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| 24 Hours of LeMons https://mail.slantsix.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27672 |
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| Author: | Joshie225 [ Thu Mar 06, 2008 2:43 pm ] |
| Post subject: | 24 Hours of LeMons |
Well, my entry for the 24 Hours of LeMons was accepted. The car is a '79 Chrysler Newport with a 318. We will be participating in the May 10th-11th event at Altamont Motorsports Park near Tracy, California. I would have rather had an A-body, but everything around here was too expensive so we race the boat. Shameless plug alert... Sponsorship is available. If you would like to donate tires in 235/60R15, a cop car wheel, some time or,  cash, we would love to hear from you. Wish us luck! |
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| Author: | ceej [ Thu Mar 06, 2008 3:00 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Good Luck! Gonna get lots of stuff welded to your car?  I'll dig around and see if I still have some tires. You can grab them on your way through (if I can find them.) I had two. I'll check tomorrow night. Soon enough? You can use my "Tire Machine."  CJ |
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| Author: | 66aCUDA [ Thu Mar 06, 2008 3:34 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Good Luck Josh Maybe you can race a slant next time  Frank |
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| Author: | NYG95GA [ Thu Mar 06, 2008 5:48 pm ] |
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I LOVE the LeMons race concept! First race I ever saw was a demo derby (45 years ago), and I've loved racing ever since. Now I enjoy the high tech endurance races. LeMons seems like a perfect grassroots blend of the two; a fantastic idea! Looks like the Mopar to have in the series is a Neon.. they seem to do quite well. 
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| Author: | Joshie225 [ Tue May 13, 2008 10:17 am ] |
| Post subject: | Ran The Race and Finished! |
My team collapsed and was resurrected. As a result we did not race the '79 Newport, but an '84 Ford Ranger. This lead to changing the team name to No-Power Rangers. Below is the post race write-up I posted to the Mopar Road Race and Auto Cross mailing list to which I belong. If you search You Tube for Lemons Altamont 2008 there is one video clip showing the pickup going by in the first few frames. We finished 40th of 88. Would have been better, but we lost many laps due to seized brake calipers and a lack of power. LeMons Racing Altamont '08; The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Our rookie owner/driver drew the longest straw and started the race. After about 45 minutes he came in complaining of a lack of power. After fiddling with the truck for a few minutes I got in and discovered no brake pedal. I was able to pump up the brakes so I took the truck out and almost completed a full lap before returning to the pits. I could tell the brakes were dragging badly. We got the front up on stands and found the rotors impossible to turn by hand. The only solution was to replace the calipers. Mad props to Tim's friend Alex and our own Keith Johnson (aka Dr Rustbucket) who saved the day! Without them bringing brake calipers to replace the seized ones the truck would have spent less than an hour on track Saturday and our 40th place finish would have been impossible. Big kudos and much love to Keith and Alex! Without you guys it's likely I would have had only a few minutes of wheel time that day. That's the good part of this little sub-story. The bad side is that the truck spent lots of time in the pits with smoking hot seized up front brakes while the competition put us 87 laps down. OK, cutting the LR tire on debris didn't help our position either, but far more laps were lost to the bad brakes than anything else. The LF caliper was the worst. When I cracked the bleeder screw to see if there was pressure being retained in the hydraulic system I got vapor! The ugly part is this could have all been avoided if the rookie truck owner had done more prep work as Tim had asked. I won't list all the things on the truck that were not addressed by said rookie driver/owner, but I was quite unhappy with the lack of prep. Tim ended up spending many hours reworking problem areas and addressing others that had been completely neglected before the truck left LA, but more needed to be done. We were very lucky the brakes were the only serious mechanical issue. Overall the truck handled very well for a Twin-I-Beam pick 'em up truck. Between cut down V6 Ranger coil springs, F250 Monroe Gas Magnum front shocks and a beefy sway bar the front was well planted and used the 275/40R17 Pirelli tires quite well. The back was lowered 4" to match the front by simply moving the spring mounts higher on the frame and substituting shorter Ford Aerostar shocks for the now-too-long Ranger spec shocks. Once the truck picked up some speed on the oval I was able to drive inside many other cars and hold them off going into the chicane. You just don't get a lot of thrust from a 2.3L engine at 2000 RPM so plenty of cars went around as the truck struggled off the corners. If the truck could have come off the slow corners better many more cars would have had to stare at our tail gate. Steeper rear gears would have helped a lot. Early on in my drive I kept my nose clean and hit the brakes often to avoid car-to-truck contact. I gave room when cars were along side and allowed faster cars to go by. Not once did I intentionally block or hit another car. I did rear end the '73 Fury as I explained in my previous e-mail, but that's the danger of running so many cars with so many rookie drivers on such a short track at racing speeds. Sunday's drive was a bit different for me. I was tired of making way for slower cars that refused to allow space for two vehicles to race side by side. I took a tougher attitude and gave up ground less often. This led to the spun out a gold Benz when the put his tail into my nose not once, but twice! Not once did I earn a black flag. In speaking with a driver from Team Size Matters Chrysler I learned that he too spun that Benz in strikingly similar circumstances. The lesson here is watch your mirrors and don't cut off faster traffic. Even with squabbles in our pits during mechanical problems and an argument about tires it was quite the weekend. I am looking forward to my next LeMons race. I felt good about my wheel time except for occasionally over driving the truck and hitting a Ford Escort that I was unable to avoid. Immediately after I hit the Escort the race was red flagged and much oil dry went down right where I slid into the Escort rather than making my turn. I feel that if the truck had been better prepped and tested before it hit the track we would have had a more relaxed time in the pits, spent more time on track and finished better. Joshua Skinner No-Power Rangers |
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| Author: | Joshie225 [ Tue May 13, 2008 12:00 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
I found a picture of me driving out of the esses onto the banking. 
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| Author: | coconuteater64 [ Tue May 13, 2008 4:30 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Love it! |
This racing series is just shy of awesome! I have been watching this series since 1984, except it was called "Aloha Friday on the H-1 Freeway Toward Waikiki". Bunch of rust buckets bashing the crap outta each other. Yep, LeMons and Honolulu have a lot of similarities. Mad props to ya. I'd love to do something like that some day if the races ever come closer to home. |
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