24 hours of LeMons (long, with pics, 56k die)

[theallpowerful]

This is the novel version of my 24hrs of leMons experience. The "bottom -line" version (if you dont feel lik readin all of this) can be found at the bottom. K thx bye.

The whole thing started out in the preferred fashion, thursday night, we were up until 5am trying to find a short that would blow the fuse for the main relay. turned out one of the O2 sensors was shorting on itself, problem solved. After getting some sleep, we head to Columbia, SC, where a guy on my team lives (we were staying with him).














We get to Columbia at 1:30 am, and decide to go to a large parking lot to test the car. I am literally backing the car off of the trailer, when a security guard shows up. I immediately turn to them and say "we're f'ed". The guard drives up and reads the side of the car that says "24 hours of Lemons bound". He then says, "Oh you guys are in that Lemons race? I heard about that on the radio, Good Luck!" and he drives off. We are able to shake down the car, and then head off to get some sleep.
We arrive at the racetrack at 930am and have to pass tech by 1030am. We are literally installing the harness in the tech line, then they rfuse us because the helmet I brought (a Snell M95) is "M" rated and not "SN". I have to run over to a vendor, get screwed to the tune of $300, and run back, jump in the car and pass tech just in time for the driver's meeting.
After the driver's meeting, I run the car through the BS-panel. They assign laps based on how much they think you spent over $500. For instance, a certain spec miata tried to join the party and got doc'd 200 laps. The first thing he says to me is "Hey man, what the hell, you can't bring that car here!" I told him what I paid, and produced the clist screen capture. He looked over it and said "Yeah I have photoshop, too" I laughed and he said, "Well, I dont really give a ****, so you pass". I thank him, and head back to the pit to suit up for the race.
It should be said that we were easily the poorest people at the track. Our pit space was in between a team with two cars (sponsored by toyota, no less), and some S-class motorhomes with enclosed trailers. This was what my pit typically looked like:



imo, the way a lemons pit should look.

I am out on the grid for the parade laps, and am noticing the steering is rather liquid... and the straight-ahead position for the wheel keeps changing, hmmmm. I take the green flag, and make one lap when a clunking sound starts coming from the front as I steer. Since it is early in the race, I decide to pit, and will make up for lost laps later.
In the pit, I see that the part of the subframe that holds the steering rack on has broken loose, and the driver's side of the rack is being held on by a trin strand of metal. Switching into hero-fix mode, I jack up the car and start rmoving the rack. Until this point, I was under the impression that the custom exhaust I had made would unbolt from the car. Not so. This is what the rest of saturday looked like: