Garage Heroes (In Training)

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

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.