Heroic Fix trophy for Team Resignation!

[pinkshinyalan]

Hey guys. Team Resignation raced the Zetec-equipped and Nixon-themed '91 Escort sedan this weekend at Autobahn Country Club.

We breezed through the BS inspection. The judge was so excited he didn't even know what car we had. Judge Phil (aka Murilee Martin, former writer for Jalopnik) even posted about us on his blog!
http://murileemartin.com/wordpress/?p=398
I'm the one on the left, in the butterscotch shirt.

Saturday started out very wet and slippery. It was hard to control. The car had tremendously scary and sudden lift-throttle oversteer. It also couldn't put down the power it had. Flooring it at any RPM even in 3rd gear would break the tires loose. Correcting the oversteer always turned into a spectacularly terrifying 4-wheel drift.

This is because, while early Escorts have that 19mm rear sway bar, they have a *very* skinny front one. With a stripped interior (and thus no weight in the back), the tail became very loose.

After about an hour of driving, a coolant hose burst. We didn't know it because our temperature gauge wasn't working. So we ran several laps with no coolant, and seized the engine. After multiple failed attempts to restart it, the only remaining solution was clear.

We had to pull the engine out of my daily driver -- a 98 ZX2 with 210k miles.

We borrowed a hoist from another team and got to work. 7 guys, a ton of hand tools, and a lucky break in the weather meant we had engines swapped in about 8 hours. We finished up a few minor details Sunday morning and had the car on the track for the starting flag at 9 a.m.

Did I mention we were parked on the grass? Moving that engine hoist was a little difficult.

Sunday was beautiful. The weather peaked at about 73 degrees, it was mostly sunny, breezy. A truly wonderful day for racing.

And the car was FAST AS HELL. No, we didn't have a ton of power. Yes, we could've done with a lot more camber. But we are light, handling is neutral, predictable and easy to drive in the dry. Our big plus is that the brakes are AMAZING. We could out-brake nearly every car on the track, pad and rotor wear are excellent, and they never ever ever showed any hint of fade. Our best lap was 1:23.877 (Autobahn North Circuit, 1.46mi = avg 62.6 mph). The top 5 cars ran 1:18 to 1:19 best laps, and those are mostly professional drivers in well-sorted cars. After some more tweaking and practice, I think we can be very competitive.

We drove well, had zero penalties, and our only repair (after the swap) was a minor valve cover gasket leak. The car was utterly amazing on Sunday, and we have a nice rubber circle on our door to prove it! (from light contact with a Merkur)

A reporter from NPR, for the show "Only a Game," came and interviewed us as we went through tech inspection. He then checked up on us again over the course of the weekend to see how things were going. He said to listen sometime in November and we'll probably hear ourselves on the show.

The judges gave us the Heroic Fix trophy. We are ecstatic. LeMons is the most fun, amazing, fulfilling thing I've ever ever ever done.

I don't have any pictures or video right this minute, but there will be plenty up tonight and over the next several days on the team blog. Click this link or on my signature to go there:
http://teamresignation.blogspot.com

NPR guy is in one of the videos that will eventually be up, talking to me while I explain to a member from a team driving a ZX2 what was wrong with his transmission (a broken 3-4 fork). One of my teammates tells me I blew an excellent radio sound bite by saying "shit" in the middle of it. "Only a Game" isn't syndicated at my local NPR stations, so I'll be hearing for it on the podcast.

[raceguy246]

That was.... Awesome!

[trekkor]

Way to go!!


KT

[Jeff]

good work that's pretty awesome

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[pinkshinyalan]

Thanks guys! We'll be out there again next October, and possibly at Gingerman in July. We'll hopefully have a spare drivetrain ready to swap in should something happen to the epic-high-mileage engine or those notorious shift forks.