Cars, Mostly ours

Our podcast this week focuses on our race weekend at NHMS with the 24 Hours of Lemons teams.  We had a bit of a struggle getting ready, but the cars eventually cooperated and raced well, at least for a bit.  In the end, we had a great time and caught up with a lot of friends and made several new ones this weekend.+

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On this episode, Alan, Jennifer, Kate, Vicki and Bill are still recuperating from the race weekend hangover, but did manage to discuss:

• Vicki learns the alphabet, finally.
• Pre-race prep and race car struggles.

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• We broke the first rule of racing and brought an non-prepped car to the track
• El Jeffe/The Bad Hombre/The Trophy Truck/Race Truck was finished literally hours before the race.
• The E36 BMW struggle did not complete until midday Friday afternoon when our great friend Bruce figured out a simple electrical issue that we could not find on our own
• We had to pick up a windshield, which was in Canada
• Bill learns to not joke with the border police
• Normal race induced issues led to a lot of on track repairs and replacement for the race truck, especially related to our steering, power steering, and steering rack.
• SpiderStang was almost brought into race trim since we had all hands on deck and needed two cars
• We rolled the dice and brought the E36 to the track and hoped we could fix it with the aide of our friends in the paddock area
• Friday testing went well with El Jeffe and we were able to get almost all of our new to NHMS drivers
• Jennifer clears all prior NHMS demons from last year
• Kate enjoys her first time on this track and then promptly has internet issues in mid story
• Jennifer is very excited and saw many benefits of the Watkins Glen HPDE we sent to two weeks ago.
• We may finally have solved our braking issue with the El Jeffe race truck
• Bill creates a new word for the dictionary
• Bruce saved our team having to get another engine and perform and engine swap by solving our issue and getting the engine in the E36 to fire.
• Bill confirms that by fire, they meant to get it running and not that it had caught on fire.
• Special thanks to the Thunder for Days team in their Folgers E36 BMW for all their assistance as well.  Apparently, they travel with an entire parts store worth of spare parts to each race.  Thankfully.  And Wisely.  We owe you all.

• Our one time only Guitar Heroes In Training Theme for this race
• Vicki confuses AC/DC and Kiss somehow
• Mia tormented Craiggers as the Plague Doctor all weekend
• Several other teams were theming hard this weekend including appearances by the Three Pedal Mafia’s Ambiguously Gay Duo themed new Pontiac Solstice and the entire gang that represented Baby Shark.

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• Jennifer’s costume was very helpful in getting our cars to have no penalty laps
• Harley Quinn and the harlequin GTI were also a big hit, ad it was quite fast on the track.
• We had a run on power steering pumps for the race truck this weekend, using three total, and we also lost the steering rack/box
• We then run through the race for the race truck and then for the E36 race car
• NHMS this year was the most aggressive race we have been in and there were many incidents, especially Saturday
• We also had a Guest driver this weekend, Jeff Wright, who we met at our Lucky Dog race in Portland this summer.  We hope he had a great time.

• Our wheel spacers led to tire tracking issues in the El Jeffe race truck
• We eventually (think) we lost the steering rack and had some steering difficulty that eventually led to the race truck parking for the last half of Sunday
• Jennifer gets here first black flag in the race truck
• Bill ran first in the E36 on Saturday and raced with several of our friends on the track for long periods of time
• We peaked at 5th place overall, our highest position ever.  Now we need to figure out how to stay there for the whole weekend. 

• We learn that there are two different style safety harnesses/safety belts
• Saturday night dinner and post-race festivities
• Vicki finally meets her girl crush, Amanda Tully, in full costume, in the Three Pedal Mafia’s hot tub, built for 4, but somehow managed to squeeze in 9 that evening.   Hopefully, we will have her on as a future guest.
• The festivities went long into the night.

• Alan eventually gets into a on race CSI investigation that gets edited out a bit.
• Vicki proves that numbers are hard
• We end up talking all over each other during the review of Alan’s Sunday stint
• The Egan’s new car modifications led to a lot of fun but also a lot more gas usage
• We ended our day in the BMW E36 when we lost either a wheel bearing and/or a hub
• Team improvements for next year were abundant
• Radios for each team member if possible
• Earlier starting prep on race day morning with more people
• Training matrix will be developed and monitor our progress towards overall team knowledge and skill improvement for next year and the future
• New Pit Crew Chief election for 2010 season is very likely
• Spares parts for the BMW for next season
• On site car alignment verification capability within our team
• We begin planning our off season and our 2020 season, including re-theming several cars for the 2020

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Thank you to all our friends, we can’t wait to see you again next season!

GHIT 0069: NHMS Race Weekend Review