24 hours of Iowa, explained...

Wow, what a crazy f'ing weekend. Drive down went well, no tires fell off this time. The Iowa highway is a bit boring though. Anyways, Friday was uneventful, got through tech inspection with no problems, the guy remembered us from Brainerd, so it was a good time. Slept in a hotel, for our last decent sleep for a night. Got up for breakfast at 7am to get over to the race and get setting up, to be there for the 9am drivers meeting. Meeting started 40 minutes late, but luckily we knew to have our driver ready to get in the car right after the meeting. We had our pit lane all set up and our garage space set up. So at 1040am they started lining up cars in the pits, and shortly there after they started lapping the track. Chump races do a rolling start and wave the green on a random car. Flagged dropped at 11:18am on the car right in front of us and we were off. The first hour and a half was busy, the track was packed with cars that were quickly dropping out with issues, so there were tons of yellow flags. Our first driver, Jeremy, was getting in some good laps for his first stint of 1.5 hrs. Then as he pitted, one of our old, aged, cracked powersteering hoses gave up the ghost. Luckily Soren was out getting some supplies, so he picked up a hose and a couple clamps. We pulled the car into the garage, replaced the hose, quickly bleed a little air out, and what we thought was a quick fix really took an hour. But we got our next drivers out, and the car ran well for the 6 hours until the safety break. So after Jeremy we got our noobs into the car, Danielle and Matt, to get them experience with the car and track before dark. Matt was quick and bested Jeremy's time, granted Jeremy had lots more traffic to deal with. After the hour loss, we shortened everyone's stints to 1.25 hours before the break except Jeff who had been due to do his two hour stint. So Danielle, Matt and I did 1.25 hr runs and GD was it f'ing hot in the car. (Sorry for the profanity, but there's no other way to explain it.) Thought I was going to die. But our car was running well and even running in the heat of the day 4-515, I was able to shave some time off of Matt's fastest time. Then my brother got in and was running well for about 55 minutes before he came into the infield a bit quick on a lap and right behind some traffic and spun the into the gravel and into a tire wall. He and the car survived fine. (see below) He had to get towed out of the gravel, but drove it back to the pits under a red flag (stopped everyone else). We emptied the front splitter and radiator of gravel, roughly half a 5 gallon bucket's worth of pea gravel, and we had to change all four tires. They all had gravel actually imbedded INTO the bead of the tire (between the tire and the rim). So we got the four new tires on and sent him back out, and he finished the rest of the time he had until the mandatory safety break.

So we were down for an hour from 7-8pm, and we decided to try to put in a brass adapter for our trans cooler and temp sensor to try to stop a leak. Got it done just in the nick of time, and got our next driver, Erik, out there. Near the end of Erik's 1.5 hours, he started to get passed on the straight, which was unheard of with our V8 power. We would crush people in the oval section, struggle to hang with 'em in the infield, then pass and crush them in the bankings. But Erik tried to radio something in, we couldn't understand a thing he said because the mic's were still working horribly. We were just confused why he was being passed. So he comes in, and mentions the engine is "running funny", but we decide to run it. So I hop in for my second stint, the first in full night, (though the track left on 20% lighting which was nice, but the infield was super dark.), and I try to pull out of the pits and into the racing line and the engine is just stumbling a TON, basically like our pre-race event in Brainerd when the timing was off. I try another lap and wow, slow cars are passing me. This is bad. So I pull in, and we check some stuff quick, hand bump the engine to top dead center, and sure enough the cams aren't lined up. SOB, the timing belt jumped. We pull into the garage, and get to work. Turns out the bolts holding in the tensioner had backed out, either under the high temps and load or we didn't use enough (or any) locktite on the threads. So we slowly get this fixed, working on a hot engine is no fun. But all in all, we did it relatively quickly and get back out there. SOB its worse! We must have moved it two teeth instead of one. Pull it BACK IN, and we fix it again, quicker this time. I pull out of the pits and HALLEJAALUIEYA! I got power and get back to passing cars in the straights for about 40 minutes and POP, (blow a fuse) and my gauges and taillights and brake lights go out. Uh oh. I get blackflagged for no taillights and pull into the pits. They put in a new fuse, go back out, first lap, POP, goes again. We're now out of the big stupid fuses Lexus uses for the main block, a 150A and a 100A, we try a 60A thinking we found a lose wire from our damaged neon system (Jeff in the gravel), that was now touch inside the cab. So I had let Jeremy go out for the 60A fix, my time was mostly up. But that wasn't the issue and it popped again. So we put in a sold wire for the fuse instead, as there's still fuses behind it inline, and Soren goes out. He makes it a full lap, but later says he was getting flickering. And it goes again, burning through the sold copper a lap later. So we have a BIG arcing, grounding going on somewhere. Walking back to the pits, I recall our "fix" for the engine cut off switch in Brainerd being that we ran new wires from the alternator power back to the cut off switch and we could only disconnect the other cable from the alternator, and it disappeared into a huge harness to not know what to cut. So we taped up a ton and left it. So I'm thinking this probably got burned through and was now touching frame on turns. Fortunately and unfortunately, I'm right. So they cut it back and re-wrap it with a chunk of rubber hose, and clamp it and tape it and ziptie it out of the way, and at the same time Grant shows up, after running out to the closest truck stop 30 miles away in search of a 150A fuse. He found a 200A inline stereo fuse, and we made that work. So at 245am, Soren gets back in the car, and starts lapping. We're runing pretty well again at this point and HUGE thunderstorm rolls in. They pull all the cars off the track at 330a and say there'll be a 6am drivers meeting to go back out. We wake up at 630am, drivers meeting is late, have a quick one at 645a, they tell us we're now only running until noon, so our 24 hour race became more like 21 hours. But we got people back in the car, and ran without incident for the next 5 hours to finish the race in 13th place out of 24 cars. One of approximately 12-13 cars to finish the race. All in all it was a super fun weekend, and I thank everyone involved who helped us at the race or helped us get there.

And now for the big one everyone's been waiting to see... So after seeing it, it looks like Jeff gave her a little brake in the turn, and couldn't quite catch it. Thanks for not breaking the car, but we were glad you were okay. For future reference, call the pits and tell us you're okay before getting out of the car.



Watch for a future invite, but there'll be a celebration BBQ at my house in Coon Rapids, July 17th. We'll have the car out for people to check out, maybe rides, and of course food and booze. Hope to see you there!