back-up) and destroyer of anything we ask him to remove from the car.

The Engine

2008-12-05T09:15:00.000-08:00

We got really lucky, I guess reading up on Toyota's is a good thing when your looking for a engine. MR2's are pretty hard to find in Utah especially in a junk yard but Pull-a-Part had a 89 Celica GTS with a nice little 4age motor just waiting for us to go crazy on. After an early Saturday morning trip and 3 hours of knuckle busting action, o-yea and a $140.00 bucks we have our donor.

The Car

2008-12-05T09:05:00.000-08:00

So we bought our first car, the usual rust bucket, cancer ridden vehicle you find parked in a field anywhere in Utah. Yep! it has a blown engine, I think "OPEC" saw a spike in oil consumption when this little baby decide to spew it's guts all over the road.With a little persuasion and a lot of bullshit we got the car for $250.00 bucks, I can believe how sentimental the guy was about the car, but he was pretty understanding when we told him we were going to strip the car and race it. It's funny how so many guys totally understand you when you say your not interested in the car as a daily driver but as a race car, at this point they really want to help you out. I guess it's a guy thing.

In the Beginning

2008-12-05T08:33:00.000-08:00

In the beginning my little brother and I were invited to race with Team V-Ram, we loved it so much we decided to start another team here in Salt Lake City. I think anyone out there that has caught the racing bug can understand why there is a need for speed. There is so much satisfaction in taking a car that basically you would be so embarrassed to drive on any street and putting it on a race track for everyone to make fun of. I guess what I mean by this is that when you take the time and tear a car apart, putting just enough parts back into it so that you hope it can last another couple of hours, and seeing such a car survive the "24 Hours of Lemons" you have to be just a little crazy. Not insane though, the safety measures put into these cars in my opinion makes you feel safer than driving your daily vehicle on the street.

Knights of the round track

2008-11-20T07:27:00.000-08:00

Well we've done it, the car is officially road worthy, talk about a miracle. We started with a car with a blown engine (oil everywhere) and now we have a "crap can" with one of those nice used engines from Tear Apart. Everything is going according to plan, I just wished we had one. Our first team meeting is coming up soon so we can decide what gets ripped out in preparation for racing.
Knights of the round track is a great spoof on Monte Pythons "The Holy Grail" so we do have a theme, we will start taking pictures of the project and posting them to the blog for all to see.
We have a mascot the Black Knight (see pic above) I just hope they will let him ride on our car when we race, that would be cool!