Garage Heroes (In Training)

Learning as we go. Come along with us and Enjoy the Ride!

Bill Fischer

NJMP 24 Hours of Lemons Race May 2018

After Tech Inspection

The NJMP race in May was our inaugural event and we prepared from essentially ground zero for the race.  The four drivers for this race were Vicki, Liam, Cassian, and Bill.  In addition, we were supported by several family members and friends in the paddock, and their contributions and assistance cannot be overstated.  Special thanks to our daughter Mia, Vicki’s sister Jennifer and husband Jim, as well as their sons Jimmy and Jacob, and Jimmy’s friend Aubrey.

Goals:  Our team goals were to 1) make sure everyone was safe, 2) pass tech inspection and get everyone at least one turn in the car during the race, 3) no black flags or crashes, 4) finish the race, and 5) ideally finish in the middle of the pack.  If we got into the top half, we did more than we could have ever hoped for.  The goals were largely adopted by everyone, except Liam and Cassian who were very concerned about “dominating” and especially about beating each other.  More on that later.    

Pre-Race Prep:  In preparation for the race, I developed a “rather long” checklist for the race weekend.  It had several sections including spare parts, tools, camp stuff, food stuff, and miscellaneous.  It ended up being about 18 pages or so and did help us greatly in making sure we had packed everything we had wanted and didn’t leave anything behind.  It even had items we knew we did not have yet but eventually wanted to bring when we did, e.g. tools like an engine hoist/lift etc.  In general, we had almost everything we needed.  (Except for bailing wire.  I didn’t pack any because I didn’t know what it was and silently thought that we didn’t need any hay for the race so why bring it.)  The nice thing is we can add or subtract things to our list that we run into or see others have that we need.  For instance, my daughters first question upon setting up camp was “why don’t we have a hot tub?” after seeing Three Pedal Mafia’s set up.  At least she has her race weekend priorities in place.

Paddock/Camp setup:  I arrived early Thursday afternoon with the trailer which also transported the tools, spare parts, and the Capri to the race.  Our set up consisted of a Ford F150 and a Look 18’ enclosed trailer.  No towing experience included.  It wasn’t too bad as we only did a few things wrong (tying the car down and loading the trailer) and needed to upgrade our hitch system.  (But we didn’t know any of those until arriving at our next race in Thompson, so we got a bit lucky).  We had arranged to stay near our friends at Three Pedal Mafia in the paddock (so we didn’t have to run too far in a panic).  The buddy system worked great throughout the weekend.  We would highly recommend partnering up a with another team if you can, even if they know as little as we do, its still more than you will at your first race.

Once we set up our paddock area and began unpacking the trailer etc., we prepared for Fridays practice day and our teams first time on any track.  We did elect to stay at a local hotel to hopefully minimize the complexity of race weekend.  Jen and her family stayed on site within their camper and had a great time at the track all weekend.  We planned on adding camping at the next race.  We did divide up areas of responsibility with Vicki and Jen taking the lead of the paddock area and I focused on the mechanical aspects of the car, race prep, and planning. 

Friday Practice:    Practice started early and we hit the track after a tech inspection and a fairly brief drivers meeting.  Our goal was to get everyone out on the rack for about 30 minutes to learn the car and the track.  We did not think to look at any YouTube videos of the track, but at least one of us had looked at the track map ahead of time.  One thing we couldn’t help but notice right away was that everyone was very friendly and helpful to everyone, even our team that was new and going through everything for the first time.  Everyone on our team was able to get out onto the track and do at least 10 or so laps.  The nice thing was that during practice, the track was fairly open with few cars on at any one time (approximately 20-30 max).  This would not be the case with 140 cars entered for our race. 

In hindsight, we probably focused a little bit too much on taking care of our cars and camp and probably should have taken more opportunities to walk the paddock area and see the sights/cars/other teams and meet the teams throughout the weekend.  In our slight defense, there is a tremendous number of things going on during the racing and a lot of juggling is needed.  Hopefully we will get better as we all learn how to do things and what needs to be done. 

Practice went well. Everyone had a turn and began to learn the track and the car.  We did offer our car to a friend (Chris Abbott) to have him take it out for a few laps to see what he thought and if we needed to adjust anything.  He did offer several thoughts that helped our team and car tremendously.  In addition, he beat our best lap time of the weekend in our car by over 10 seconds in one of his laps before we made the upgrades.  Obviously, our team has a lot to learn about racing.  (It was finally starting to dawn on Liam and Cassian that maybe they weren’t going to dominate the entire event weekend, lol) 

Upgrade items we changed with Chris’s input were to

  • Improve air flow through the radiator by boxing in a bit with hard foam insulation panel,
  • Adjusting our brake pedal height to be closer to the gas pedal height for easier transitions between the pedal and maybe even some heel-toe action.
  • Changing tire pressure to 32 front and 30 rear
  • Adjust/tighten the throttle cable to eliminate a gas pedal dead spot 

These “small” changes made a big difference when we went out in the race Saturday.  I took great pride in Chris’s observation that our car “wasn’t tragic” and was even “fun”lol. 

Saturday/Race Day #1:  We elected to have Vicki go out first on race day for several reasons.  One was she drives very well and would be most likely to remain conservative at the start of the race when many other drivers would be at their most aggressive.  Second, she is the family CFO so make sure she gets seat time.  Third and finally, I am not (that) stupid.  She started slow and worked her way up throughout her stint.  It was noticeable visually and even more so after we found an app to monitor the lap times in real time.  (about $10, who knew).  We kept all our driver stints relatively short at around 45 minutes or so to make sure no one got too tired and to maximize the chances that everyone got at least one turn in.  Each of our drivers got at least two turns in on Saturday.  So we accomplished our first goal of everyone getting to drive, but we did have a few other “issues”. 

We got our first black flag when someone took off their glove in the pit the adjust a GoPro.  (two rules broken at one time).  We got another black flag when I “overcooked” it a bit going into turn one by a few feet and went over the line with two tires at the end of the straight, still on pavement, but technically I had two wheels off per Lemons rules.  The first infraction was met with a warning.  The second with a 30-minute parking spot in the penalty box.  Oh, I did end the day in the tire wall so that the racing day ended a few minutes early.  So our goals of no black flags and no accidents were out the window early on day one. 

Finally, late in the day and late in my stint, I had finally gotten to open track with a good driver ahead of me to follow and learn from.  The only issue was he was a good driver and I apparently wasn’t nearly as good.  I went a few inches too wide onto the curbing and the back end went out a bit.  I did not recover in time and ended up stuck in the tire wall.  (Yes, Vicki and Mia took pictures of where I hit the wall during our track walk later that evening)  After they towed the car back into our pit.  The Capri had a minor front left quarter panel bend that was easily fixed with a precision instrument called a persuader.  (Some of you may know it as a sledge hammer.)  Per team rules, that I came up with on the spot, I could not race tomorrow since I had crashed the car.

PS  We also got a bit lucky with at least one other tire off track and possible “rubbing” incident on track that either didn’t happen or wasn’t seen.  These were also not aligned with our goals. 

We ended the day fixing the front quarter panel and then being invited for a track walk.  Only half out team went, but the experience was simply incredible.  We learned so much of what to do, where to look, what the track surface actually felt like and how it varied, noticed minor humps and bumps that could either help or hurt your time, etc. that you don’t see when travelling in a car at speed.  Highly recommended, but try to go with another experienced team if possible.  Again, special thanks to Chris, Jeff, Mental, and Chrissie from Three Pedal Mafia for inviting us on their walk.  After a long day, the whole team of drivers hit the hotel for a needed shower and some sleep.     

Sunday/Race Day 2:  As most of our team is not functional in the morning (17 and 18 years old) so Vicki got the first drive of the Sunday as well.  After the track walk, she easily reduced her time by ~10 seconds per lap vs the prior day and continued to improve throughout the day, Liam and Cassian also improved, but not quite as much (see, no track walk).  We ended the day with our car still in the race and took the checkered flag and drove the car through the pit area and paddock under its own power.  Many happy waves, clapping and high fives to be had by everyone there.  Did we belong, not really, but we felt like we did. 

Final Standings

Race Results:  We ended up finishing in 82nd place.  I can analyze the data a bunch of ways but the easiest way to summarize if we lost to only a few teams with similar lap times as ours (or slower) and we “wasted” a lot of time with slow pit stops and lots of pit stops to keep everyone fresh.  In total, we were around 80 laps or so from as good as we could possibly have done at the driving level we were at.

But we did not come to win, we came to try a Lemons race and we loved it.  There was a closing awards ceremony, which is an event all by itself.  We said our goodbyes to all of our new friends and many, many thank you’s to a ton of people who helped us throughout the weekend.  We actually did help one team a bit by “lending” them gas so they could get out and race.  No money needed.  We took the future Karma. 

We packed up camp and left the area after the awards ceremony.  All of us were tired, a bit dirty, but still excited (and a bit proud of what we had done)

As Vicki and I said while driving home from NJMP “I think we found our idiots”.

Takeaways:  Things we learned:

  • Set goals for team and make sure all on same page
  • Get the track and race schedule handouts – we didn’t know these things existed until a week later.  They help. 
  • Optional practice on Friday is not really optional for first timers at a track.  Do it if you can.  Otherwise it is a trial by fire on race day. 
  • Lap timing apps are available (and helpful)
  • If it’s your first time racing, try to partner up.  Most teams seemed willing and very helpful.  If not, find us.
  • Short driving stints are good for the first time to keep everyone sharp and fresh
  • Track walks are awesome (and essential)
  • Track videos can be reviewed ahead of time to help learn the track.  We like the ones with the track overlayed especially. 
  • Bring more than 4 gas cans if possible.  Lots of trips off site to refill can be avoided.  Also, the “Slurpee” tax for each trip really adds up    

Come with Us and Enjoy the Ride!

Capri Car Prep – Theme

  • Initial Car Theme
  • “Final” Car Theme

As you probably expected, we had zero experience on our team for car theme prep for a car in a 24 Hours of Lemons race.  It took us weeks to finally come up with a team name we all could agree on.  We finally settled on Garage Heroes (In Training) and hopefully it sticks, especially since it is now the website we are using.  It hopefully stated our goal to eventually reach a decent level of capability both driving and mechanically, but also stated we are far from there.  Finally, it complimented our team being comprised of a bunch of comic book movie fans and several of us have enjoyed comic books since the 1970’s.  Yes, they had paper back then.

Now, to begin to prepare the car and the theme. 

With so many colors to choose from and so many potential themes that could apply, we were baffled for quite a long time.  We finally settled on the Avengers theme we ended up with.  The timing was right as the fourth Avengers movie was coming out just before our May race at NJMP (and the Avengers comic was my favorite growing up going back to volume 1 issue 131 so I was on board early)

We used what we had on hand and finally some of my woodworking background came in handy.  I had a HVLP spray gun for painting and we thought we could use it for painting the car.  The steps we used, and our progress are covered below. 

The one agreement we had with the former team (Prompt Critical) was to change our number so they could retain the old one.  (Note extra credit points to the first who figures out why we chose the new number.  Anyone?)  Anyone familiar with painting a house knows that the key to a good outcome is the preparation steps and care.  First step was to remove the stickers and decals on the car.  Particularly hard for us was the hood that had a decal that seemed like it was made of metal, but we eventually got through it.  As they say we had a team “beach party” because there was plenty of sanding to do.  Top tip:  Slurpee’s and pizza increased productivity dramatically.  We tried every type and device we could find or think of at a lot of various grit sizes.  What we found worked best was the following items.

Capri:  Sanded and Prepped for Paint
  • Sponge sanding blocks, 60, 120, and 240 grit, especially the ones with the grooves
  • Rubber sanding paper cleaner stick.  Takes all the residue out from between the grit and expends the life of the sanding surface by 3-4x or so.
  • Red nylon wool discs for a hand drill:  gets a good amount of paint and decal removal, especially in the bottom of panel grooves. 
  • Orbital disc sander:  works on flat surfaces very well but pay attention to not groove metal panels
  • We did not try a belt sander although it was suggested.  Our concern was the rapid material removal may be too fast and cause surface damage to the sheet metal of the body .
  • Bondo:  We don’t need no stinking Bondo.  It was our goal not to use it unless absolutely necessary.  It was probably necessary, but we didn’t use it anyway. 
  • Adding to the complexity of this operation was the rust and the rusted through holes (I am guessing this is fairly common for many/most Lemons cars to be).  Rust is a ceramic material and as such it is much harder than the metal and the removal rate is much slower.  Pay special attention to any area that may have rust so that you don’t remove more metal from the area around the rust than the area of the rust. 

Our process was to remove most of the paint and all the decals looking to get a smooth surface.  The prior paint was probably original and had a ton of oxidation, so it had nearly a sand paper texture to it.  Hopefully your surface won’t be as rough.  We ended up about 60% or so bare metal.  We were going to paint it almost immediately, but if not, you may want to apply a thin coat of primer or clear to prevent any rust from coming back as bare metal rusts quickly. 

We then masked off the surfaces with painters’ tape and painting paper and began our first effort to spray paint a car. 

We had decided to paint with an automotive paint from a local Colours store.  We chose a dark blue for our car and “saved money” by not priming or applying a clear coat after.  We shall see how the painted surface wears with time.  We ended up getting one gallon and using almost all of it on our relatively small car (but we probably painted it a bit thicker than needed).

The desired goal was to look good at twenty feet.  We would be happy to look good at 20 feet and 50 mph.  I think we got there.  But there are a lot of drips, mostly due to overly thick layers of paint.

  • At Tech Inspection
  • “Final” Car Theme
  • Relaxing after Tech

Things we found/learned:

  • Try to spray in thin coats.  This means the color changes but may not reach the final color.  Come back later with another coat in 15-30 minutes.
  • Try to keep a wet edge to avoid varying paint thickness
  • Try to move the paint in a path where it is at the same angle to the paint surface, not in the natural arc you would get from pivoting at you shoulder etc. 
  • Short people and kids are great for reaching the lower sections like the rockers etc.
  • Masking off tires with a cloth paint drip cloth is the easiest thing we found so far
  • We “heard“ that when masking off the car, don’t forget to mask off behind the grill or you could end up with a painted radiator.  There is no evidence of this happening on our car.  Seriously, no, never happened. Just helping a friend.  
  • Painting outside in the sun and wind are not best practices but it is what we had so we did, and it worked OK.  Again we weren’t looking to get into a showroom here.
  • Try to give the car about 2-3 three days to dry and harden.  That includes don’t put a car cover on to keep any rain out etc. 

Now we have a blue car and while it may look better, this is not what a Lemons racing car is thought to look like.  We need stripes and decals and lots of other stuff.  We ended up going with a long, centered Go Fast stripe vinyl decal we found on Amazon.  We also found a large Avengers “A” vinyl decal for the front hood that we liked.  Add a few more character stickers to the car as “driver icons” and the car was basically where we wanted it to be.  Some hand painted touches of the side stripes of white and red by our artsy team member Vicki and another vinyl “Avengers Assemble” decal provided by our friend Jeff at the Three Pedal Mafia and the car was as ready as we knew how to get it.

Estimated costs were about $100 in prep supplies, $300 in auto paint, $20 in other paint. $200 or so in decals and it took about 5 long days with 4-5 people. 

We hope you think it turned out ok.  If you have any questions or need more detail for nay part, please let us know.

Enjoy the Ride!

We made it to the race!

1974 Capri – Mechanical Preparation

  • Tranforming from here
  • to here

Mechanical Preparation for Lemons Racing of our 1974 Capri or “How to prep a Lemons race car without mechanical skill nor knowledge”

After our debacle with the dirt track car, we (I) made our team’s first good decision and decided to look for a car that had lemons experience, since we had none.  After looking for several weeks, we found the two Prompt Critical team cars were available and we eventually drove down to investigate.  

We met with Vince in March 2018 and during our discussions, the Capri looked like a great option for us.  It had several successful’ish races and was solid mechanically.  In addition, it was relatively easy to drive and since it was from the 70’s should be easy to work on.  Down sides:  Transmission may be a weak spot and parts are probably getting harder to find as we go.  Our only show stopper was that team Prompt Critical had begun the process to change the Capri drive train over to match the Mustang.  Finally recognizing my limitations (perhaps for the first time, just ask Vicki), I asked for the car to be put back with the original motor and transmission.  We eventually met in the middle and they agreed to put the engine back in, but we had to finish up the rest.  Consider it our welcome to Lemons World and our first Lemons test.

We agreed and picked up the car the following week.  (actually picked up both cars, but that is a story saved for our Mustang Prep post still to come).  So now we have a car that needs, in our minds, considerable work to be ready for the NJMP Lemons race in May.

Please remember our status at this point is a team consisting of one 17-year-old son with two high school auto classes, an artistic mom with some mechanical ability gained through YouTube, and a father who can work with wood, but we were pretty sure we shouldn’t have much wood in the race prepped car.  We also had nearly zero tools beyond standard household and honey-do items like hammers, drills, and screwdrivers.  Oh, I also forgot, we have no garage in our current home so whatever we need to do is done outside in the elements and in northeast PA, winter can get cold and last well into what the calendar says is spring.  I knew enough to know that working on the ground on a car in the cold is not really enjoyable.  In summary, no mechanical skills, no tools, and no place to work.  Situation normal for our team. 

 We end up working on the car to get most of it put together and ready.  Thanks to a Hanes manual and high level Google-Fu.  Since this is our first effort, we located a local garage to do a quick safety review of the car (and our work).  This satisfies my fatherly concern over the safety of rest of the family driving.  The garage does find a few issues and agrees to help us fix most of them.  In my mind, money well spent.  All together we ended up with a car summarized below.

  • 1974 Ford Capri (I believe sold by Mercury in Europe)
  • Stock 2.8-liter V6
  • Stock 4 speed manual transmission

Upgrades and changes include the following items

  • Full welded halo roll bars (already installed by Prompt Critical)
  • Fuel cell – 12-gallon capacity (already installed by Prompt Critical)
  • Braided stainless steel tubing to and from fuel cell (already installed by Prompt Critical)
  • Mr. Gasket electric fuel pump (already installed by Prompt Critical)
  • Holley Carburetor 700 cc (already installed by Prompt Critical) (cleaned, changed floats and adjusted )
  • 4-wheel disc brake conversion using Volvo 205 brake rotors and pads (already installed by Prompt Critical)
  • Brake pad upgrade to Raybestos SF-43 racing pads
  • All water coolant system
  • Added two cooling fans to the radiator (already installed by Prompt Critical)
  • Walled in radiator and fans with foam insulation and aluminum HVAC tape to improve air flow through the radiator
  • Brake fluid changed to 660 racing fluid from Wilwood
  • Fire Suppression system (already installed by Prompt Critical)
  • GoPro Hero 6 installed
  • 28” wide panoramic rear-view mirror mounted off center
  • AIM telemetry system
  • Race seat (already installed by Prompt Critical)
  • Adjustable seat back support bars (already installed by Prompt Critical)
  • Racing steering wheel with quick disconnect (already installed by Prompt Critical)
  • 5-point racing harness (already installed by Prompt Critical)

If anyone wants a more detailed description of any of the above, just let us know.  

Special thanks to our friends who built this car originally at team Prompt Critical, D&A Auto Service who helped inspect and/or fix most of the rest and our friends at Three Pedal Mafia / Everyone Racers podcast for advice and tips throughout.  We would be even further behind without your endless help and tolerance for our questions.  

Any questions are always welcome.

Enjoy the ride!

How did we get here?

A member in an endurance racing team?  It all started as a kid.  My favorite toy was a Hot Wheels cars or a Matchbox car or especially a Johnny Lightning car.  This was very cool since my mother worked for Topper Toys and she got the Johnny Lightning ones for free.

Fast forward another 34 years and my son is fascinated by Hot Wheels and then moves on to the Transformers, cars especially of course.  

Fast forward again, my son now has his permit.  How do you train a new driver.  Well it all started with hundreds of hours at various go kart tracks across the country, but what to do now that it really matters?  We had a very extensive process, (we can elaborate in detail if anyone is ever interested) but a HPDE (high performance driving education) course seemed like a great idea.  So it turns out his firt time ever driving alone is on the high banked turns and infield course at Pocono raceway.  Being a good dad, I had to share the experience as well in another car, lol.  

Once we completed this, we made a deal.  Don’t drive like a jerk/idiot/dummy/etc on the road and we will do other track day driving to enjoy periodically.  

There were two other key steps in the path towards amateur endurance racing.  Number one was a podcast and TV show called “Everyday Driver” that had an episode on Lemons racing in Washington.  Second was another podcast called “Everyone Racers” that is hosted by four members of the Three Pedal Mafia lemons racing team (who became our good friends later).  

So lets skip to the present day.  We are an amateur endurance racing team.  We have a ton of friends at the races and find more every single race.  We have 2.5 race cars for lemons.  We have raced in two lemons races so far and are registered for at least two more this year.  Our team name is Garage Heroes (In training) and at this point, the emphasis is on the “In Training” part of our moniker.  

We have a team of 8 drivers and growing.  Two of which learned to drive a manual transmission just to race in the last race.  In total, we have 3 high school teen drivers and 5 parents, with at least two more younger kids in training to get into the car ASAP and a bunch of other high school friends chomping at the bit to get in.  We all know we are way closer to the beginning of our journey into driving and working on race cars, but we are all enthusiastic about it and looking to learn as much as we can as fast as we can.  

So hopefully we can accomplish one or more of our goals here for you.  

  1.  Help motivate you and your potential team to give this a shot
  2. Help you learn along with us and ideally learn from you as well
  3. Help save you some learning lessons and hopefully save you time or money, likely at our expense
  4. Entertain you with the process, our ups and downs, and hopeful improvement.

Who says that none of the kids care about driving?  Or that no one cares about driving!  Perhaps when you do more than steer a care it becomes a bit more exciting.  There is a vast difference between steering a car and driving one.  

Welcome aboard and enjoy the ride!

About Our Team

Our endurance racing team at the 2018 24 Hours of Lemons race in Thompson CT

We are a relatively new endurance racing team that has little skill (driving and mechanical).  Our goal here is to document our progress and hopefully help inspire you to come join us on the track.  Our team consists of a bunch of friends and family, many of whom learned to drive a manual transmission just to come out racing with us.  We have no professional aspirations or delusions, but we want to eventually become resourceful and maybe even competitive.  

Our intention is to help show you that racing a car should not be a dream, but a hobby that anyone can do and have a great time with friends and family.  Is it easy, sometimes.  But some of the best times are when it isn’t easy.  We are constantly meeting great people and making new friends at every race.  Whether they feel the same is still to be determined at this point, lol.  

Since we are learning as we go, we plan on covering things that are often overlooked by many as potential obstacles to getting into our sport.  We hope to assist you by learning with us and make it even easier for anyone who follows along with us as we grow and hopefully get better at this.  This will include areas like buying and preparing a car, both mechanically and theme, as well as improving driving technique, track and camping life, along with every other detail we either succeed or fail at as we go.

Everyone can have fun out here, waste some time, waste some money, but have a blast.  Who knows, we might even save you some of both as we go.  

Welcome aboard. 

Come with Us and Enjoy the Ride!

We fully expect you to laugh at our expense fairly often.  Racing is a blast and the more people we meet, the more friends we have.