AngryCorvair wrote:poopshovel wrote: We're officially changing "Hong Norrth" to "Always a bride's maid."where might i find details of this MX3?
I'll see if Kevin, in typical fashion, has an uber-detailed build site/thread somewhere. Suffice it to say, it was put together from various piles of parts, and I'm amazed it's held up for 2 races. Kevin, Les, and Kevin's buddy Will bent/built/installed their first custom cage on this one too, and it came out top berkeleying notch.
In reply to poopshovel:
The Hongs were incredibly organized, and their attention to detail was top notch. They really approached this race like a professional team, and the results show it. DILYSI Dave was doing his best Roger Penske impression, and I'm sure it helped them to have one guy not having to worry about driving, but all the minutia instead. Very impressive, and very well done!
At this race no one was going to catch the leader as long as it held together, which it did. Of course Angry P will be happy to know the winner was a Probe GT!
We ran a 2 bbl on our 351W in the Thunder Terd, it was NOT down on power by any means. 
I heard through the grapevine it was clocked at ~105MPH on the front straight, bringing Jay out of the ivory scoring tower to have a stern talking to with me and a couple of my drivers concerning the obvious excessive power combined with Tinkertoy brakes. 
Had we been able to whip the flinging belts and resulting overheating, the TT would have placed much better.
I'm going to hazard a guess that you were not running a insulator plate and were using a stock mechanical fuel pump. If so that's a recipe for disaster. Make an insulator plate out of aluminum sheet, run a thick gasket on each side of that, clean the carb out real good then use an electric pump and a big fuel filter.
Now, our ignition system was a big steaming pile of points and condenser E36 M3. I'll stick in some sort of electronic ignition before I'll let that happen again.
I can't seem to find a detailed article on this one like Jalopnik usually does? Wanting to see pics!
Here is a link I found with some pics.
http://ronman.org/pics/lemons/miami10/index.htm
Hotlinked for your pleasure the Deuce on track and the the first feeble attempt to contain the cooking wheel bearing grease.
Cameron at Pettit Racing helped us out by sourcing us some much needed brake pads and a dust cap. Tom Heath also pitched in by giving us some rescue tape to keep the cap and a red bull can on. Rescue tape held up to at least 300 temps!
Ah...Rescue Tape. I love that stuff!
92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: I can't seem to find a detailed article on this one like Jalopnik usually does? Wanting to see pics!
Pics, video, and more build info are coming.
We're using an electric fuel pump; it's definitely not a flow problem. There's 5-6 psi going to the carb. Some combination of vapor lock or a carb float that doesn't are the most likely suspects.
I say it's cursed.
Joe Gearin wrote: Of course Angry P will be happy to know the winner was a Probe GT!
And if he decides to trash the really nice one he has to participate in a Lemons race, I may have to help. 
alfadriver wrote:AngryCorvair wrote:You are asking about the wrong car. Didn't the winner have what you already have?poopshovel wrote: We're officially changing "Hong Norrth" to "Always a bride's maid."where might i find details of this MX3?
problem is that my PGT is still a pretty nice car, no way it's Lemons-friendly yet. i would like to make another Challenge run with it, though.
Yup, we tested two electric fuel pumps, two regulators, two fuel cell pickup points, two regulator mounting points, one heat shield, various float settings and more. The only variable that we did not swap is the carburetor itself. I'm guessing that each time the fuel would start to boil, the 36 year old float would lose some of it's buoyancy. No problem, it is soooo time to move on. Fuel system components are "free" under the rules. You can go crazy on every component from the fuel cell to the carburetor inlet fitting. Only the carburetor (or efi throttle body) itself is not "free". Plan is to build a budget minded return style fuel system. Bypassed fuel stays inherently cooler. Pressure is likewise more consistent. We'll spend a coupla bucks on heat shielding from a company like Design Engineering.
I must have details on the MX3. I happen to have a disgusting MX3 shell and a well-used and leaking but still plenty strong BP + trans available.
And the GF gave me the go-ahead to enter a Lemons at some point. 
From what I talked about with Kevin, Tommy, and Dave from the Hong team, the MX-3 seemed very close to stock.
A reworked exhaust using the factory manifold from a (Accent? Something Korean that uses the BP motor...) junkyard donor and safety equipment was just about all. There were some really slick details, like the transplanted HID lights from a General Motors SUV.
AngryCorvair wrote:alfadriver wrote:problem is that my PGT is still a pretty nice car, no way it's Lemons-friendly yet. i would like to make another Challenge run with it, though.AngryCorvair wrote:You are asking about the wrong car. Didn't the winner have what you already have?poopshovel wrote: We're officially changing "Hong Norrth" to "Always a bride's maid."where might i find details of this MX3?
its winter, and you have summer tires. It can be fixed.
Joe Gearin wrote: In reply to poopshovel: The Hongs were incredibly organized, and their attention to detail was top notch. They really approached this race like a professional team, and the results show it. DILYSI Dave was doing his best Roger Penske impression, and I'm sure it helped them to have one guy not having to worry about driving, but all the minutia instead. Very impressive, and very well done!
:blushing:
So, my take on Lemons...
I've had an interest in Lemons for a while. I may or may not eventually build my own car, but when I heard that pit stops were the place where the Lemons Logik car suffered at the CMP event, I took that as my cue to get involved with his effort as crew chief. While I like driving, it wasn't in the budget, and this was a cheaper way to get involved and help out. Turns out that it was also incredibly satisfying.
When I heard stories of 7-10 minute pit stops at CMP, I focused on two areas for my contribution to the car - a quick jack and a dry break fueling setup. The quick jack was inspired by F1 cars, and it works awesome. It's basically a giant crowbar with an 8:1 ratio so that lifting the ~1200# front of the car is accomplished with only 150# of input. I built it to go over-center as well, so that once it's down, it stays down and plays the role of jackstand. The front of the car can be in the air in a second or so with one person. While a hydraulic jack could accomplish the same thing in 5-10 seconds, it's nice to 1) shave those seconds, 2) set the tempo for fast stops, and 3) see the looks on competitor's faces when they see it. :) The other area was the NASCAR style fueling. Christian Shipp was kind enough to loan us his fuel cans with ATL probes on them already, and we managed to find a cheap-ish ATL filler neck on ebay. Kevin installed it along with a 2" filler tube into the stock tank, and it worked great. Lemon's rules say that the car cannot be fueled with a driver in, so our pit stops also included driver changes. We spent a good half hour or so rehearsing these before the event started, and it really helped. Come race time, we were knocking out a driver change with 10 gallons of gas added in under a minute. Props to Cembor for lifting 130+/- gallons of gas into the car over the course of the race. Speaking of gas, if you ever get the chance to walk into a convenient store and say "I'd like to prepay for $400 of premium on pump 4" do it. The reaction is priceless. OTOH, filling 130 gallons from a convenient store pump takes the better part of an hour. :( We had (4) 5 gallon fuel jugs plus (2) 55 gallon drums. O'Maley had a transfer pump, so between the drums, the pumps, and the dump cans, we actually looked like we had our E36 M3 together on the fuel front.
The race itself was thankfully quite drama free. Despite fears to the contrary, the racing was very clean. I saw one big hit over the course of the 24 hours, and while it was big enough to take a car or two out of the race, everyone was fine. That one involved one car getting sideways coming onto the pit straight, and the car behind him getting into his side. Not a huge speed differential (20mph maybe), but it happened at probably 60-70 and it was enough to put the front car into the pit wall and bring out the FCY. Outside of that, the racing was spotless as far as I could tell.
Our drivers were awesome. The best part of the whole event for me was that we were not a bunch of different people - we gelled as a team and egos were nowhere to be found. Seriously - we became a singular organism focused on a task. It was pretty magical really. Every once in a while you get brief glimpses into the potential humans have if we could just focus our efforts, and this was one of those times.
Over the course of the race we worked our way up the top 10, and the car was behaving great. The oil consumption was low enough that we could get away with only adding oil every 8 hours during tire changes. Note - I don't know if all Lemons races are this way, but the ONLY thing that could be done in the hot pits was fueling and driver changes. ANYTHING else had to return to the paddock - a much longer stop. So checking oil, checking tire pressure, even cleaning the windshield was verbotten in the normal stops. Having a car that only needed to go to the paddock twice was huge. Anywho, back to the race - all of the drivers were putting in solid laps. We settled into stints that were 2 hours give or take. We ran as long as 2.5 hours when we could, but would be ready for FCY pits at anything past 2 hours. Most of our driver changes went flawlessly. Once, we sent a driver out without the radio plugged in, so we got to use the pit board for that stint. All others, radio was a nice thing to have.
From hours 16-21 or so, we were in 3rd, but probably not within striking distance of 1st or 2nd, and for 4-5 hours the Team America Miata had been 1 lap behind us. Actually, they passed us repeatedly, but then gave it back in the pits repeatedly. But 1 lap was all that had us on the podium for 4-5 hours. Stress. At about 9:00 I told everyone to get ready because we were approaching the window where we could finish the race with the next pitstop. We had run several 2:30 stints, so 9:30pm was guaranteed, but I figured we had a bit more than 2:30 if we needed it, so I was hoping to be ready by 9:15. I have no idea if I vocalized this, or if it was just math within my head. I was going on 3 hours of sleep in the previous 48 at this point. I discussed with Osgood, who was in the car, that should a FCY come out, we were going to pit him early. Jugs were ready, Cembor was dressed, etc. At probably 9:20 the car in 2nd threw a rod and oiled the track, and BAM! Full course Yellow! Woohoo! Go Strategy! We were going to do our final stop under an FCY, not lose a lap, and be heros.
Except that I couldn't find O'Maley (the driver for the final stint). Osgood is in my ear saying that he's coming in, I'm yelling at him "NO! DO NOT COME IN! DO YOU COPY!?!?!?!" all while looking for Dave. Nobody knows where he is. I've seen Osgood's lap times stumble a couple of seconds in the last half hour, so I know he's tired, but I ask him if he can finish the race if necessary. He says he can if he has to. Course is still yellow. At some point O'Maley comes sprinting up. He'd been dropping the kids off at the pool and didn't know the pit stop window was open. DOH! He proceeded to put on a fire suit faster than has ever been done before, and I give Osgood the clear to pit. We do a quick driver change, and get back on course still while under FCY. Whew! I get on the radio with Dave, make sure that the previous 3 minutes hadn't mind-berkeleyed him too bad, and then told him what he needed to do - I was pretty sure that we had put some laps on the Miata, but I wasn't positive, so drive fast but safe for now.
In the meantime, we learn that not only was it the car in 2nd that blew, but confirm that the Miata in 4th that had been threatening for hours apparently was right behind the blow up and oiled their brakes. They came in for a quick pad swap, but unfortunately, a stuck caliper meant that we put 11 laps on them before they made it back on course. Or 3 laps. I actually thought it was 8, but we got mixed reports on the number, and didn't know for sure until the 10:00 update. It turned out to be 11 laps. I do some quick closing speed math in my head and decide that we can lose 10 seconds a lap to the Miata and maintain position thru midnight.
So shortly after 10:00 I get on the horn and tell Dave that 1st is un-catchable, and we are way ahead of 3rd, and his new job is to baby the car. Don't slow down so much as to be a rolling roadblock, but back off. This turns out to be good, because the tires and brakes were pretty done by this point. He was down probably 6-8 seconds a lap from his previous stint, and I could still tell he was having to nurse that out of the tires. We were kind to the drivetrain though, running the whole course in 4th and 5th gear. The miata was driven like a damn missle and kept ticking off laps, but by 11:45 I knew that we could now park the car and hold position. I didn't share this with anyone, but it was a relief none the less. I did go clarify with the pit marshall that it was OK for non-suited folks to enter the cold pits once the checker flew, and they checked with race control and said that was fine. The final few minutes / laps ticked away and then it was over. Checker. We had held on to 2nd place. It was one of the greatest moments of my automotive life, and it probably even makes the top 10 for life. Dave pulls in to our pit spot and gets a champagne and Bud Light shower, and I'm pretty sure I kissed him. The next half hour is hugs, tears, high fives, beer, cigars, trophies, and lots and lots of smiles. It was awesome. I'll be back.
Props: Kevin Boswell - Built an awesome car. It could not have been more reliable. Outside of oil and tires at hour 8 and oil tires and brake pads at hour 16, it was on track and knocking out miles. 1400 of them. He also put in a stint that didn't suck, and gave away his second stint to Osgood because he was focused on the prize and knew that Osgood was the right driver at the time to go in the car.
Tom Shuman - A couple of stints, fuel cans, bean soup, and a lot of other stuff I'm forgetting.
Mike Taylor - Put in 2 solid stints behind the wheel, and was always willing to do ANYTHING needed. "Mike - can you go check the hourly update." "Mike - can you grab me a water." "Mike - hold onto this get out of jail card as if your life depends on it and if necessary, I want you to make it to the penalty tent before O'Maley can." Mike has always been solid, and he was true to form.
Marc Osgood - 3 stints, all of them fast, all of them clean. Like a damn machine - he could just click off lap after lap within a second of the best lap the car was capable of. Also - entertaining as hell on the radio. Everyone had different radio personalities - Marc's cracked me up repeatedly. "WOOHOO! I JUST MADE THAT PRELUDE MY BITCH!!!!"
Dave O'Malley - 3 Stints, including the one where he nursed a tiring car to the podium.
Brian Cembor - Best damn fuel guy I've ever worked with. :) Brian kept me company on the other side of the pit wall, played out strategy with me, filled in on the radio when I had to step away, etc. We did as well as we did in large part to our stops, and we did as well in those as we did in large part to Brian.
The ladies- Kimberly Hardy, Jen Osgood, Sofia Staton, Patsy Tabor. They kept the rest of us idiots fed, hydrated, photographed, updated on standings, updated on competitors, and made sure that we got at least minimal amounts of rest. Always ready and willing to do anything needed to keep the rest of us focused on the race, they really were the unsung heroes of the effort. Additionally, Sofia played a significant role in the prep of the car (getting the nod of approval from all of Kev's friends in the process) and Patsy supplied us with the RV base, without which we'd have been a lot more distracted / a lot less comfortable, and I'm not sure we could have pulled it off without the home base in place that she established.
So that's it, the "It's a week later and I've finally sort of recovered enough to write some stuff down before I forget it all" recap of my first endurance race.
Dave, Nice meeting you. And I very much enjoyed listening to your radio chatter from the next pit stall. We WILL have radios for the next event. Endurance racing is all kinds of fun.
Awesome write up. Sounds like a blast!
Congrats to all of you guys to made it through.
congrats guys! awesome post dave.
man i need to get involved in this somehow. any teams in the greater boston area needing a helping hand?
The coolest part of the team Hong pits (aside from the people) was their jacking system.
No pumping, just leverage. Awesome stuff!
Steve Chryssos wrote: Dave, Nice meeting you. And I very much enjoyed listening to your radio chatter from the next pit stall. We WILL have radios for the next event. Endurance racing is all kinds of fun.
Good meeting you as well. Nice to put a face with the name / car.
And yeah - The stint where we failed to plug in the radio was a bit surreal - after being able to communicate with everyone so easily, it was like we had sent Tommy off to war, never to be heard from again.
Tom Heath wrote: The coolest part of the team Hong pits (aside from the people) was their jacking system.
Thanks! I was pretty proud of that one.
i was going to build one for the Lakewood back when that was a Challenge project. would've been baller in the concours pavillion. but you'd better throw some rollerblade wheels on it somewhere if you're going to use it at the challenge.
The only "problem" with that is then some jackasses decide to ride it around the parking lot of the hotel being pulled behind some DIY Zombie Apacolypse Scooter.
The Hongs were incredibly organized, and their attention to detail was top notch. They really approached this race like a professional team
Sounds like the team really had it together! 
Dave, great writeup!
I'm curious about what setup you guys used for communication. At our last LeMons, we only had a pit board, which was pretty good, but when tim eis of the essence, radios are nice. If we had radios when we saw the car blow a radiator hose and dump all of its coolant, the driver would have brought it in a lap sooner and we would have avoided blowing headgaskets like we did.
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