Ready for T-Hill

Paul and I worked on the Magic Rabbit this weekend, we have GO and we have STOP. Replaced both front bears, both front A arms and the right front “knuckle” which holds the bearing and the steering arm ties to (we think it was bent). So now we have about 2 degrees negative camber on both sides. Looks good.

Also changed the tranny and we now have all gears again, shifting smoothly. We went with close ratio gearing which should be great for most of the track/s but we may run out of gear at the long Thunderhill straightaways.

Oops forgot the gas cap!

The Dirty Duck Racing Team's Magic Rabbit at the 2011 24 Hours of Lemons Goin' for Broken true 24 hour race at the Reno-Fernley Raceway. The video is in hour 21 of the race, we are in 4th place overall. 6:30 am Mr. Unruly, aka Ted, gets in the race car after our visiting driver, Brian Hamilton, drove from 4am to 6:30 and had rain and snow on the race track.
The video shows my two spins which put us in the penalty box for 3 hours, basically to the end of the race. We finished 20th overall after the 3 hour delay.
Fantastic time, miserable weather, ready to do it again!

Dirty Duck Racing-Racing in the Rain-Fernley 2011 Lemons from Sreddet on Vimeo.

We have lots of colors!

This is a lap chart which plots the position at each hour of the top 10 finishers, plus Dirty Duck Racing #83 Magic Rabbit. Also added in the Model T GT since it lead the race for 12 hours before their transmission failure.

So we had 4th place pretty much nailed down at the end of 20 hours, the Geo Metro Ladybug pushed us to 5th place just before our third spin/black flag and three hour sit down. The Geo Metro then faded, so I am sure if I had just run a little slower turning the wet we could have finished 4th.

Jacked up the front of the car on Tuesday and the front bears seem OK, so it must be the rear wheel bearings that was making so much noise. Besides the transmission grinding issue, I also noticed that we have a prominent exhaust leak somewhere. Hope it is just a gasket and not a cracked header.

Mr. Unruly

Reno Fernley 1st report

First off, thank you everyone for a fantastic weekend! I am sure the entire team is suffering from sleep deprivation, especially after having to deal with the blizzard over Donner Pass!

Anyway, on to the fun stuff.
Overall
We finished 20th, our best finish in our four Lemons races! That included a 3 hour penalty hold for our third black flag (more on that later). We completed 387 laps on a demanding 2.6 mile, 20 turn (30 turns if you count each apex) course, for a total of 1,006 miles! Over 1,000 miles of racing and we did not have a single mechanical failure (well, the windshield wiper on the driver side did come loose).

The Magic Rabbit is tough and dependable. Our wheel bearings started yowling about 6 hours into the race, but never failed. Our transmission started grinding on down shifts, so we all went to double clutching. Then the tranny started grinding on up shifts, so we went to double clutching up or nice a easy “Granny Shift”( count to two). And everything held together to the end! Oh yes, the oil leak is GONE! The o-ring on the speedometer cable opening fixed it.

Now, the disappointing news is we got three black flags when the rain and then SNOW, then rain again, arrived a 4:15am Sunday morning. Brian spun first and then I spun twice as your back tires were running almost bald at that point. That gave us our third black flag in an 8 hour window, which in Lemon’s Rules means you must sit out for three hours! Damn! Before that we were in 4th place! Can you believe that, we were running in the top five from end of Hour 4 to end of Hour 21!
We were as high as third place overall at end of Hour 6 (oh by the way, Hour 6 was the end of my stint J). OK, we were third overall also at end of Hours 7,10,and 11. After Hour 11 the Eyesore Turbo Miata had worked is way back from being 45th at end of Hour 1 to push us down to 4th.
We proved the tortoise and the hare theory, we were the slowest of the top 10. Our fastest lap was 13 seconds slower than the winner, Eyesore Racing. But no mechanical issues, 2 to 2 ½ hour stints and quick clean pit stops put us there!

What If:
What if we had some fresh rubber for our back tires and Ted and Brian didn’t spin out. Assume conservative 3:00 laps for the three lost hours, that would give us 60 more laps finished for a total of 447 laps. That would have place us 4th Overall and just one lap behind our friend Tony and his Def Leppard Nissan Sentra. Be a little more aggressive for the last two hours, when Rye would have been out and the track was now dry. Say 2:50 laps, that would have put us on the same lap as Tony’s Def Leppard car. Could we have gotten ahead of them, SURE! So I will say we had a 3rd place run!! Amazing when you think back to our first race just 10 months ago.

DDR Hot Shoe Award
Remember, we tried to remind ourselves that this was a 24 ENDURANCE race, smooth, consistent, safe lap times….but wait, it’s a race! Gotta go fast! Our Goin’ for Broken DDR Hot Shoe Award goes to Tedders, lap time of 2:43.9 on lap 191. This was during his second stint, around 8pm, sun had just gone down, track had cooled (like it was every warm!), lighting was perfect, all the stars aligned. In racing this is known as the Happy Hour. 44 of Tedders 120 laps were under 2:50, great job. Even though we all know you ALMOST took out the race leader (at the time) Spin in Out at the top of “The Slide” corner! J Congrats Tedders.
Our invited driver, Brian Hamilton, was nipping at Tedders heals with a best time of 2:44.3 on lap 76, his first stint around 2pm Saturday. Very interesting on Brian’s times was his comment that he felt in “the zone” during is dead of night run at 4am, 6 of his top 25 times came in the 10 laps from 4am to about 4:30am when the rain/snow started.

Crew and Pit Stops
A big thanks to Peter and Kelly, they kept us on track and the pit stops show it. Our best was 3:56 and that included the time driving into and out of the pits! All but one pit stop was 4 to 6 minutes. Also, we took advantage of some all course yellows to pit. We also learned that the course workers changed out every 8 hours and the second time we planned it to do our pit stop and tire change during that 24 minute all course yellow!

OK, that is my first report. More reports and maybe some graphs in the coming days.
A very tired, but very pleased,

Mr. Unruly
Team Captain, Dirty Duck Racing

Lemons Gets Its Cool Back

Been a long time since my last post....busy preparing for Sears Pointless and running the race. Had a blast even though Mother Nature had other ideas, lots of rain on Saturday, Sunday had a dry race track.

Here is a link to an article about Lemons and Racing Getting It's Cool Back. Our Magic Rabbit is shown in one of the pics listed at the end of the article. Picture is of us going through tech and the BS Review. Everyone liked our new addition, the rabbit in the hat!

Take a look:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/03/a-conspiracy-of-lemons-how-racing-got-its-cool-back/

I will post more pics later. That's it for now.

Merry Christmas from Dirty Duck Racing

Merry Christmas everyone from Dirty Duck Racing and our Magic Rabbit.

Nothing says Christmas more than your parts car all aglow in white lights! And the Bounder is happy with its string of lights all the way around the coach!

And who said I live in a holler? Ever seen a holler so decorated, well maybe lighting up the dead cars and the RV does qualify Pine Trail as a holler! :-)

But you have to admit the Bounder looks great all lit up with the house in the background.

And the Magic Rabbit is out for Christmas with it's red lights all ablaze! So festive, so very Christmas. Totally in the Christmas Spirit.

With its red lights shining Santa Claus will certainly be able to find my house, hope he brings camber plates, new cam shaft and maybe even a limited slip differential.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Buttonwillow Day 2 - Sunday Dec 5th

Sunday morning, day two of the Arse-Freeze Appalossa at Buttonwillow. We are feeling good, here is the car jacked up so we can give everything a once over to make sure everything is tight and secure. Fill up with gasoline and ready for an early drivers meeting, 8:30am.

Everyone gathers under the shade structure to listen to Jay Lamm's instructions for Sunday. Most of everything he says is routine until he says, "Well, you guys have been doing so well on the track yesterday, we have decided to mix things up. For today we will run in the opposite direction, counter clockwise instead of clockwise."

A huge moan from all the drives, lots of looks of disbelief! How could he do that, everything we learned on Friday test session and all day yesterday goes out the door. We have no idea what it is like to run the opposite direction. Also, Jay added another corner into the circuit, right in the middle of the "Drag Strip" straight away. Actually that sounds good, slows us down a bit. But the biggest shock to everyone is that no one has practices going counter clockwise. So perfect Lemons, the only thing constant with Lemons is change! Just like the weather.

I am the first driver again, so I have just the smallest advantage in that the two or three parade laps before the green flag is waved will be very slow and I can at least figure out where I would like to be on the track for each corner. Everyone else on our team will have to learn the track at full speed their first time out!

So first we line up before going onto the track. The top 10 finishers from yesterday get to line up at the front and the rest of us fall in behind them. Here I am on the second row of "the rest". So we wait for the Top 10 to make it onto the track and then we roll out behind them. I immediately start thinking about where the best line around the track is in the opposite direction.

Another change for Sunday, the little Fiaguzzi (remember Fiat 600 with a 1000cc Moto Guzzi motorcycle engine in the back) must race with the blue and yellow flag permanently mounted to the side of the car. This flag means to move over, you are about to be over taken. Perfect for this little car as the corner workers were working overtime on Saturday waving this blue and yellow flag at them. Also, this flag make the little Fiat much easier to see ahead of time and plan a place to pass them. Great decision by the Lemon's Staff.

The crowd favorite was back out again, the Lincoln Towncar horse and cowboy.

But they soon had problems on the race track, drew a black flag and ended up in the Penalty Box. Here is the team dressed in pink prison outfits, chained together having to parade around the pits as their penalty. The pink prison outfits are actually used at the Maricopa County prison outside of Phoenix, AZ. The county Sheriff is notorious for treating prisoners with very little respect, make it tough so they will not want to return. An amazing idea! I like it, and I enjoy seeing our Lemon's team dressed the same way, just so long as it's not us.

And thankfully, again, the Dirty Duck Racing team ran clean both days, no MAJOR black flags, well maybe just one. Well there was one little one on Sunday, hardly worth mentioning, why even go over it, are you sure you want to know? OK, seems that when Paul first went out in the morning, on his first lap they waved a black flag at him. He couldn't believe it, how could he have a black flag in one lap? But he came into the pits and the course worker, positioned as you first come off the track, waved Paul over and told Paul he MUST slow down sooner when coming off the race track. Paul grinned and said that this was his first lap out but he would tell the other driver, Mr. Unruly, to slow down. Paul was then pointed back on the track, no lengthy penalty, no visit to the penalty box. See, a black flag hardly worth mentioning! So lets just forget it!

This is a picture on the added corner for Sunday, call Lost Hill or Phil Hill, in the middle of the Drag Strip straight, an up hill and then left and downhill. Fun corner, could take it very fast in the Magic Rabbit. But took a while to learn as we had never seen it in either direction.

White helmet, so this is Paul coming down the "Esses". You can see the top of the new turn, Lost Hill and the corner workers in the background.

Here is a shot looking back at the Esses, a series of three quick back and forth turns, run them flat out. Here you can see the Fiat on the curb trying to stay out of the way of the Jeep Cherokee and the Help Dubai Porsche 924.

The Magic Rabbit ahead of a Porsche 924 with the topless blowup doll riding her hobby horse!

And here we are battling with Christine, the BMW E30.

Closeup shot as the Magic Rabbit turns onto the start/finish straight away. You can see Bugs Bunny riding Shotgun. He loved the wind in his face. In fact his face got very dirty after two days of racing.

Traffic at the "On Ramp" curve, that Volvo station wagon in front of us was the same car that hit us at Thunderhill. This time we were faster and could pass them.

On our inside is the past winner at Thunderhill, Ice Cream for Children Nissan 260Z.

The last driver on Sunday was Tedders, we put him in with a hour to go, we thought. The clouds had rolled in and it was starting to sprinkle when Tedders went out. Immediately the skys opening up and for 15 to 20 minutes Tedders was racing in the rain, heavy at times. In the link of the blog post earlier, the video now includes right at the end, video of the Nissan truck spinning out in the rain right in front of Tedders. He did a great job of keeping the Magic Rabbit on the black stuff and right side up!

As 4pm came and went, we realized that our expectation for a 4pm checkered flag was erroneous! So now we started to worry, will we have enough fuel to make it to 4:30. We hadn't refueled at the last pit stop. We held our breath and we just made it. During that last 30 minutes our standing just moving up, from the high 40's, then into the 30's, then the low 30's. Our competitors where spinning, breaking and having to pit for more fuel. Our little rabbit kept chugging away.

At 4:30 the checkered flag flew, WE MADE IT! And better yet, we finished 30th overall! Over the two days we completed 263 laps or 684 miles. That is 164 miles longer than the Indy 500!! and 64 miles longer than the longest NASCAR race, the Coca Cola 600! With no major mechanical problems, just awesome!

We were all amazed and thrilled at our success. High fives all around and thanks to all the support from out fans.

The awards ceremony at 5pm, first the overall winner of laps completed went to POS racing and their BMW E30 with the F'ed Up theme. They had come very close a number of previous races, this was their first win. $1,500 for them.

And look at the dark clouds behind them.

And the award for the best theme went to the Cowboy and Horse atop the Lincoln Towncar. It finished the race. The team arrived on their stick ponies to accept the trophy.

And the favorite price, the Index of Effluency or IOE award, and $1,501 cash went to the Fiaguzzi! The 1964 Fiat they ran the whole race and stayed out of everyone's way. The car with the least that did the most! They brought the blue/yellow, "move over you are about to be overtaken" flag with them to the victory stand.

Congrats to every team, it was another great time, a total blast. Can hardly wait until March for Sears Pointless at Infineon Raceway.