• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Garage Heroes (In Training)

Garage Heroes (In Training)

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

  • About Us
  • Our Cars
  • Our Drivers
  • Handy Links
  • Tips/Tricks
  • Contact Us
  • Questions or Comments
  • Sponsorship

24 Hours of Lemons

The Nittany Lemons

Formula SAE Team and Endurance Racing Team

  • Lemons Paddock
  • Lemons Car
  • Tire Choices
  • Endurance Racers
The Penn State Formula SAE team comes to Lemons

GHIT 0197: The Nittany Lemons Formula SAE Team

We met the Nittany Lemons at our recent 24 Hours of Lemons race at PittRace.  Their team includes Eric Junker, who gets blamed for any electronics and powertrain issues, Jared Sable, who is the past SAE team captain and responsible for the team overall, and Becca Baker who takes care of the driver controls, brakes and safety systems, and car ergonomics.  They were a great group and seemed to have a great time and fully embrace the Lemons racing paddock.  Even with all their SAE team background, they learned a ton at the race.

On this episode of Dominating with Dawson,

we talk about Tire Talk.  What does it mean when your tires start making noise on the track and how to use this new information source to improve your track driving.

  • Formula SAE Car
  • Formula SAE
Their Formula SAE race Car

You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice, including the Apple podcast app, Google music, Amazon, and YouTube etc.

Also, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating or even better, a podcast review, we would greatly appreciate it and it would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving.

For instance, leaving an Apple Podcast rating is very easy.  If you go to your podcast library, under shows and click on the podcast you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review.

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/NittanyLemons

We hope you enjoy this episode!

ghitlikesapex!

PS  Please don’t forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, don’t forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order.  We have two systems for our team and Bill is looking to add a third for this season, pending CFO approval from Vicki.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

  • Becca
    Becca Examining the Ergonomics
  • Its not always serious in Formula SAE
    Its not always serious in Formula SAE

GHIT 0197: The Nittany Lemons Formula SAE Team

PittRace 2021 Post Race Review

GHiT Team Wins

GHIT 0194: Our Post Race Review

This is our PittRace 2021 Post Race hangover Episode Notes.  We will replace later with a normal review when coherent, likely later this week.  

In this episode, we go over how our first race weekend went for 2021.  We had a great time racing and meeting all our friends.  

Oh yeah, we WON our first race ever in the S10 El Jeffe Trophy Truck in Class C!!!!

Class C - WINNERS

Further proof that anyone really can do this.  Why not start today?  We’d love to see you on track with us.

GHIT 0194: PittRace 2021 Post Race Review

The Semi Sentient Centenarians

Racing Team

  • 911 fake bimmer
  • In the paddock
  • Winners
  • Engine Woes

GHIT Podcast Episode #193 with our guests The Semi Sentient Centenarians Racing Team

The Semi Sentient Centenarians are a relatively new endurance racing team that are in the midst of an engine swap for their 1996 front wheel drive Buick Century A-body.  Their team started much like every other team, including ours, and in their case they can blame Matthew, lol.  They are a great bunch of guys learning as they go and trying to come up with the magical plan to dominate the C division of an upcoming race.  They are another example of a group of people who were interested in racing but never thought it was possible or knew how to get started so they just jumped in and tried it and the hook was set.  While we discussed their planned engine swap, we also had the opportunity to check back in the next week to see how the plan went.  This is one team we can’t wait to check back in with at the end of a full race season.  So we didn’t wait and added an update on the engine swap progress and project prognosis.

On this episode’s Dominating with Dawson, we

go into the topic of what is a money shift and then once we define what a money shift is, we then go into several different types of shifting and shifting issues that you may encounter with a manual transmission.  If you aren’t driving a manual transmission, at least the segment should be entertaining.

You can subscribe to our podcast on the podcast provider of your choice, including the Apple podcast app, Google music, Amazon, and YouTube etc. 

Also, if you could give our podcast a (5-star?) rating or even better, a podcast review, we would greatly appreciate it and it would help us to grow the passion and sport of high performance driving.

For instance, leaving an Apple Podcast rating is very easy.  If you go to your podcast library, under shows and click on the podcast you can leave a (5?) star rating and enter your review. 

A link to the episode is: https://tinyurl.com/SemiSentCent

We hope you enjoy this episode!

PS  Please don’t forget that if you are looking to add an Apex Pro to your driving telemetry system, don’t forget to use our discount code for all Apex Pro systems you will receive a free Windshield Suction Cup Mount for the system, a savings of $40.  Just enter the code “ghitlikesapex!” when you order.  We have two systems for our team and Bill is looking to add a third for this season, pending CFO approval from Vicki.  They are a great system and truly invaluable in safely increasing your speed on track and/or autocross etc.

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights from this episode include:

1)  We learn how their team started, developed, and became the team and drivers that they are today.  One thing that they did well was to talk to other Lemons and experienced endurance racing teams to accelerate their teams learning.

2)  The team’s racing philosophy is very simple:  Podium/Top 3.  So far, so good in the one race to date.  Lol.

3)  The stories of what they did and what they learned at their first race is tremendous.  It sounds like they truly jumped in the deep end of the pool with their first race being a ture 24 hour race at CMP.  It sounds like some of the Racing 101 series would have helped them.  It looks like we were only one year too late.  However, they did win the IOE at their first race so who are we to say anything?

4)  We walk through the logic of their upcoming engine swap and whether this is a good plan.  It sounded great, and then the turbo plan kicked in.  Luckily they have a full five weeks to get this done before their race at Sebring.  How hard could it be?

5)  Bill even resorted to math, but the +40 HP plan seems to be set in stone.

6)  We then check back in after the weekend to get an update on the progress and the prognosis.

GHIT 0193:  The Semi Sentient Centenarians Racing Team

GHIT 0161: Johan Samanta and a VERY Special Guest The GD Yo Man

  • Fire Breathing GD Yo Man
  • Full On GD Yo Man

We have had a few guests requested and here is one of them, Johan Samanta is a driver that started endurance racing over a decade ago.  In his real life, he is a Neurologist and at the track, he may need one, lol.  Johan travels across US to races from his home in Phoenix.  We last raced with him at the Lucky Dog race Charlotte Roval August 2020 and a great time was had by all.  Johan also shared many of the things he has learned in his racing career and we discuss many of the reasons to race beyond “winning”.  You can save a ton of money by learning from others.  In addition, we have a special F&F Storytime question guest for this episode:  The GD Yo Man!

On our Dominating with Dawson, we go into dealing with the marbles around the track (as well as what the marbles are).  We also provide a tremendous method to learn or teach where the flag stations are at a new to you track.  Special thanks to Robin Burnett for showing us how. 

  • Johan Samanata with Roland Hahn
  • GD Yo Man with Jay Lamm

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Best regards,

Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, and Bill

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training Podcast and

Garage Heroes In Training racing team drivers

Highlights from this episode include:

1)  How does a Neurologist end up needing one, oops, we mean how did Johan get started in racing and a lot of his racing history to this point and how he has changed his racing over the years.

2)  We go over Johan’s first ever race with Lucky Dog at the Charlotte Roval where we were literally sharing the garage with their team, and tools, and parts, and shave ice, and….  Cathy and the Lucky Dog team get two more thumbs up!

3)  Bill simply cannot rests making a Ricky Bobby quote.  Honestly, we are surprised it took this long.

4)  The places to save money, as well as the places not to, like safety equipment.  We also provide several cautionary tales regarding poor or counterfeit safety equipment.

5)  Johan also goes into several other “bad” ideas that are so bad that they are good ideas for a Lemons race.  Some of them are things like eastern European racing cars, adding turbos, and several others.  How hard could it be?  Actually, these will likely make endurance racing even a bit harder.

6)  Pit strategy, tips, best practices, and goals and other “free” ways to save time on the track.

7)  We then go into a prioritization of ways to improve your driver and, if you must, your car.

8)  This is the episode if you ever wanted to learn how to endurance race a Super Beetle.  Boy, that search string is not going to increase our Google search results for this episode, lol.

9)  Our second guest comes in at around 59 minutes.  Vicki and Jen were less than prepared for THE GD Yo Man!!!!!  That is Mr. Yo Man to you.  After this, you will know the Yo Man much better, probably better than you ever wanted.  Lol.

10)  I think Jennifer is still broken from this interview.

GHIT 0161: Johan Samanta and a VERY Special Guest The GD Yo Man

GHIT 0124: GHIT Flashback to Thompson 2018 with the 24 Hours of Lemons

Award Winning GHiT Team
We Won (well, at least we got an award)

On this flashback episode, we cover our team’s second ever race at Thompson with the 24 Hours of Lemons series in 2018.  How did the race go?  Well, it was our first ever two car race.  It was the first ever race for half of our team (Alan, Jennifer, Casey, and Pete).  It was our first time on track with the SpiderStang and our friends at Prompt Critical showed Liam and Cassian how to “adjust” the boost on the SpiderStang.  The Capri died and is still dead to this day.  We won the “I Got Screwed” award.  Details of our weekend and what we learned shall be provided.  PS Never show your new to racing teen age team mates how to adjust the boost.  Also, on this episodes Dominating with Dawson, we go over car control and what it means when someone refers to a car “rotating”.

  • SpiderStang Makes its Debut
Capri’s dies while the SpiderStang makes its debit

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Best regards,

Bill, Vicki, Jennifer, and Alan

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast

and team members in the GHiT

Immature Endurance Racing Team

Highlights from the episode include:

1)  We quickly gloss over the new raspberry additions that Alan and Bill added to Vicki’s garden area.

2)  We cover from post-race of our first race at NJMP to the conclusion of our second race at Thompson

3)  How our team grew from our first race with 4 drivers to where we had a two-car team with 8 drivers.  Our preparation was not quite up to what it should have been. Especially with 4 additional drivers, two of which that had never driven a manual transmission before.

4)  The advantages and disadvantages of a teen drivers on a racing team

5)  How a perfectly performing a running car from our last race did not stay that way during the trip back from the track, to the great surprise of all involved. Carburetors are not our center of expertise and decided to let us know.

6)  How the SpiderStang theme came to be and what we learned in doing it.  It ended up looking great, but the process was not one we would recommend.  Sometimes you learn what to do and sometimes you learn what not to do.  We also mention how we built “Bondo”, a PVC and spray foam version of a mannequin to be used as Spiderman on our car.

RV Plumbing Fitting
RV Plumbing Fitting, not Automotive Grade, lol.

7)  Vicki’s trials and tribulations for her first time driving to a race with a race car trailer.  It did not go very well.

8)  How our first time trying to stay at the track went.  In a word:  poorly.  We have come up with much better sources for renting RV’s to stay at the track since then.

9)  How our new drivers first time driving went.  Quick checklist, panic attack at being strapped in, panic attack about going on a racetrack in the pit lane, first ever racing in the rain and heavy fog, and how to be a rolling chicane on the track.

10)  Prompt Critical helped us with our cars but gave away a bit too much information to Liam and Cassian.  They now knew how to adjust (read as increase to maximum) the boost of the turbocharger.  After all, more is better, lol.

11)  How to dial in a brake proportioning valve during testing.

12)  Alan’s chipmunk powered internet popped up again, a few times.  Bill had no idea on how to edit this, but it seems pretty funny.

13)  How we became an award-winning racing team at this event.  It all started with Jennifer and her license in driver tech inspection.  Well on our way to minor internet celebrity status.  Still on the way to this day.

14)  Things we learned at our first ever rain race and our first ever fog race, all at the same race.

15)  The story of the death of the Capri and the birth of El Jeffe, The Bad Hombre.

16)  We share the secret concoction to keep fog off your windshield that was shared with us by the Three Pedal Mafia.

17)  Alan treats his body like a temple?  And we finally found the root cause for why Alan doesn’t want to work on the Capri.

18)  Bill tries to avoid sleeping in the bathtub even though we won the coveted “I Got Screwed” award.

19)  Finally, we go over the post-race awards and the trials and tribulations we went through to get home afterwards.

SpiderStang Glows
SpiderStang Glows, Who Knew?

GHIT 0124: GHIT Flashback to Thompson 2018 with the 24 Hours of Lemons

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Most Recent

  • DwD 0507:  Racing the Track vs Racing the Other Cars
  • GHiT 0506:  Eric Dewey DeWitt
  • The Mythology of Late Apex and Braking in a Straight Line
  • Glenn Robinson
  • The Fail Failage Rally 2023

Categories

  • Aerodynamics
  • Autocross
  • B Spec
  • Cars, Mostly ours
  • Comic Books and Movies
  • Dialing In
  • Dominating with Dawson
  • Driver Education
  • Fitness
  • Food
  • GLTC
  • Grid Life
  • Guests & Interviews
  • Honda Challenge
  • HPDE
  • Judges
  • Lemons Rally
  • Mechanical
  • Motorcycles
  • Our Team
  • Races
  • Racing 101
  • Radios and Communication
  • Safety
  • SCCA
  • SIM racing
  • Sundae Cup
  • Telemetry
  • Themes
  • Time attack
  • Track Photography
  • WoOT

  • About Our Team