I saw one FB there but I didn't get to talk to the crew. I was there in the #31 Flying Spaghetti Monster Integra.

 

Oh hey Gene I didn't know you were there. I was driving with the Booby Prize Racing (frog + duck) Nissan 200sx. I have to say I had my doubts about the whole hyperfest at the same time / lemons on Shenandoah thing but it rocked!

 

I was there in the Lotto covered BMW 535i. Had a tough weekend, 90 min in we were running on 5 cylinders...

 

Haha I saw the license plate on the BMW but I thought it was just a coincidence. Sorry to hear about you troubles. 5 cyls are still more than we started with though! We should coordinate better next time ;P

 

Nice. Next time you need to make the duck head out of something stronger than cardboard and pvc pipes

We didn't get away without problems either, we spent a good 1.5 hours in the pits and some time before that messing around with the motor, it was down on power real bad and was puking oil everywhere. We had to re-seal the whole valve cover and cam ends, and it turned out that the timing had slipped a tooth which is why we were down on power. Car ran great after that but there was no way for us to catch up. Ended up 28th overall, not too bad considering.

 

Yea, it wasn't really designed very well. The duck head made a good pit board later on though We were running in 2nd place on Saturday but dropped back to 4th by Sunday (running 5 drivers and 1-2 hr stints is not a winning lemons strategy). Later we lost close to 30 laps when our transponder went out, dropping us down to 12th.

Still had a great time driving on my "home" course in a way totally un-befitting for an HPDE. Never imagined I'd be side-by-side in a game of chicken seeing who could brake latest to gain entry to the fast line through the Karussel before!

 

The car felt pretty good Saturday morning during the first 60 minutes and I was able to set the best lap time for the first 6 hours! At this point we were in 14th spot.

About 90 minutes in the car lost complete power, 3rd gear was useless and basically we had to keep the revs up in second to get the car to move, It felt like we lost a cylinder.

Five hours in I took the Karussel much faster than normal and I ended up breaking the front right strut. The spring perch completely broke and dropped the spring down on the tire- it shaved the inside of the tire nicely... This was one of those four wide going into Karussel moments!

After 2.5 hours down we got the car back out on track with some cleaver welding. During the downtime we checked the plugs to see if we had a mis-fire, but we discovered cylinder number one had a serious problem. The plug was really fouled and smelled of fuel. The car ran like crap, but we were able to run a consistent 2:11-2:13 lap times and get some time back on track. At this point we were in 55th spot.

An hour later the power steering and power brakes failed making the 5 series heap SO much harder to control. Several more hours to go before the end of the first day...

We take the checkered for day one and begin to mend the car.

End of day one aftermath:

Pulled the valve cover to find out what's going on with the lack of power. We discovered we broke an intake lifter and had been running on 5 cylinders for 8 hours!

Broke both sway bars

Rear u-joints in the driveshaft had a ton of play, thus causing the awful clunk

Another exhaust leak from the header to downpipe flange.

Power steering leak, still didn't determine where the leak was from.

Leaking brake fluid from the left rear line.

After fixing as much as we could be buttoned the car back up around 1:30 and took off for beers and bed.

Started day two:

First lap, second day, under yellow the rear and left exhaust hanger failed causing our exhaust system to drag behind the car for 1.75 miles. Got Black flagged and took our penalty. Driving from the penatly box back to our paddock spot the muffler sheared off from the downpipe. It was quite the sight... the entire exhaust system sans the header laying on the ground. 30 minutes of welding and rigging up wiring we we back in action! Two hours later the crappy welding job gave up and the muffler broke again, thus ending our day. We ended up 51th out of 86 and were 100 laps down from the overall winners.

 

We were car 911 - the white 325e with the oil derrick. I thought the track was going to be completely over crowded but it was very reasonable.

 

Yeah the traffic was not all that bad. I ended up having a nice four wheels off trying to get around the outside of the snoopy truck into the "johnson" turn. He got a better launch out of the previous turn than I thought he would and I used up the whole straight trying to get by him and ran out of track.

Some nice pics of our car here:

http://www.venganza.org/2010/06/24/f...at-lemons-500/

 

Wow you had some hard luck with that bimmer Truly living up to the lemons name! I'm so used to either having a total catastrophic race-ending failure or running from start till finish but never having so many little things go wrong one after another. Hope you still managed to have some fun with it.

Some in-car from Sunday

 

Nice. I remember following someone (closely) into the carrusel who broke way too late.. the car got all kinds up upset, caught air and he wound up 180* out somehow.


We only had 3/4 throttle for a while and I couldn't get out of my own way. Wound up in the penalty box after someone thought he would try to get around me, couldn't and yanked my bumper off. Me and the other driver were summarily duct-taped together 3-legged race style and made to run up to the convenience stand to fetch 'the court' shushies. We had to climb up and down the stairs like that. Arghh.. fun times.

 

We were the 78 malibu with the flames. Finished as first carb'd car. 27th or 28th overall.

 

We just won teh denver race with our 80 RX7.

 

Sweet, congrats! Another rotary victory (I believe an FC won at CMP last year as well).