Next race!

Well the people as Lemons have updated there website and added a new event at Nelson Ledges! Its a bigger corse, and its a natural road corse, not the roval we had last time. So, now the debate is which car do we use?? The Camaro might be better off on the new track, AND we are not sure if the car needs lighting or not. We will have to see as time rolls on. But ethier way we are totally stoaked about the new race.

"Mini"-Monster truck

Here's a sort of cool video of a monster truck rally... I find it quite interesting for the visual effect.

Woah... Autocross++

And I thought our autocrossing was fun... Check this out!

Oh, and the title of this post is a programmer joke. The "++" means "take this and add one to it" - thus this is one more than autocross.

Watch for the insane Segway bit. No helmet!

Heart transplant well underway...

Today we resumed work on the Escorts - we wanted to get them to a state where we wouldn't need to work on them outside in bad weather... And we definitely did!

A new team member, Tony, contacted us last week and said he would be available this weekend, so we decided to take advantage of his willingness to help! We pulled the escorts out of the back and started on the process of transferring the engine from the donor to the racer...

The racer rolled really well, and the engine had obviously been out of the car at least one time in the past. With the learning curve it took us about 2 1/2 hours to get the engine out of the car... No significant snags or difficulties. And we didn't have to cut... much.

The donor car had a seized front disk brake, so we had to pull that apart outside, before we could roll it into the garage. Once in, that engine came out pretty well as well. The experience of taking out the racer just before was a real asset to taking out this one. There were extra bits that we had to extract as well, but it went well. So well that we kept going and were able to pull off additional potential parts - Windshield washer resivore (more on that in the future), and fuel tank, which was in better shape than the one on the racer.

Now the next step is to disassemble the donor engine and make sure it is in good shape... Then put it back in the racer...

Overall, a very productive day, and we have a lot of time left to do other things!

The New York Times!

Apparently our outing at the 24 Hours of Lemons - Detroit-ish caught some attention...

When Life Hands You Lemons, Race Them

That's the New York Times - on page two they reference our sign!

From Team SuckerPunch 24 Hours of Lemons Detroit-Ish 2008

No longer an unstoppable force...

Today frankie started on the path of adding/modifying bits... We drove to where it's stored and spent a good 6-7 hours working on it today. It got some basics - windshield wipers, tires properly pressurized - as well as some just-passed basics. We did our initial rebuilding of the rear brakes and can now fairly confidently stop.

With the possibility of stopping, we've now officially declared the car "safe enough to drive", so we took it out for a little spin. It's going to be quite the fun car to drive! I'm rather looking forward to getting it out and autocrossing it.

I'm continuing to learn quite a bit from Matt - and I'm improving on my skills. I've now re-built 4 drum brakes, I think I have a fairly good idea of how they work now. He's also starting to show me around the engine compartment - I'm sure removing the A/C as well as other bits will be a good experience for me!

We're definitely exited about Frankie - we just need to make sure we don't lose focus of what needs to be done to 'Scort... Our current plan is to get the engines out sometime this week...

Till next time space cowboys...

The new SuckerPunchMobile! "Frankie"!

Today was a fun and exciting day - we went and checked out a car we found on craigslist... A 1989 Camaro RS with a 305 and Automatic. It looks... "experienced", but when Matt did a more technical inspection he discovered that it's in great shape! Well, all except for the brakes... Which were also quite... experienced.

Needless to say, we now officially have another car for Team SuckerPunch. We're looking at getting it prepped for Lemon's 2010 - 2009 will be the escort's ("Scort") second run.

Once we payed for the Camaro, we -carefully- drove it back to Matt's Pa's place - he was nice enough to let us fix it up there prior to getting it into the Milwaukee area. We plan on fixing up the brakes and whatever other basic repairs prior to taking it to Gordon's #1 Service - the home of Team SuckerPunch.

After arriving at Matt's Pa's place, we started taking it apart a bit more and seeing what was really there... And it was even better than what we initially thought it was! Matt has asked me not to give away all of the innards, but as he said to me "when the original owner ordered the car, he must have checked EVERY option".

It wasn't all easy though... Obviously the brakes are important, so we wanted to take a look at them. I poped off the covers on the nuts, and unfortunately there were wheel locks on the car. So a search ensued... And even included dissassembling some internal paneling looking for the key.

Officially determined the key was nowhere to be found, we attempted to use a few tools... And no, they didn't work... So we went to an auto parts store, where they looked at us and said "we don't sell anything like that". So we went next door to a tire shop - they said "We'll take them off if you drive it here". Only one issues with that of course - um, we want to fix the brakes before driving it more... Finally, thanks to Menards(!?) we had the proper tool and were able to remove the locking lug nuts...

So now it's just waiting for us to return with supplies - brakes, brake lines, and so on... We're hoping to be able to drive it back to Gordon's by Sunday...

Team SuckerPunch 1989 Camaro - Frankie!

Team SuckerPunch: Round 2 - Frankie! from Niles Stonne on Vimeo

Small Update

As winter approaches we're starting to look into winter activities for the team. Right now the plan is to pull the engine out of the 2nd escort and rebuild it over the winter.

Additionally, we've located a potential new lemons car. No official news yet, but look for an update in the future... If we pick it up, we'll still probably be racing the escort in 2009, and then the new one will be brought out for 2010.

Testing

testing

WAI Autocross

Sunday was a fun day for a couple of members of Team SuckerPunch! It was the final WAI Autocross event of the year - titled "Return of the Jetta", based on a theme of "Cone Wars" (Star Wars).

We worked the first and third heats, driving the second and fourth... The first heat we walked out and took our corner. The first car on the track makes it through ok... Then the second makes it through the initial slalom but spins and takes out a couple of cones after the slalom. Watching a subsequent car take the course, they did a good run until the finish, where they spun out, damaging the cabling to the finish line sensor. By now we've established that the surface is a bit... slick...

Heat two... Matt and I finish getting the car prepped and wait to start our run. Matt's driving first, and I'll drive afterward. We get up to the line - and then we're off. Matt does a good run around the course, not hitting a single cone and getting a pretty solid time.

This event, I made a decision to try for "flow" first, then speed. Trying not to trounce brakes or gas, but just to flow from section to section of the track. Ease in, ease out, and just work with the car instead of against it. It worked. It worked very well! I had a personal first for my first run... I beat Matt's time. Riding along with him through the course really helped me identify where to do what, and going for flow first made the run feel great!

And to make things even more fun when I finished it put me in first for STS class.

Of course, subsequent runs on heat two Matt got better times than I did, but I really managed to tighten the gap between the two of us. It turned into a fun trade-off between us, each of us pushing the other to improve our driving (and thus our times). Discussing strategy on the course was a lot of fun.

Lunch break - tasty chilli for us.

Then heat three... And the rain started. Just gentle rain for us working heat three. Surprisingly, fewer people got into bad situations in the rain than out of it. One car did manage to take out an entire side of the finish line (4 cones), but beyond that, not too much exciting.

By heat four it was raining fairly well - an amazing amount of the people that were to be driving heat four left without driving, but Matt and I stayed through it. Performance driving in the rain definitely adds some interesting aspects! I managed to get the tail to do a controlled slide around a few corners, which is something I always enjoy the feel of.

Matt did three great runs in the rain, to the point of the announcer saying something to the effect of "He's pulling the closest heat two to heat four times I've seen today". Matt was able to get very similar times moring to afternoon, which was quite impressive. I didn't do quite as well, but still managed to be about 1.5 seconds off of Matt's times.

On a side note - Matt got a chance to talk to several people about Lemons, and it sounds like we may have at least 2 more members of the team for next year!

Helmet Graphics

I've had a couple of people ask about the graphics on the front of my helmet... I hate to give away the secret, but they're actually rub-ons for scrapbooking. I picked them up at Michael's craft store.

If you'd like to take a closer look, I've added a photo album over on Picasa.

-Niles

Niles's Helmet

New URL!

We're going all out on this... You can now point your browser to:

http://teamsuckerpunch.com

That URL will map to this blog for now... And in the future... We'll see.

Meet The Drivers...

Ok here's the three drivers that I expect to post occasionally:

- Matt - He's the guy that started Team SuckerPunch. He's put a tremendous amount of time and effort into our team car and organizing the team in general.

- Me - I go by Niles Stonne on-line, although in person many people call me Lance. I've designated myself as official tech geek of the team - Video/Audio/Web, you name it.

- Scotty - He races Spec Miata and also lent us use of his trailer to get the car to the 24 Hours of Lemons. Great Guy!

Where we're at now...

During the race we had a radiator problem and overheated our engine to failure, so now we need to figure out a plan for next year...

Since the team purchased two cars, we're planning on taking the engine out of the spare car, getting it rebuilt and then installing it in the Team SuckerPunch race car. I'm hoping to get this process done this winter, so that we can get the car out for some fun prior to Lemons next year. I've been suggesting autocross events, and we've also thought about the Midwest Enduro Series. Right now we're still in need of a good way to transport the car - one of the team members has a trailer, but he uses it quite often for Spec Miata racing.

I'm the largest geek of the group, so I set up the radios and video camera for the team. We had some issues with the video camera powering down mid-race, so we only have about an hour of video. My additinal goal for the winter is to look into the video camera and get it working for maximum-length movies. Additionally, since it records in high-def I'd like to find a better place to host the videos.

Blogging Begins

From Team SuckerPunch 24 Hours of Lemons Detroit-Ish 2008

This is a blog for Team SuckerPunch - a 24 Hours of Lemon team based out of Milwaukee, WI.

We participated in the 24 Hours of Lemons Detroit-Ish 2008 race... Here's some Videos and Pictures.