Cars, Mostly ours

GHIT 0083: Our 2019 Review and 2020 Goals Episode

On this episode, Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, Kate and Bill went over our 2019 season and our 2020 goals. Are we on the same page? Do we even belong in the same book? Listen in and find out. Some of it was news to us, lol.

Areas covered included:

2019 Review:

1) How did our Team’s 2019 go in your opinion, Highlight and Low-light
2) How did your personal season go? Highlight and Low-light
3) Things you want to keep the same/similar and Things we need to change or improve
4) Biggest team weakness or missing need
5) Best Race or HPDE and Worst Race or HPDE
6) Our traditional Good, Bad, and the Ugly

2020 Goals:

1) What race goals do you have For you, For the team, For cars
2) Personal, Non-driving/racing goals
3) What driving/HPDE goals do you have, Any tracks or races interested in for 2020
4) Any additions to our team in terms of People, Tools, Training, Paddock, Cars,
5) Roles/Responsibilities, and Team talents missing/needed
6) What would define a successful year? For you and for our team
7) What would you say to the other members of our team

We try to do this every year and would recommend it to you and your team.

Bill’s inner planner sometimes takes over.

Best regards,

Bill, Vicki, Jen, Kate, and Alan

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast
and team members in the GHiT
Immature Endurance Racing Team

GHIT 0083: Our 2019 Review and 2020 Goals Episode

GHIT 0077: Our Friendsgiving Work Weekend

Thank you to Chris and Chrissy

Alan, Zombie Vicki, and Bill go over our recent Friendsgiving Work Weekend with special guest from the Everyone Racers Podcast hosts, Chris and Chrissy who came up to guide, instruct, and assist us with several of our cars that, as always, need repair and improvements. Highlights to the discussion include:

1) Our two and a half Porsche 944’s that are available and soon to be posted for sale for HPDE or racing use.

2) Capri update and our updated plans going forward

3) Winter is here in Northeast PA and when the sun goes down, the temperature leaves the garage in a hurry

4) How we organize our garage for both parts and cars and how Chris helped Vicki determine what is good to keep and how to identify the unknown items we have collected since our race team started.

5) What parts are worth keeping and what parts have donated all they have to give

6) Alan’s hamster powered internet shows up again

7) Our plans for the new Honda race car project code name Godzuki

8) The difference between parts replacement projects and part fabrication projects

9) Our repair update of the race truck/El Chrissy/The Bad Hombre steering issues and exhaust leak and the potential for a power steering line cooler to be added

10) Our repair update of the BMW E36 race car

11) How many ignore the potential for their race car to be their own planetarium

12) Alan bonds with several local FLAPS in our area

13) We need a bunch of camber shims to fix our S-10

14) We have renamed our race truck due to this week.

15) Alan gives a visual description of suspension geometry

16) A discussion of our hubs and bearings for the E36 and transferring the brake cooling ducts to our other race cars

17) Vicki and Bill plan to go to a local race shop to see what is available for our use

18) Alan’s fall led to a broken jaw, so does disagreeing with Kate. You can choose which is the cover story and which is real.

19) Alan impersonates a BMW E36 while Chris was investigating our electrical wiring issues

20) Spare parts and supply at the track discussion

21) Vicki, pre-Zombie, and Bill received a welding lesson on our Miller 211 MIG welder and began the learning process in earnest

22) Vicki relates welding to her art background

23) Chris and Chrissy had a spare moment to test our Mazda MX-5 on the test track for a good shakedown run

24) Skid pad event discussion and planning for this winter/spring at Lime Rock

25) Car show Fails on YouTube, a worthwhile time waster

26) The best way to say thank you/bribe people to help you (Hint: Food, drink, and beer)

Bribing Hard — We bribe our guests hard! And that was after we ate.

Special thanks, as always to Chris and Chrissy for coming up and helping. We learned a ton and accomplished quite a bit. We hope our bribes of food, drink, and racing were sufficient to lure you up again, hopefully soon.

If anyone wants a garage tour, we could put up a video (excuse the mess) on our YouTube channel. Just let us know.

E1R is Cool — Everyone Racers podcast is way Cool

Best regards,

Bill, Vicki, and Alan

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast

and team members in the GHiT

Immature Endurance Racing Team

Links mentioned

For part ID and a great source for auto parts

Our Miller 211 Welder

Welding related YouTube channel

Everyone Racers Podcast

GHIT 0077: Our Friendsgiving Work Weekend

GHIT 0069: NHMS Race Weekend Review

NHMS Flag — NHMS 2019 – 24 Hours of Lemons race

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.+

Team at Tech — We confused Guitar Heroes with Garage Heroes, oops.

Mia as Death Doctor — We confused Guitar Heroes with Garage Heroes, oops.

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.

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.

Team Folgers — Thunder for Days saved us

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.

New Driver — Baby Shark team and new driver

3PM is not Ambiguous — 3PM is not so ambiguous

Solstice NHMS 2019 — Their new Solstice race car

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.

Jeff at Tech — Jeff rocking out awaiting tech inspection

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.

Proof we can drive — Proof that we can drive a bit (5th overall)

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

NHMS 2019 is Over — NHMS 2019 and our racing season is over

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

GHIT 0069: NHMS Race Weekend Review

GHIT 0068: NHMS 2019 Prep Week

Our ineptitude continues

Our plans are unravelling — Our preparation plans are unravelling

NHMS race weekend prep status.

One race, three cars, none working. The rest is good though.

On one hand we have the BMW E36 3 series from 1998. Issues, yes. It won’t start. It seems to not be getting power to the computer system and won’t turn over. We found one wiring issue and are tracking down any others, slowly. One good thing is that the prior owners live very close to our race, so as a last resort, we may ask for some assistance.

El Jeffe/The Bad Hombre: Braking issues abound. Still. The caliper/pads do not fully release from the rotors, which may be the issue we have been battling this entire season.

On this episode:

Alan breaks up into a game of boggle with things like DME, EWS2, etc.
Vicki breaks back in and tries to get us to explain what is going on
Bill breaks down the entire battle we have been having with the brakes on the race truck
El Jeffe brake theories, plan, and a review of the current status
An El Jeffe Transit story for the books
Alan talks about flashing ECU’s and seeking additional help to get the E36 running well again.
Alan does his best weatherman impression and forecasts clear skies for the E36
Kate even makes a quick guest appearance towards the end

It seems to be a standard week before the race. Now will this turn out? Tune in tomorrow, same bat channel, same bat time.

Or actually when we record at the track this weekend.

GHIT 0068: NHMS 2019 Prep Week

GHIT 0067: Watkins Glen HPDE Review

Welcome to our latest podcast episode where we review our weekend HPDE with NASA North East at the world famous Watkins Glen International racetrack. We had a great weekend with 5 of our team showing up and two other friends from the Everyone Racers Podcast and The Three Pedal Mafia racing team, Chris and Chrissy.

We summarize the prepping of the many cars we brought and the debacle it became for almost every car we brought.

Cars we prepped included:

BMW E36 1998 race car
1. Roll bar prep and Passenger racing seat installation
2. Issue: Won’t start as we were prepping to leave. Issue still TBD
1. Roll bar padding and switch to racing seats and racing harness from OEM
2. Issue: 4-point belts aren’t acceptable so hot swap at Watkins Glen to install two new 6-point harness sets
1999 Mazda MX-5 Turbo Miata with Flyin’ Miata Turbo
1. Installed new roll bar
2. Issue: did not finish roll bar installation and did not remember to reconnect the battery before giving it to Jennifer
2019 Mazda MX-5
1. Mostly no issue, except cleaning
2017 Toyota GT TRD
1. Bad Lug bolts and Missing Lug bolts
2. Waited until day before to get parts, ended up with bad hub threads and missing bolts, and doesn’t know how to click the pay button after registering for the HPDE
3. Cue the sad trombone please
2013 Dodge Dart
1. Did not have time to change to race seats, nor brake pads and fluid, nor tires from standard OEM
2017 BMW M240i
1. No issues since Chris and Chrissy are always prepared, unlike us.
Race Prepped Honda Civic

Brad was an excellent test passenger for three different cars on the track. He reviews his first ever race laps in the Turbo NB MX-5 versus the race prepped Honda Civic vs a new Acura NSX.

Team photo WGI 2019 — Our team for the weekend

Vicki, Jennifer, and Bill covered our in car instructors and areas we worked on and improved over the weekend.

These areas included:

Track vision
Racing lines in general
Braking points and braking pressure and the proper application and removal of the braking pressure
Turn in Points
Input sequencing
Several drills, including vision and non-shifting the entire lap or session
Car control
Learning and feeling what is correct and what isn’t with immediate feedback
Late apexing vs early apexing and turn in
Prep is key to racing

In addition, we also reviewed our thoughts of the track and the NASA North East HPDE event in general.

We also reviewed the relative performance of the Turbo 1999 NB MX-5 to the newly updated 2019 MX-5 ND.

GHIT 0067: Watkins Glen HPDE Review