24 hours of Lemons at Thunderhill

[bam2002]

This one was good. The cars had to run lights for night driving. It was a road course so HP came into play.

Thunderhill Lemons: Nocturnal LeMons

results..

Thunderhill Lemons: The Top 50 Lemons of 24 Hours of LeMons

photos

Flickr: Photos tagged with 24hoursoflemons

More to come.

I will be calling the cage guy this week RE getting materials.

Id like to have a meeting with those whom I have contacted re driving.. the end of Jan?

B

[treekiller]

Nice one, looks like they were able to tone down the accidents! that is huge! Am I driving? I can help with the cage if you need help.

[Loren]

We've got the rally on Jan 26th. Check schedules for any other events you want to avoid scheduling on top of... or schedule your meeting on a weekday evening.

Is there a date set for the event we're looking at doing? I need to get it on my calendar.

[bam2002]

Weekend of July 26th is the one in SC..
Then they have another in Ohio Sept 13th weekend. IF the SC one goes so well and every on needs another fix.

But July 26th is the one I want to be ready for.

Also is meeting some where in Ybor OK.. guessing its centralized.. I dont know if any one lives in St pete vs tampa.

[Loren]

My calendar is marked. When are we gonna do some practice at Sebring?

BTW, Jeff and I have driven CMP. You'll want the car set up to really handle tight "almost autocross" turns for the one back section of that track. If the car has the tendency to plow rather than turn, with as many drivers as you're going to have, it could get ugly for the tires.

[burgy240]

That looks like SOOO much fun!

[bam2002]

Loren
Thanks for the heads up on the track. the e30s tend to understeer so we will need to do some welding on the rear sway bar to beef it up.
Each car has about $200 of improvments. Since I have already spent the $$ for 2 new timing belts on each. They are not installed yet.

Also a side note from the Lemons group out on Yahoo. Some of you may want to join.

Here is a thread about penalties and getting blacked flagged..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I didn't ever get to use the shock collar, dammit. Admittedly, this was mostly because I
was too busy escorting miscreants straight out the front gate. (I think I pulled six driver
wristbands by the end of the day Saturday, and I personally put three cars on the trailer
Sunday. We also gave out a whole crapload of one-hour and four-hour impounds.)

I did cheer up a little when DILLIGAF manfully took three-dozen raw eggs in the lap over a
30-minute tire/cone penalty, but it just seemed that nobody wanted the shock collar in
exchange for keeping his wristband, the wimps. They were possibly too afraid of the little
one...--Jay

--- In 24hoursofLeMons@ yahoogroups. com, Jason Wiener <jason@...> wrote:
>
> did anyone get tased?
>

[treekiller]

Originally Posted by Loren

My calendar is marked. When are we gonna do some practice at Sebring?

BTW, Jeff and I have driven CMP. You'll want the car set up to really handle tight "almost autocross" turns for the one back section of that track. If the car has the tendency to plow rather than turn, with as many drivers as you're going to have, it could get ugly for the tires.

I concur completely, the only place where you could have a car that was too loose is turn 2, where the floor drops out, or the kink. It's a Wilson designed track and has his signature radius changing keyhole because of it, the longest straight is coming out of the sharpest corner.

and while Loren might have a diffrent input, the curbs on track out are rough. where Sebring invites you to use all the track these seriously mess you up. in a race i'd want to pass on the inside. if you get pushed on one of those curbs you'll pogo right onto the grass. (don't ask me how I know) so yes a loose car will be nice, but it will have to brake REALLY well if we ever want to pass anyone. another thing to keep in mind is the sand when it gets windy. it can blow uninterrupted onto turns 1+2 unless they paved the paddock.

[bam2002]

Here is a video of the Thunderhill 1.2 mile course.

Looks like Alot of fun,,

Full Video of Sunday Session - trackHQ.com Gallery

[Loren]

Nice. Didn't watch all of it, but looks like good clean respectful racing.

[bam2002]

Well I am thinking where the $200 would be best spent. Welding up some metal to the rear sway bar will be one way to stiffen it up.
I am thinking some sort of brake upgrade would be ideal, but with the 14 inch rims? Maybe using some brakes of a 5 series ( heavier ).
I know i can find cheap copies of ECU chips on ebay for $50..
But the engine has a 5 k redline. and is only about 120 HP.

So weight also will come into play. Since there wont be a need for any huge nerf bars there wont be alot of weight added. But I definatly dont want to skimp on the roll cage..

To tune the cars I am ok with a sebring run. But Im thinking some dial in sessions up at brooksvile would also work. Since we set up the course on Sat and run on Sun. we would use Sat for testing.

Last of all.
Who can meet during the week?
Id say around 6 or 7 in the Tampa area.. Or you are welcome to come out to Brandon at the house and see the cars.. meet here.

B

NOTE>>> Just got a Fuel cell 16 gal of ebay for one of the cars..

[Loren]

I can make a weekday evening meeting.

The decisions here will be yours, but my recommendations for this kind of event are pretty simple:

1. Remove as much weight as possible. Look at some of the cars in that video. No side or rear glass. Replace the front glass with Lexan if possible... or make everyone wear full-face helmets and run without glass. Remove all of the factory lighting and extraneous wiring, wire some simple "crash-proof" brake lights up high inside the car (again, look at the video). Cut out inner door panels and any other non-structural weight that you can. All of this weight reduction is "free".

2. Forget about spending money on making power. Do what's free... open up the exhaust and intake, advance timing, whatever. But RELIABILITY, HANLDING, and BRAKING are far, far more important than power for this kind of event.

3. Fit something in the suspension to give us some adjustment over the handling bias of the car. An adjustable front or rear swaybar would be good. If the car needs more rear bar, find a way to fit a hacked-together beefy bar with adjustable arms with 4-5 adjustment holes. Give us plenty of adjustment. We want to be able to get the car to oversteer if we want it to... and if it rains, we'll want to be able to dial it back so that it's easily controllable.

4. Brakes. I wouldn't fit larger brakes. With reduced weight, you really shouldn't need them. Invest in really good brake pads and some simple ducting. Shouldn't need more than that. Are brake pads and tires part of the $500 budget? I would expect not.

That's it. Devote all remaining energy to safety equipment and getting the car set up. Trust me, you'll get far more out of having the car set up to where it handles well and has some easy adjustability than you ever will out of trying to make more power with it.

Oh, and don't forget weight = free power. Just stripping the car is going to make it seem a lot more powerful.

[bam2002]

Very good suggestions. thanks
I didnt even think of making adjustable swaybars.. I think I have 2 sets already out of the cars. So Ill look at them

Also we will go over this when we meet but I truely want this to be a group Build. IE I will go with what the team wants re a build. I dont feel I need to have final say.. Because I am no expert..

If it turns out we have enought people we can build 2 cars then we coule even set them up a bit differnlyt for the differnt driving styles.

I have run e30s at Sebring and the brakes were fine but that was a 45 min run VS a 24 hour race.. So going with the duriblity factor Id say cooling ducts and if there is a way to upgrade? DId you experience any brake fade When you were up at that track?

I was planning on pulling all the glass except the Windshield. I would rather have it in place for safety.. If something gets thrown up from a car the driver doesnt get smacked in the head.
I already have looked over the body panels and found alot of places to pull out some metal.

After doing more reading on the last race it looks like Lug nuts were also a point of concern. One of the e30s lost its back wheel. So Im going consider aircraft grade lug nuts part of the Safety unlimited budget.

[Loren]

Originally Posted by bam2002

I have run e30s at Sebring and the brakes were fine but that was a 45 min run VS a 24 hour race.. So going with the duriblity factor Id say cooling ducts and if there is a way to upgrade? DId you experience any brake fade When you were up at that track?

It's nothing like Sebring for brakes. It's not as fast as Sebring, and there are only two really hard braking zones and even those aren't that bad... just depends on how late you want to stay on the throttle. I liked to carry the front straight into next week and pray that I had enough brakes and grip to make turn one. It really is a fun track... I think it was one of my favorites of all the tracks I drove last year... and I drove... um... 11 or 12 different tracks last year.

45 minutes at Sebring will get any car's brakes about as hot as they're going to get. With less weight to decelerate, full race brake pads and some added brake cooling ducts, I think you'll be in good shape. The only question will be how long a set of pads will last. I wouldn't be surprised if we went through as many as 3 or 4 sets in 24 hours. But, maybe only two. I think Jeff and I did a couple track days at Sebring in his car with both of us driving at least 2 hours per day and didn't burn up a full set of race pads.

It's important to start with new rotors, too. Spec Miata guys with the smaller 1.6 Miata brakes have learned this. The brakes work great with new rotors... plenty of rotor mass to dissipate heat. But when they get down close to their service limit (but still with enough meat that you'd think they were "okay"), they don't dissipate heat as well and can fade in conditions that they didn't previously.

So, full race pads and new rotors for sure.

[treekiller]

agreed, the EBC yellows have surprised me on how slowly they wear for race pads and are very benign to the rotors, they even have a "Blue" which is designed specifically for endurance racing. I would make sure to keep one set of really grippy pads for the last change. the ebc's just happen to be the cheapest full race solution out there too. really anything more exotic and you'll have boiled the fluid long before they fade. yea yellow brake fade is at 800 degrees F.. but that's oaky bacause the fluid will have boiled at 600 degrees F. speaking of which i have plenty of RBF 600 floating around. this is one of the items that sold me on moutul products. I can't wait to try their multi vis shock oil.