Down but not out...

Leon did not make it all the way through the race but we are not done... No way. I think the team, seen in the photo below, would all agree that this was a blast. This was a great time. I, for one, cannot wait to do it again. If we did not need to rebuild the engine just to race again, we might be driving to Omaha for the next race.
Before I forget, we have to thank our supporters and fans. Thanks to all our fans who came to the race. That was really cool to have all of you out there. Thanks to the Family Miller for making all those runs to the local Napa. Thanks to Team Maikish for picking up the welding tab.
And thanks to the rest of you who put up with us nutballs talking about nothing but cars, firesuits and racing for 3 months.
We learned a lot from this race. We are going to spend the winter putting Leon back together, part by part. I have no idea how to rebuild an engine but I am going to learn. Anyone know a good book on the subject? The goal is to be ready for the Pueblo race in March.

A few words on Porsches and cheaters

OK, if you brought an F'ing Porsche to a $500 car race, you are cheating. That is really all there is too it... you are cheating and that makes you a cheater.
Want to know what a cheater looks like? Check out this loser. He is in the penalty box for... drum roll please... CHEATING.

Here is a great shot... One car is a real lemon. The other is a cheater. Can you tell which is which?Clearly there are different levels of folks in this race. One of the other Porsche teams travels in this Mac truck rig with the professional trailer shown below. What is in that trailer, you ask? Good question. Tools.. lots of tools. And wrenches and stuff too. These tools had a generator, it ran their air compressor and welder. They also had a pallet jack to move their tire mounting/balancing machine. WTF??? Oh, and the F'ing Porsche fits in the trailer as well. Why is that Porsche up on jack stands you ask? It threw a rod... right through the oil pan. See the picture below. It does make me feel somewhat better that all 3 Porsches (yes, there was more than one cheater...or these things are much cheaper than I thought) did not manage to finish the race. Actually, team Leon managed to beat out 2 of the 3 teams in total laps. Let me give you some sense of scale. I could put a can of beer in that hole... the long way. The rod came down with such force, it blew that chunk of the oil pan out. Crazy!!!
The last of the cheaters to stop running was the db that I pictured first. Here they are getting pushed off the track. Apparently the car stalled if the RPMs got below 4000. So they spent all of Sunday in second gear. Up until the engine blew. Come on man! On top of cheating in a car race for junkers, you are going to trash a perfectly good Porsche? That is no way to treat a Porsche. Where are your manners?

Not the only ones...

We were not the only ones to get blown out of the race. Blown engines and thrown rods seemed to be the most common problem. The Saab that led the race all day Saturday threw a rod. Superman's car blew its engine. The yellow Prelude blew it engine, spend Saturday night putting a new used engine in, and blew the new engine less than an hour into sunday.
Below the two XR4Ti that were in the race. Both were blown out before we were.

Leon Races!!

How did we do you ask?
Well, lets just say that we had reasonable expectations and we succeeded in our number 1 goal. Everyone on the team got to drive...
Here I am getting into the car. That suit is so damn hot. It was unbelievable. Yes, I am climbing in through the passenger side window. Believe it or not, that was much easier. The gap between the wheel, the seat and the roll bar is small that I cannot get my fat thighs in or out. Next year, we are going to make a removeable steering wheel...

Here is the tow truck pushing our car off the track and back to our pit. Unfortunately, this was not a rare occurance. We would stand by the big hairpin corner, not far from our pit. You can tell by the other cars on the track roughly when to expect your own. Car should be here any time... oh, there it is. And repeat. Until you start thinking, it really ought to be here now.... it REALLY ought to be here now! And then the tow truck comes racing by, out of pit row and out on to the track. D'oh!!!

Here I am under the car fixing the alternator. That was one of the simpler problems.. We probably got pushed off the track 3 or 4 times.

The final incident had our last driver behind the wheel. He heard a number of pops, like fire crackers. That is NOT good at all. I checked the temp on the car after he was pushed back to us, it was still overheated and in the red. That is not good either. Certainly not his fault though. The guages ended up in a position where the temp guage could not really be seen.

We could not get it to restart. But we had had that problem all afternoon between alternator and battery problems. So we pulled a plug and tried to start the car. Everyone within 10 feet got wet... the car was shooting water out of the engine block. That is pretty well dead... the general opinion of the assembled crowd was that we had blown our head gasket. Joe and I (and a random collection of drunks who stopped to "help") worked on the car until close to 10pm. We wanted to strip it all the way down to the head gasket to see if that was the problem. Instead, we bent the hell out of our engine pulley. Whoops. Oh well, time to give up... Below you can see Joe and one of the volunteers trying to get that pulley off.

A word about the rules.

There are rules... if your team breaks the rules, you get black flagged. Lose control of your car and spin out, black flag. Put any tires on the dirt and off the pavement, black flag. Lose parts of your car during racing, black flag. Speeding in the pits, black flag. Ferral children, black flag.
If you get black flagged, you head over the judges area for punishment. Pictures of punishments below.
Here is Ross doing the walk of shame. He passed while under a yellow flag for caution... he was black flagged, pulled from the track and forced to mime his crime as punishment.
This vixen is bound to the post in clear plastic.
The Swiss Cheese car was put in the penalty box for a while and then forced to drive with that flag. I am not sure what they did, but if I had to guess it would be tires on dirt. They really had trouble with those S turns. These folks got what was known as the Bart Simpson penalty repeatedly... They were required to do what Bart does during each episode. They wrote what they would not do again 100 times.

I will not go 4 wheels off 1

I will not go 4 wheels off 2

and so on.

They had listed a requirement to go to driving school before coming back to a lemons race.

They were not going to pass under a yellow caution flag again.

As you can see, the whole car was covered with writing

I am not sure what crime this vixon committed either. But she was forced to dance on the roof of her car waving this flag.

Now that is a nice car!

If you are a car junkie, what better place to show off your ride than a car race?

This is one seriously pimped viper.

Real Cobra or a kit? I have no idea how to tell... probably a kit.

How about this one? What a bummer it must be to own a car like this and show up only to find another at the same race.

Yes, that is a 4 door Porsche... It looks like a 4 door 911. Very cool car, I had never seen one outside of a magazine. There is some serious money in automotives here.

The Neighbors

The poor folks next to us failed tech and spent the next 24 hours trying to pass. By the time their car passed tech it was 4pm on Saturday. They were 7 hours behind the rest of the field... not that they finished even close to last. They had a banner day on Sunday.

Lets take a closer look at that car. I love the old, faded pain job and all the chrome. Pretty damn bad ass. What is it you ask? Well it was a 50s Renault they said.. but "was" is the key word in that sentence. Look inside...

That is the engine about where the back seat ought to be. You can also see that they welded on a little extra metal to make their wheel wells wider. Check out the picture below and you can also see that they moved the steering wheel and seat to the middle of the car. I am impressed... though I would have been more impressed if they had passed tech before the racing started.

Team Spiderman

They had the spider theme going ON! See the inflatable spider on the trailer roof?

The car is covered in webs and little platic spiders.

On the hood, you get the Spidey eyes and the big welded spider...as well as plenty more little ones.

More fun "race cars"

This team was called Kelly's Gyros. They drove around in this RX-7 (I think that is what it was) that was made to look like a tank. That cannon on top fired T-Shirts just like at a sporting event. They spend friday evening driving around the pits, blasting Bon Jovi out of that speaker (located where there used to be a headlight), and firing T-Shirts into the crowd.
These guys were called the road crew. That truck was suprisingly fast. It cornered a little rough but it generally performed better than I would ever have expected. Unfortunately, they got the max number of black flags allowed in a day and were kicked out of the race. Mostly for skidding around corners, drifting is not allowed... though I am not sure how you race a pickup truck without a little skidding.

This RX-7 ended up being the eventual winner.

Below you can see a number of other cars, making their way around the hairpin turn. The M626 is the multi colored car entering the corner. It was part M Series BMW but mostly a Mazda 626. It is followed by Marvin the Martin, a 9000 series Saab. Marvin was a REALLY fast car. It spent all day on Saturday in the lead. With 45 minutes to go on Saturday, they blew a rod and were done for the race. Behind Marvin is the Starship Enterprise on a Mazda Miata. The Mazda actually has a turbo sticking out of the hood. The rest of the pipes around the turbo are all PVC tubes! It is sight to see... and fast as hell as well.

This is my favorite car (other than Leon of course).

The Cheese car was probably the coolest, most creative one out there. It is an AMC Marlin... if you have any idea what that is. Yes, those are all holes in the car. If you look closely, you can also see the masks that they wore to inspection... mice masks. It was really something to see.

Here is a closer picture of all of their holes... in varying sizes. The car had plenty of muscle, but it cornered like a boat. I saw them sliding in corners and clipping dirt on the edges of the S turns a few times. Still, it was a really cool car.

This Volvo was the mustache car. Their slogan was "who wants mustache ride?" However, it was not their verbal creativity that impressed me the most. Check out that hood scoop located in the roof. Nice ventilation for the driver! It was so hot in those fire suits.... I am jealous. That is some good thinking!

What kind of car would Superman drive?

Not pretty is it? They run oval tracks normally so the car is actually designed to turn only one way properly. They had to bend a strut with a hammer to get it drive straight. If you look closely at this picture, you can tell which side of the car the wall is on. They hit the wall in a recent oval competition. That same wreck, I was told, drove that passenger side tire right through the fire wall and into the passenger compartment. They tried to beat most of the hole closed with some hammers. If you look back in the wheel well in the picture below, you can see the scraps Superman used to weld the rest of the hole shut so they could get back to racing. At this point you can probably understand how bending a strut with a hammer might be considered a handling improvement in this car.

The Competition

These guys were called the Jolly Raunchers. They broke an axle shaft, as I understand it, and slid right off the track in one of the corners. They got that corrected and were back on the track remarkably quickly.

I have a soft spot for Cherokees. These poor guys were in trouble before the race even started. As you can see here, they are hard at work trying to get the Jeep ready to race. By night fall, they had removed both axles and the transmission. I am not sure what they were trying to fix. They did get on the course eventually but they were out of the race nearly as fast. They described the final problem as a "blown engine" which was a remarkably common description at this race. I wonder if they are all like that?

Superman is here!

Thankfully, Hagn is an expert at drumming up assistance. He wandered pit row and, in less than 10 minutes, found a professional welder/rollcage builder who had the time and kindness to help get us going. His name is Justin but we just call him Superman. Here is Justing trying to cut his leg off:

Here he is trying to cut his ankle off:

3 hours later, our car was ready to pass tech. Heck, we even found a judge to prequalify that night.

How is that for a miracle? They said Leon is safe and us fools can go racing!! Wow.

Failed Tech But Still Looking Good

This should not be a surprise to anyone... but we failed tech the first time through. On the promising side, we did not fail over any of the thousand little things that we let go. Unfortunately, we failed on our roll cage instead. Here is a picture of the judges discussing just how badly we were failing:

We failed for two reasons. There were 5 little welds that they said needed a litttle more love...and then there was our major roll cage design failure involving a cross member. Considering I am a self taught welder and my one and only lession with myself was Wednesday evening, I am probably not the right guy to rebuild our cage. If I could get the brace in place, we would still fail on the part where they require professional welds. My welds were described as looking like bird shit on a piece of metal...

We managed to bribe the judges to keep it to "just" rebuilding the cage. To prove to all that we had successfully bribed our way into legitimacy, they actually spray painted bribe onto the hood in english and in arabic... don't ask because I do not have the slightest idea.

Race day update

Sorry for keeping you all waiting, I know you have been on the edge of your seats. We gave up at 2:30am but Joe came back to the house and fixed it before 8am today. I was a blown fuse! Joe is my hero.

It's 12noon, check in starts now. We are not there yet, and we have no documentation so I have embarked on a mission to pick up the documentation at Ross' house. So we are late but unprepared, but at least the car works.

Worst Thing Ever?

Oh man... it is not looking good here folks.
It is 2 am, 4 hours since we cut the wrong wire. The car still will not start.
Joe and I went through the fuses a second time around and found some blown ones... but they are for things like the interior lights, so it is unlikely to be related. Joe is off to find a 24 hour walmart to get some new fuses. If this does not do it, I am not sure what else we can do.

D'oh! D'oh! D'oh! D'oh! D'oh! D'oh!

Sorry for the radio silence folks... we have been hard at work on Leon.
Tomorrow is race day. I have barely slept in two weeks but she is ready to go. We got the cage in, did the safety stuff, painted and numbered the car... we are READY.

So we are going through the checklist to make sure we really are as ready as we think. There is comment about loose wires under the hood. We have tons of those. So we started the car, just in case we made a mistake, and started cutting out wires for the fog lights and headlights. Hagn and Joe cut a bunch of wires (on the far side of the car, near abolutely nothing) and bang, the car died. There is reason I can think of that any wire, having anything to do with the operation of the car should be routed through behind the passenger side headlight. There is nothing over there beyond the headlight and a motor mount.

That was at 10 pm... it is now 11 and it is still not running. We put every wire back together, nothing. She is dead... We all still need to pack(clothes, tools, the car), sleep and everything else. Thankfully my parents went shopping for team food this weekend or we would all starve.

Remember on thing from this sports fans... If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Back to the garage to see if we can summon the spirit of a dead car.

APPLICATION ACCEPTED!!

Our application was accepted today and we're in!!  Boo-yaaa!!  There are 73 applicants.  Honestly, how could you not let such an innocent looking guy in the race?  I mean really?  Ok, so he looks more like he's auditioning for the next lead role in a horror flick named "I know what you're going to do this summer in your crappy Neon."  I'm sure it would be scarier than us sticking the cold air intake out of the hood....or maybe not.

A work of art in progress.....

A picture that would make Picasso blush.....

Name change

We thought that having the word "cheaters" in our name wasn't the best idea going into the race where cheeting could be fairly common.  It may beg our car to be the people's curse winner in which it would be destroyed at the end of the race.  Therefore, we've changed the name of the team from "I'm not a Tiger, I'm a Cheetah" to "Leon the Craptacular Neon".  We worked on the roll cage last weekend and have it about a third of the way done.  We'll try to finish it up two weekends from now and will get some more pics on the blog soon.  This is the last week that team are allowed to apply for the race and so far 50 teams have applied.

Back At It.

Howdy Sports Fans.

We were back it last weekend... working on the roll cage.

Here is how the roll cage arrived:

Notice the split cardboard wrapper on one set of the pipes. The floor plates were in there but were lost in shipping. In addition, if there were instructions that were supposed to come with this kit... they were probably in there too. After about 2 hours of staring at the parts, moving stuff around and looking at a picture of a different rollcage on line, Chris finally had it all figured out. Good thing, because the rest of us were still baffled.

The thing about this Lemons race... or perhaps the thing about owning a $500 car... is that you need to have some creativity. Thankfully we have Chris who can see a rollcage in a pile of pipes.

Check out this link to see the sort of creativity we are up against...

http://jalopnik.com/5510916/this-sentras-oil-blow+by-problem-solved-cheap

(Thanks Scooter)