"Official announcement" for the LeMons team I hooked up with for Detroit 2008

[fast Ed]

The Trackaddicts entry in the 2008 Detroit (ish) event was approved yesterday.

After victory in the 2007 24hrs of LeMons Detroit race Bernie mysteriously disappeared with a large (still unaccounted) amount of the winning nickels. Vague suggestions followed of (totally unverified) sightings of an old Supra mysteriously appearing at various famous racetracks around the world. Rumors of a pair of copulating bunnies on the roof seemed to substantiate the claim that it was, in fact the winning car. Soon these rumors disappeared and all mention of the Supra faded. It seemed that around this time trackday organisers stopped receiving entry fees in large amounts of nickels. The team set out to track down the car and it was found beaten and battered in a barn, obviously going through serious withdrawal from a lack of racing.

A team of dedicated staff quickly started work on the Supra. Thorough diagnostics deemed that the car was utterly addicted and dependant on cheap track racing. As hard as we tried, no cure could be found and the Supra's condition only deteriorated. Our only choice was to administer some much needed surgery to remove some of the damage from all those unsupervised track excursions and get the car back into a strictly monitored race schedule. The announced return of Track Addict (names were changed to protect well, someone) is the 2008 24hrs of Lemons Detroit(ish) race.

The Track Addict enabling recovery will be administered by a crack team of personnel including:

1. Team Administrator: Neil (the Wild Boer) Claasen (aka the African American, Token and the Fiscal Iron Fist). Responsibilities include budgeting, herding cats managing drivers and catering.
2. Surgeon 1: Rich (Steady Hand) Lipstrau. Responsible for beating Track Addict into shape, Driver
3. Surgeon 2: Eric (Bergtroll) Grothaus. Driver and crazy mechanical ungenius. He builds wings too.
4. Surgeon 3: PJ (the Noisy Cricket). Driver and rallycrosser (remember this one is paved PJ!)
5. Surgeon 4: Ed (the Foreigner) Nicholson. Driver from Canada. Need I say more.
6. Surgeon 5: Luke (Lucky) Bailey. Driver
7. Surgeon 6: Some guy with either a lot of money or that is a really good driver. Maybe we get lucky and find one that is both!


"Bernie" is a well-abused 1986 Toyota Celica Supra.

More here:

http://trackaddicts.net/

http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/



Wish me luck !!


cheers
Ed N.

[milner351]

when and where is the event?

I would love to volunteer to help - but my schedule is ridiculous and would not have any time to offer anyway.

Keep us posted - I'd love to attend part of the event even if I can't participate this year.-

[fast Ed]

This one is being held at http://www.toledospeedway.com/

Date is Sept. 13-14.

Take a look at the www.24hoursoflemons.com site when you get some time. Just reading through the rules and regulations is hilarious.


cheers
Ed N.

[fast Ed]

Well, we didn't have such a great weekend. It was raining like a bastard on Saturday, but was starting to taper off by the afternoon when the race started. Still had some pretty good puddles going on the infield portion though. Anyway, the Toyota Supra we were running (which won last year's Detroit race) had some intermittent running problems, not getting full power. And then it developed a nasty engine noise about 90 minutes in. I brought it back to the pits, where the crew determined it was a bottom end noise. They managed to get the oil pan off to inspect, and found a spun rod bearing. The crew chief called the parts stores in the area, but surprisingly none of them stock a set of rod bearings for a mid-80s Toyota DOHC inline six. LOL

We were trying to think of what else we could use, belt leather, old pop cans, but in the end we decided to pack it up, and head back to a friend's place near the track for BBQ and beer. I felt bad for the other drivers especially, I was the only one that got to drive ... they figured the "old guy" with the most experience was the best one to start, even though I haven't raced wheel-to-wheel for 10 years.

Full results and details are on the Jalopnik site:

http://jalopnik.com/5050379/the-top-...ns-detroit+ish

There was a mid-60s Fury that finished 5th, it looked pretty neat bombing around out there.



Here is our Toyota that made it 19 laps:



At least we weren't dead last. Planning for the 09 event is starting already.


cheers
Ed N.

[ecniv]

I know the feeling.....


That Fury has run in many LeMons events, representing the old Detroit Iron well. If you guys make it out to one of the west coast events, hopefully I'll see you there.