Why I am not married

Originally from November 22, 2010

Late yesterday and into the evening I took a look at the transmission Ford Cook gave us and it has thick pink stuff in it, like Pepto Bismol, just not as bright, and whatever it was not bothered at all by Brakeclean. Is it some sort of silicone lubricant? Otherwise it looks line and clean in there, with very little metal on the magnet, and everything seems to work OK on the bench.

The strange pink transmission oil turned out to be Redline Shockproof.

On the way out the door to NAPA to pick up a few things I saw the aftermath of last night's late night build session afresh, and it reminded me of what a friend once said when she say my place when I was in the midst of a similarly inspired project - "Now I know why you are not married."

Oh yea, the fact that the temperature in the kitchen was 17C might be another reason I am not married. I think I am starting to understand what my friend was trying to tell me. If she was here this morning this is what she would have seen.

Get back to work, guys!

Originally from November 13, 2010

I've been buried with work (I know, I don't have a "job", but still...) lately and preparations for the December race were pushed to the background, but that will change this week. That job is winding down this weekend and I'll have nothing else to do except healthy, happy, Opel Yoga. I hope everyone else on the team is up for some of the same. At least it's not 105 in the carport any more.

When we left off a few weeks ago we had ended work with a number of improvements and fixes, including an oil cooler, new ball joints and front-end bushings, a fan shroud, new motor mounts and bottom end gaskets. This was topped off with a day at Thunderhill where we got to see how everything was working out and to get Geoff some time in the car. The results were mostly good. We still have a carburetion issue, probably related to the jetting for both ports. Also, either we didn't get the fan shroud installed correctly, or the motor moves around more than we expected, or the front of the car is more flexible than it should be, but the result, the fan blades are a little shorter now. But, at least the tire rub issue has been taken care of, courtesy of Geoff's BFH.

I think I also noted that we picked up a gift of a motor, heads, more carburetors, distributors, yet another tranny, (we now have four), and race clutches. The motor is bored to 2.0L but is not stroked. The bottom end is together and has run only one short race. The heads are off but are together and ready to go. A little inspection, some measurements, cleaning, and gaskets, and we've got a like-new motor that we were told could be getting us power in the 110-120 whp range. Our current motor is good, runs steady, but is only putting out 85 whp (and we do appreciate having every single one of them), and oil pressure is in the 25-45 psi range, a bit low, but that's still OK. I'm all for running our current motor until serious problems develop, which hopefully will not happen until we're putting the car back on the trailer. The idea of a motor swap in this car, at the track, does not sound like fun. The motor comes out of the bottom of the car. Other than that, it should be easy to do, courtesy of 1960's automotive technology.

Still to do:

• Fix the tranny, and a spare tranny. They need 3rd-4th synchros and we've learned that Fiero synchros will do the job.
• Adjust valves. This will be the only motor work done so far, aside from spark plugs and gaskets.
• Minor but important electrical upgrades, such as installing a fuse between the battery and kill switch.
• Install wipers. We may not need them, but the race is in December.

The official checklist is at Geoff's house. I'm sure there are a few more items on it.

As for the race itself, there have been a few developments.

• Brian is unable to drive for us. [Joking]This means we can take the shift-light off the check list.[/Joking] We'll miss you Brian. How about next spring?
• Alan cannot drive for this race. He has a prior commitment, the one-darned-day-of-the-year type commitment, but, if Team Tinyvette can get the corporate jet for the weekend and fly him down to Buttonwillow after his event, Alan will be able to drive. In other words, he'll be with us in spirit, plus he has offered to make his truck and trailer available, so he'll be with us in "equipment", too.
• We've asked a local kart racer Steve to drive with us. He has track experience and serious shifter-kart race experience, but so far no racing in anything that has doors. He has seen the car, and when he got in it he got that big grin that tells us he wants to do it, but it's not official yet.
• I'd like to ask John Harlen, lead instructor for TEAM Racing, to join us. When I mentioned this to him last summer he was very interested and said he'd even buy one of those fancy Italian (Sparco?) suits for something like this. He's a great guy, has the right spirit, and can drive. I'm not sure if he has any door-to-door experience, but then who does?
• Bernhard is not available, as much as he'd love to drive for us. His business in Davis will either be taking off real-soon-now, or not, and in either case it requires all of his attention.

Bribe ideas are needed. We did the booze thing last time, and booze is pretty standard for bribes, er, baksheesh, so it would be nice to do something else, something that would do well using our flip-over headlight bribe-delivery system. I was thinking maybe cute little a kitten or puppy, but on second thought, maybe not. We'd have to strap them in, hang them upside down in the pod, drive the car to the inspection station, and by them I'm sure they'd piss themselves or worse and would want to shred whoever comes close to them after the pop-up spectacle. Then I was thinking inflatable girl wearing a greasy Lemons t-shirt, some form of pants, and holding a wrench, so I went online to find one and they were pretty disgusting. I wouldn't want one of those in my house. I moved on to searching for an inflatable Danica Patrick doll, but so far no luck.

Another idea is an Opel GT model. One of the judges loves collecting models of weird and off-beat cars, and the Opel GT might qualify there, at least in his way of looking at thing. Another suggestion has been food, since these guys are inspecting cars all day and don't get to eat. (If police are associated with donuts, what would be right for judges?) Anyway, we need to think hard and long about this. It could be the single most important decision we make for this race.

And for the team promo update, besides the monthly Davis Cruise-Ins, where our car is pretty popular, last night Alan and I were at the Sacramento Auto Museum for a sneak-peek event for the new Italian cars show. While there I chatted up the automotive writer for the Bee. He wanted our postcard, which I was showing people so they could see the car I was talking about, and he wanted to keep it. We exchanged cards and I'll follow up today. Also, I talked to the curator and an event coordinator about a possible Opel show, and that looks like it will happen sometime this year, which means we can't ball up the car just yet. So, try to picture our little yellow car in a museum. Yes, it may be difficult, but try.

Accepted!

Originally from September 26, 2010

We just got accepted into the race. We're that special. Plus we got to keep our number 8. (No one had taken it yet.)

Of course, there are a total of 197 teams registered. Not sure if all got accepted, but damn, that would be 800 drivers, plus other crew and family.

Let's see, Buttonwillow is about 3 miles long, so around 15,500 feet, that's roughly 80 feet per car. Subtract the length of the car and we are have about 65 feet between each car. At 60 mph, that's less than 1 second's travel distance. By the end of Saturday when half the cars have crapped out, we'll be almost 2 seconds apart, on average.

What could go wrong?

The Meeting at Tinyvette Corporate

Originally from September 23, 2010

Last night everyone got together at Tinyvette Corporate headquarters (Alan’s house), everyone local that is, for a stop-putting-this-off strategizing session. We've got repairs to do, an oil cooler to install (we finally sold a heap of Opel GT parts last week), and we need to get seat time for our new never-been-on-track driver and for our went-off-twice-at-Arse-Sweat-and-got-us-parked-for-3.5-hours-on-Saturday driver, and of course to test the tinyvette. We think we can get everything done before Bonni's (TEAM-Racing.org) October 15 track event. We think. We have nearly all the parts we'll need, with two more spare trannys coming. We damaged two at Arse-sweat and new synchros are nearly impossible to find, except apparently in Russia and Poland.

Anyway, "we think" is maybe a bit better than Lemons-inspired optimism. We've had the car nearly completely apart before, so we've already broken all the bolts that were destined to break, and now we even know where all the leftover parts go.

October 15 will be a chance to test our repairs and "new" tranny. Thunderhill is a lot closer than Buttonwillow and Bonni's people are Lemons-friendly. We do hope to be able to get to Buttonwillow once before the race, probably for the NCRC event, assuming we don't use up what is left of the 40+ year old car before then.

Arse-Freeze Apalooza

Originally from September 18, 2010

Team Tinyvette is going to enter the car into the Arse-Freeze Apalooza, the LeMons race at Buttonwillow in early December. We'll be back with the whole team, the only change so far being that Geoff, who did a lot of fab work and wrenching for us before and during Arse-Sweat, is also going to drive this time.

Preparations for the race focus mainly on fixing stuff that went bad at the last race:

1. Cooling
2. Oil leaks
3. Transmission

We'll also do a little front-end work. Bushing and boots, basically replacing the last bits of rubber and plastic that was on the car when Alan and I bought it.

Oh, and very important, more decals, to round out the ALMS Corvette look.

Buttonwillow is quite different from Thunderhill, and I think, not the best place for a total rookie to get some racing experience. Buttonwillow is about the same length and has about the same number of turns, and like Thunderhill there is not much you can hit (unlike Infineon), there are two things our guys have t look out for:

1. Many corners are fairly sharp and quick. In traffic, that can be a lot to deal with.
2. Everything around the track is soft, meaning, if you go off the pavement, once the massive cloud of dist settles and we can see where you ended up, there is a good chance you will be upside-down.

That said, there are some really fun parts of the course, such as the long a slightly banked "NASCAR turn", and the high-speed esses, a long front straight, and a fairly high banked tight turn where in my Prelude on street tires I have logged over 1.1G, so who knows what the Tinyvette car will be able to do.

There is one boring aspect to Buttonwillow, and that is the lack of elevation changes.

Here is a video showing the start of last year's race in a car that is in the power and weight range as the Tinyvette car. It also shows a very aggressive and confident driver.



And here are two videos showing what is likely to happen if you go off track. This was at the same race as the above video, but is on the last half of the last lap, with the V8olvo posing a serious challenge to the first place car.

24 Hours of Lemons Buttonwillow 2009 Leader of the race rolls his car on the last lap.


Big Sausage Roll at Buttonwillow 24 Hours of Lemons

Lap Time Comparison Video

Originally from September 12, 2010

Has it been too long since the last Tinyvette video?

This one provides a comparison of four different drivers in the same car, at Arse-Sweat/Thunderhill.



“One car, one track, four different drivers with very different levels of experience. Brian knows this track well and has raced in LeMons a number of times. This video shows him turning his best lap of the weekend. Bernhard has decades of experience in the Renault Cup series, but this is his first time at Thunderhill, first time in this car, and his lap is from his first practice session in the car. Alan and Zep have driven Thunderhill, and this car, a couple of times, but their laps are from their first time racing.”

The interesting thing about this video is not the different laps times each driver turns in, but how the half second here, half second there, difference between each driver adds up.

Germany -vs- Italy

Originally from September 9, 2010

Not a wreck (sorry), but an impassioned chase.



About 19 minutes into the race Brian pits to tell us that the car is great, then heads back out. Just as he is rolling out of the pits, "it" speeds by. "It", the green/white/red Alpha from the team California Mille, manages to keep Brian at bay for 4 and a half laps. It's a great chase, with lots of exasperated hand waving, but in the German car (1969 Opel GT), and a driver that seems to be possessed. After that Brian turns some of the fastest laps of our weekend, but then comes in early with a broken transmission. And, Brian, didn't we agree to something about shifting at 5,000 rpm? That is a 41 year old motor after all, and it's coming out of 25 years of abandonment, save for an oil change and the new spark plugs it got for the race.