Lemons Maintenance Begins for Fall

Last weekend the Bunch of Idiots team (aka Team Coronautski), officially placed their entry into the CMP Fall race and are unofficially committed to the December race at Road Atlanta with 24 Hours of Lemons. The team will be focusing on a smaller 4 person team for each race to give each driver a little more seat time.

Bottom end of a factory-original 280,000+ mile motor. We'll leave it as-is.

Step one toward tackling the most busy racing schedule of the team's existence is getting some repairs from the last race completed and doing some preventative maintenance. Some of us decided we didn't want to swap a head gasket overnight at the track again, so that was item number one on our list. 

Top end / head with intake manifold is going to get a little refresh.

The top end of the engine was disassembled and sent home with Kyle for some cleanup and getting it to a machine shop as we found it was ever so slightly warped. While the engine is apart, we are assessing how to tackle our leaking exhaust header. The front timing belt cover fell apart during the 24 hour race and caused us some unwanted time in the pits, so we've decided to replace the timing belt and have sourced a new timing cover.

Timing belt showing a bit of wear after 24 hours.

We had two wheel bearing failures at the 24 hour race, so we've also disassembled most of our suspension while we order replacement parts. We ran a Raybestos brake compound known for durability and it survived all 24 hours great up front, but the Carbotech pads we had on hand and put on the rear were a bad match. New matching Raybestos rears will also be on order.

We found a few other little items to fix and tune up and are looking to be right on track for one more weekend of work at the end of July.