Race Report: 2012 Capitol Offense - The 24 Hours of LeMons

Race Report: 2012 Capitol Offense - The 24 Hours of LeMons at Summit Point Motorsports Park's Shenandoah Circuit in West Virginia

The Mighty Shenandoah - an MGB Friendly track if there ever was one... 22 turns, no waiting!

Never Mind the Bullocks Here's Gormless Racing MGB!

We had over-revved the engine at the last race and grenaded the engine, and so for this race we had installed not only a tachometer but a Rev Limiter as well, set to 5000 RPM - the suggested point at which cylinder 3 bearing starves for oil, melts down and goes all shambolic.

It worked great as far as we knew - engine didn't blow in any event. We sailed though Tech Inspection.

50 Years, 50 Horsepower, whatever

In the first 40 minutes of the race the accelerator cable popped out of the trunnion and left Driver Carl idling around the remaining 80% of the track, until pulling into the paddock. Remarkably no other teams noticed the speed difference. The FAIL was poetic justice, as Carl was the culprit that had gerry rigged the connection in the first place.

"I have NO IDEA why that trunnion would fail. Weird. Why do you ask?"

Dave and Scot hacked in an emergency repair and it lasted the rest of the race. About an hour total was lost.

"Ah HA! Here's the problem - Hamster wheel came off it's axle."

SEEMS LEGIT

We had also noted a half quart of oil "missing". No one would admit to taking it, but our sister BMW team was in the paddock beside us, and something about Germans stealing English oil rings true - they would not confess however.

2 hours and 15 minutes into the race, Scot driving... the entire pedal assembly holding the brake pedal and the clutch pedal fell off! oops. Scot was nonplussed however - explaining that one bolt was still sort of hanging on, and if he tilted the assembly correctly he could EITHER shift OR brake, but not at the same time - which was fine by him, as he swore to never use the brakes anyway. We noted another barrel of missing oil, so we tightened up the oil cooler lines at the engine and adjusted the connection angle.

"Look MA! I made it all the way to Turn 17!"

The rest of day one was only fun fun fun for us, cranking out the laps - slow yes - but laps none-the-less. Added 1/2 quart oil here and there, while wrapping various oil lines (there seemed to be a 'mist' around the distributor side).

Our poor sister team was pulled into a mashup, and smashed up their front end, enough to moved the drive train an estimated 3 inches forward!! They spent the rest of the evening replacing engine mounts, radiator, and trying to get old Ali running again for the next day. Quite a crowd gathered to help out, late into the night.

:-(

The only 'event' we had Sunday was Dave was attacked through the Esses and the gang of cars sheared off the passenger side mirror!

Saturday Night's Race to the Emergency Room: note inebriated skateboarder hanging onto the moving Boat-Mobile... which would later hit a newish expensive car when doing donuts in the parking lot...

Barely any water loss, so maybe head gasket ok. Oil consumption may be valves, rings, leaky oil pan, or leaky oil cooler hose... or all four. Probably all four.

It wasn't raining, and so "Queenie" was mounted to the windshield wiper post and continued to disapprove of our driving the entire race:

No matter what you asked the old girl, it just wasn't good enough

The home-made Cool Shirt cooler & pump worked spectacularly; highly recommended.

All in all: we finished 64th out of 117 starters... pretty damn good for taking our time swapping drivers, having the pedal assembly succeed from the kingdom, and having only 50 horse power.