Shine Country Classic 2020

Team Bunch of Idiots loaded up and took the purple car down to Alabama to compete at the 2020 season opener for the 24 Hours of Lemons.

John in grid Saturday morning, ready to take on a wet and chilly track.

When we last posted, our engine was coming back together. Unfortunately, as I was tidying up a few final items Tuesday night, I came across an oil leak on the garage floor. Wednesday we tore out the transmission, tracked down a leaky bolt in the oil pan and got it all back together. Major thanks to Jason for the lightning fast wrench skills.

Kyle stays busy while our hardest working EE, Luke said he did his electrical work right the first time.
 

Friday we hit the track to break in the motor and get familiar with things. It's been two years since we last took on Barber Motorsports Park, so a refresher was helpful. We sorted a few other small odds and ends that would have otherwise robbed track time during the race. It was extremely productive.

Movie night in the trailer with the guys.

Friday night we made use of the new trailer and reviewed video from the test session and our last race at Road Atlanta. We got a lot of value out of the review session and I dropped at least 3 seconds per lap during the race that I may not have otherwise found. One of our biggest successes is being able to constantly critique and improve our driving together.

Luke laying down some smokin' hot laps on the back straight. 

Despite all the preparation we hit two major mechanical issues Saturday. The belt turning the water pump and alternator decided to jump off of its pulleys and we took about 25 minutes to get the car in and our spare belt put on. Not long after, a failing front wheel bearing was called in and the team swarmed the car and slapped a spare bearing on in only 20 minutes. By this time we'd dropped down in the 60s.

John brings it in Saturday night.

Employing a new pit window strategy we put in some LIGHTNING quick pit stops, capitalized on some full course cautions and then Luke and Kyle banked some incredible lap times as we lifted ourselves up to a final finishing position of 24th overall. Not the result we wanted, but we learned a lot and worked out some solid strategy we can carry forward. Had we managed to avoid the mechanical issues we factored we would have be right around top 10. Oh well.

14 hours of racing complete. 

The new engine held together beautifully, the replacement transmission shifted like butter, no more oil leaks were found, and the engine even stopped consuming oil. We've got a few maintenance items to look at, but otherwise we're starting to prep for our second 24 hour race back at CMP in April. We can't wait!

Race Ready

This past weekend, the Bunch of Idiots lemons team converged for a final time to get the engine re-assembled and running. After a week of delays and shipping incorrect piston rings back and forth, we finally gathered the correct parts and got to work.

One piston in!

Saturday was spent carefully assembling the bottom end, then mating up the head and all the accessories. Sunday the new-to-us transmission was bolted up and everything hoisted into the car. Wiring was completed, cooling system flushed and plumbed, the exhaust bolted in place and I hopped in and fired it right up! First try! It's like we've done this before.

A little wiring cleanup for our aftermarket water temp gauge.

We went back and cleaned up some of the wiring that we found had gotten mildly damaged. The suspension components were checked over. We finished off installing my larger wheels to roll the car around while Kyle takes our race wheels to get flipped. We're feeling pretty good for the Barber race coming up. We're spending Friday before the race running the test session, spending the time to break in the motor and get re-acquainted with the track so we can push for our first top 10 finish.

Looking Hella Sweet! Ready to race!

January Maintenance

Down at NMS South, we're ramping up for the 2020 season with some maintenance. First up, the Lemons Miata was consuming more oil than we wanted in Atlanta last month. We rebuilt the top end of the motor last year, but the bottom end was still Mazda-original, 189,000 miles. It was due for some work.

One gross bottom end of the bad motor. The bad crankshaft was the terminal blow. 

We picked up a free motor from some friends that were also running a 1.6l Miata in Lemons. This one had cooked a head gasket but we had hoped to salvage the bottom end, rebuild it, and just swap out the old one in our car with the donor one freshly built. Once the donor motor was apart to begin the build we quickly realized it was a total dud. Sticking with our theme from earlier in 2019, we've got lots of failure to talk about here.

One of the rings that was too large sits on top of the cleaned up engine block. There's no way we'll be able to compress that down into the cylinder.

The next step was pulling the good motor and disassembly. We found a fair amount of tiny metal shavings in the transmission fluid and knew it might be on its last legs. Once the motor was apart, the bottom end had a few metal shavings in the oil pick-up tube. We decided to strip it all down and send it to the machine shop for a thorough cleaning.

With some extra time on our hands, we installed some air intakes in place of the old turn signals to get some more cooling air into the engine bay. 

The following weekend it was back, looked great, everything checked out, the crankshaft went in smoothly, but then the piston rings showed up in the right box, but the wrong size. We pressed on with our other tune-up items and ordered new piston rings.

Less paint is less weight, right?

Another set of piston rings showed up, but its another batch of right box, wrong rings. To add insult to injury, I parked the car outside while it was lightly raining and then put the car cover on. After a few days in the sun, it must have turned the little bit of water under the cover to steam and bubbled up most of our clear coat. Oh well. It's just Lemons.

The square metal bracket sandwiches between the cable running to the radio and the actual antenna

On the positive side of things, I finally was able to correct a mistake I made with the car last year. I had mis-measured the hole needed in the body for mounting our long-range radio antenna and drilled it out too big. Today I realized it could be fixed by making a small bracket to adapt the size of the hole and got the antenna installed. Hopefully that'll keep us in contact with the driver anywhere on the track at our next race.

Final product sits where the factory antenna was placed and covers up my over-sized hole.