24 hours of LeMons Build Blog

—War room—

There are those of us who fought against it.

But in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the effluence race, the 300ZX-cup race, and the nickels race. And at the same time our drivers grumbled for more races and driving machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we’d been spending on bribes in a single year.

—Somewhere over California—

A lone B-300ZX bomber has ignored all recall codes and is headed toward its primary target, the Infineon complex in Sonoma. A lemon yellow nuclear bomb is mounted to the roof.

—War room—

Is there really a chance for that lemon to get through?

If the driver’s good, see. I mean, if he’s really… sharp, he can barrel that baby in so low… You oughtta see it sometime, it’s a sight. A big car, like a ‘ZX, vroom! There’s jet exhaust, fryin’ chickens in the barnyard!

Yeah, but has he got a chance?

Has he got a chance? Hell Yea… ye…

http://strangelemon.overt.org/

The mannequin has been removed. On to the next theme…

Finished painting the roll cage this weekend with Bryan and Nolan’s help. It looks great and definitely won’t rust again.

Bryan hard at work

Nolan sanding rust off the factory dash crossmember

Finished cage, rear

Driver side

Passenger side

The roll cage has been slowly rusting while the Z waits for the 2011 season, so I’ve finally gotten around to painting it. First step is sanding all the rust off and getting down to bare metal, then priming and painting satin black Rustoleum enamel.

Step 1, grind off all the rust

Not so bad

Passenger side mostly done. I attacked the welds with a soft grinding wheel before moving on

Driver side before

Driver side after

Mostly primed cage. It took 6 hours to get the cage from rust to this point.

The brakes were disappointing at Thunderhill. The bias felt better, but we had to pump the pedal before almost every major braking zone to get any feel or force.  I have lots of theories (air in the lines? pad knockback? bent pad hardware?) but no concrete explanation for it.

The stock brakes were pretty crummy 1-piston cast iron sliders, so instead of investing time and money in them I’ve decided to replace them all witha  set from a 1990 Z32 300ZX: 4 piston aluminum up front, 2 piston aluminum in the rear. They’re lighter, simpler, brake better, cool better and have better pad selection. 1990 was the only year with the 26mm front calipers that work with the normal 1987-1989 Z31 turbo front rotors without shims or excessive piston excursion. Somehow it all fits together.

New

Old

Nerd factor 9 visualization of our raw transponder data. PDF download

The weather forecast Sunday morning gave a 30-40% chance of scattered showers all day, so we started the day by preparing for rain. We bolted the rear hatch back on, made sure the windshield wipers worked and shuffled the driver rotation to have Tommy, our best wet weather driver, available to swap in if things got wet.

Mat started the day with another clean session and reported the car felt better. The weather held without really changing.

I followed and did my damnedest to avoid getting us another flag, but was crushed to take one anyway. Neither I nor anyone on our team could figure out what I’d done, but the judges insisted I’d passed under yellow. Fourth penalty: “The Bart Simpson.” We had to write “I feel a burning sensation in my cone of shame” 100 times on the car before we could go back out. I finished off my session without incident after the judges let us go. The weather started to clear up a bit.

Mike ran a nice clean second session. Our position was still in the high 20s. George hopped in and took a fairly short session, just long enough to ensure Tommy could close out the race on one tank of gas. Tommy finished off the day (and perhaps our tires!) driving the wheels off the car and chasing down one last position. We finished 25th.

The suspension fix held up, the brakes still sucked (we had to pump for almost every corner to get decent pedal feel – turn 5 without pumping was quite scary) and the new intercooler never gave us any problems.

Thunderhill was a fantastic race. As our second race, we had a much better idea what to expect, weren’t as panicked and could enjoy ourselves more. I think we’re hooked and will definitely be back for more.

We drove short sessions at our first race at Infineon, no more than 45 minutes.  We didn’t have much faith in the car yet and wanted to make sure each driver had a chance to drive it before it blew up. We also didn’t have a working fuel gauge.

Our strategy for this race was to use our recently repaired fuel gauge to run the longest sessions possible, minimizing driver changes and keeping us competitive.

We also tried running lower tire pressure (31psi) and found the tires wore better. We’ve been really impressed with the BF Goodrich G-Force sports – they’re sticky and tough for an treadwear 340 street tire.

Like Infineon, we had a slick radio setup that made driving much more pleasant. Tommy provide the radio gear, thanks again!

Tommy opened and drove a clean session. The car ran well except for the brakes, which were squishy and required pumping to get full force and any pedal feel. Mat followed and did the same. After the first few hours we were running roughly 25th.

I (Doug) took the 3rd session and spun about halfway through it. I’m glad I’m the team captain / car owner, otherwise someone would probably kick me off for all the penalties. I did a 180 coming down out of 5 but stayed on track. First penalty: warning.

Mike’s first session for our team started with a flag for passing under yellow. Second penalty: Mike had to read instructions on racing Thunderhill in the manner of an evangelical preacher while the rest of the team formed a call and response congregation. He got back out and ran a clean, quick session. He can definitely drive with us again.

George drove a good session up until he spun at speed in turn 8. Third penalty: mandatory 1 hour timeout. Shortly into our timeout, the judges took mercy on us and told us “you can go out as soon as you affix a cone of shame.” We quickly found a traffic cone, spraypainted it black and were busily mounting it to the posterior of our milk bar mannequin when Mat noticed something scary on the car – the upper mount for the rear driver side damper had completely failed. When Mat jumped up and down in the hatch of the Z, the damper would stick up a few inches or disappear into the bodywork instead of staying fixed. It was completely disconnected.

Did the mount rip when George spun? How long had it been like that? Will it be safe to take the car back out on the track? Tommy bravely volunteered to run the last 30 minutes of the day and feel the car out. After a few laps, we were surprised to hear him radio back that the car felt exactly the same as it did in the morning. Had it ever been connected? Tommy closed out the session while Mat and I prepared to dig into the car.

The damper mount had completely failed. A section that was supposed to be solid rubber had torn through. Unfazed, Mat borrowed a MIG welder from a fellow Z team (Thanks team!) and rigged up a solid mount that looked like it would hold for the weekend.

We towed the Z up Thursday night and stayed at a local hotel to get a jump on the track when it opened Friday. We showed up around 8am, snagged a good pit spot right between pit in and put out, unloaded and had hours to spend putting the finishing touches on the car before tech inspection opened at noon. This gave us time to install the mannequin that I think really made the theme.

Mat installing our milk bar mannequin

We went through tech inspection shortly after it opened without problems but hit a snag while waiting in line for BS inspection: I couldn’t find our budget documentation! I was sure the judges wouldn’t believe our intercooler was actually legitimate without our pile of receipts. We managed back our way out of the BS inspection line and spent the next hour digging through our pit spot, cars, the hotel room, etc. until George finally found the receipts documents stuffed in the radio box.

Budget in hand, we went back to BS inspection. The judges appraised the intercooler as “likely to make the car blow up,” Mat made a well-timed bribe delivery when the judges started poking at our shocks (again) and I had to do some high pressure long hand addition to prove our spreadsheets were legit. In the end, we made it through with zero penalty laps.

Zero BS laps!

George, Mike and I had never driven Thunderhill so we bought into Friday’s all day practice session. We each got 10-15 laps of track time that really helped us learn the track and ease back into track driving. Mat went out to take some practice laps as well but was turned away by the track marshal because the Z was dragging something. A tire had rubbed against the front brake ducting and snagging the coiled wire inside it, ripping it out and balling it up into a tangled mess that was dragging under the car. We quickly rerouted all the ducting and sent him back out.

Brake ducting destroyed after snagging on the tire

The mess of wire that was ripped out of the brake ducting

Brake duct routing plan B – go low