Most from the least

So, I spoke too soon - with about an hour left in the day, we blew a rear main seal and sprayed oil all over the place, leaving the Mystery Machine up on jacks at the end of the race. Much sadness.

However! There's more than one kind of winning, and we took home the "Most from the least" award, which if you'd ever glanced at the engine on the mystery machine, is a wholly appropriate prize. (The oil spray everywhere from the blown rear main blends right in with the existing crust of dried oil and coolant. I'm not kidding when I say it's a miracle it made it onto the track at all.) Mostly, getting the van on the track feels like winning. We're incredibly proud to have been part of such an awesome racing event.

The Mystery Machine drivers, plus Scooby and Scrappy, our mascots:

From mystery machine

Drivers, Left to right: Jinnah, Jared, Jen, and Astrid. (The perfect two guys/two women split was accidental but fortunate. If it had worked out otherwise the guys would have been terrifying in skirts. Jared's got a lot of leg to show.)

We finished in 59th place overall. (We got as high as 42nd before the car blew.)

Thanks, guys. And to everyone who showed up and made the race awesome: you all rock. It was a blast.

(And to Rob and Laz, who put in a lot of late nights helping out on our van when they still had plenty of prep to do on their own car - no thanks are enough. I love you guys.)

PS - for anyone who was wondering, we took off the back gate while racing mostly for visibility. The van has pretty much zero side and rear visibility otherwise, and we wanted a good view of all the cars that were passing us. It was also a serious weight loss - the door is heavy.

Also, the Italian flag was a special Fiat prize awarded just to us, as a model member of the former Chrysler empire.

a few photos, real quick. x-posted to both blogs.

race day

(x-posting to panda and mystery machine blogs)

Hello from Reno-Fernley. We're on the second day of racing at Goin for Broken, and shockingly, both the Mystery Machine and the Panda car have been running well so far. We had some excitement getting the minivan through tech inspection on Friday - suprisingly enough, the tech inspectors were less than thrilled with the broken wheel stud on the driver's side front wheel. The lug bolt is insanely difficult to replace, so Laz and Jinnah did a hero run to pick n pull in Sparks to get a whole new steering knuckle, which we fitted in gathering dark and howling dust.

Meanwhile, Laz successfully bribed his way through a very special bullshit inspection - he unwisely laid down some very fast laps in the practice session before going through inspection, so they pulled Ling Ling aside for special inspection as a "real race car". (The special judge they called in is a cheating expert; he took a quick look underneath and proclaimed her an *actual* piece of shit.) Laz smoothed things over with a super smooth bribe:

Judges: What, you aren't even going to try to bribe us?

Laz: We hadn't gotten to the hard sell yet. (Whips out the whiskey from the trunk) 

Judges: Oh, well then. This is good stuff. You guys are good to go, no penalties.

The Mystery Machine is a HUGE hit, which is a relief, because we're also the slowest thing on the track (surprisingly, there are actually a couple of cars slower, but we still hold the record for the slowest fastest lap of any team). For a while, Ling Ling and the Mystery Machine held the single fastest best lap and slowest best lap in the race.

They started timing the race when the Mystery Machine crossed the starting line, so for a full two seconds, Jinnah was leading the race. (Subsequent, we fell into our role as mobile chicane and had the whole race lap us repeatedly. Driving the minivan is like driving through a swarm of bees, with other cars whipping past constantly. We've taken the tack of being very polite about it, holding a steady outside line, which has garnered us a lot of good will. (Another team came up to thank us for being predictable while being passed, and gave us a hat as a token of gratitude. :-) )

Pandamonium has not yet seen a revisit of the electrical issues from last time, and is currently running around tenth overall. 

The Mystery Machine has done pretty well through simple consistency, and is currently around 46th place, much to our surprise. After the last-minute scramble to get her race prepped, just seeing her running around the track feels a lot like winning.

guess the fluid

This was extracted from the minivan:



I particularly enjoy its light-absorbent qualities:



I bet it's about as chemically delicious as coke zero, too.

(It's brake fluid. Good thing we got around to bleeding them.)

towing out

Camping ambulance is loaded, hair is red, and the transmission fluid filter has ALL its gaskets now. We're getting ready to tow out tonight.

We should probably remember to put the wheels back on the van before we leave.

Shockingly, we're mostly done with prep - new belts are on, brakes are bled, and Rob spent most of last night welding a box bracket to mount the racing seat (while we drank beer and tried not to stare at the bright light - important work). Once the bracket's in we're pretty much ready to race (except for the blown cv boot and the broken wheel stud... details.)

We should be unmissable on the track. Look for the giant rolling blue chicane.

Tape remaining on ambulance:
- roll cage padding
- paint wheels
- seat
- harness
- load on trailer

countdown

Last few days of countdown towards the race. We've been working pretty much flat out for the past week, getting the van ready.

To keep track of work items, we've been using the Laz Method of writing things on blue tape on the windshield. After a solid week of work, here was the list as of Sunday night:


Last week we fitted new front shocks, fixed some leaks, and... honestly, I don't remember. Stuff. We did stuff. The new shocks made the van not heave like a boat on heavy swell when you jump on the bumper, so that's a plus. We re-replaced a leaking hose, stripped some bolts, mostly wired in a new radiator fan, and tried to make the temp gauge work and generally finish some stuff up before Jdh left town on Thursday.

Over the weekend, it went kind of like this (from my email, Sunday night):

--------------
Things we actually got done are:
- transponder
- 3rd brake light
- tried and failed to get the bracket needed to mount all the brake
parts we have; ordered new brake pads instead. Rotors come off the
list.
- tied up all the dash wiring
- promptly shorted out the headlight switch
- wrapped the headlight switch in electrical tape, replaced several
fuses, and re-zip-tied it (headlights work again)
- installed a front grill (pick n pull consolation prize)
- put a solid dent in the oil pan which you will never notice because
I am going to plaster it up with jb weld when we also seal the
dipstick tube

We now have parts for:
- wheel stud & cv boot (if we get time)
- brake pads

When we were tying up the dash wires we noticed that the coolant temp
gauge goes straight to hot when you turn on the headlights. I haven't
checked its behavior again since fixing the short.

...

-----------------------------

...etc. Monday night:

-----------------------------

Okay! Today was nearly an improvement. :-)

Taped tasks removed:
- oil change (my first! alas, the drain plug still seems to leak a
bit. also, I don't think those guys really changed the oil, it was kind
of cruddy.)
- coil
- jb weld filler tube and plate on the oil pan (I lied; you'll totally
notice. But laz spackled it with jb weld and hopefully made it a lot
stronger)
- tires (tires and wheels now piled in front of van, falken ziex 912)
- spare wheels (jen got 2 spares from pick n pull for $5 each)
- brake pads (extra quiet! you would not want the pads on a racing
minivan to be noisy.)
- transmission fluid & filter

While we were cleaning up, laz was all like, "Hey Astrid, did you see
this?" and when I turned around he was waving a bit of rubber at me...
which was the inner gasket for the trans filter. Which I had not
realized existed until that moment. After I had already reassembled
and refilled the whole transmission pan with five quarts of shiny new
fluid and approximately one hundred small bolts.

Pieces of tape added:
- power steering belt (needs doing at the same time as the alternator
belt, something damaged the belt cover which has in turn chewed the
belts up good)
- coolant flush (optional but would also let us fix the leak in the
lower coolant line)
- transmission fluid & filter. D'oh.

----------------------------

This is a high-precision operation.

Score card currently stands at:
# times transmission fluid was changed: 2
# types of fluid dumped in Astrid's eyes: 2 (coolant and atf, for anyone who's counting)
# front brake pad changes: 4
# sets of pads accidentally or intentionally acquired for van: 5
# important bolts stripped: 2
# times we've replaced that hose that inexplicably sends coolant to the turbo: 2
# hours at pick n pull over the past four days: 8

We tow out on Thursday night. I should probably add a piece of tape for "put wheels back on van".

the most important part of a race car is obviously its paint job

The turbo minivan's transformation from junkyard reject to Probably Quite Stoppable Racing Mystery Machine is now, mostly*, complete.

Here she is, in all her exterior high-gloss enamelled glory:

From mystery machine

*except for the seat. We'll probably need a seat.

Also we'll eventually need to attach the newly-created exhaust system with something other than zip ties.

It took all weekend to finish the paint job - green on saturday, orange on sunday. (It took me about five hours per side to lay down the initial coat on the lettering.) We originally had fancy plans of using a projector to get the initial shape, but I was too impatient to wait until it got dark, so I ended up free-handing most of it.

Rob doing the final outlining:

From mystery machine

Laz rollering a second coat with a sawed-off 1-inch roller:

From mystery machine

From mystery machine

From mystery machine

From mystery machine

Meanwhile, Rob worked on fabricating an exhaust system, the vehicle's original sawzalled-off-at-the-header exhaust system not really passing muster under the new Rule 3.24:

• 3.24: Exhaust System: A professional-quality exhaust system is required. Exhaust outlets and tubing must be designed, routed, and maintained to avoid heating the fuel tank(s) and/or fuel-system components. Fuel heating is extremely dangerous and must be avoided at all times.
• 3.24.1: Exhaust system may not dump ahead of the driver, and must not allow undue levels of exhaust to reach the driver's compartment.

After we installed a real exhaust with a muffler and everything, it no longer sounds nearly as bad-assed. However, it now LOOKS AWESOME, which is not something I ever thought I'd say.