Lemons 2019

This year the S.C.C.A. Oldies are being ambitious and taking two cars to the April Lemons race at CMP. 

The trusty Civic, Jim, will be returning this year. Jim is a 1986 Honda Civic Si. He's made 8 attempts at winning a Lemons race and failed every time. We fully expect yet another failure this time around. It should be fun. 

And we will be adding another high quality class C car to the mix, Dirtie. Dirtie is a 1978 Datsun B210 originally purchased for Rallycross. We just know it will be stupendous at Lemons, so we are shooting for yet another failure at winning the race. 

A month or so back, I installed a fuel cell in Dirtie. The factory tank had entirely too many holes in it that weren't installed at the factory. There was no way it would be safe enough to actually race. Between that and the rusted tank mounts we decided to not flirt with disaster and install a cell. Yes, the battery is also moving to another location. 

Shellie's House of Speed was nice enough to make a short video of the cell install.

Another short video by SOS. More prep work and getting ready for a seat install. We are taking 11 drivers to the event. This is most of them. A pretty motley crew if you ask me. 

Dirtie got a race seat.

Since the fuel cell is not SFI or FIA rated it has to have a bulkhead between it and the passenger compartment. Being a hatchback, I had to build one. That happened this weekend. We are also moving the fuel fill from the right side of the car to the left to make fueling in the hot pits easier/safer. The sheet metal still needs to be fastened but I won't do that until the last minute. There is still some plumbing to do underneath it as well as plumbing a fire suppression nozzle underneath it. 

While I was working on the bulkhead in Dirtie, the Civic, Jim received a new clutch. 

This one didn't want to transfer power to the wheels anymore for some reason. 

We put the girls of the group to work replacing it. 

The measurement have been made for the roll cage in Dirty and will be ordered this week. A cage build is happening soon.

More to come.  

 I’ve wanted a B210 for years... where do you guys find this stuff???

In reply to Recon1342 :

Craigslist. No title and rusty. I think it was $200. 

Awesome.  We elected to skip the full 24 for reasons of sanity.  Wish you guys all the best.  

volvoclearinghouse said:

Awesome.  We elected to skip the full 24 for reasons of sanity.  Wish you guys all the best.  

I don't think the 24 is going to be near as much fun as the two day events. I think it's going to be a long hard slog to the finish and no Saturday night shenanigans. 

The rest of the team wanted to run it, so we are. I'm hoping the fall race goes back to the old format. 

In reply to Toyman01 :

That was exactly our assessment of it, which is why we're punting.  

i've never run a 24, but i've done several 2x7.   at watkins glen in 2012 (or 13, i don't remember), one of our cars slid for a bit on the roof/hood during the Saturday race.   we removed the windshield, swapped powertrain (sliding on hood wore through hood and rocker cover and partly into timing chain), and put that car on the podium on Sunday.   in a 24, there would have been no such reward for those trackside heroics.  call me spoiled, i guess, but i totally get the call to do 2x7 vs 1x24.

These endurance race shows are KILLING ME. I Want So Badly, I Have A Car. Road Atlanta had a show this past W.E. 25 miles Away.and I Can't get a car To The Place,       Frustrating !

Very Frustrating.

Today was the start of a cage for the B210 and trying to fit some kind of brake setup that will survive CMP and not kill us.

It's been a lot of years since I had any part in building a cage and I wasn't the guy doing all the design on that one. I did managed to get the main hoop done successfully on the first try. 

I'm pretty happy with how it fits. 

For brakes, we are going to try to use a set of 240Z front assemblies with some $40 coil over sleeves. . It's going to take a little fabrication but decent brakes will be worth it. The B210 brakes are pretty scary and CMP is notoriously hard on brakes. I let the rest of the team work on that.

Just a quick note on your main hoop:  If I recall accurately, the rear backstays (per LeMons rules) are supposed to come back at 45 degrees from the highest point in the main hoop down to the floor, at a line no further back than the centerline of the rear axle.  With the main hoop so far back, from the angle of the picture anyway, it looks like the rear stays might have difficulty meeting this requirement.  Something to check before committing to a full weld.  

3.E.1 General Rollbar and Structure. Professionally-made full rollcage required. A poorly built, improperly mounted, or badly engineered rollcage will keep you from racing: Don’t show up with crap! Cages originally created as bolt-ins are not allowed. At minimum, cage must include: Full front and rear hoop, appropriately braced to each other along the roofline (halo type and side/downbar type are also acceptable); two driver-side door bars (X-design is acceptable); appropriate main-hoop backstays with no bends, located as close to 45 degrees from horizontal as practical;

• 3.E.1.e Rear Limit of Rollcage. No backstay, spreader plate, or other rollcage element can extend past the rear edge of the back tire. (In exceptionally rare cases, very tiny cars may require a different solution–contact Lemons HQ well in advance.)  Separate structures to protect fuel tanks, etc., are allowed behind the rear tires, but they can’t be attached to the rollcage and can’t allow rear-impact loads to be transferred to the rollcage.
• 3.E.1.f Main-Hoop to Backstay Intersection Location. Main backstays must attach no more than six inches (measured from the top of the stay) below the main hoop’s highest point.

Reading all that, you might be OK- looks like the limit is the rear edge of the back tire.  And you can go down a bit from the top of the back stay- up to 6".

Carry on.  ;-)

I'll check all of that just to be sure. Thanks!

The hoop is that far back to get the hoop behind the driver. This car is pretty short and we have several drivers that are over 6 foot so the seat is laid back a fair amount. It's all tacked in at the moment so moving it won't be a problem. I'll probably do another seat fitting just to double check everything before it gets burned in. 

In reply to Toyman01 :

No problem.  Hate to see you get burned at tech.  Jay & co. have been pretty strict on cage design lately.  That's pretty much the reason for the minimum wheelbase rule- 85" or whatever it is.  

Shellie's House of Speed made a video of the clutch job in the Civic. 

Jim gets a new clutch.

Shellie's House of Speed video from the last Lemons work day. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQj46msPEGA&

Just curious, is the 210 still an A-block?  I have a Cannon 821 single dcoe to A14 manifold and absolutely nothing to use it with, though it is slightly modified to allow the dcoe to be mounted at a very slight inclined angle (extra clearance in a very tiny engine bay).  I am not sure that any of that fits in a challenge car, but there you go.

Matthew

The cage in the Dirtie is done, finished, complete. I'm reasonably certain it will pass tech. After VCH's concerns and studying the rule sheet closer I did elect to relocate the rear stays and get them closer to the 45 degree angle. Better safe than sorry. All the gussets are in. Since I didn't want to cut the rocker boxes to drop the cage, I cut holes in the roof to get full welds on everything. I'm confident the cage will take a pretty serious hit and keep the occupants in one piece. 

Fire systems are installed in both cars. 

Bottle and cool suit cooler ended up on the passenger floorboard. 

The Dirtson got lights and mirrors. Naturally vintage Datsun requires vintage Japanese mirrors...from a Chevy Captiva. 

Hopefull this will be enough light to see in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere South Carolina. A set of no name Jeep LEDs from the junk yard, a set of Hella 500FF and a pair of 6" light bars for corner ilumination. 

The Civic got a few lumens on the front as well. Hopefully it has enough alternator to run them. Hella 500FFs for distance and 6" light bars to light up the brake markers and corners. 

The Dirtson also got treated to front calipers, rotors and Powerstop track day pads for a 240SX.

Both cars are pretty much ready to roll beyond a bunch of little stuff. Fluids, brake bleeding, tires and such.

We did find some sweet vintage wheels for the Dirtson. $5 each and saved from the scrap yard. 

Should be a fun event. Assuming all this crap stays running. 

Nice looking cage!  Hope it gets you through tech without issues.

I  put some of those Hella's on the Plymford.  They work pretty well.  And they were not too many pennies.  

Since you guys have run lemons quite a few times now, can you tell me a good ballpark of how much (actual) money is spent on the event, outside of the car's $500 budget? 

I'm getting the itch but SWMBO is watching the bank account like a hawk. (she wants to waste all of our money on a house...)

Keep in mind, I have zero safety gear thus far.

Thanks!

In reply to BirgerBuilder :

At present, including building one car, we are at $5480.50. That cost includes registration, cage, fuel cell, fire suppression, lighting, brakes, and a lot of little things on the Datsun. That price also includes registration, the fire suppression system, lighting, clutch rebuild and little crap on the Civic. Also included is all the driver fees. 

Not yet included is fuel, 6 tires for the Dirtson, food, towing costs, and lodging. All in it will cost about $6500 to field two cars, including building one from basically scratch. We are going with 10 drivers, so that's about $650 each. Which is about what it cost to build the Civic 10 years ago with 4 drivers.

This does not include personal safety gear. The basic kit from Lemons is about $500. 

What costs most teams when it comes to building a car is the cage. If you don't have a bender and the capability to build a cage, add $2k+ to the cost of the car. The cage in the Dirtson cost $260. 

In reply to BirgerBuilder :

At present, including building one car, we are at $5480.50. That cost includes registration, cage, fuel cell, fire suppression, lighting, brakes, and a lot of little things on the Datsun. That price also includes registration, the fire suppression system, lighting, clutch rebuild and little crap on the Civic. Also included is all the driver fees. 

Not yet included is fuel, 6 tires for the Dirtson, food, towing costs, and lodging. All in it will cost about $6500 to field two cars, including building one from basically scratch. We are going with 10 drivers, so that's about $650 each. Which is about what it cost to build the Civic 10 years ago with 4 drivers.

This does not include personal safety gear. The basic kit from Lemons is about $500. 

What costs most teams when it comes to building a car is the cage. If you don't have a bender and the capability to build a cage, add $2k+ to the cost of the car. The cage in the Dirtson cost $260. 

Edit to add: Once the car is built, it gets a good bit cheaper. Basically entry fees, and consumables. We will probably burn about 90 gallons of fuel, burn up a set of brakes, and three tires for the weekend per car. How much that costs, depends on the car. Ours are pretty cheap. Pads are $100, tires are $105 each.  We are not there to win. We run cheap lightweight cars that don't burn up tires every fuel stop, get 10mpg on track, and burn regular gas.

Thank you very much for this! 

Building a tubing bender is already on my too-do list. I think I'll need to get a full team together before I plunge-in, to offset the costs. 

A Datsun HoneyBee!

In reply to BirgerBuilder :

A much cheaper route is to find someone already fielding a car and run with them. I started out building my own car, but ended up joining a team of guys that have gradually grown and it's a much lower stress way to do it. Plan to spend about $800 on a weekend plus your safety gear. More for faster cars, less for cars that might spend time on jack stands instead of on the track. I bought my own safety gear, but it's possible to rent it. If you think you'd do more than one race I'd buy it, just start bargain hunting now.

I've done over a dozen races and every one was a blast. I haven't raced since 2015, I think? :-( Two kids will do that to you. Back on track soon

In reply to BirgerBuilder :

First race for us (only difference being we didn't have fire suppression back then) cost us ~$1500 per person all said and done, including buying safety gear.

You can buy a tubing bender that will make a "LeMons legal" cage for about $400.  Add in the cost of DOM tubing and you're in another 300-400 for tubing.  If you've never bent a tube or made a cage before....2,000 for a cage professionally installed starts sounding cheap.

To build a "500 dollar" car, our experiences are about $5,000.  Per race costs are about $1000 per driver, all in.  

Everyone thinks they're going to find a way to do it cheaper, but to date I doubt anyone has.  It's racing, after all.  Fastest way to make a little money in racing is to start with a lot of money.