Here is Tom R’s report from his 24hrs of LeMons race experience last month, enjoy!

To do well at 24 Hours of Lemons racing you need a variety of things: Reliability, decent speed, decent drivers, no severe penalties, strategy, and some degree of luck. On September 15th and 16th, “The Tartan Brigade” took our 1980 280zx to Thunderhill Raceway for a third attempt at glory. To be clear, we recognize that we are all mid-level drivers, and a class win is likely not in the cards for us regardless of the car we are driving. However, our goals are always to finish in a respectable position, in one piece, and with a big smile on our faces. We achieved two of these goals, but failed pretty miserably in terms of position. The escapade went something like this.

The weather at Thunderhill in September is bound to be unforgiving, with daytime temperatures consistently in the mid 90’s, and the only flowing water visible being that leaking from some poor sap’s exploded radiator. So it was with no great surprise that from midday on Friday, during the practice session, we knew we were in for a battle as we had to be towed off the track for the first time (of four times throughout the weekend) as the car lost all power while driving down the back straight. Still plucky and filled with questionable optimism, we tentatively diagnosed the problem as being caused by a failing ignition module. We swapped it out for a spare we brought, but my confidence in it was immediately shaken by the unmistakable Sharpie lettering on it: “Good?” Low and behold, by the time Friday’s practice day was over, we had received our second tow of the weekend, and began to worry that we might be looking down the barrel of a black-flag solely for being on a first name basis with the tow truck driver. With the sobering thought that the race could be an abject failure for us soaking into our minds, I wandered through the pits, practically on my knees, begging any fellow racers to share with us any excess flexible ducting they may have such that we could get some more “cold” 97F air to the ignition module come race day. And, sure enough, the Lemons spirit of camaraderie prevailed as a team running a late 80s RX7 was kind enough to hand over 4’ feet of dryer ducting. As though it were as valuable as gold, we used all the key Lemons-specific tools to mount the ducting in place (tin snips, zip ties and duct tape, only JB Weld going un-used in this case.) Looking like we had somehow run over a silver elephant’s trunk, we now had what we hoped would prove to be our salvation…

At 9am on Saturday morning, the butterflies were working overtime in each of our stomachs, a mixture of boyish enthusiasm and utter dread that our “fixes” may not have done the trick to keep our baby cool and operational. We waited as long as possible to get our car on the starting grid to minimize the chance of overheating the ignition module before even seeing the green flag… …[read more]