12-16-2011

 So yeah........

Last night I started to work on compressing the large 5GB 60min in car video of me driving. I got it compressed down to 350MB, but I am still learning how to encode, and compress down videos on our new MAC with free software. The video looks and plays well on the MAC but wont play on my phone. There are a few settings I need to change with the audio that should do it. I will then cut out a few good sections and put them into a 5-10min video on youtube I will post later. My Girlfriend and I had some holiday shopping to do that got in the way of me finishing this, and tonight we are going out to see an old friend of mine. Then I have plans to work on my commuter car, and the Spitfire with my dad this weekend, along with  some partying as it is my birthday Sunday, 31 wooo hooooo, and holiday time. The video can wait, as I know not many people I know find it very interesting, but I think it’s fucking cool.
   
There is a LeMons race this weekend at Eagles Canyon Raceway in Dallas Texas. Man how I wish we could just travel to all these races even if we race or not.  The track design looks fun. http://www.eaglescanyon.com/2008/facilities.php though I am not sure the layout LeMons is using. I will just browse the forums and check the LeMons facebook page watching for informational updates on how the weekend is going.  We have 4 races planned next year, which is plenty for the time and funds I can put into the team, though I wish we could do more. Speaking of our team, it is called te Sex Pistons. It is a spin off of the Sex Pistols. As our car is British and having a British punk rock theme, doing a spin on the Sex Pistols was easy. The flag my sister painted on the hood that says “God Save R Spitfire” looks amazing. This was a play on the Sex Pistols logo of the flag and their song “God Save the Queen”.
I have started a Facebook page for our race team, but have yet to put much effort into it.  Here is the link https://www.facebook.com/pages/Team-Sex-Pistons/  I have to say that this team has had it’s ups and downs. When we originally decided to start it was sweat, lots of work, but good times were had between my father, one of my best friends, and myself. The story of our racing team follows (warning it’s rather long).....

The first race we attempted to do, Arse Freeze Apalooza 2010 at Butonwillow, did not go as planned. It in fact went horribly. We got everything loaded up and ready, we were going for it with the three of us, 1 driver short, but my father was willing to take the wallet hit as well as paying for himself and I already. Then while I was at work the day we planned to leave, I got a text or call (can’t remember which) from my friend stating that he would not be able to go do to personal reasons I do not feel is necessary to share. From work I met with him and unloaded the spare parts from his vehicle into mine and drove to my pops to give him the news and explain how it would only be the two of us. We were not going to quit and were still excited to go racing.  We got there late Thursday night, it was cold, dark and quiet in the pits, we relaxed, had a drink then went to sleep. When we woke up I went outside to find many teams with insane cars, it was like Disney Land for junk car nerds. We got the car through safety tech inspection with no problems  When the Bull Shit inspectors saw what the car was they had us pop the hood and just laughed. A Spitfire? Good luck! was basically the attitude, but in LeMons that means AWESOME! So we rolled away happy. 


I was paid the day before and Decided to spend some of the little money I had to test the car that day on track. After a good 30min run that was a blast and put a huge smile on my face, I came in and we looked the car over and then I went back out for another 40min run. On my way in on the last lap only a few turns from the pits, I felt a clunk and saw out of the corner of my eye the left rear wheel go flying away down the track. I kept the car under control and aimed it into the dirt. After being shamefully towed in we looked over the car. The hub had stripped the axle-hub key off the axle and was still bolted to the wheel. At this point I thought well some welding and we can make it work. Little did I know that these Spitfires have 3 types of metal between the axle, axle-hub key, and the hub. When the track welder took a look at it he said, I can not do this, and I do not recommend anyone try as it will not be safe on the track and someone will get hurt. We then made some calls, looked on the internet, and the closest axle and hub we could find was a racing kit that was $3500.00 way out of our budget and would be worth more then everything we put into the car so far. We went around the pits, got some suggestions on people to call. One guy was two states away at a classic car race, another was a 7 hour drive each way. We pretty much gave up. It was a sad feeling, but reasonably after all the money my father had spent, having only his old RV, and I having spent my last part of the budget, we were done. Sure many people came over excited, we can do this, but many realized the same thing, it can not be welded. We chose to stay the night Friday in case anyone responded to emails for our need. After seeing the crap situation we were in, the team camping next to us pointed out they had a keg of Arrogant Bastard Ale and told me to enjoy, which I thoroughly did.  We received no offers  reasonable on the parts we needed and knew we were done for sure. We decided to hang out a bit on Saturday and watch and just enjoy being there and we had a good time. My father then asked me that afternoon if I wanted to go home or stay for the next day. I told him, lets stay, camp, watch the races, and help out, we were going to be here another day anyway. So that is what we did and man I am glad we did. The racetrack pits were like a party that night, drinks, music, cars putting around, people wrenching, and movies projected on the building walls. It was cold, but not cold enough to scare people inside.

The next morning I awoke with quite the hang over after two drinking nights in a row. That day I got the feeling that my dad has been asking, or maybe begging, Spank to let me drive one of his cars he brought to the race. If I remember correctly he had 3, the Turbo Mini, a Moke, and this Citroen DS. Whether Spank did it out of pity, or to shut my dad up, ( really I know he did it cause he is a good guy) but he gave me some wheel time in the Citroen DS. What a pig this thing was, and it has a column shifter which I had to ask how to use. I got instructions from Gram, (who if I remember correctly is a classic Minni Cooper mechanic and has a classic English accent,) he told me something in the order of; “Fist is up, second is down, third is up and behind first, the breaks work well, now go out there and just drive the piss out of it until the over heating light comes on, then bring her in”. That was good enough and I went out and had a blast. The ride and breaks on this large car was amazing, and by knowing how to drive over the Phil Hill Corner I was able to pass much faster cars. When I brought it in after each of the 3 times they let me go drive(30 mins each), there was no water left in the radiator and once it was out of gas. We would just dump in more fuel and water and send the next person out. Oh and I forgot to mention, this Citroen ran on only 3 of the 4 cylinders. (Thanks again Spank) The weekend was a horrible failure for our team, but fun for me and filled me with the desire to continue this hobby. On a final note on that Citoen DS for those of you who do not know, Spank drove it out to the east coast to enter it in a race then I believe he gave it away.. haha classic.

    The next race we planned to do, we ended up not having the funds for, the RV needed work, I was in between jobs again, and my friend could not make the event anyways. We skipped it, and waited until June 2011 for the Chump Car race at Buttonwillow when we had the Spitfire ready, had the money, the time off, and found a 4th driver to join us. My father’s neighbor had shown interest in our crap can racer and came along with his father to help out for the weekend. We had a great time, did some drinking mostly between my friend and I, and had a solid 14 hour strait race with only some oil leaked and burnt off. We used up an extra 4 quarts of oil but that low compression 1500 motor slowly got us around the track the whole 14 hours. My friend called me the Sunday driver cause I was limping the car around the track in the 98deg heat in the worst part of the day, while he managed our fastest lap for the weekend. I never wanted to push the car, I wanted to finish. Giving the car time to cool during my runs may or may not have saved the motor, but it felt like the right thing to do. Once it cooled down we all ran much faster stints. The last few, I might add, where in pitch dark and we had stock headlights. This lead to 2 scary last stints for my friend and I but we managed to do it. The Chump Races are great, but they are a different world from LeMons. Yes the cars are $500 before safety gear, but it is one class and normally only 25-40 cars. Nothing like the 120+ cars LeMons races have, with cars in our lap time range. In other words, our Spitfire does not compete in Chump very well. We did end up being awarded the Chumpiest Chumps award for our horrible car amazingly running the whole 14 hour race. Good weekend, we learned a lot and met the first goal of finishing the race while having fun.

Our next race we had to drop my friend as a driver, he got his licence restricted. We picked up my father’s neighbor who has been a great help and good driver, and a MG driver from VARA. This was another Chump Car race but at AutoClub Speedway in Fontana mid October. For this race we put in a motor from one of the parts cars we picked up which had a little bit more power. We also dropped the over drive transmission for a standard 4 speed. We were not using the over drive anyway and people who build Spitfires for the road really want them so we sold it. Also added a Weber carburetor, replaced the motor driven fan with an electric one, and replaced the stock catalytic converter containing exhaust for strait through headers and pipe. The car ran much stronger with this set up. We started out running rather well and all were enjoying the day. It just so happens there is this drift pin in the transmission bell housing that holds the clutch arm in. My dad had pointed out to me (while pulling the 4 speed transmission out of the parts car) that under race conditions it gets so hot this pin will just slide out. We agreed we would change it..... Well we didn’t, we forgot, completely spaced on it. After about 5 hours into the 7 hour day, the poor driver who we had on the track all of a sudden had the clutch arm slam into the clutch and lock the car up. We got it towed into the pits and after some wrenching and fussing with it someone figured it out. We grabbed our 3rd transmission and swapped it in that evening. While looking over the car we noticed we had a nasty flat spot on one of our tires. We grabbed the hard low traction spare tires and by a vote of 3-1 against my dad, we mounted them on the back and put the good tires on the front, thinking it would be best to have the steering. We then had dinner, my father and I had some beers and we all went to bed for the night.

The next morning we went out racing again, not the slowest car on the track, and now with horrible rear tires, the first driver spun many times. Our second driver went out and got hit, this lead to us being black flagged, and the decision was made to swap the low traction tires to the front for a controlled push.  We ran a couple more hours then we started to hear this horrible knocking sound coming from the rear end. The car was pulling funny but was still drivable so we just kept going. It was quite funny hearing that knocking sound from the pits as the Spitfire went by. Then we were meat balled (black flag with red dot indicating the car has problems) off the track. The car was blowing oil on the track and smoking. We stood there and looked at it and thought we blew the main seal, and with the unknown issue causing the knocking sound, and only two hours or so left we called it quits. Not a bad weekend, not a great weekend, but was fun, we all got plenty of track time, made some passes, and we learned. 10 hours out of 14 was not bad for us. We did not win any awards, though I did not expect too, besides that is not the point.

Once home and rested and a week passed, we got to working on the car. What was that knocking sound? We got under the car and noticed some of the problems. One of the u-joints was falling apart, one of our rear shocks had busted. My pops said he would order the parts and next weekend we could replace the u-joints and rebuilt the others, and we can mount the shocks John from Chump Car gave us next weekend. We did exactly that, then when we putted the car around the back yard, I could still hear that clunk clunk clunk. We got the car on jack stands and spun the back tires while my dad watched and he noticed that only one wheel spun and the other shook. He then tried to stop the tire that spun and could not. The diff was shot to hell. There was only power going to one wheel, the other side gear was just skipping. This was causing the car to pull and turn better one way then the other and make that horrible clunking sound. I then said I will go rip the diff and leaf spring off the parts car and come back another night so we can swap it. This we did, and we added a spacer under the leave spring lowering the rear end and adding more camber. In the end it was all worth it. My dad got the front seal changed but noticed it was not that bad. He was kind of confused as to how all that oil got everywhere.

We got the car back together, and bought new tires. Damn, I do not recommend anyone race with 13” wheels in LeMons anymore. With the tire selection allowed with the LeMons rules (190 tread ware or greater) your stuck with horrible highway tires, or struggling to find tires with good traction that will put you back over $550.00 for the set of four, plus mounting costs. In crap can racing spending that much on tires for us is not acceptable. We will be upgrading to a 15” wheel after we finish off these tires we have decided. As we were changing the oil, plugs, and tightening everything down, my dad noticed the oil filter was cranked down really tight and the rubber seal was smashed. I was the one who put it on, and believe it was my fault. We could have finished that race if I would not have not over tightened he filter, or we figured out where the leak was from at the track, but still the diff could have gotten worse and cause a crash. I still felt dumb about cranking down the oil filter, I must have not been thinking as I know better. We were now set for another attempt at Arse Freeze Apalooza Dec. 3-4 2011, and man was I excited. We had 3 drivers, plenty of spares parts, and high hopes.

My dad ended up selling his classic VARA racing Spitfire and put the money towards a new motor home and at the last min decided to move everything over from the old motor home so we could take it to the race. It is a nice ride, we managed to get everything we needed to the track with us and it was nice to sleep in. This selling of his classic VARA racer gives my dad more time, and having the newer motor home, the eagerness to drive and tow further. wWich means more LeMons races. So no Chump races planned for 2012 only LeMons which I think is awesome, I enjoy Chump Car, but LeMons so much more.

Back to the Arse Freeze Apalooza ‘11, we hit a snag in a form of not passing safety tech inspection. My fault mostly, as team captain it is my responsibility to check the rules. So we went there under the wrong assumption that because we passed last year, and we passed ChumpCar’s tech all year we would have no problems. Oh we were wrong. The new rules required larger spreader plates, and after there being a pretty bad wreck at a different LeMons race earlier this year still in their minds, they failed us. We needed to buff up the spreader plates on the bottom of our cage and add more padding around the driver. We did not have a welder with us so we wheeled the car down to the race shop and the guy quoted us $300.00. Shit... We decided it is not worth trying to scramble up the metal and welder from someone in the pits and handed over the car. We were not the only ones, many teams faced this problem. The shop was backed up, it took him six hours to do a max of a three hour job. What frustrated us, is the guy wanted to charge us $100 an hour, not for the actual work time he put in to the car. My pops worked it out with this eh hem, gentleman, and he paid $349.00. This was just one more thing we did not need to be paying for but we were there to race and race we did. I later paid my dad for half this expense though, being the way he is, he was not going to ask me for it.  With the car back and safety tech closed till morning, all we could do was hang out. So we ate, and put back a few and relaxed. That night got so cold. We were outside drinking and people were playing pool, yes pool, on a table Spank’s team brought as a bribe. We awoke early Saturday morning, ate breakfast, got the car started and warmed up. I decided with my dad being frustrated the day before with the whole tech failing and money situation that I would take the car to tech and handle it myself. While there I could tell we did what they asked and Jay was going to pass us, but I could tell he was not at ease with our car, the fuel cell is very close to the rear bumper, and this old shit can has no modern impact crumple zones. (This is what led me to recently email him pics asking what he would like us to do for 2012 so we wont face a tech failure again).But he passed us, I thanked him and we got registration done. .. more boring stuff .. blah blah.. We put our other driver in the car to start the race and off he went. He came in to early, he was black flagged for passing under yellow, then debated with the LeMons judges which is a no no. This sucks, but was partly my fault. This is his first Lemons even and I forgot to give him a heads up on how crazy it is on track with 120+ cars and hot to treat the LeMons crew. When he came in he mentioned the car was still pulling to the right under breaking, a problem we thought we fixed. The car was drivable so we just dealt with it for the day. I got a clean stint done then handed the car over to my dad. He went out and soon also got a black flag for passing under a yellow flag. I was off watching the race with my girlfriend and her friend as they had just arrived. I noticed the Spitfire was not on track so I went and found my dad cooking food and not driving. He had to make them lunch because of it being our second black flag, part of the strange punishments in Lemons. While our other driver was on track, just shit luck, he was rear ended. LeMons has an “all fault” contact rule. So we were black flagged again and  received a one hour penalty. I was kinda frustrated and at this point told my other drivers “We are slow, there are only like 3 cars on that track you should be passing, if you are passing any other cars, your doing something wrong. Don’t pass unless you can see the flag station and there is no yellow flag.”  This is something I should have told them before we started, LeMons racing is chaotic, you need to be very aware. Now I know my dad knows better but he has been doing lots of short sprint racing in his classic VARA racer and the mentality is different. So I was not mad, just frustrated. I sat out there with the car in the penalty box until the judges came to me. The said they were going to forgive one of our black flags and let us back out on the track, but if we get another its a 3 hour penalty and a 4th we are finished for the weekend. I explained to them what I told my other drivers and they laughed and said it sounded about right. They realized I was the driver with no incidents yet and said go out there and show us a clean hour. I did just that, then we finished out the day clean. We worked on the car some that night to get the breaks as even as we could for Sunday, then had dinner, drinks and watched some live punk music. I got pretty loaded and swapped some stories with this English guy who was racing on one of the Camaro teams. The next morning I went out first and we had a great day, no black flags, and only one issue when the throttle got stuck open. No big deal. Good times a great day to finish out our weekend. Now we originally were up for the big prize in LeMons racing which is call the Index of Effluency. But with our rough start on Saturday, and just some other wild, crazy, funny moments by other teams, we were out shined. They gave it to Spank and his four car twelve person team, no surprise there. His cars are horribly awesome and the group did a great job and got less penalties with four cars then we did with out one. We ended up finishing fourth in class C and 61st out of 131 teams over all. I was happy with it. A notable team was the winners of class C the Zombees. They drive this beat up 70s MGB made up to look like a bee and racing with them was a blast, they had more power and we had better handling.  We once again learned, improved and had a great time.

After that weekend it brings us to now. Our next race is March 23-24 2012, Sears Pointless at Infineon Raceway. We have a list of things to do and I believe I have found us a 4th driver for this one, as my friend won’t have his licence back until April. Things are looking good and I can’t wait to get working on the car again.

OK so now to a complaint... Did our government really take away our civil right to a trial in favor of detaining citizens without trial, on terms of suspicion? That is nuts! We have just lost one of our fundamental rights. Now I am not saying I would vote for the guy but Ron Paul was right when he said,

“We’re talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantanamo Bay and held indefinitely,”

And that shit is scary......