24 Hours of Lemons: New England

Events that are not Sponsored or Organized by the SCCV.
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brownMINI
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24 Hours of Lemons: New England

Post by brownMINI »

Stories to come later.

The ElCowMino wound up finishing a respectable 6th place.

Here are my pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/snid/sets/ ... 589987784/
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BugEyeRex
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Re: 24 Hours of Lemons: New England

Post by BugEyeRex »

Here's to the Cow and it's farmers! :drinkers: \:D/
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lawdogg
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Re: 24 Hours of Lemons: New England

Post by lawdogg »

Awesome!!! :drive1:
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343Saturn
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Re: 24 Hours of Lemons: New England

Post by 343Saturn »

The whole team had a blast at the event and we continue to be amazed that we havent yet managed to slaughter the cow :lol: .

There were quite a few more cars at the event this year - 90 entered, 77 actually made it to the track surface. Last year, if memory serves me there were only 56 that drove so the field was quite a bit larger this year. That made for a lot of entertainment watching that many cars try to navigate a half mile course - and also a lot more contact. The worst of it for us was that one of the other teams was "kind" enough to relocate our rear bumper for us early in the race :rock: We need to fix that and several other small items but the car should be good for at least one more event - if not more. Now we just have to decide which event... :drive1:
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gtivr4
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Re: 24 Hours of Lemons: New England

Post by gtivr4 »

343Saturn wrote:We need to fix that and several other small items but the car should be good for many many more events. Now we just have to decide which events
Fixed that for you :D
Nathan Dana
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343Saturn
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Re: 24 Hours of Lemons: New England

Post by 343Saturn »

gtivr4 wrote:Fixed that for you
You are so very optimistic :lol: . After each event I have just been glad that we werent one of the teams holding broken internals in the air for the crowd to see at the awards ceremony :partyman: . Seeing it sounds like the elcowmino will be headed south to Miami for the end of season race, I hope it continues to be indestructable :3gears:
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brownMINI
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Re: 24 Hours of Lemons: New England

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Here's the story of my driving...

We had 6 drivers, and the race is 15 hours long, so that made our plan for each driver to do 2.5 hours to minimize driver changes since that is where time is lost.

I got the first stint again. The first hour was awesome. I was in 26th place when the race started. As all the cars are parading around, they pick one of the cars to be first at the green flag, and the rest just fall where they happen to be. We happened to be 26th.

I was really in a groove and passing lots of people. By lap 10, we were up to 10th place. By lap 20, I had passed my old team I went to the Ohio race last year with. By lap 27, I had us up to 5th place. A few people passed by and I spent a lot of time in 7th. Then, I got too ambitious passing a Camaro and overcooked the braking zone putting 2 wheels off. The judges gave pretty much just said "don't do it again" and I was back out about 3 minutes later. But, three minutes is 6 laps, and we were back down to 23rd place.

So, I was a little more cautious after that. I kept racking up laps, until I came into the only real braking zone on the track to see a whole mess of slow cars. I got slowed down fine (always look really far ahead), but the MR2 behind me locked up the brakes and rear ended me. They got black flagged and I didn't, so things were still okay.

About 2 hours in, I've worked my way back up to 6th place and I'm passing a mk1 (I think) Golf on the outside of the oval, and just before I get all the way past, he for some reason slides / turns right and tags our rear bumper. Again, no black flag for me, but I hear over the radio that the bumper is only being held on by one mount, and is dangling at a 45º angle. So, after a few more laps I get flagged for the bumper.

The rest of the team pulls the bumper off, then the judges say (legitimately) that they don't like us leaving the bumper supports sticking out. So, a mad thrash takes place to remove those from the car. As an interesting side note, the bumper bolts wound up holding the brake calipers on for another team's car.

Since my 2.5 hours is almost up, we had already decided (as I was coming in) that we'd do a refuel and driver change then. I drive to the refuel area to refuel, and someone pulls the fire extinguisher out of the car since we forgot to bring along a second extinguisher - you need one in the car, but you also need one when refueling. Refueling is done, and Tom hops in the car and the rest of the team works on getting the belts tightened, etc as I start walking back to our stuff to get some water. It takes way too long for the rest of the team to show up at our site. It turns out that either removing the extinguisher from the car or putting it back in, the fire extinguisher mount had gotten bent and it took about 5 minutes to get it "fixed" so the extinguisher would stay securely in the car.

By the time Tom gets back on the track, we're down in 25th place.
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Re: 24 Hours of Lemons: New England

Post by MX5 Driver »

Great job guys!

Was that an old red T-bird I saw in the pics??
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brownMINI
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Re: 24 Hours of Lemons: New England

Post by brownMINI »

MX5 Driver wrote:Great job guys!

Was that an old red T-bird I saw in the pics??
Yup.

They've been trying a variety of motors in that. At Summit Point, it had a Jag V12, and only turned 1 lap. At least I thought it was Jag, but Jalopnik says it was a BMW V12.

This time it had a BMW turbo diesel and actually made a bunch of laps.

http://jalopnik.com/5595695/engine-swap ... hunderbird

http://jalopnik.com/5596133/and-the-real-winner-is
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tiFreak
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Re: 24 Hours of Lemons: New England

Post by tiFreak »

brownMINI wrote:
MX5 Driver wrote:Great job guys!

Was that an old red T-bird I saw in the pics??
Yup.

They've been trying a variety of motors in that. At Summit Point, it had a Jag V12, and only turned 1 lap. At least I thought it was Jag, but Jalopnik says it was a BMW V12.

This time it had a BMW turbo diesel and actually made a bunch of laps.

http://jalopnik.com/5595695/engine-swap ... hunderbird

http://jalopnik.com/5596133/and-the-real-winner-is
I'm curious how they managed to keep it under budget with that, I saw a couple of new-ish cars in the pics too, looked like a Chevy Impala and PT Cruiser, do they just give you some kind of time penalty?

6th place is pretty good though, especially out of a field of 77
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