Race Report: 2013 Monticello There Goes the Neighborhood

Race Report: 24 Hours of LeMons 2013 There Goes the Neighborhood at Monticello Motor Club in Monticello, NY, April 6 & 7, 2013

Drivers: Brandon, Ruffy, Steve, Scot, Carl
Guardian Angel and Good Luck Charm: Zouneda


A 24 Hours of Lemons race at Monticello Motor Club is a rare event; in fact this will probably be the single time it will occur in the history of the Earth so it was imperative that we race there... even if it is to be very very very cold and tractionless.

A Beautiful Course, primped and proper, not at all what endurance racers are acclimated to:



Monticello Motor Club North Course



A bit more to scale I'd say



Tech and Safety Inspection: we mostly passed, with only two warnings... I lost a quart of sweat while the officials negotiated Warning (go race) vs Fail (go home).

 

1) The Kirkely Race Seat we have is a tall back, and the seat harness comes through about a foot from the top of the seat (making a weak point) - we need to add a support bar or brace behind the top part of the seat to keep it from folding back via helmet strike. Note the support does not have to attach to seat, only stop it from folding back.

 

2) One of the roll cage 'star' connection points is weak since someone cut out a section of tube years ago; never mind that the car has been in five prior LeMons races and passed tech - I see their point!

 

Thankfully, they let us race with these two points of 'oppertunities for improvement' with a deposit of promise to fix them before the next race.

MGB GT 50 - Gormless Racing, pic courtesy of official LeMons photo gallery

 

 Last minute check of the car yielded a loose bolt - THE loose bolt - that holds the brake and clutch pedal assembly on. This is the bolt that came off during the 2012 Captiol Offense race while Scot was driving. No coincidence that it is Scot's hand in the photo tightening the bolt!



More tea, Vicar?

In the first 15 minutes of the race, our driver pulled in complaining of loud clacking in the engine. We pulled off the valve cover and sure enough valves 7 and 8 were a bit off (0.016 instead of 0.013 warm), so we adjusted them and sent him back out.
Later, one of our newer drivers got into a bit of a tangle with one of Those Annoying Volvos and smashed in the front fender - luckily the tire was there to stop the steel from bending all the way in.... er....


Ruffy the MGB GT Front Fender Bender Mender - adding airspace between razor sharp jagged steel fender and soft supple race compound tire

We had to visit The Judge twice before we had bent the fender back enough to be deemed safe to rejoin the race:







 

At the end of Day 1 after 7 hours we were in 9th place in C Class and 80th place overall out of 121 entries.

 



MGB GT 50- Gormless Racing in action, pic courtesy of official LeMons photo gallery

The remainder of the race was spent adding oil, or trying to find out where the oil was spraying from, or swabbing the oil out of the engine bay, or borrowing oil from other teams, or cleaning up oil from the paddock.


Scot checking... something, while two supervisors keep him in check.

Cardboard & Kitty Litter - yep, it's British Leyland!

MGB Head Gasket bubbling like overcooked eel pie

MGB Engine Bay - now with built in rubber glove dispenser for oil cleanup!!

We ended Sunday after 14.5 hours in 66th place overall (out of 121) and 6th in C Class (out of 16) - not too dang bad for having 3 brand new drivers and taking our sweet slow time in the pits.

Race Report: Where the Elite Meet to Cheat 2011

Where the Elite Meet to Cheat at Charlotte Motor Speedway was a riot as expected. Plenty of this report snipped & edited from Driver Dave's email.

We finished the race with a blown head gasket; 53th place out of 66 entries; we were in the pits the last 4 hours with the engine ripped apart. A noble effort!

 

Rain. And more Rain. And no windshield wipers. And no RainX (plastic windshield).

Friday: set up day: Judge Phil comes over with a friend and says something like “this is my friend Randy, he’s a pretty good driver and your car really caught his eye… any way he could sneak a few laps in it sometime?” … Carl is in a great mood and of course said “hell yeah”… good karma and all that. Also - it's always a good idea to do the penalty-wielding judges a favor.

Tech Inspection: should move under-hood fuel filter closer to pressure regulator so it is more protected and doesn't flop around; brake light switch may need adjustment (woops - more on that later).

Paddock all set up Goldbrick style: XBOX, fridge, leather couch, snacks. We'll unload the car sometime... oh wait did anyone remember to actually bring the car?!?!?!

Saturday, Race day one: we finished the first hour as the top class C car.  Carl was driving in the rain and doing a great job.  Until he passed under yellow - scratchy plastic crap windshield with no wipers was almost ok until it stopped raining and muddy water coated it.... oops. Penalty: driver change *whew* Second hour we had a terrible driver transition and refueling.  Dropped 30 laps back of top C car.

Then Ray got the best black flag in the history or racing.  He gets stuffed by some other car on a corner and ends up hitting some cones (mandatory black flag here.)  His penalty was to sit out for an hour... OR...  Let Randy Pobst drive our car during the penalty. Randy is a professional car roadracer.  Check out his info on Wikipedia.  So, during that hour Randy posted 60 laps, one of the top 10 fastest laps on the track (1:21), got us back to within 5 laps of the lead!  He was doing stuff we didn’t know the MG could do.  UNREAL! It's written up here: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/09/randy-pobst-lemons-mgb-gt-handles-well-bad-brakes-low-on-power/

I had forgotten to replace my lucky stick-shift knob with a "real" one... sorry Randy!

Randy dropped the rear tire pressure to 2 or 3 psi below the fronts, so now Front 29psi, Rear 27 psi; also said the rear drivers side would "clunk" on the one hard left, and that we really should adjust the pedal travel.
 
Then the problems started....  While Kurt was driving, he got flagged for brake lights.  Took us 2 HOURS to fix the stupid brake light switch on the MG.  So, we were well behind.  Dave made up some of it and was having a GREAT hour.  Posted a 1:24 lap and was trying to emulate Randy.  Was gaining 1 lap every 4 laps against the 2nd place C car and 1 lap every 5 against the 1st place C car.  Then Dave says he turned into a moron and ran out of gas while on the track...  Lost everything he’d gained waiting for the tow truck.  "I’m advocating a gas gauge Carl..." We added 7.5 gallons... so that is our new volume (thanks for measuring that Dave!) Max went out... into the heavy rain... zero visibility.

We finished day one pretty well though.  160 laps even with none of Kurt’s last 20 laps in the rain registering - several transponders were not working in the heavy rain towards the end of day one.  We were only 30 laps out of 2nd C class car.We were 47th place, "good enough" with all that lost time.

I guess 43 is old enough to smoke, so what the hell was I supposed to say?

Sunday, Race day two started well.  Ray was putting in some good laps.  Posted a 1:28 lap time!  Then 1/2 hour in the car started overheating.  When we looking it over, discovered water in the oil... unfortunately AFTER we refilled the radiator.  We’ve driven it without water before, so sent it back out!

Exhibit 1: A major disadvantage of having a light colored paint job

Kurt was driving when he was black flagged for the oil pooring out of it... :( 

We cleaned it up (drained everything; replaced oil filter plus oil change) and let it idle for a good 15 minutes; revved it a few times. We were thinking of sending it back out with new oil and no water.  

Judge Phil drove up and so no f@(#)%^ing way. Probably a good call.

 

So, we had no choice but to try to replace the head gasket.  Judge Phil assured us it was an easy job... Then disappeared...  We had some generic too-thick cork for other gaskets and decided to go for it. With four hours left we tried.  Couldn’t get it done by the time they called the race 1/2 hour early with lightning.