Barber LeMons Feb 04-05 2023. RetroRacing Rides Again
The 118-car LeMons starting field. Upper left in the photo is the Barber Porsche Driving Experience cars. Ever see that many Porsches in one spot outside of the parking lot beside a big law firm?
04Feb23; Sat. Dawn. We are again at Barber, our home track, a beautiful road course, just twisty enough to suggest it may have been originally designed as a motorcycle track, one of George Barber’s loves. The on-site Barber museum is full of great old bikes among the vintage race cars.
Our Lemons four driver Blitzwagen team is in good spirits. There is Hawkeye (a non-neurotic neurologist), Dr. Steve aka Slick (an MD), David (Ford dealership tech honcho), and JamRod (Ace Mechanic cross-trained as Ace Driver). They are here like men driven to join the Foreign Legion, escaping the work day, lost love, or bounty hunters.
Slick (Banzai head dress) chatting with crew. Staying on friendly terms minimizes brake sabotage.
Race day dawns clear, cloudless. Cold but warming. This is important to us because our dual oil cooler system is too effective. We’ve been blowing emulsified oil vapor out of the engine since December’s Road Atlanta even under racing conditions. On a cold day, with 3 gal + oil in our dry sump system, we’re barely reaching 180° F. operating temp even going like hell for hours.
The Blitzwagen draws onlookers.
We’ve improved the case vent system (all 16AN now) since Road Atlanta last year, and we’ve blocked off one oil cooler intake entirely.
We still have Engine #1 in the Blitzwagen from Road Atlanta where it replaced Engine #2 because #2 dropped the cyl #3 exhaust valve and destroyed one of our original DRD L5 heads.
Both engines are the same, aluminum race case, 78mm stroke, 94mm pistons, W125 Engle cam, straight-cut cam gear, 3 gal. dry sump with FRAM HP-1 filter, and 9:1 compression. The DRD heads have 40x35.5 valves.
Our carbs, as usual for our enduros, are Solex “Kadrons” with 44mm throttle bodies, 34mm venturis, and 170 main jets, built by Kaddie Shack. Webers are great for sports car sprints, but too dirt sensitive for 14-hr weekend enduros.
The green flag does down at 0900 hrs, and on this day one, lap one, anything is possible. Fortune already smiles on us. Our wipers don’t work and it’s not going to rain.
An enduro is fury on the track and monotony in the paddock. We run hour and a half driver stints, the rule being to just make laps so as to last, while the racing demons in the driver’s psyches make them want to go like hell.
Slick straps in.
Slick is smooth and steady, but not slow. He can post almost identical to the second lap times like an automation. We get some excitement when we can hear the exhaust note of our engine change as it passes us on the track. We are sounding sick. Slick gets the car back to the paddock and we quickly discover the problem. The 1 5/8” exhaust header on the 3-4 cyl bank has lost a couple of nuts. We get that fixed and on restarting the engine, discover a fouled NGK plug in cylinder #3.
JamRod installs a new set of iridium Denso plugs. They are immune to most common spark plug problems. We have no fancy ignition, just a Pertronix 009.
Hawkeye is disciplined enough to keep his racing demons in check, but not all of the time. He’s the first of our team today to get hit. A big American V8 sedan sideswipes him, right across the left rear. A piece of plastic bodywork gets knocked off that corner. We get flagged in and on inspection, see we can continue. That takes time.
David preparing for his turn. He enters the car voluntarily this time. We didn't have to bribe with liquor or hookers.
JamRod picks personal races with individual cars. All of our drivers run from 2:05 to 2:10 enduro lap speeds. But David? No stopping him. He sets a 2:01 lap and could go faster. Fastest lap in all classes, some hotrod V8 something, was 1:47.
Then David gets hit. A Camaro bankshots off his right rear fender, cracking some plastic. Again we lose time getting inspected and released.
The Blitzwagen has a 12-gallon fuel cell. We almost empty it on these 90-minute stints. Refuel requires whole crew to be in fire suits, and a 10lb extinguisher to be in a refueler’s hands. For fire safety, LeMons requires an on-board extinguisher with nozzles plumbed all through the car. And we carry a handheld just for tradition.
As the day wears on, and the engine is going strong, we’re starting to think the Racing Gods have forgotten about us. Sort of like the Irish joke: May you be in heaven a half hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.
But then – midafternoon – JamRod comes in. He says the rear suspension doesn’t feel right. Both rear tires need air. We started with 30psi in the rear, and now they’re reading 35psi. That means they’re working hard. The right amount of heat-induced inflation would be about 2 psi.
But there is something potentially worse. The left rear axle nut is loosening! David pries out the cotter pin and removes the axle nut. Spline wear. We lose more time cleaning splines with a file, trying to find hardened washers big enough, and even consider an axle stub replacement. In the end David just hammers the nut tighter with a high-torque battery powered gun. New pin in, and JamRod is back in the race. 40 minutes lost.
With our big grippy tires and racing torque, we have actually twice broken the center out of our rear brake rotors, always left rear. Changing to less sticky tires seemed to have fixed the problem for the past few races, but this is not looking good.
After a few days left out in the rain, this is what a hub center failure looks like.
We’d earlier moved up to third in class, the race is close, and we do not have laps to lose. And the Blitzwagen is going strong, despite our two paddock stops.
Finally, at about 1700 hrs, the checkered flag flies, and the day’s racing is over. But our work isn’t done. We borrow a small trailer and tow the Blitzwagen to a garage near the track. David welds the axle nut in place. The actual problem is fretting on the spline and groove axle to brake hub connection. It wears away metal. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
David grinds the welded axle nut down smooth.
05Feb23; Sun. 0900 hrs the green flag does down and the parade lapping field of MadMax LeMons cars blasts past the flag tower, scrambling for position like roaches caught in the open when the kitchen light suddenly switches on.
We’re in it as well. We are now running sixth in class due to the lost time yesterday.
The ambient temp on this February day is middle 60’s F. Oil temp is about 210° F. Today, we have one oil cooler air intake scoop totally taped off and half of the second one. The case vent exit through the right rear fender is smeared with some milky emulsified oil but not as much as yesterday. We’re still not running hot enough.
At 210° F we get more vapor and less emulsion.
As usual, the race is called for an hour at about 1100hrs, for “quiet time” so as not to disturb any local churches, Catholics to snake handlers, in the vicinity. It gives us and everybody else a chance to work on the cars. David and JamRod are checking wires, distributor clamps, sparkplugs, fuel, and lug nuts.
At noon, its go time again. We’ve got to make up time. The field has thinned, and the remaining cars are all fixed and going strong. But Engine #2 is also really running strong. The Kads are doing their best. The brakes are great. Kush-Loc clutch is great. Refuels are smooth and quick. Our drivers are serious and tight-lipped, passing tips and warning to the next driver. The hours pass in a haze of oil and gas fumes, burning clutches smell. The tension is high. You’d think we were sitting in the cement cubicle pits at LeMans, silently praying for someone ahead of us to break.
Jamrod checking out the car during quiet time. He just sits in it, making engine noises. No one notices.
We watch the positions change on Hawk’s smartphone. We’re in and out of 5th to 6th in class. We calculate. We were off track an hour and a half yesterday fixing things. The number of laps lost would have us in 1st right now.
But no one breaks. Not even us. And at sunset, the checkered flag whips from the tower as all the surviving cars thunder under it.
RetroRacing finishes 6th in C Class. 58th overall. About exactly in the middle of the remaining field.
