Many dollars were burned to get here

Last year I finally realized the dream of building a Chump/Lemons car. I didnt really do a build thread on it but there is a little info here.

In short, the car debuted at the Michigan International Speedway Chump race in August 2014.

It felt so good to get this.

The night before. We even ponied up the moolah for a garage space.

We were running midpack for the first 2 drivers

Then the steering wheel adapter broke on the second driver and this happened.

After dragging the car home and pulling the motor, the front end looked like this.

The guy that build the cage has a frame table and said it could be fixed. In October I took him the wrecked car and a parts car to put together. That is a whole other discussion but the car is still in pieces.

In January I decided to hedge my bets and started looking for a replacement.

I wanted to stick with another Civic or Integra. Mainly because I had a garage full of spare parts and I spend the 2000s working at a Honda dealership. I placed a "WTB" ad on the Chump forums and found a guy between Indianapolis and Terre Haute looking to sell his Integra that had been in 11 Chump races. On a day that started clear, my wife and I began the 800 mile round trip to pick it up. It was a long day.

Very nice. Good luck with the new car.

We set the goal to return to MIS for the June 20 race. The car had a bad transmission but I had 3 sitting in the garage.

I ended up swapping the motor/transmission from the Civic in it. I bought it from a GRM board member in Wisconsin while I was in Chicago for work last year. I put a new T belt package and such on it, and it had only run 4 hours before the wreck.

I also needed to fab up a new seat mount and had a long list of maintenance/cleanup things to do.

I had plenty of help.

I took a new job in March that requires me to spend most of my time in the Northeast and travel home to Michigan on the occasional weekend until we can move to PA. So all the work was being done in small chunks (Checklists are great!)

While all the work was going the drivers from 2014 backed out for various reasons. I was certain I was not going to be able to make the race because I am very wary of renting to strangers. Especially since my racing career so far had been full of bad luck. The weekend before the money was due I was 2 drivers short of the required 3. Then my friend that had crewed last year said he would drive. My wife volunteered to step up from being "Fire Extinguisher Girl" and drive. Now I had my 3 drivers so I sent in the money.

Once my wife decided to drive, she signed herself up for a track day at Waterford Hills (I don't have any pictures of that because I was in Massachusetts or similar). We then took the Integra to a track day at Gratten and split the sessions to get used to the car and shake it down. We put 80 miles on it with no issues.

We were not real keen on the color.

So we decided to do something about it. In honor of my favorite GI Joe, Alley Viper

Plus the "Safety Blue" and "Safety Orange" make it easy to follow on track. Ace Hardware enamel.

We didn't really take any team pictures during the race. Here is the only one I have. It is from a dress rehearsal the weekend before the race.

Im the fat guy in the gas station snack suit.

A few pictures from the race.

That looks absolutely fantastic.

Right around 7 hours or so into the race, the engine started to lose power. I pulled into the pits and we found the motor was making a crazy racket. We pulled around to the paddock and found a intake rocker are laying the head loose, and the timing off a couple teeth. We reinstalled the arm and fixed the timing to see what would happen and the motor was just done.

I had a spare engine/trans combo with harness and intake sitting in the truck so we swapped it in. We were out of the race for about 3 hours but pulled back out with around 4 to go. The rest of the race went off without a hitch and we managed to finish 9th. That 9th place finish felt like winning the world championship of everything. We were exhausted but we finished.

We were all 3 novices but I have to give major credit to my wife. I said before the race she would put down the fastest lap. She has been competitively riding horses cross country for many years and has tons of experience at looking ahead and picking her lines.

Not only did she have the fastest lap, She had the fastest 86 laps!

Her fastest lap was 133.6. My fastest lap was 138.4. The other driver had a fastest lap of 139.5. Between 133.6 and 138.0 she logged 86 laps.

She had a faster lap than 2 other teams as well.

She kicked our butts.

Our registration is paid for Gingerman so we can do it all again.

Awesome.

Perseverance in the face of adversity! You sir are a chumpcar icon.

RIP, Hooptie/Barney. Hello, Gulf-ish lookin' unnamed Integra!

ValuePack wrote: RIP, Hooptie/Barney. Hello, Gulf-ish lookin' unnamed Integra!

Awesome.

You had me at Alley Viper.

SnowMongoose wrote: You had me at Alley Viper.

The colors were the source of a lot of discussion between the wife and I. Last year we realized how hard it was to see and follow a black car around the track (obvious in hindsight of course). The bright orange "Tow" sticker on the Civic became what we would look for. It was easier to see for me than the rest of the car. So we knew we wanted to go with something high viability.

The yellow was ok but it is a common color so I figured it might get lost in the pack. Orange is good but it seems every Honda/Acura with orange is also done up in a RealTime livery with white.

I didn't really want a solid color and I kept thinking about how I Alley Viper was my favorite because of the loud combo that stuck out from the Snake Eyes, Serpentors and Destros of the world.

I went to the local hardware store to see what my options were. When I saw the safety paint for 9.99 a quart, I knew we had a winner.

When the steering wheel adapter broke on the 1st car did the wheel come off in the driver's hands causing the wreck?

bgkast wrote: When the steering wheel adapter broke on the 1st car did the wheel come off in the driver's hands causing the wreck?

Yep. It happened on the worst corner of the track. Anywhere else would have had much less damage because of run off area.

I never heard of the issue. Once it happened to me stories started coming our of the woodwork from all sorts of motorsports where it happened. Rally drivers, circle track drivers and chump drivers all had stories. I believe the owner of the integra said it happened a couple of times with different brands before they went with the weld on style the car currently has.

The rally driver told me he started making sure to inspect all the mounting screws regularly and replaces it as maintenance.

I should also throw out a Thank You to Dr Boost for trading me a cherry picker. Without it, it would have been much harder to swap motors at the track.

I would have bought one anyway but now he can feel special.

Great story! Crap can racing is great for your spirit, but hell for your wallet. When are you moving to PA and what part? You gotta bring that thing LeMons racing.

Ugh. I actually kinda wish my wife could drive faster then me. But i think i would be terrified to ride with her if that were true.

Cool stuff!

In reply to Klayfish: We are looking around Scranton-ish. Hopefully we can make the move in the next few months.

We are down for Lemons races when they fit our schedule.