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.