Thread: Hi 24 Hr Lemons 1991 se-r new guy

Yeah, that white car has done about 28 races over 7 years and the car count has never been under 120. In the west, we're 2 wide in most corners...especially at Sears. Lucky for Jim that he is a careful driver but... not all drivers are created equal and in some cases it wasn't our fault. FWIW too, I don't hit people either.

Hey rodknox, I hear ya about widening the front bumper, and the rear? Do you recommend removing the existing bumper and fabing one out of 1 3/4? I've been tripping on how exposed the front wheels are, if we were go clip or get clipped it would be lights out to a tie rod.
How did you mount the sides to the chassis? What prevents them from getting smashed in?

Nothing prevents them from being smashed in...that's our crush zone. We just bend the ends back out with a needle bar. If the ends were connected to the chassis, then there might be damage to the chassis. Tie rods are a PITA to change at the track. One time at Sears, we bent one. We just McGivered it by putting a floor jack under the tie rod and jacked on it....it's still on the car!
This is our latest iteration...we just welded on some tabs to the bar and bolted on the cover. The rear was left bare.
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Got it. Man that thing looks good. Did you remove the rear glass for weight?

We remove weight everywhere...we skinned out the doors, hood and trunk lid. We put the battery in front of the right rear in the cabin. Don't try to skin out your hood without a front center pin...don't ask me how I know.

A short story about Sears and tie rods...Our driver exited the carousel and going up the straight to T7 flat in 4th, he encountered a double line of slow cars. He was on the left passing everyone when one of the slow cars pulled out in front of him. He hit that car with the front right wheel so hard that it stopped him in his tracks and spun him around 180 degrees. The ice water in the cooler flew out and up to the windshield and then back on to the steering wheel and his lap. The water shorted the PTT and the car radio was permanently transmitting...he was calling us be we couldn't respond.

The impact jammed the right front wheel up and back into the wheel well so hard that we had to deflate the tire just get it off. The axle, tie rod, wheel and control arm were destroyed. The axle and tie rod were in 2 pieces. It took us 3 hours but we got the heap back on track.

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Anyone else try the Chumpcar series as well? I find it to be better (at least here on the East coast) just on the fact that you don't have 140 cars on a 2 mile track.

I've done LeMons, Chump, and also World Racing League, those are the three series that run in Texas. It has been many years since I've seen a LeMons race get above 80-90 cars entered, and being LeMons there are never that many on the track at once. On a 2+ mile track, it is manageable. Once Chump started up here, it took a chunk of cars away from the LeMons races, which I guess is a good thing.

Chump here typically has 40 cars or so, depending on the track and paddock space available. WRL I've only driven at one track (Texas World Speedway), and I think they had about 50 there.

Many of the same people at LeMons and Chump here, driving styles pretty evenly matched between those two series. The trick is to watch people and try to figure out ahead of time who's new out there and who isn't, before they do something stupid. WRL I found to have a much more aggressive driving style, and there was a much more serious mismatch of cars out there. Chump and LeMons both seem to have a good balance, but WRL had a number of NASA and other such cars out there driving for blood. Fortunately, being an endurance race, that crowd thinned greatly by the second day. LOL

Woah! I have to ask about that center hood pin, I skinned my trunk but only have the two side front pins. Does it just vibrate like crazy or what?

Yeah, it will flap and will eventually tear. On the white car, we had to replace that cross piece with an aluminum one we fabbed up. We had to reinforce the pin holes with larger plates. The hood stuck out too far in front. So we cut off about 2" and riveted back under the cutoff edge. We cutoff those pointy bits on the fenders to make a smoother front.
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We ran the second ever Chump race. It was at Sears. Chump is a little more forgiving for contact and offs. My main complaint is their friggen monstrous, ever changing rule book.