BeerTech Racing Presents: “The B Team” at the 2009 24 Hours of LeMons at CMP Spring Event.

Well, here we go again. April 4^th and 5^th of 2009 brings us to the first of two 24 Hours of LeMons events this year. Since I’ve already written about the car, I’ll spare you the boredom of that part and get right to the team and the racing. I’ll let the pics do the talking.

THE TEAM:

“In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune.
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team.”

Yeah! What he said….except, its not 1972 and we are a much cheaper knock off version of the A-Team with no discernable skills between the four of us. Hmm, I guess that makes us The B-Team! Let’s go with that.

This year we only had four teammates so this worked out nicely for our theme. JP was Face, Ian was Hannibal, Rob was Murdock and I was B.A. Barracus. We were also lucky enough to have Big Tom as our Crew Chief again. Thanks Tom.

THE CAR:

Already covered and as you can see, my attempt at turning a BMW E-30 into The B-Team van was highly successful. In fact, many people asked us if that was the van from the TV show. Ok, no one actually asked us that but they should have.

Because BMW’s are perfect cars for an event like this, the LeMons races seem to see a lot of them. The judges and promoters now hate all things E-30. So much so, they have a stencil they spray onto all E-30’s now and asses bogus penalty laps on top of that just for having an E-30. Well, this year an E-30 won the race! Not ours mind you, but an E-30 nonetheless.

THE TRACK:

This year’s configuration was much like last year’s except this time there was no single car wide chicane in the middle of the front straight. We had an all out sprint race from the last corner to the first turn. We reached a mind-boggling 80 miles per hour or so. Hey, you don’t want these heaps of junk going too fast, they all should be in a junk-yard as it is.

Carolina Motorsports Park (CMP) in Kershaw SC. TRACK MAP<<<<<<

THE JUDGING:

Ian and I got to the track early on Friday and unloaded everything hoping the rest of the team would show up in time for the tech inspection on the car as well as the infamous judging. Time was running out so Ian and I decided to tech the car and wait until the last possible minute to get judged. Besides, JP was bringing some liquor to bribe the judges with to keep our lap penalties down.

We went thru tech only to be told we needed to add two backing plates to our cage or we would not pass. Great. Let’s go find some steel and get to work. I was sick and tired of working on this car a month or so ago so I was a little unhappy with this news. We were lucky enough to find a truck garage a few miles down the road that had some free scrap steel and he even cut it up for us. Score! We got back to the track and Ian took the car back up to tech to get, well, tech-ed.

We got good and drunk waiting on the others all day but at 5:00 it was time for judging. Ian and I threw on our costumers and we headed to the judging with only one bottle of liquor to bribe the crooked judges. Our ride looked sweet, is an E-30 and has part of a motor swap. We knew we would be in for some laps for sure.

They looked over the car, gave us a bunch of crap and painted some stencils on the car. They demanded that we paid $500 for the head on the car and I got them down to $100. This put us over budget by $60 so we got 6 penalty laps. Sweet! we can make that up in no time! The Mr. T and Hannibal costumes definitely saved some serious laps. Until….

I’m pretty sure it was Evan, though he still denies it but someone told the judges we installed an M5 differential in the car. First of all, impossible, and B), what a D-bag! Ratting us out? Who ever it was deserves a good crushing. Anyway, the judges told us that was worth $800 and gave us another 80 laps. Oh yeah, this was Saturday morning by the way, an hour before the race started. We were the second most heavily penalized team behind Team Cockroach with 125 laps (another E-30).

Executive Summary of our Performance:

We finished 90^th of 94 cars. Our car was very fast when it ran but crapped out early on us on Saturday with fuel delivery issues. The rest of the weekend was spent drinking beer and heckling other teams while being bitter and calling everyone else a bunch of cheaters…….which, they are by the way. J

We didn’t race for very long but there was some contact during Ian’s stint with the talent-less wonders who won this: JUDGES' CHOICE AWARD FOR EXCESSIVE WHINING: #50, Team Thunderturd II (1987 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, Bradenton FL) This car slammed into the back of our car completely destroying out exhaust. They also managed to cave in our right side door and rocker panel. Nice driving A holes.

Full Race results:

RESULTS FOR LEMONS SOUTH SPRING, 4-5 APRIL 2009

• OVERALL WINNER: #90, Dorifto Dogs (1986 BMW 325e, Bahama NC)
• INDEX OF EFFLUENCY: #21, Heavy Metal (1972 Ford LTD, Charlotte NC)
• DANGEROUS BANNED TECHNOLOGY: #66, Our Lady of Perpetual Downforce (1988 Honda Civic, Atlanta GA)
• WINNER, CLASS PW: #95, Lightning McQueen (1990 Volkswagen Jetta 16V, Richardson TX)
• WINNER, CLASS NPW: #02, Ponticrap: We Are Driving Excrement (1986 Pontiac Fiero, Cincinnati OH)
• ORGANIZER'S CHOICE: #44, Team Turbo Schnitzel (1987 Merkur XR4Ti, Atlanta GA)
• I GOT SCREWED: #86, Greyman Motor Club (1989 Mazda 626, Charleston SC)
• MOST HEROIC FIX: #55, Tunachuckers (1966 Volvo 122, Travelers Rest SC)
• MOST LIKELY TO LAND IN A POND FULL OF POISONOUS SNAKES: #29, Scuderia Gonzo Alonzo (1987 Alfa Romeo Milano, Milton NC)
• WINNER, PORSCHE CUP: #81, More Cowbell (1984 Porsche 944, Richmond VA)
• BEST MOONSHINE OR APPLEJACK: #55, Tunachuckers (Triple-Row Radiator Distilled Apple Pie with Vitamin Pb)
• LEAST HORRIBLE YANK TANK: #47, LeMons Vuitton (1998 Plymouth Neon, Fort Meyers FL)
• GRASSROOTS MOTORSPORTS MOST FROM THE LEAST AWARD: #191, rbankracing.com (1985 Saab 900 Turbo, Aliquippa PA)
• JUDGES' CHOICE AWARD FOR EXCESSIVE WHINING: #50, Team Thunderturd II (1987 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, Bradenton FL)
• PEOPLES CURSE: #32 Ford Mustang: http://jalopnik.com/5199325/the-mob-has-spoken-the-superkak-racing-mustang-gt-must-die
  

MY RACE RECAP:

Thanks to JP’s camera that likes to turn its self off every 28 seconds, I have no video of my stint but I can assure you, it was spectacular. With 94 cars on a one-mile track, there was racing everywhere. The car ran great for a little over an hour until the rusty fuel was stirred up enough to clog our entire fuel system and choke our car to death. I think I made up around 40 laps of our 86 lap penalty in that hour. I was passing 8-10 cars per lap every lap and I was racing like I stole it. I was making it happen at every corner and being as aggressive as I could. Just like real racing, and if you don’t like it, go back to DE’s. Period. It was a blast. It’s so much easier to pass when you have a lot more power than everyone else. I’ve got to get a cheater motor in my Spec E30. Now I know what it’s like to drive Jim Robinson or Geegar’s car.

It was fun while it lasted! The motor starting choking and I brought it in hoping we were just getting low on fuel and we were beginning to starve. No dice. I came in, filled up and the same problem was still there. Coming out of the turns the car would fall flat on its face for a few seconds and then come back to life. The problem was getting worse so I brought it in.

We changed three fuel pumps, thanks for the help Jessie! This worked for a while. We got about 20 – 30 mins out of the car until it would happen again. We finally retired the car Saturday afternoon and called it a weekend. We will have to change the entire fuel system from the tank to the injectors. Good times ahead. This is what I got out of the fuel filter:

We did get a residual value for the car of $380 from Jay Lamm so we can spend another $120 getting it ready for the next event, which will be plenty. We will definitely be back in September to contend for the win. When this car runs, its fast.

I hope you enjoy the pics! Stay tuned for next time!

-Brian Jones, BeerTech Racing #380 / B.A. Barracus,The B-Team #25

LeMons car preparation update!

Me replacing the radiator hose. Rob Changing the AFM

With the LeMons South Spring race fast approaching in two weeks, we were back at it. I've been putting in a lot of time during the past few weeks and weekends when I haven't been racing getting our whip buttoned up and ready to go.

A few weeks ago I fired the car up, warmed it up and bled the cooling system to get all of the air out to hopefully avoid overheating our car during the race. All went well then I shut the car down, worked on my real race car for a while and went back to the LeMons car to pull it back into the garage. No start. Just fires and immediately dies. Great, what now?

I assumed it was a simple electrical gremlin in our now 22 year old Frankenstein race car that we cobbled together. This should be easy to diagnose with my years of highly refined electrical knowledge. This was about two weeks ago and the next weekend was our Road Atlanta race (see post below) so I was running out of time and patience with this car.

I called around, got some ideas on the thousands of issues it could be an decided to put it on hold until I could get Rob down here to help me troubleshoot. Which was this weekend. Thanks again goes to Jim Levie who offered lots of help and ultimately led to the solution. Long store short: we have a bad AFM. I'm not sure where JP got this AFM and if it ever ran a car he owned or not but it was confirmed bad when I tried it in my Spec E30 race car. Another donor part from #380 and we are back in business. Side note: Jim also has a writeup on how to repair the bad AFM so hopefully we can fix this one.

Once we got it fired up I took it for a spin thru the neighborhood. Car feels great and will get sideways fairly easily. Should be a handful at speed with this ancient suspension. Oh, and we really need a new caliper out back, the brakes are just plain scary.

After a successful test drive I bring her back in the driveway, call Jim to thank him and let him know its running great. As I'm talking to him on the phone I see lots of steam and fluid on the driveway. This is not good. I pop the hood and quickly look at the front corner of the engine where the head meets the block. There is steam pouring out and I quickly deduce that we just lost a head gasket and cooked the motor. Jim laughs at me and says look at the hoses. Hoses? You mean the original 22 year old hoses we reused? Those are fine. Except they aren't are they? there was no a big crack in one where the hose clamp is and it is conveniently spraying on th engine right where the head meets the block. I told you I was no pro tech. We let it cool off and replace the hose, all is well again...until the next issue arises that is.

Weekend Summary:
This weekend we:
1. got it running...again. Installed the kill switch, finished the harness mounting and Rob helped me move all of my garage crap to the new house. Thanks again Bobert.
2. Churched up the inside of the car a bit with some rattle can primer to cover the surface rusted metal.
3. Went to Mac's on Main again, great little place with live music and a sketchy waitress. I'm pretty sure she eats everyone's leftovers.
4. Went to the club to check out our New Amsterdam promotions. Blame it on the New Am...not feeling great today.

The paint job is done!

Paint is still wet. Wet sanding the first two coats of gray.


















The car sanded before painting. Safety first!

A lot of the time I've put into the car has been getting it looking nice. I've always wanted to paint a car with rollers and see how nice I can get the paint. Since this isn't a real car its the perfect candidate. This way, if I screw it up who cares right?















I used Rustoleum and went with the three color scheme reminiscent of a once popular 80's TV show featuring a sweet van. It goes along with our LeMons team theme which will be revealed in the race recap blog. If you can figure it out for yourself by these pics and my clever clues, consider yourself average at best and go ahead and eat that extra cookie. You've earned it.















Bobert wiring up the kill switch. Two E30's ready to race?


The proper method of painting with a roller is to thin the paint to almost water like consistency so it levels and apply several coats, wet sanding in between. I had intentions of doing this for the whole car but decided against it once time began to run thin. No pun intended. I did thin the gray and added a few cots but most of it is thinned slightly and applied heavily. I did wet sand, compound, polish and wax afterward so the paint looks great for a LeMons car. As with any paint job 90% of it is in the prep work. Getting a smooth surface to start with. I sanded the car and that's about it. Again, LeMons not concourse.















This car will be smashed to pieces in the race anyway so it doesn't matter. Enjoy the pics!

I Hate being wet…Did I mention that?

80 degrees and sunny for four days. That was the weather we had right up until Friday, March 13th 2009. Then it turned to 30’s and 40’s with constant rain. Just in time for a race weekend at Road Atlanta. Yes, the same Road Atlanta that I wrote about in previous blogs with lots of concrete walls very close to the tracks edges. It sounds like a great combination: a wet slippery track, race cars and concrete walls. What could possibly go wrong!!??
I hate being wet all weekend. Wet clothes, wet gear, wet food and worst of all; wet feet all weekend. I do not like those things. In fact, it’s miserable. Last year at CMP when it monsooned, I was ill prepared and was wet and cold all weekend. Not this time. I bought a full rain suit and brought my waterproof boots. Quite possibly the best investment in clothing I have ever made. Not to mention, the sexy “I know what you did last summer” killer’s outfit really gets the attention of the ladies…as Boogie pointed out to me.
This weekend I wasn’t wet and cold except when I was in the race car since we have to race with the windows down. You don’t notice that when racing though, you’re kind of busy. You do however notice that you can’t see 10 feet in front of your car because of the spray from the other cars as well as your completely fogged up windshield, which is nice. Those things make it interesting. Oh yeah and my ABS went out in Saturday’s practice session. More on that later.
Turnip, Rankin and Boogie brought the RV to the track again thanks to Tom Johnson. This was great because I planned on camping in my tent for the weekend and they had an extra spot in the RV just for me! I’m glad they offered too because Friday night brought the wind and the rain. I would have been miserable in my tent on top of the hill under the shelter. I’m pretty sure I would have blown away. The rain was hard enough to wake me up in the RV that night. From then on it rained non-stop day and night, all weekend. It was miserable and lots of cars were wrecked. Mine thankfully came out unscathed. I did get stuck once…more on that a little later as well.

Friday:

I took Friday off of work so I could take my time making the three hour drive to the track and get there with plenty of time to help out for the three hour enduro that started at 2:00. I got to the track around 12:30 and we set up the pits to help out a few fellow racers. Fortunately the rain missed us all day Friday and it was a good day. Steve Foushee, fellow Spec E30 racer took first in E2 until his NASCAR style celebration efforts earned him a DQ and the Title “Donut king of Augusta.” He stopped on the front straight and did donuts on the track. This is generally frowned upon by NASA officials and this time was no different. I didn’t get to see them but I heard the donuts were pretty sweet. Sorry Steve!
Friday night a few of us went out for Mexican food and some beers. I smelled like Mexican food all night. Some of the others went to the baby shower that was being held in the timing and scoring tower. That’s right, I said baby shower. I suspect they went for the free pizza and cake but with those guys, you can never be sure.

Saturday:

As Skid Row used to sing “I woke up to the sound of pouring rain.” Well, I was actually woken up by Rankin who had to go meet his student first thing in the morning. I’m pretty sure it was about 4 AM. It seemed that early anyway. And it was cold and pouring rain…all day. Our practice was at 9:30, qualifying at 11:10 and the race at 2:00. Surely the rain would let up later in the day for the race right? Not a chance. I left my dry setup on the car but luckily I had a fresh set of full depth R888’s mounted by Sasco the day before. This made the wet track a little more tolerable but I was still loose all over the track. I felt pretty good in practice and in qualifying I was able to be quick enough for 5th out of our 17 Spec E30’s. Sweet!
Because of the conditions the race director decided to grid us in one big group for the race. This meant we were classified by our overall time, not just our class. This meant I was starting 10th out of about 60 cars. This was done to keep cars at similar pace near each other to hopefully avoid a lot of carnage on the start. It worked but it’s not as fun as grouping all of the Spec E30’s together and having split starts. Maybe it was for the better.



I ended up finishing 6th. Not bad and I got the sweet 6th place trophy that Geegar made, a T-Shirt, a set of free brake pads from Bimmerworld and I didn’t crash the car. All in all, a good day on track for me.

>>>>>>>>Saturday Race Video<<<<<<<<

Saturday night we had our awards banquet and again, it was raining and cold. But I was dry and warm thanks to my sweet rain suit. I hate being wet. The bad thing about the rain at the track is it sends people in early for the night and it kills a lot of the partying we usually do. We took it easy that night. After dinner we took showers and went back to the RV to watch Role Models. Pretty funny movie. I recommend it.

Al, Travis and Scott decided the weather was too much for them and they went and got a hotel room. Dave White was also there and he had a hotel room. At around 9:00 we get a phone call from Travis, hammered drunk, announcing that they are going to the Wal-Mart to raise some hell. This should be good. We tell them we will wait for the call from jail later that night and we went back to watching our movie in the money RV. Dry and warm.

Sunday:

Again I awoke to the sound of…Rankin, getting ready to meet “the talker” at 8:00. I quickly fell back asleep only to have Travis wake me up with a phone call. “Hey, are you gonna qualify?” I said “when is it?” “9:00AM.” he replied. I said “probably not, well, I guess I might. We’ll see.” Guess who was there for qualifying with me?

Some of the guys were trying different setups for the wet. Some seemed to work, some didn’t. I changed mine on Sunday by disconnecting the rear sway bar as my car was very loose all day Saturday. This has worked before while racing in the rain so I thought I would try it out and it worked great. I was able to get the power down a lot sooner getting out of the turns and I qualified 3rd.

We again had a full group start and this meant I was 9th overall starting the race. I had a decent start but was soon passed by three cars in my class. The track was very wet and with the ABS not working I was getting lock up in a few braking zones. I backed off a bit from the cars in these areas just in case but I was managing it well for the most part. I went too hot into turn 10A on the fourth lap and the front tires locked up and I was sliding toward the Spec E30 in front of me. This was not good. It’s usually not a big deal when this happens, you just get out of the brakes to regain traction and apply them again. Smoothly. If you are still running out of braking room at this point but your speed is okay you can “throw” the car into the turn and still make the corner.
This time I was quickly running out of room and if I tried to throw the car into the turn I would have run the risk of hitting the car in front of me. Instead of doing this I opted to go straight off into the gravel trap. I was stuck on the beach, my race was over but the car wasn’t damaged. I sat there for a few laps watching the race and then the tow truck came, pulled me out and I drove into the pits. Sucks to end the race like that but it was the right call.

Recap:

Overall it was a good weekend. I had a great time seeing everyone and like I said, I hate being wet but I like driving in the rain. A big thanks goes to Aaron, Warren, Lauren and the G-Man for letting me crash in the RV.

Observations:
1. A rain suit is an absolute necessity.
2. 6th place is better than 2nd thru 5th.
3. Wal-Mart in Braselton GA will tolerate a lot of jack-assery.
4. The 10A gravel trap is a great spot to watch a race.
5. Do not drive on any of the painted surfaces at Road Atlanta when wet.
6. ABS is a good thing to have in the rain. (gotta get that fixed)

I haven’t sent out an update in a while so the two posts below may also be new to you. Stay tuned for our next event: The 24 hours of LeMons returns! Will we get the car ready in time? What’s the theme? Did Ian get that rash cleared up? All of these questions and more will hopefully be answered in my next post. Until then, stay dry and keep the car off of the walls.

-Brian Jones, BeerTech Racing #380-

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!!!!!

The 2009 racing season is here!

After a short winter break we headed to Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw SC to kick it off. This was a rough weekend for Spec E-30.

Let's get right to the action:

Friday: I get to the track on Friday at about 5:00 as the 3 hr enduro is underway with one hour left. Read Jim’s blog for the exciting recount of the enduro. Turnip brought a motor home for this event which was an awesome HQ for us. Unfortunately it meant splitting up the Spec E-30 paddock.

For some mysterious reason I noticed in my garage that my left rear shock was leaking. The car had been in the garage for a couple of months and I didn’t notice anything wrong with it until the week of the race. Great, now what? Chuck Taylor of Factory 3 Performance was nice enough to bring a shiny new one to the track for me. Thanks again Chuck!

The weather was great all weekend but it did get cold at night. Good thing I brought a heater for my tent! It worked great. Friday was a lot of fun catching up with all of my racing friends while eating Mexican food, drinking beers and telling lies….Sometimes when I’m away from the track for a while I think about selling the race car but then another event comes around and it makes all of the hassle and cost worth it. You’ll never meet a better bunch of people than you will at a NASA SE event. More on that later.

Saturday: 7:00 AM. It’s cold outside but warm in the tent with my awesome little heater! Time to change out that shock before hitting the track.

This will be my first event using the new Spec tire Toyo R888’s which replaced our Toyo RA-1’s. The new tires have a stiffer sidewall but are supposed to have the same compound. They require a little bit a different set up on the car to work correctly as testing from others have shown. I still have a set of RA’s to burn thru so I run those in practice. I will have to use my 888’s for qualifying and in the race.

Practice goes well as I shake the cobwebs out of the helmet and get myself back up to speed in the race car and on track.

For qualifying, I throw on the 888’s. I didn’t have time to change the setup on the car all weekend so the settings I use with my RA-1’s will have to do. I haven’t looked at the tire wear yet to see how the setup is affecting them but the car felt good all weekend. These tires do not like to be overdriven so smoothness becomes even more important. Once these tires get too hot they are get greasy and go away pretty quick. I qualified 6th out 18 Spec E30’s.

Now for the race: This year we have a whole new crop of rookies to run with. It’s great to see these guys out here and to know that Spec E30 is alive and well. With more cars on track comes more chance for bad things to happen.

As the race starts there is contact between Steven Canterbury and Brandon Smith sending Brandon spinning. Luckily no one T-bones him and we all continue on. Turns two and three are clean but as we enter turn 4, I make an inside move on Robert Patton who is driving the Pink Panther for Saturdays race. I had a good run on him out of turn three and decided to make the move. As we approached the corner Robert goes for the apex and we make contact sending him around. Turn 4 is a very high speed corner and unfortunately we were all still bunched up at this point. Damion Moses was right behind us and as he came thru four he had nowhere to go. He grazed my driver’s side door and took my mirror off before hitting the panther in the drivers rear with his left front. I went on to finish the race but Damion’s car and the panther were damaged pretty heavily. I finished 6th but was later DQ’s for passing under double yellow several laps later.

We reviewed my in car video of the wreck, (START OF SAT'S RACE) and no one was found at fault for the wreck, it was just a racing incident but it still sucks.

During the same race another Spec E30 driver was taken out by a Miata. It really takes the fun out of it when cars get bent up.

Sunday: We had little more contact on Sunday that damaged two Spec E30’s. Steven Canterbury and Chuck Taylor got together coming out of turn three and wrecked both cars.

Video of STEVEN AND CHUCK Chuck's car:

Man, this is getting old. Racing is a dangerous sport and quick decisions have to be made and these things happen.

As the quote goes: ”The price for men in motion is the occasional collision.” And we had a few of them this weekend.

Sunday was a much better day for me on track though. I had to borrow a mirror from the Pink Panther for Sunday’s race and the guys from Florida thought it would be funny to make that mirror a little easier to see.

They attached an F 250 mirror to the side of my car. See the pic. It was pretty funny…well played.
I went out for qualifying and qualified 5th but a surprise weigh in after qualy put me dead last, 17th, in the field due to being underweight. Our minimum weight is 2750 and I weighed in at 2743.
7 lbs. under! SEVEN!!

That’s one gallon of gas. Dagger!

Oh well, to the back I go and I threw a spare wheel and tire in the trunk to make sure I would make weight for the post race weigh in…which didn’t happen.


Two other guys were found underweight and started in the back with me. I had a great drive and managed a fifth place finish earning me a cool 25 Toyo bucks.

SUNDAY RACE VIDEO:

It would have been interesting if all Spec E30 racers had weighed in after qualy but some didn’t. I wonder who ….Hey Craig, what did you weigh in at? It was a poorly run post qualy impound. And no post-race weigh in? C’mon where’s the consistency?! This is all for fun anyway so I don’t really care but it adds to the bench racing and lies later on!

Too much carnage this weekend on track but this weekend really showed the spirit of the Spec E30 racing community. And that’s why we are all here. Our fellow racer and truly great guy Scott Gress had been getting the run around from a shop that was supposed to do some work for him months ago. Long story short they did not do what they were supposed to and messed up the work that they did do. He barely got the car back in time for the CMP event after calling the cops but now needed an engine swap. This would have to be done at the track to get him back out there racing with us.

As I am more of a parts swapper than real actual mechanic, this work would be left to the professionals and guys who know what they are doing. Everyone was determined to get him on track and parts were brought in Friday night from all over to get this thing running. Several people pitched in and they swapped the engine and had him racing on Sunday. This truly is an amazing group of people.

Overall the weekend was fun but all of the on track contact really took the fun out of racing for me. Saturday night was fun, we had the awards banquet and guess what? No BBQ! We had spaghetti! What a great change! I had a great time hanging out with everybody and especially Boogie! I had to add a special shout out just for you! Turnip, Rankin Brooke and Boogie were nice enough to let me hang out in the motor home all weekend and we had a great time together as always. I’m looking forward to Road Atlanta!!

Sorry for the dull write up, I kind of want to get this weekend put away and forgotten. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next one!!

-Brian Jones, BeerTech Racing #380

Preparing for the 2009 24 Hours of LeMons.

Because of the success of last year’s first ever, south east event, the LeMons creators are bringing it back! This year there will be two LeMons events at CMP, one in the spring and one in the fall. Since we had such a good time last year we decided to enter again.

We managed to destroy last year’s car in Weird Al’s Second Annual Dirt Track Democross and Firearms Spectacular back in November so we would have to find a replacement. If all goes well, we may be able to enter this same car in the fall event as well.

Because we are BMW E-30 junkies and gluttons for punishment, why not find another one of those we thought? Besides, some of us have lots of parts for these things and we know plenty of people who can help if we need it.

As you will recall from last year’s LeMons write up (see below) , these cars cannot cost more than $500 total, including prep work once you get the car. Safety items are excluded from that cost.

It’s pretty easy to find a “running” example for less than $500 but this means you will be buying an “e” car. These E30’s have 2.7L inline 6 cylinder engines but are built for economy more than performance. They make good low end torque but do not make much power and have a low rev limit. Their cousins, the “i” cars, like our Spec E30 race cars, have a 2.5L inline 6 but they rev higher and make more power. The “i” cars are more valuable and sought after. So we bought an 1986 325e we found for $400. But it has some problems. It has lots of problems. But we can fix it! And we can make it better!

List of problems: It’s old and rusty and has all original parts! Read: original suspension, bushings and mounts. All old and in need of replacing….which we are not replacing. The rust holes in the floor boards are big enough to put your leg completely through. I’m pretty sure the car has its original tires too. You could stick a quarter through the dry rot cracks. Nice. And safe! We will be replacing the tires. This car also runs extremely rich because it has the wrong air flow meter. Oh, and it has the milkshake. The Milkshake, in car terms, means the car has coolant in the oil. This could be due to a blown head gasket, cracked block or cracked head. We have a plan for that.
















The good thing about being into this crap is that you find out neat little things along the way. It is widely known in the BMW community that you can mix and match parts from different engines and come up with different configurations. Oh, and we are replacing the open 2.93 rear end with a limited slip 4.10 I have laying around. That should make things interesting.

We decided to take our “e” engine and put all of the high performance bits from an “i” motor on it to make a poor man’s stroker motor.

Think of it this way: your 82-87 325,e,es has the 2.7L 9.0:1 compression M20 and the 87-92 325i,is,ix have the high performance 2.5L 8.5:1 compression M20. Now if you have both an "e" and an "i" then take all of the high performance "i" parts off and bolt them on to the "e" and you will have a high performance, high torque 9.0:1 compression 2.7L M20. So that’s what we did. The one thing we also needed was another wiring harness.

So we have a 1986 e car bottom end, 198X i head and ancillaries and a 1989? wiring harness. All of the mechanical work was easy enough, pull the head from our e car, put on the i head with new gaskets of course, and then it was time for the electrical work…..

Now, we at BeerTech are parts replacers, not real mechanics. This means when it comes to electrical work, count us out. All four of us taught ourselves how to work on cars and have taken zero actual classes on the subject. We’re not even sure how to use a volt meter correctly. This should be fun.

So we splice in the “new” wiring harness and fire the car up. By “fire it up” I mean turn the key and get nothing! Success! Oh wait, that’s not the result we are looking for at all. Great.

I have had the LeMons car for weeks doing odds and end getting it ready. Stripping it down completely, etc. We scheduled a BeerTech weekend for Feb 20-22nd to do most of the work. Swap the rear end, install the cage, seats, harnesses, do the motor swap, brakes and general maintenance while drinking about 6 cases of beer. We worked day and night on this thing for three straight days, got everything done and then it wouldn’t fire. A great ending to a loooong weekend. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the beer.

The race is the first week in April so this means it’s basically up to me from here on out to get the thing running and ready. And I have a ton of other things going on. Rob was nice enough to come down the next weekend and help me out and JP and I were on the phone all week looking for solutions.

Thanks to Jim Levie, BMW guru, we were able to trace the problem to the coil’s ground wire. This wire is shielded to reduce radio interference to the coil. We cut the node off the end of this wire to install a kill switch, which also didn’t work, and when we put the ground back on to the coil the shielding was in contact with the negative post. This prevented the DME from being able to ground and un-ground that connection therefore not sending a start signal to the coil.

I pulled back the shielding and reconnected our ground and the car fired right up! Sweet! Our LeMons car is alive!!! A few more odds and ends and this car is ready to rip it up on track.


We were lucky enough to find $1.59 in change in the car to offset our cost. >>>>>>>










Stay tuned for the race report and the unveiling of this year’s theme!

-Brian Jones BeerTech Racing #380

Ho! Ho! Ho!, Let’s go Racing!

BeerTech Racing and NASA South East present: Santa’s Toy Run at Road Atlanta December 5-7^th, 2008.

Who races in December? Its cold outside, that wouldn’t be any fun. Guess what, you’re wrong again! Okay, it was very cold but it was a lot of fun also. Atlanta in December isn’t supposed to be so cold. It was in the 20’s a lot of the time but when you have all of your race gear on, its not so bad and as they say, its good horsepower weather.

If you couldn’t tell by previous write ups, NASA likes to theme the weekends based on the venue and time of year, thus we have Santa’s Toy Run in Dec, at Road Atlanta. Each year during this time NASA holds a toy drive for underprivileged kids, which is awesome. Instead of paying an entry fee to the track, we all bring a toy to donate. Jim Robinson wanted to leave his car there for the kiddies but that would just be cruel. That thing is a Grade A turd, read about it here JIM’S BLOG.

Event:

This was a three-day event starting with an 8-hour endurance race on Friday and the regular two-race schedule Saturday and Sunday. NASA decided to run an endurance challenge this year with many 3 hour long races, this was the finale and they made it 8 hours. Saturday was a double points sprint race and Sunday was a combined group 1-hour fun race.

Track:

Road Atlanta is a world famous road-racing track, has been around for a long time and is an absolute blast to drive. Lots of elevation changes and blind corners make for an interesting experience. Not to mention all of the concrete walls in most cases only 20 to 30 feet off of the edge of the track. Road Atlanta demands respect and will bite you hard if you step over the line. You will not be a habitual line stepper at this track for long.

I know what you’re thinking. “Why do I read these things? They are so long and boring and I’m just trying to waste time at work.” Well, too bad, you’re in this far so keep reading, it will get better…. probably.

So lets get down to it!

Friday:

I was the Crew Chief for the BeerTech racing car #467 of Scott McMennamy. The Drivers were Ryan Osiecki, Scott McMennamy, Warren Turnipseed and Craig Geiger. Each driver would drive for 2 hours and then come into the pits and change drivers, re-fuel and change tires/brakes if needed.

Ryan started in the car as he had never been to Road Atlanta before and quickly learned the lay of the land and turned in some truly fast laps. The first 4 laps were run under caution so this gave him a good look at the track before it went green. First stint was uneventful and successful. The race started at 9:00AM and the track was icy in some spots so nice job to Ryan for keeping the shiny side up and all of the corners square.

Second to drive was car owner Scott McMennamy. Scott jumped in the car and became acclimated quickly, turning some good laps. About 45 mins. into his stint, coming thru T-12, a very fast, sweeping, downhill right turn which is flat out in 4^th gear in our cars he had a moment. The rear end decided it wanted to get to turn one first so it stepped out and started coming around. Scott tried to save the slide but it quickly developed into a spin sending him into the outside wall. There are no tires against the wall in this area because the wall is so close to the track, just lots of thick concrete.

The driver’s rear corner hit first snapping the driver’s front corner into the wall. This bent the whole front of the car over about 3-4 inches toward the passenger side and broke the radiator.

After the car was towed into the paddock, Scott decided we should try and fix the car and get it back out there and we did. Aaron Rankin, Craig Geiger and I worked fast to get the car back out there. A little bodywork, a new radiator, some cutting, banging and cursing and off we went, back into the race. At this time Warren Turnipseed took the wheel and headed out on track. We only lost about an hour and a half in the pits so we had plenty of time left to “test” our handy work and see if anything else was broken.

After Turnip’s successful stint, Craig Geiger took the car out to finish the race. The car took a pretty good hit and handled okay but not ideally. We did finish the race 12^th in our class, E2, and 24^th overall out of 30 entries. Not bad for having to fix the car half way thru!

The enduro saw lots of carnage for E30’s and we weren’t the only ones doing repairs during the race.

Chuck Taylor (right) and I racing hard.

Saturday:

Saturday was the regular schedule, Practice, Qualifying and Race. Yay!, now I finally get to drive Road Atlanta in my car. This was my second time ever at Road Atlanta and first time in my car. After taking last year completely off I drove in the March enduro with Scott. Practice was good, I just needed to learn my way around the place again and after watching lots of video thanks to Mike Skeen of Mikeskeen.com, I picked it up pretty quick. I ran a 1:48.8 in qualifying, good enough for 15^th. Not bad, Ill take it. Like I said before, Road Atlanta demands respect and I was definitely going to give it.

The race went well, a little boring late in the race as traffic stretched out but I was able to finish 10^th with a fast lap of 1:46.9. Much better! A few drivers dropped out due to mechanicals and one guy was DQ’d for having an illegal rear end. To his credit I don’t think he did it on purpose, it was the one in the car when he bought it and he had bad intel telling him that model had the correct rear end. Oh well, to the back you go!

Sorry, no video from Saturdays race, I forgot to turn the camera on….again.

(Steve DeVinney using all of the road...with his 4.10 rear end)

Sunday:

Since this was going to be the last event of the year, NASA decided Sunday would be a combined one-hour fun race. This put the Lightning and Thunder groups together. This would be interesting as we had LOTS of fast cars out this weekend. Corvette Z06’s, Porsches, IMSA lites and even two ALMS Ford GT’s. Those guys are crazy to put those million dollar machines out on track with the likes of us!

We drew numbers in the drivers meeting to form a random grid. I wanted to be as far to the back as possible with such fast cars out there. Some cars have several hundred more horsepower than our cars do and that makes for pretty fast closing rates on track. I was lucky and drew #70. Starting 70^th of 74 was a good thing. If there were any big wrecks up front, hopefully I wouldn’t be involved. Luckily everyone behaved themselves and there were no car to car incidents. Nice work everyone. See the video for some exciting footage:

>>>>>>>>>>BRIAN’S SUNDAY TOY RACE FOOTAGE PART 1<<<<<<<<<<<<<

>>>>>>>>>>BRIAN’S SUNDAY TOY RACE FOOTAGE PART 2<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Lodging:

Because of our antics at the last event, Rockingham we were all banned from camping for the rest of the year. Great. Who wants to camp in December anyway right? Thanks again to Jim Pantas. For this event we rented a Lake house in Dawsonville GA and had 10-12 people in it. Very nice place, pool table, foosball, ping-pong, hot tub and a lake for when you really get banged up and want to take a swim. Did I mention this is December?

We stayed Thursday night thru Sunday and had a blast. See below:

Shenanigans:

Thursday and Friday nights were pretty low key as we all needed rest for racing but the smack talk and games were still intense. I beat the hell out of Al Taylor at Pool and Ping-Pong and Skeen beat his ass repeatedly at Foosball. It wasn’t a good weekend for Al in the game room. Sorry Al, hate to do it to you but it’s the truth baby!

Saturday night was crazy! We had some more people over to the house including the BDR crew and had an old fashioned throw down. We all got pretty banged up, played some games, talked some sh*t and had a great time. Oh yeah we also paid Turnipseed $179 and he drank a bottle of Ultra Concentrated Dawn dish soap, green apple flavor! Bleh!

Since he is “The Man”, he is henceforth known and referred to as Officer Bubbles. $179 can get you a sweet nickname too!

HIGHLIGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS:

1. Having a 4.10 differential is an advantage when no one else does.
2. $179 is the going rate to see someone drink a bottle of soap. Thanks Officer Bubbles!
3. Al Taylor sucks at Ping Pong and is mediocre at best at shooting pool.
4. Road Atlanta is one of the most fun tracks I’ve ever driven.
5. I should get a hot tub.
6. If AMP ever becomes a reality, the lake house is where it’s at!
7. Jim Robinson listens to Christopher Cross. No, really, the CD is in his truck right now! So what do you do when caught between the moon and NY city? Jim?

That’s it for this installment! Hope you’re still awake! See you next time!

-BeerTech Racing, Car #380 Brian Jones-

BeerTech Racing Goes to the Rock!


Well racing fans here it is, the latest and greatest racing news from your favorite racers. September 20th and 21st we visited one of our favorite tracks for some great racing for possibly the last time, more on that a little later.

The weather was perfect all weekend and we had a great time on and off the track. JP and I made the trip down to Rockingham NC to hand out some beat downs to MLT. Unfortunately, Scott was unable to attend due to the man keeping him down.

Lets get right to the racing! BeerTech took two first place in class finishes in both Roll the Rock races this weekend. JP won on Saturday and I won on Sunday. This was my first victory and it was all I hoped it could be. What’s that you say? You heard that not all of the Spec E30 racers started the race I won? Hey, shut it! They could have …but didn’t. ;) I had some tough competition out there but was able to hold them off for the victory! Ill take it.This was my second time at The Rock and first time racing there.

When we run Rockingham we get four races in the weekend, I know pretty sweet. Each day there is one points race and one fun race. The points races are split as usual between two classes, Thunder (high horsepower cars) and Lightning (momentum cars) Spec E30 runs in the Lightning races for points. The Fun races, called Roll the Rock are both classes mixed together for one big race. Speed differentials are substantial and make for interesting racing. It’s an absolute blast!

Here is a quick rundown of the races and how I did. Yeah, this is all about me in case you are wondering.

Points race #1 Qualified 8th, finished 9th RACE ONE VIDEO


Roll The Rock Race #1 Finished 11th in class. ROLL THE ROCK #1 VIDEO
Watch for the punt I get from MLT’s Travis Wilson at 5:53 in the video.

Points Race #2 Qualified 2nd, finished 7th
Q2 Due to a few people disqualified for passing under yellow in qualifying. I didn’t get video of this race due to my car not starting on grid and barely getting it running before going out. I forgot to hit the record button, dagger!

Roll The Rock Race #2, finished 1st in class! ROLL THE ROCK #2 VIDEO

On the track the racing was fast and clean. No incidents this weekend except for M3 Bill losing a motor in Qualifying on Saturday. The competition is getting better and better all the time in our series also. I am obviously a fantastic driver with superhuman driving ability and I'm not even running up front! I know what you're thinking, they are all cheaters! I agree.

The competition is so close in fact that in qualifying for race #1 Laura Patton, JP Coates, Me and Al Taylor all ran our fast lap of 1:11.1x. All four of us within the same 1oth of a second.

Rockingham is a great track to race on. It used to be on the NASCAR circuit years ago but is now used for testing, ARCA and other track days like ours. We use NASCAR turns one and two and the infield road course making this into what we call a roval. See track map.










I have a new found respect for circle track drivers for sure. The concentration and stamina needed for driving thru the banking is amazing. In our cars we go thru flat out at the top of fourth gear with the car on the limit at around 105- 115 MPH or so. I can’t imagine doing it at 200 MPH, 3 wide for 4+ hours. Amazing.

The nice thing about Rockingham is that we can use the NASCAR garages. These are a nice break from the sandy, grassy paddock spots we usually have and we are also allowed to camp in them, which is nice, so I got that going for me.

Now the off track "activity."

Normally we throw a pretty good party at the racetrack everywhere we go. This event got a little out of hand Saturday night and we (the entire NASA group) were almost asked to leave the track for breach of contract Sunday morning. Ooops, sorry again Jim.





I can’t go into too many details here but when track management came in Sunday morning, they found a car parked on the start finish line on track…NOT happy about it. The Shenanigans were pinned on Spec E30 as a group, namely BeerTech and Malt Liquor Tech. Can you believe that???




We were certainly making memories and it was a blast! Sometimes these things happen but we will try to take it easy in the future.
HIGHLIGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS:
1. Travis is a dirty driving Ba*#@&d. ;)
2. Look out for the man in Red.
3. Riding Lawnmowers make great pit vehicles.
4. Vic Hall is rotten on the inside. (You need to have that looked at.)
5. Spec E30 throws kick @ss parties.
6. Track management is lame.

Ill post a few pics as I get them but until next time, try to keep the noise down all right?

Oh yeah, don’t forget to look for me soon in Columbia, SC. I got a promotion and will be moving there at the end of October…right in the middle of all the Southeast tracks! Perfect!

-BeerTech Racing Car #380, Brian Jones