LeMons at Autobahn

[gas it]

There's 4 SHO's and one Geo SHO. 70% chance of rain. FWD will rule!!!

 

[luigisho]

Pics Sergio!

 

[platoribs]

Might mosey down there after I get some chores done.

 

[SinisterSHO]

anyone have any updates on this?

 

[Toolman]

A neon won, not sure where RRRR finished, or the other SHOs and SHO powered vehicles.

 

[typhoon5000]

Full results here.

It was a pretty interesting race. Lots of SHOs, as mentioned. My team, Rally Rolla, in an '89 Toyota Corolla All-Trac finished 11th! even though we had one of the slowest lap times of the top half of the field.

I have a bunch of pics and vids and hop to get some of the pics posted tonight.

 

[SVOFANATIC]

I've always wanted to do this and one of the tracks isn't that far from me either.

 

[typhoon5000]

Here's my full album of raw pics: http://s303.photobucket.com/albums/nn122/typhoon5000/LeMons%20Chicago%202010/

Here's one of each SHO powered car:

MetroSHO


ROBOSHO


Warhawks


Victorious Secret in their CliTaurus


RRRR Team changing a wheel bearing:


Here's my team's car:

 

[gas it]

Here's some. http://www.murileemartin.com/LC10/UG/LC10-UG.html

I'll post the all about it tonight. Got home last night at 11:30pm.

 

[FordLover]

Here's one of each SHO powered car:


RRRR Team changing a wheel bearing:

There I am, supervising Sergio pulling the spindle/knuckle. We were in first place till the wheel bearing went kaput, most likely from some earlier car contact. Managing to claw back from a 32 place to 9th was way better than we were expecting. I saw the all trac badge on the back of the corolla and was surprised, I didn't even know they made an AWD.

We've got a month till the race in Belle Rose, La. so we've got work to do..

Also a shout to Ryan Pasch, we got to hang a while towards the end of the race, and after the awards stuff, I didn't see you again, and didn't get to say bye.

 

[gas it]

There I am, supervising Sergio pulling the spindle/knuckle.

And the old man wanted to quit and go home. What a crybaby ........

 

[Crab Spirits]

Okay, for those that want the play by play, here it is. We're all still recovering and all our cars smell like oil, mildew, and farts.



Thursday Evening: Everyone showed up to finish the car. It was a ways off from being complete, but too close to give up on completely. We finished welding the cage, adding an additional diagonal brace and floor plates to help deal with the huge rust holes in the footwell area. The rest of the team concentrated on our engine firewall, which, I'm quite proud of. See, a few weeks prior, we went to a scrap yard to find some sheetmetal to build it. They had a bunch of sections of big metal billboards. Figuring we might be able to find something cool, we thumbed through them with the annoyed mexican scrap worker. When we saw it, we flipped out.

So it's late Thursday and I'm really running out of steam as we align the car with a tape measurer, re-weld the shift cable so it can actually go into gear, get the coms set up, fix a chronic heater hose leak, and bleed the nightmareish cooling system. At about 1AM we take it out to the parking lot here at the golf course to see how screwed we are and get everyone familiar with the car. Only issue that seems to be unresolved is it cuts out under hard acceleration, other than that, it feels ok to at least limp around the track. We guess that since the fuel cell and pickup is at such a stupid angle, that even with 1/3 tank, it starts sucking air. There is really no time to diagnose it any further. We leave the shop around 3:30am with the belts and fuel cell mounting still not done.

Friday: I get out of bed and begin vomiting from the exhaustion, stress, and partial hangover. Other team members experience similar. We are literally killing ourselves on this car. I go swap out our 5th argon/co2 cylinder to go with the 25lbs of welding wire we've used and begin another thrash session. At noon, the car is finally ready to scrape it's way onto the trailer. I can't even think straight, so I bring the car and very little else to the track which is 15 minutes away fortunately. I leave all the tools and wood "ramps" necessary for jacking up the car at the shop. I also put a pin that secures the ramp on the trailer in the wrong position, so of course that falls down and sparks all over the busy expressway. I finally get to the track and circle the paddock for a space. This is one of my fondest memories of the weekend. Everyone is already there, done with tech, and sorting out their cars when I drive past with the geo on the trailer. It's like a record scratch at a dance club.
I plop down near The Lowbrau team, totally clueless on what I should be doing. Fortunately, they are super awesome people and went out of their way to help us the entire weekend. I would give them the shirt off my back.
My brother arrives and we head to tech and BS. We were one of the last cars to go through. I was pretty dazed the whole time, but it seemed like everyone came out to watch our car get tech'd. HQ seemed puzzled at first and then literally speechless while they went over our car. I remember hearing "That's the most awesome hood I've ever seen in my life." "Look at the exhaust!" It was hilarious. We fail tech for a missing bolt in the battery tray, wrong size shoulder straps, bad vent line routing, and some wiring rats nest. Next was BS. I popped the hood to expose our bribes, some car-themed Chicago microbrews, our OOgah horn (by request), and the neon lights. Phil responded by saying "You're bribing us?! WHY?!" He attempted to jounce the suspension, which did not happen, and laughed. There was some mumbling going on, followed by "but it's just so cool." We received 0 penalty laps. Awesome. We spent the rest of the night trying to resolve our tech issues. I was very concerned about fixing our harness, Lowbrau and a few others were busy helping us find a replacement. We borrowed the shoulder straps from a friend's drift car and they worked perfectly. Wow. We drive tomorrow.

Saturday: It's been dry here in Chicago for months, but today it's going to rain hard. I'm supposed to drive first, but I feel like crap again and we cannot seem to adjust the crotch straps on the worst racing harness ever made. Everyone is out on the track already, the green flag is about to drop and we are pulling the seat out to adjust 2 belts. Also, it's pouring rain and everyone is soaked. My brother, Dan, takes my place and pulls onto the track 3 minutes late in the middle of a downpour in an untested midship. Did I mention he has absolutely NO motorsports experience of any kind? What can possibly go wrong? I ask him if the car is actually accelerating. He says something descriptive like "Yep". But after seeing it drive by on the main straight, it becomes apparent. NO, it is not accelerating, it is HAULING F'G A**. We are all just standing there in the rain shocked watching the MetSHrO overtake the entire field through standing water. I yell at him to slow down, but he tells me he's not driving fast, everyone else is driving slow. He's right, people are spinning and having a terrible time.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=1429507580238

He has to pit right away though with a completely fogged windshield. After a few more laps, he comes in with shifter problems with it stuck in the 1-2 gate. The fabbed part of the shifter is fine, the Ford part broke at the balljoint. I just put it in the 3-4 gate and push him back out. Later in the day the ball joint for the other cable would fail. Then he comes in with a broken PTT on the radio. As long as this cursed car is out on the track, it blows by all but the fastest cars out there. In fact, by hour 2, despite our frequent pitting and late start, Dan has us in 17th position.

After 2 hours we put Eric in the car. He says "This thing is awesome!" and stays pretty fast and consistent with heavy traffic. We are reaching 1/3 tank now and the car cuts off for 10 seconds around the one left turn on the track which gives up any advantage we have. It kind of ****** me off. Once again, something I made has everything crap working perfectly and all the expensive new stuff SUCKS.

We get a BF for passing under a yellow nobody saw. We also find out that was our 2nd BF for the same thing. There were some problems with flagging on one corner. HQ loves the car so much, we get a slap on the wrist and are sent back out. Close to the end of Eric's stint, the car is hit hard square on the right rear wheel. The toe is knocked way off. Aaron gets in next for the remaining 3 hours. We can never sync refueling and driver changes and waste a lot of time pitting. He drives at a conservative pace which is fine considering the damage to the car. We end the day in 24th.

That night we check the car over. I do my best to eye-align the rear in the dark. We open the cell up to shift the pickup to the rear. Once done, it fails to start. We are all too tired/hungry to fix it now.

Sunday: I'm supposed to drive but feel terrible again, and have to fix the car. Turned out the hose came off the pump inside the tank when I was moving it. Dan takes my place once again. He is complaining that it's all over the place. After another refuel, which adds +10 mana and +5 magic to our car, he rips off our fastest lap of 1:25.142. Only a couple cars are faster than that. Then he spins and comes in for another slap on the wrist. We put teamate 5 in the car and after only 2 laps he spins and we get BF. We need a tire of shame on the roof now. Of course I forgot the 4" tire at the shop that I was going to bring should this penalty occur so we have to hunt one down as well as the tools we need. We brought NOTHING. We just threw any chance of finishing well right in the toilet. I'm just stunned at this disaster and how ill prepared we are. Some teams are nice enough to help out and a tire is bolted on in short order while I suit up. Figuring Eric and Aaron didn't have too much trouble, I quickly set the rear toe back to where it was post-crash.

Once out on the track, I finally start to have fun. What is the MetSHrO like? Well, by some miracle the suspension feels pretty balanced, but with some really bad cornerweighting, which is what I expected. It feels like driving a teeter totter. There is no weight in the front unless you have that magic fuel, so it understeers unless you are braking. We really needed 0* camber as with -2* we were using 70% of our contact patch up front. The brakes are really good, but with pedal travel that does not inspire confidence. They reach lock up pretty much at the floor. It's scary but actually works well as kind of a caveman ABS while making threshold braking easy. Best of all is that beautiful beast sitting behind you. Just before apex, you punch it. The runner control kicks in and the tail just plants with insane traction as it screams to 7000rpm (I never hit the limiter, there was no need), then you upshift and that's when you do your best to weave through everyone before you. I remember being next to a stockish S13 through 3rd, and once I upshifted it was like I hit the NOS.

But then there was that problem out back. It was like a swinging pendulum. It got so bad under braking that I was sawing the wheel back and forth to keep the back end from favoring one side before making my turn. I came in for magic fuel after an hour and lap times dropped by 16 seconds. Then at turn 2 it went south. I took the same line I had taken many times, had a bad hop, and without warning I was facing the front of a LeSabre. Mandatory 3 hour time out, which was fine with me. We obviously had no business being out there.

This left us the final 15 minutes of race after the penalty and I planned to nurse our car around the track just to finish. Teammate 5 wanted to redeem himself however, and since he only got 2 laps in the car, I told him he could finish the race with the stipulation that he stayed behind the slowest car out there. This did not happen. Instead, he was doing laps 2 seconds off Dan's best as he battled with the Red Rocket SHO and other top-driven fast machines as I screamed at him over the radio. Then on the FINAL LAP, NIGHTMARE. He cooks it off turn 2 and almost causes a massive pileup. I can't remember a time I've been more embarrassed in my life. If the $800 radio I was holding had belonged to me, I would have smashed it all over the pavement. I told him to just go home.

At the awards ceremony I was shocked to find out that we had won Organizer's Choice following the unforgettable speech from Jay. It wouldn't have surprised me if we had gotten a "Don't ever come back" instead. It was kind of a bittersweet end to the whole ordeal. I really just needed a beer, and a lukewarm Miller Light was placed in my hand. It was probly the best beer I've ever had.

Then an amazing conversation took place with my wife who has been less-than-pleased from the beginning.
Me:"Well it was kinda fun, but I dunno if I'll do it again."
Wife:"What!"
Me:"Yeah, it's just so much trouble."
Wife:"Why? Now that the car is done and....(more rationalizing)"
Me:"Are you even listening to yourself?!"

Much thanks goes out to SHOforum and dozens of other people. It would have never happened at all without that support.

 

[typhoon5000]

Awesome story. You have to run again. I know the first time building the car is a huge PIA, but that was the hardest part. Now it's just fixing/reinforcing what you know will most likely break and tweaking to make it better. And next time you can be much more prepared.

In our first race in the Rally Rolla we also finished it the night before, and placed 25th out of 52 cars because we played it very conservatively and pitted every hour to check on the car. For our second race, we tried to fix some of the original problems we had and we pitted every hour and a half (so each of our 5 drivers got a stint each day) and we placed 11th even though our car is slow as **** with only about 100hp when new. Your car is smoking fast and the judges love it, so if you got it running right, it could def be a 1st place contender. Just think of what you could do with $1500 in nickels!

 

[Crab Spirits]

Nice to meet you btw. I wanted to stick around and bs, but had many other things to tend to. I feel like I missed half the event. Never got to hang out. Never got to sample the brews and food that make these races what they are.

 

[Sho Amo]

Let me know if you wanna sell it to me, so I can race it

Sounds like fun.

 

[typhoon5000]

Nice to meet you btw. I wanted to stick around and bs, but had many other things to tend to. I feel like I missed half the event. Never got to hang out. Never got to sample the brews and food that make these races what they are.

Nice to meet you too. I know it was a crazy weekend and I didn't get much time to talk to any of the other SHO teams as well, except for quickly stopping by the RRRR team just as they were tearing their knuckle off for the new bearing.

 

[Crab Spirits]

Rally Rolla and the MetSHrO appear in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/v/5BfUSsFTpVo?fs=1&hl=en_US

 

[gas it]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTU5zXgxz1A

Here's the Warhunks 27 SHO fighting with the Randy Pobst team Crown Vic. At around the 4 minute mark here we(RRRR) come and pass them both.

 

[gas it]

It's a week late, but here's our story.

We leave Houston around 1:30pm with the car on a trailer. First time it was trailered to a race. Drive all night and get to Autobahn at 7:30am.

We go get ready to test. All 3 of us drive in the morning and we all like the North course. We practice again in the afternoon and like the track even more. We go thru tech and BS inspection. Tech finds 2 spots on our rollcage that has incomplete welds. We get one of the teams to weld it and pass tech. Now it's BS time. The result was a 1 lap penalty for not getting a residual value from the last race. OK, whatever. We know we can make up one lap over 2 days so BFD.

Saturday it's raining. Race starts at 10. Jay goes out and drives for 2 hours til the rain stops. With the 1 lap penalty we are way down in 70th out of 87 cars. He comes in at 1:40. Not sure where we were then but still a ways back. Martin goes out and about 30 minutes later comes in for car contact in a turn. It's a racing deal and he goes back out in 10 minutes. No problem as the track is now pretty and he says he can pass everybody. No one can pass us. At 3pm we are in first. A little later he comes in for gas. I get in and drive. Then I get black flagged for passing under yellow. WTF? I go in and they say he passed under yellow and maintained race speed during the yellow!!! I was smoking hot. This isn't my first race, I know how to act under yellow. Well you can't argue with a dictator so I got to be in a parade with 3 other BF offenders. I had to follow the Judgemobile around the paddock at 10mph waving to the people. I love a parade........Finally 15minutes later it was over. Back out on track, I think we were 9th or so. Either Martin or I sset fastest lap of the race then. The car was flying.

Then, 45 minutes before the end of the race on Saturday, the right front wheel bearing grenades. I come in and we look at it. I say we are done. The others don't think so, and say to wait and see where we are at the end of racing for Sat. It's 32nd place 39 laps down to the leader. Let's go home I say. But these other 2 guys don't want to hear that kind of quitter talk. Jay talks to some corner workers and they told him that we were driving some lines that they didn't think were possible without going off the track. He told them of our problem and they said don't quit, there's 7 more hours of racing left and anything can happen.

Jay calls an auto parts store and goes to get a bearing. Martin and I look for a bearing press. At Autobahn there are plenty of race shops on site and we found one with a press. $40 later we had anew bearing in the spindle. OK.

That night we looked at my yellow BF penalty. The video shows clear as water I was not passing under yellow like they said. But it wouldn't matter since the call was already made. The flagging on Sat. was so bad that Jay, Mr LeMons had to have a talk with them that night. It was better Sunday but still not great.

So Sunday the plan is go drive it like we stole it. I go out and drive like Mexican druglords are chasing me for stealing their drugs. It was non-stop passing, I passed everything, including a time zone I think. I come in for gas at 11:15. They tell me to keep driving we are moving up, in the top 20 now. I come back in at 1:20 and we are 13th. I set a quicker fastest lap than yesterday by half a second. Martin drives til 3:06 and Jay takes over. I think we were 10th maybe by then. He clicks off a faster lap than me with 10 minutes to go, we are 9th. Then the 36 Camaro sets a faster lap by 3/10ths of a second. Oh well no one wins anything for fastest lap, other than bragging rights.

So 9th was it, 3 laps behind the 27 Warhunks SHO in 8th.

Next is New Orleans, a 24hour race on Nov 20th. We are 5 points from the national leader Eyesore racing. They have one more race on Dec 4th in CA. Depends how well we do in N.O. and what they do in CA to see if we have a chance in Miami on Dec. 30th, another 24 hour race.

Stay tuned, anything can happen......

 

[fmcokc]

More videos on youtube of the race from inside the warhunk SHO:

http://www.youtube.com/user/fmcokc?feature=mhum

Enjoy