So we totally didn't win. We came in around 40th, after some massive shenanigans with overheating at the end of the day on Saturday (threw the accessory belt, suspected that the water pump had jammed or failed; discovered, eventually, that the thermostat had disintegrated and jammed shut), and a collision on track on sunday resulting in some downstream panel beating, prying, wiring stuff shut, etc.
This is not the thermostat you want in your car:
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| From 24Hrs of Lemons - Sears Pointless 2011 |
The damage happened while Jinnah was driving, and he noticed the overheating problem very quickly, so the brief period of running extremely hot didn't do any noticeable damage. Happily, we did not replicate the Kill Bill team's experience of blowing a thermostat, swiftly followed by toasting the head gasket due to overheating. Sadly, we did lose the last half hour of Saturday. (Plus, Jinnah had to give up the dream of staying ahead of the other cars he was dicing with when he started to overheat. A tragedy.)
Working to fix:
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| From 24Hrs of Lemons - Sears Pointless 2011 |
Laz glamour shot:
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| From 24Hrs of Lemons - Sears Pointless 2011 |
Adding the Mystery Machine drivers to Ling Ling's lineup resulted in some hilarious confusion on the part of the other drivers, since with Jinnah at the wheel she is rendered merely mortal, and with me at the wheel, slightly less than that. For a while there the other cars were so excited about passing Ling Ling that they'd spin with happiness before or after the attempt -- "Whoa, I'm badass, I passed Ling Ling! *spiiiiiin*" At the end of the day Sunday, though, Laz put in 2 hours followed by Rob, and tore like hell through the pack to end us somewhere around 40th place (up from a low of ~79th following a few repair pitstops).
Ling Ling on track with Jinnah at the wheel:
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| From 24Hrs of Lemons - Sears Pointless 2011 |
We made it as high as 5th place early on Saturday, while Rob was driving, which meant that we got to see our number up on the Infineon leaderboard. Since Infineon is a real track which hosts real races, they have a lot of exciting signage, and seeing our number up there, however briefly, was incredibly satisfying.
Really hard-to-read proof:
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| From 24Hrs of Lemons - Sears Pointless 2011 |
Sunday morning with me (Astrid) driving, I took a huge hit in the rear. I was tearing around turn 7 in a pack 3 wide, when the inside car ahead of me got crossed up. The car directly on my inside (the Mazdarachis rx-7) checked up trying to avoid him, and while I was trying to get wide and get around, the ripple effect caught up the cars behind me, and the next car back clocked my inside rear quarter panel hard enough to spin me all the way around (I never saw who it was, but I heard it was car 500). I ended up stalled facing backward on the track for the couple of seconds it took to get my shit together, and then limped her back to the pit with the fender dug into the rear tire.
My experience goes something like this:
Hey, Mazdarachi is all checked up, go wide! (Screeeeeeech) I hope whatever's behind me doesn't--WHAM! (I get a nice 180 view of the track, watch the other cars scatter like cockroaches to avoid hitting me - Thanks, other drivers! That was awesome!) Hmm, I'm just sitting here. Damn, I should probably... get out of the way. Right.
I fire the car back up and drive her over to the side, which is hard because the seat got knocked loose on the slider in the impact, and has slid back into 6'5" Laz position (I am 5'5").
I sit on the shoulder for a second and think about life. Then I remember, hey, I can still drive! I should probably drive back to the pit! So I do that, with the fender digging so hard into the tire that it's blowing black smoke the whole way. The track worker at pit exit flagged me down to be like, "Hey, do you know you're blowing smoke?" Me: "I'm telling myself it's from the tire." (It was.)
Then the guys pounded the shit out of the fender, made sure the battery and fuel tank were still ok, and I went back out. I got black-flagged for the incident, which seemed entirely reasonable, but the judges were kind enough to let me go back out, so I got a couple more hours of driving in. This was my first time at Infineon, and I had a total blast.
Some gratuitous pandas (taken during tech inspection):
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| From 24Hrs of Lemons - Sears Pointless 2011 |
We discovered a bit later that the impact had kinked the fuel filler hose, leading to a leak when the tank was full, and after fixing that, forgot to put the rear spring back in place, which ate the rear cv boot before we got it fixed. (The rear springs are from a different car, and they're too short for the e30 - when the spring is unloaded, it falls out.)
But we went back out and Rob and Laz had a good time pwning the rest of the track (like they do) and we survived to come through the checkered flag, and it's all good. In fact, it's really kind of awesome.
And Ling Ling's rear end is a little... sideways. Yeah, I did that.
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| From 24Hrs of Lemons - Sears Pointless 2011 |
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