24 Hours of Lemons Detroit-ish?

[IKE]

This is not a robot competition, but the Car and Driver magazine article (may 2008 issue) from the 2007 event at Flat-Rock race mentions some participants being "nerds taking a break from robot competitions". I doubt that I am the only FIRST mentor that thinks that participating in a 24 hour race with a $500 car sounds like fun, so are there any other FIRST people going to Toledo this year? If so, look me up. I will be competing on the Latchkey Kids again and we will be using the Chia-Neon for its 3rd Lemons race. We will be number 17 (just in case a green and brown Neon with Astro-turf racing stripes is not a good enough description).

Event Details:
http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/events/toledo/

Team Details:
http://www.chianeon.evilengineering.com/latchkeykids/

[dtengineering]

The rule book is worth a read http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/rules/ Can't say as I'd want the FRC rule book written this way... but the Q&A forum responses would be more entertaining!

Jason

P.S. Rule 2.4 is one of the better ones although 1.6 isn't half-bad either. And the video for the "people's curse" award... well...

[MrForbes]

and 2.2: they accept valid NASA competition licenses

I know a couple guys who've done the Lemons in California...

[IKE]

The orgranizer, Jay Lamm, has a rather interesting sense of humor. Our team competed in the Detroit Race last year at Flat Rock and got 3rd in a field of about 45. We then went to the Thunderhill event over Christmas break (5 guys in a Durango for 51 hours straight). There we took 2nd in a field of 72.

The "People's Curse" is Jay's way of enforcing something like GP, but he uses the opposite technique that FIRST does. While FIRST rewards and honors GP, The "People's Curse" is a ballot system where every team gets 1 vote, and everyone's least favorite team is likely to get destroyed. Here is a video from Thunderhill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Capsecb11QA
These guys were by far the most aggressive driver's on the track. Since they "won" the curse you might say they were a little too aggressive. Besides bad driving, blatant disregard for the $500 rule may also get you the curse. Show up in a $20,000 racecar and be prepared to be dismantled. (A BMW was dismantled in South Carolina).

Oh, and the NASA license they refer to is actually an amatuer racing association not the space guys. Though I am sure Lavery could convince them that professional Rover driving should count as a competitive license. (I am pretty sure that the Mars Rover would not be eligible due to numerous violations of rule 2.1 though).

[DarkFlame145]

I have been wanting to do this for the past couple years.

[Bongle]

We ran in Toledo this weekend. We were in the brown #93 Civic, which was running in the teens out of 53 (despite myriad brake-heating issues and way-too-frequent driver changes) until the other civic spun out about 15ft ahead of us in a spot with concrete barriers on both sides and no runoff room, resulting in a pretty violent collision.

We didn't even make an effort to look at the engine after the crash because our suspension was pooched enough to put an end to any further racing. The engine looked fine at a glance, and we were thinking we'd just have to fix the suspension and put a new starter on the engine. However, as my brother took a closer look yesterday, he found bits of metal in the timing belt case, couldn't find the timing belt itself, and found cracks all over the various external casings of the engine.

The atmosphere there reminded me of a FIRST event, and not just because I referred to most teams by their number. Everyone was always coming by to say hi and check out each other's cars and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. There were rich teams, there were poor teams (us), there were cool pits, there were hacked-together-out-of-tarps-and-rollcage pits.

[Kingofl337]

I want to do this so bad, the only trouble with the event is you have to cage the car. Which is usually about $1000.00 to have made by a cage builder. So, if you end the peoples choice or another driver wants your car for $500.00 you have to sell it. You almost have to get the car for like $200/$300 and get someone to weld up the cage for free. Which may result in a poor quality cage.

I think they should increase the budget to $1000.00.

That video was awesome and cruel.

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by Kingofl337

I want to do this so bad, the only trouble with the event is you have to cage the car.... I think they should increase the budget to $1000.00.

Although I am far from an expert on this event... I've only read the rules and never been to one in person... I believe the rules state that safety modifications such as the cage, wheels, tires and parts of the exhaust system are NOT included in the $500 limit and are not subject to the $500 claim. If you are chosen as the people's curse award recipient you have 30 minutes to remove safety related items from your vehicle.

Like FIRST, the rules make more sense when you read all of them...

Jason

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Kingofl337

I want to do this so bad, the only trouble with the event is you have to cage the car. Which is usually about $1000.00 to have made by a cage builder. So, if you end the peoples choice or another driver wants your car for $500.00 you have to sell it. You almost have to get the car for like $200/$300 and get someone to weld up the cage for free. Which may result in a poor quality cage.

I think they should increase the budget to $1000.00.

That video was awesome and cruel.

Anything that makes you safer is 'free' budget-wise. This ends up including a lot of things that also make you faster.

As for the organizers (not participants, just the organizers) buying your car, that hasn't actually ever happened. The organizers are pretty nice guys and know what kind of work/money goes into the safety half of the cars, I doubt they would elect to use that option unless you cheated REALLY badly and in bad spirit.

And finally, increasing the budget is kinda silly. You can get a whole lot of car for $500, especially if you buy a $1000 or $1500 car and are very good at selling away unnecessary interior bits like glass, seats, and trim to get your net cost below $500 (yes, that is allowed).

[IKE]

Well, we finished 4th of the 55 entries. That's right, I am with the Latchkey Kids and the Chia-Neon. I actually was wearing a non-antenna KB33 hat most of the race weekend. We had a crazy time and a lot of problem solving along the way. You can read and see more here at our website:
http://www.chianeon.evilengineering.com/latchkeykids/

We won the award for "Least Horrible Mopar". Although they didn't have it this time, we were the highest placing American car.

To anybody interested, give it a shot.
DTE is right. $500 only applies to the car. Safety, wheels, tires, fuel are exempt. S&W makes a cage kits for about $250 (see 10 point) that are plenty safe. Only the event organizer may claim your car (not other teams). I have been in 3 races and I have never seen Jay (the organizer) buy a car. I did see a $2,000 BMW get peoples curse for being too nice a car (don't cheat you will get destroyed LITERALLY!). I have also seen cheaters get huge lap penalties. Do understand though that to ave a decent entry you will send about $2500 ($500-car, $250-cage, $900-1100 entry fee depending on drivers, gas, tires...).

Congrats to all who made it through the 24 hours. It is crazy tough to keep a car running that long (our website talks about our issues). Of the 55, only about 18 or so were still running, and a few others just came out to take the Checker Flag.

[IKE]

Bongle,

Who drove your 12-3 am stint. I followed you guys through one of the coolest passes of my life. It was an inside to outside to inside on the banking with barely a car length between them. You guys had a great car. I wish I had that one on video. It was so cool.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by IKE

Bongle,

Who drove your 12-3 am stint. I followed you guys through one of the coolest passes of my life. It was an inside to outside to inside on the banking with barely a car length between them. You guys had a great car. I wish I had that one on video. It was so cool.

Thanks for the car comments, we liked yours too (I kept pointing out to my teammates: "I PMed that team on Chiefdelphi when we were just starting out on this"). Lots of people came by our pits asking "how is that thing so fast?!", I think it may be because the 92-95 CX hatchback was only sold in the US as a 70hp econobox, while the stock canadian model was 105hp, and we think ours was 115hp because of the engine swap. You can't underestimate a car that was only 2100lbs brand new.

We were having big problems with brake cooling, so 12-3am was actually made of 3 different drivers, and the 3rd guy was the one that was involved in our accident that took us out around 2:40am. The guy that probably had the skill and aggression to do a pass like that was probably our Formula SAE driver, who was on from 12:50 to 2:00.

We LOVED our car. It was a junked shell of a civic mated to a junked CRX Si engine, built by highschool students many years back, then sold through many owners in the local autocross club. It had a few suspension goodies, a bulletproof engine, and only cost us $100. We'll be very lucky to find another car like it for under $500, or even a car for more than $500 with enough sellable interior and trim bits.

However, as my brother back home investigates the front-end damage, he is finding more and more stuff that got damaged in the collision. For example, our timing belt is MIA, and there were chunks of metal that somehow found their way into the timing belt compartment. Jay gave us a residual value of $275 (I guess he didn't fully believe our $100 story), so we gotta figure out how to replace as much as we can for only $225. We've got a spare running D16A6 engine that we picked up for $300, so hopefully we can replace a bunch of parts on the car without doing a full swap.

Do understand though that to ave a decent entry you will send about $2500 ($500-car, $250-cage, $900-1100 entry fee depending on drivers, gas, tires...

As a team that started from NOTHING, I disagree with this bit. It is probably possible to do that if you've done a race before, but the capital investment to get a team going was pretty severe.

Here's an approximate budget for our team. Note that since we wouldn't have a team if we asked everyone to buy their own suits and helmets, we shared 2 sets of safety gear. It turned out to be not that gross.
One-time costs that shouldn't occur in the next year
$0-500 - Car
2x$230 - Helmets
2x$300 - Firesuits
2x$60 - Fire shoes
2x$30 - Fire gloves
1x$40 - Neckbrace
$300 - Initial rollcage investment (we were lucky enough to have a welder and guy who knew how to weld, saving us untold hundreds in labour)
$200 - Additional steel for rollcage because pre-built kit didn't fit our tiny car
$150 - 5-point harness

Recurring Costs
$1450 - Entry for car & 6 drivers without race licenses + transponder rental
$200 - 4 brand new crappy tires (expect more if your car doesn't have the shopping cart-sized tires that ours did)
$45 - 6 previously-enjoyed backup tires
$200 - 4-day U-haul car hauler rental
$200 - Gas at the track (more if you're not driving an econobox like us. The Plymouth fury team said they used 3x as much gas as us)
$200+ - Gas to tow your car there
$100 - Gas to carpool your team there
$160 - 4-person hotel room for 2 nights (yes we crammed 6 people into our room, we're cheap)

[IKE]

That makes sense that it handled so well.

Yeah the $2500 was a low ball quote. All are driver's had gear, many had licenses. We also had a trailer.
Hotel? What is that? That is what the parking lot is for.

I won't go through everything, but this is our third event. It cost us about $500 each for our first event in Flatrock (6 people), $750 each for 5 to do San Francisco (including gas for the 51 hour trip), and looks like about $500 each for Toledo.
Now that being said, we spent a lot on quality tires $85x8 for Hankooks, we had to buy a new used cage for Toledo (our old cage didn't have the front hoop). If we didn't have to get another cage we would have been down to $2500.

You are right though that for a new team that has no racing experience or equipment, it will be more than $2500.

If you are looking to do a new vehicle Neons are great. 135 wheel hp, and you can gut them down to 2300 lbs. We have gotten a 2nd, 3rd, and a 4th. Bosch guys got 11th with their entry, and the Lemon Lappers won with one.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by IKE

Hotel? What is that? That is what the parking lot is for.

We got in at 1:30am, after an extremely stressful 12 hour trip (it was my brother's first time towing on the highway, and we had botched our departure schedule quite badly, so nobody was in a good mood). It was raining and there were huge puddles in the parking lot (though at the time we thought it was a grassy field because it was too dark to see). In these conditions, none of us wanted to set up and sleep in tents, and after $5k of car spending, $160 for a hotel is nothing.

I think we'll probably go with another Civic CX. We've still got another D16A6 engine left to destroy, and the shells for those things are worth nothing. If we can get ol' #93 working again without taking too many spares off the spare engine, we could potentially have twins.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by Bongle

I think we'll probably go with another Civic CX. We've still got another D16A6 engine left to destroy, and the shells for those things are worth nothing. If we can get ol' #93 working again without taking too many spares off the spare engine, we could potentially have twins.

Sweet. Those are fast and great handling cars. While nerf bars are no longer allowed, I would recommend adding in some re-inforcements for accidents. The pusher car pushed a guy across traffic 2 cars ahead of us and our driver rearended the other car. We had re-enforced the bumper and upper radiator support 2 races ago, so all we had to do was pull the hood and get back out there.