Half-Life Racing Plead for Residual Value for Vodden the Hell, 2016

Judge Phil,

The Half-Life Racing team’s depraved thinking of registered our current fleet of two cars into the upcoming Vodden the Hell Are We Doing race is really a good question?   When you look at the carnage from the last race our sanity to return these cars to the track should be in questions.

For the last race at Arse-Freeze, it did not start well.  When we were doing our final checks the weekend before the race we found the differential rear bearing for the Ra-D-um to be shot, so we swapped it out with an open differential.  

Being that we are "smart" chaps we think we are, we decided that to make the open differential better we could welded the spider gears to make it a closed differential.  The thought was the car is like a Karting cart, so what could a little more likeness hurt?  Well, we shouldn’t have done that.

At the end of the first day, one of our drivers over did it entering turn 5, and well this video says it all.  

and at least there is some remorse.  

Needless to say, our desired Kart car meeting the K-rail did some damage.  We spent the night working on it, which required some sawing:

cutting, 

and welding

 Through great team effort we were able to get it “running” in the morning. 

When we got it back to the Shop we did find the frame rail deranged.  

We also found the lower control twisted.  

It is this part I would like to plead for some help.  To make it work on track the lower control received some editing.  Now after some realignment, I would like to replace this, and it will cost $53.95.  After that we need some additional fine tuning with hammer, preventative maintenance with the Come Along, and some air brushing touchup with Rust-oleum Key-Lime and all should be right again. 

As for the Seize-Z-um, at Sonoma, we thought we had a good (for us) first run.  

The only common trouble was the 3rd to 4th shifting where the syncros were not happy.  However, after some interviews with the various drivers we decided to dropped the gear oil that evening.  To some, horror, distinguishable bits came out.

Well, since we had our hands full with the Ra-D-um this was deemed a problem we needed to “live with".  With some luck and some extra special sauce we nursed it to the finish. 

To correct for this in this next race, we pulled the troubled transmission, 

grabbed two transmissions that was in our Shop, 

turn the two into one, 

and then completed the transplant.  

During this process we also noticed another rear wheel bearing trouble.  That is second in a season for this car, so we might be finding some weak points on the car.  A few more beers and a possible confession should help determine if it is the car or us.  

In the meantime, you have a good idea what we will be doing this weekend.  In the end, for Seize-Z-um the amount of parts needed is limited.  I plead your indulgence for $26 to replace the drivetrain seal and fresh gear oil.

So, in the end I, grovel for lenience to allow these minor parts of $53.95 for Ra-D-um, $26 for Seize-Z-um, and lots of labor costing me a few beers.

Thank you for your most honorable consideration.

Muddy