Hongs finished 2nd place in their MX-3 behind a chopped up V6 probe.
The 5.0 ran the entire time. Our only problem aside from the brakes was cooking the wheel bearing grease. Temps stayed cool, good oil pressure and fuel delivery. Could have used stickier tires, better pads and extra calipers and rotors. Rest assured the Lincoln did not whoop up on us.
Congrats on finishing!
Any of you guys coming to CMP in Feb? If so, see you out there.
It does not look like we will make the February 19th Lemons race at CMP. We still have not yet taken the car off the trailer, but the buzz around the office is the April ChumpCar event is up next. We have some radical, budget aero mods in mind to make up for the 160HP smog motor and fuel percolating carburetor.
(not)
Chump Car 24 at VIR? You know you want to. If you come out..I'll drink beers with you! 
Look for an after-action report as soon as we get our hands on a copy of the results.
The Deuces laid a whupping on the GRM team, but we nailed our stated goals for the event so we're (mostly) happy with the way things worked out.
1) The car took the green flag and the checkered flag.
2) Nobody got hurt, and our car was incident free.
3) All the team members at the race got seat time on track.
Well, maybe we aren't happy with the result, but we are at least OK with it. We've got plans to fix what ailed us (specifically the 2-barrel carb from Tim's Edsel) and look forward to another event soon.
Tom Heath wrote: We've got plans to fix what ailed us (specifically the 2-barrel carb from Tim's Edsel)
I hope you got bonus laps for running a damn Edsel carb!
I want some in car video of us on the back straight Tom. Pronto!
I think the Lincoln would greatly benefit from a T-5 and four barrel. It was tough to watch them constantly fiddiling with it. I think they could have beaten us by spending less time trying adjustments and more time on track. That three hour (turned into a four hour after fubaring one of our calipers) time out hurt us badly.
In reply to Greg Voth:
Working on it. I only got a little bit of the in-car video, but I'm sure there's a nice one of the Deuce RX-7 passing us. Jerk.
JG is compiling the mother of all cool event videos, but I'll bang out a quick one from my stuff.
Junkyard_Dog wrote: I hope you got bonus laps for running a damn Edsel carb!
That turned out to be the big story for us. Parts vs. Penalty Laps: Don't LeMons yourself out of contention. A brand new, reliable carburetor could have resulted in additional penalty laps, but it would have yielded lap after lap of reliability and driving pleasure. The LeMons organization levied just FIVE penalty laps in tech. And we, unlike the Spinning Dookie Boys, raced perfectly clean. It's easy to race clean when you only have 12 horsepower. In the end, we penalized ourselves HUNDREDS of laps by running that turd carburetor. We would have preferred 100 penalty laps if it meant more seat time. Hindsight is 20-20. /Steevo
buy new carb, make it look dirty. Install.
In reply to sachilles:
It's not that we hadn't thought of it, we just didn't think we could get away with it.
Something about flying the GRM flag makes us a magnet for stonethrowers—even at the event, while staring at our puny carb and 420 treadwear all-season tires there was a guy saying "oh geez- the Grassroots guys brought a ringer car!".
Oh well. Like Steve said, we'll move forward and deal with penalties when and if they come.
junkyard OBD0 EFI swap FTW!
I think you all would have been much better served with a newish carb. You should be able to find a used one for a 302 pretty easily. Just rebuild it and your good to go. If you could have stayed out most of the time even being down on power you would have destroyed us. That was proven by the countless other slower cars that did just that.
Next time we should have the brakes sorted. Poor brakes certainly aided in looping the car. When you have to grab fourth to try to slow down the back end wants to come around on you. The driving we will just have to work on although we did get better as the race went on. I heard somebody in the pits saying you all got a black flag or two but I have no idea what for. I think we got a total of five. All for looping it. We also got tagged by a Crown Vic whos brakes were apparently not up to task. He got flagged for the incident.
We were penalized 15 laps. Some for the fuel pump, others we have no clue why. Must have been the used Sumitomo all seasons.
We are thinking of doing ChumpCar in TN if anyone else will be out there.
Steve Chryssos wrote:Junkyard_Dog wrote: I hope you got bonus laps for running a damn Edsel carb!And we, unlike the Spinning Dookie Boys, raced perfectly clean. It's easy to race clean when you only have 12 horsepower. /Steevo
Hey, we raced perfectly clean......your washing machine has a spin cycle doesn't it? It makes things clean right??
Our RX-V8 was a bit twitchy. Greg was the only driver who didn't spin it. It was managable, you just had to brake in a perfectly straight line, and be off the weak binders before attempting to turn.
Our team did get a black flag when Rennie was driving when the headlights went out. It was a mechanical black flag, not a talent black flag.
In reply to Greg Voth:
We won't be making any more "Lemonsy" decisions when it comes to reliability. If it's a brand new carburetor, we will write the words "Brand New Carburetor" on the fuel bowl. For me, it's all about seat time from here on. Winning will come over time.
As for doing laps, we had a heat related issue. At the beginning of each stint, we had 140 HP, by the end of each stint, the carburetor would take ZERO throttle. Idled fine, accelerator pump squirt worked fine, but main circuits were absolutely dead. On more than one occasion, fast cars almost rear ended us. That other cars stayed out under unsafe conditions means absolutely nothing to me.
We have all sorts of fun tweaks in mind.
Joe Gearin wrote: Hey, we raced perfectly clean......your washing machine has a spin cycle doesn't it? It makes things clean right?? Our RX-V8 was a bit twitchy. Greg was the only driver who didn't spin it. It was managable, you just had to brake in a perfectly straight line, and be off the weak binders before attempting to turn.
Well, if Greg didn't spin the car then it must be your driving.
Yes, my driving, and all the rest of the team's driving. It is a testament to Greg's car control skills that he managed to keep the RX-V8 on the road. The rest of us lacked the self-decipline, or had a brief lapse in concentration which was all it took in that hairy little beast. It was well worth it though, as the car was an absolute hoot to drive, and was capable of running with the fast guys.......for a while.
lessons learned for the next race!
jensenman said: So the Hongers finished way up there, huh? Congratulations to them!
We're officially changing "Hong Norrth" to "Always a bride's maid." SOOO proud o' my boys. Sickens me that I couldn't be there, but it looks like we'll have a well oiled machine of a team for SC. Props to those who made the long haul down there just to crew (DILYSI dave & crew.) I'm told you guys did a phenomenal job! (No surprise there.)
The Hong team did put forth a fantastic effort. There was some discussion of using the Lincoln to ...ahem... "influence" the leader and make way for the Hongs, but we decided against it.
poopshovel wrote: We're officially changing "Hong Norrth" to "Always a bride's maid."
where might i find details of this MX3?
Honestly, though I've been invited to drive, I may just stick with playing crew chief.
AngryCorvair wrote:poopshovel wrote: We're officially changing "Hong Norrth" to "Always a bride's maid."where might i find details of this MX3?
You are asking about the wrong car.
Didn't the winner have what you already have?
Joe Gearin wrote: It is a testament to Greg's car control skills that he managed to keep the RX-V8 on the road. The rest of us lacked the self-decipline, or had a brief lapse in concentration which was all it took in that hairy little beast.
Car control skills = 11 years of driving a first gen RX-7 in everything from autocross to rallycross to HPDE and now Lemons.
The brakes sucked big time, worse than I have ever felt one of my RX-7's. It had a lot more power and the clutch up take was jerky. If you didn't rev match well you were locking the rear tires up downshifting to 4th. For almost my whole first stint I ran the track in 5th gear. With the taller tires later on 4th was much more useful.
That event was a heck of a lot of fun. Never been so refreshed by 3.5 hours of sleep in the back of a van, and it's been ages since I ate a breakfast as hearty or energizing has two big bowls of chili piled with cheese and oyster crackers (thanks again Margie for feeding us!)
Lincoln was the most comfortable race car I've ever driven. Great visibility, easy as pie to drive, and nowhere near enough power to be scary. We'll have to address that in the next round, but considering how things could have gone, that sucker was like a roach that wouldn't die. And I've never seen so many necessary fixes applied to a car without the root problem ever being truly solved!
Needs more computers :)
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