Customisbetter

That's a shame as that Laramie car is fantastic! Wish them the best.
Unfortunately my car is nearly finished so I don't need any parts.

cheseroo

iTrader: (2)

My understanding is that they have run into the same thing we have, the LeMons Sears Point races are so oversubscribed that getting a "sporty" car like an RX7, E30, miata, etc accepted can be difficult unless it has a spectacular theme. So they are building something else that I suspect is rotary powered.

Customisbetter

Yeah west coast stuff is the real deal. If I were racing over there, I would be in a two stroke v6 outboard powered Saab Sonnet. I doubt something that awesome would be turned away. lol

Customisbetter

Hoping to revive this thread!

My Lemons race went amazingly! Built the cage in 30 hours with no sleep then drove the thing two hours to the track, passed tech and then finally got some rest. Next day the car ran great and survived completely unscathed. Sunday boiled the brake fluid and the warmer temps caused some overheating. Pitted and built a splitter out of plywood to direct air through the radiator and then had zero issues after then.
Finished the race and then drove the car home. I cannot believe what we accomplished and I Had the time of my life!


I'm thinking about doing the Michigan international speedway event next year with Chump car. Anybody have experience doing both series?

Diver22

iTrader: (1)

What car did you use?

Customisbetter

My rx7 convertible.

mschiap

iTrader: (20)

Congrats! quite an awesome story of budget endurance racing.
We're a west-coast based team. We've run two LeMons events and approx 15 Chumpcar events. It's dificult to get an RX7 accepted to LeMons events out here, and the tracks are filled to (beyond) capacity. Chumpcar fields are smaller, so there is more racing room, which we prefer.

Mazda did well at the recent Fontana Chumpcar event:
SATURDAY
1 261 #502 Wet and Wreckless 1979 Mazda RX7 (302 V8 engine swap)
2 260 #30 Miata P.I. 1994 Mazda Miata
3 257 #37 Roto-Plooker Racing 1990 Mazda RX7

SUNDAY
1 260 #30 Miata P.I. 1994 Mazda Miata
2 256 #82 The Flyin' Hawaiians & 2 White Guys 1973 Datsun 260z
3 252 #74 Leftover Parts Racing 1983 Mazda RX7

We're off to Vegas this coming weekend for the Chumpcar west region championship.

Customisbetter

Thanks and Good luck this weekend!

Diver22

iTrader: (1)

Yeah good luck. Here is our chump/lemons car.

cheseroo

iTrader: (2)

Welcome to the madness. I've got basically the same car as you and a similar cage setup. If you passed LeMons safety then you shouldn't have much an issue with Chump tech. There are differences in what is/isn't allowed as far as kill switch location (Chump requires that it be in the center of the car). You'll need a window net. I didn't want the hardware hanging down in the upper/front part of the cage where you'd scalp yourself every time you got out. I got this type of mount (with the seatbelt type latch) and welded the tab towards the outside of the cage tube so the tab was mostly out of the path of your head when getting in/out. http://www.summitracing.com/parts/gfr-wm1 The net is a trapezoid type where the bottom side is secured with a length of allthread that attaches to the cage via brackets at each end. You'll also need arm restraints since it's a vert. Almost forgot, you'd need a fire suppression system too. I went with the 4.0L system from these guys 4.0 Liter Multi-Flo Steel Mechanical AFFF System
As far as filling out the Chump forms for vehicle valuation, well, I'd suggest you consult your accountant, actuary, clergy and mistress to determine your vehicle's Chump value. Don't ask me how to do it as I can't figure it out. All I know is that I'm over $500 due to my scrap plywood splitter, lexan vent windows, stolen campaign sign/coroplast airbox and ABS pipe cooling vents. I think they dropped the stock brake pad requirement for next year so that saves me some penalty hits. I run Hawk brake pads with Castrol GT/LMA fluid and have had zero braking issues and get good brake wear. That combo is certainly not the most exotic or expensive so I'm not sure why you'd have brake problems in a pretty light car with good sized brakes. You want to see brake problems, you should see what I have to go through with Jag brakes.

I've cut the stock springs 1.5 coils and slotted the upper strut mount holes inward and rearward. That got me 2 degrees of camber up front. I had to shave a little rubber off the strut top so it doesn't try to self center in the hole. It handles pretty nice, doesn't do anything stupid and telegraphs pretty far in advance when it's unhappy. I don't know what the temps were but if you are having cooling issues this time of year, you'll kill that thing in the summer. Make sure your undertray is under there and attached. I took the hit and bought the Racing Beat silicon radiator hoses, bypassed the heater lines and bought new hoses for the rest. Every engine that we've popped was because of a burst water hose. I've plumbed in a oil pressure idiot light sender from a 65 Impala wired to a trailer clearance light on the dash. When that comes on, we know the cooling system has lost pressure and it's time to shut er down.

Customisbetter

That coolant idiot light is an awesome idea!

We overheated from no under tray. We literally worked without sleep for 30 hours and then dropped everything and drive to the track. We made it with 4 minutes to spare and were the last car through tech. So the undertray never got out on. Lol

We used very not cheap ECS brake pads and they wore awesomely. Only issue was the left rear caliper amazing and putting the piston to the rotor. The other pads looked great.

We used that blue dot 4 fluid and it did great. I want to try the AP racing stuff I use at work next time around since I use it every day.

I'm thinking about re theming my car into the my work car. The 2014 Trans Am TA2 Championship winning #1 blue Dodge Challenger. We have a spare nose I can cut up and fab onto the front and old wings we don't use. Maybe make some lemonsy parody sponsor stickers???

This is my day job...

Customisbetter

Since the lemons season ends today I was thinking about next season.
With my work schedule I can't really race everything i would like to. It would be super cool if Trans Am and Lemons shared a weekend because that would make my life so much easier.

So the hope is to race Gingerman and Joliet for Lemons. Then at least one of the Michigan International Speedway events for ChumpCar.

I also finally move in to a house with a garage this month so things are looking up!

Customisbetter

Anyone racing this year?

cheseroo

iTrader: (2)

Already ran Sears Point (not in the RX7). RX7 got waitlisted for March Sears Point but Jag and E46 (wtf?) got in. Chump changed their Buttonwillow race to 1 day from 24 hours which kinda killed my interest (and apparently everyone else's too as it got cancelled). Planning on running Fontana with RX7, E46 (EC) and maybe the Jag. Plan is to put newbies in the Jag. We'll run 2 cars at LeMons Buttonwillow (RX7/E46/Rover?). After that it's kinda murky. Thinking about Chump at Vegas and Laguna, LeMons at Thunderhill and Miller.

I kicked another rod out of the last spare Imp block so I'm thinking of repowering it to rotary with a VW transaxle. I'd like to use an S4/S5 so that it can share a spare with the RX7. So I'm looking for a kennedy/vw adapter kit, 6 port carb intake (Imp has limited space above the engine), some sort of self contained ignition and perhaps a S4/5 engine or rebuildable core.

Customisbetter

Dayum 9 races? Thats a lot!


Actually i just realized that i can only do three because i am running 11 races in Trans Am. So I guess 9 seems more reasonable. lol

You have a pretty sweet schedule I must say.

cheseroo

iTrader: (2)

Well, 9 is probably too ambitious but I'd say 5-6 is more likely

Customisbetter

Still thats pretty awesome

darmy

iTrader: (10)

NA FC gets 3rd place at Sears Pointless 2015 - Brought to you by Team Rotary Rooter

We're pretty proud of ourselves, mostly since this race is so competitive, and fields so many really good teams. We've gotten top 10 a few times before, but feel that top 3 puts us in with the big boys.

Our car ran trouble free during the race, although this was after a hellish Friday where we spent 12 hours finding and fixing a fault in the trailing toggle wire. We also did not step on our dicks and ran without a single black flag all weekend for once. We had one stop in the penalty box when we self reported after someone hit us. The other party owned up and the judges whisked us through. We lead the race for a while near the end of our first stint until refueling times took their toll.

The 1st and 2nd place cars were on the same team, the Flying Scotsmen. They were well driven and crewed, but their real advantage was both cars took at most 1 pit per day. This is not something we can even come close to doing with our rotary. The car is plenty fast and the engine is bulletproof, but the fuel economy kills us. We try to mitigate this with what we think is a very good fuel cell setup, and very good pit times, but The Scotsmen still had about 10 extra minutes on track than we did over the course of the weekend.

For full disclosure, Depend (Porch Racing) and Cervesa got 5 "penalty" laps to help even the playing field. While Cervesa broke near the end of the race, Porch, another team that iron-mans 2 stints, would have taken 1st and bumped us back to 4th if not for those -5 laps.

cheseroo

iTrader: (2)

Was watching you guys on Race Monitor. It's just real tough to win a west coast race particularly when other cars can do it on only 1 stop/day. I thought for sure the Scotsmen guys would break or step on their wienies because they seem to do that but I thought Cerveza would be the ones that won it. Well done boys. I think the only chance us FC guys have is to go to Utah or Colorado.

darmy

iTrader: (10)

Thanks cheseroo!

Yeah, it's tough with the current format. Now, if Jay were to implement Spank's idea of a max stint length, that'd be a game-changer for our platform.

I also happen to agree with the idea for a few other reasons:

1) Driver safety - A person is 10x more likely to make a bad decision in hour 4 than hour 2, no matter who they are.
2) Driver comfort and the fun factor - Fighting down puke for the last 30 minutes of a stint is not fun, which is why we're doing this in the first place.
3) It'll put more pit strategy and crew strength back in the mix - I think this is the coolest part of the series, and would love to see more of it, especially in class A where the cars are less likely to come in on an unplanned stop.

Customisbetter

Congrats guys!!!


1 stop a day? How is that even possible on 24 gallons of fuel per stint?
For the record the Trans AM cars I run use 22 gallons in 75 minute races. One pit a day seems just insane.

I have a spare old 22 gallon ATL I could grab from work but its a whole lot of work to fab that badboy up. I am considering doing it for the Michigan Speedway race this summer.

cheseroo

iTrader: (2)

The stock BMW 6's seem to be able to go 4 hours at a good pace with a 22 gal cell (max allowable size). We got almost 4 hours out of our FC with the stock tank at last year's 5 mile Thunderhill race but there was a fair amount of full course cautions. At Buttonwillow where you are on the hammer a lot more, we may or may not make 2 hours. Not sure if darmy's FC ran properly long enough to know what sort of mileage they got in the altitude at Utah last year but that seems like a track like Sears Point where you would get decent mileage.

Not a big fan of a stint length rule even though I was part of Spank's marathon deal. That came about because he wanted to stretch the moke's range by putting a bigger cell in it. Compounding that was I would be flying back from Tulsa on Sunday morning and wouldn't get there till 1pm or so. The plan was that I would take the 2nd shift when I got there (it was just the two of us). He told people he would stop when he was ready but then decided that I was going to signal him (somehow) when I got there so he would know to stop. I waved a few times from the garages but I guess he never saw me and ended up running out of fuel with 15 minutes to go. He was not in good shape when he got out of the car which is why he's advocating that no one try that again.

I would be okay with something that says you have to stop at least once a day but no time limit. Apparently Roland can see pretty quick whether or not you stopped and how many. The problem I have with a Chump type 2 hr stint limit is that it removes all available strategy if you have a slower car (i.e. my Imp or Rover). If you tell me I have to stop X times, then I can play around with putting a faster guy in the longer stints and slower guys in the shorter, etc. If my car is 10 secs slower a lap than you and I'm forced to stop the same number of times as you, I can't stretch my stints to do one fewer stop than you so I have no hope. For our FC, the difference between running top 10 and not is to cut out one fuel stop. You just can't run fast enough on track to make up the difference. While it's fun to go fast, slowing down a little if you can cut out one stop makes a huge difference in standings at a crowded race. Ultimately, I don't seem LeMons changing anything in this area. FWIW, I think WRL is trying to add west coast races and I think their rules might be a bit more favorable to the FC's.

DaveEstey

iTrader: (2)

We'll be joining the RX7 ranks on the East Coast this year in our 87 Sport



I'm the veteran on the team with one Lemons under my belt, but we have some good fabricators and decent racers from the hillclimb, circle track and autocross realms.

Last year I was part of the Datstang team that made the "Most amazing Lemons Cars of 2014" list. Yes that's me eating Dinky Di.
LeMons New England: Many Audis, Many Forgotten GM Cars, and the World?s Most Evil Vanagon | Car and Driver Blog

We're skipping out on the crazy fabrication and going for reliability this time around.

Customisbetter

Dang that looks like a clean car! What's wrong with it that's made it a lemon?

DaveEstey

iTrader: (2)

Hidden rust. The floors around the seat mounts are bad and there are some holes in body panels, like the driver's side door. It also needs a transmission (I have 3 spares), fuel lines and a de-mousification.

It was sold as a parts car.

It photographs nicely though hahaha