My first and possibly last Lemons / Chump Car event.
Our Chump Car event this past weekend was a bust. Our first driver (I was scheduled second) ran for about 35 minutes when he pulled in with the car overheating. There weren’t any obvious problems so a decision was made to pull the head to check the gasket. While doing that we turned the engine by hand and all sorts of water came out of three of the exhaust ports. The head gasket didn’t show any obvious failure but we ordered one anyway. We picked it up around 2 pm. When we were putting the head back on the guy doing the work was told to torque the head bolts to 100 ft/lbs. He gets to 100 on the first bolt and “twang”, pulls the threads out of the aluminum block. It turns out the torque spec is 65 ft/lbs. So now we go get a Heli-Coil and install it. Ooops. Wrong size. We’re done for the weekend.
I don’t know if I’m going to bother running Lemons or Chump any more. The entire basis for both programs is designed for failure – try to get a $500 car to run on the track for anywhere from 6 to 24 hours straight. It’s great for guys that like to “wrench” but for those of us that prefer to drive – not so much.
Steve
Our Chump Car event this past weekend was a bust. Our first driver (I was scheduled second) ran for about 35 minutes when he pulled in with the car overheating. There weren’t any obvious problems so a decision was made to pull the head to check the gasket. While doing that we turned the engine by hand and all sorts of water came out of three of the exhaust ports. The head gasket didn’t show any obvious failure but we ordered one anyway. We picked it up around 2 pm. When we were putting the head back on the guy doing the work was told to torque the head bolts to 100 ft/lbs. He gets to 100 on the first bolt and “twang”, pulls the threads out of the aluminum block. It turns out the torque spec is 65 ft/lbs. So now we go get a Heli-Coil and install it. Ooops. Wrong size. We’re done for the weekend.
I don’t know if I’m going to bother running Lemons or Chump any more. The entire basis for both programs is designed for failure – try to get a $500 car to run on the track for anywhere from 6 to 24 hours straight. It’s great for guys that like to “wrench” but for those of us that prefer to drive – not so much.
Steve