Ruby seen on the National TV

The advertisement group of our team really likes the coverage we get at Fernley. Both times we ran there our car can has been seen on national TV. For the 2009 Goin' For Broken race, Good Morning American ran the following clip. (Ruby can be seen at the 1:58 mark. Wow, we rode high back then.)

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7714415

This time in 2011, we see Ruby on the new The Car Show with Adam Carolla, and not once but twice. First at the 0:14 mark and again at the 4:57.

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/the-car-show-reno-lemons/123ddrtx?cpkey=a81e8ca2-4127-ee34-f352-1e7aa853f8e6%7C%7C%7C%7C

I really like the second one. The car is going through the corner flatter and passing a certain Miata.

Enjoy

Muddy

PS- Thank you Claus for the link.

Debrief

What a great weekend!  That was an awesome track and the car was well prepared and set up.  Thanks Muddy.

I propose that we get together in the shop and have a celebration.  Since I'm inviting myself to drinks in your garage, I figure we should at least let you pick the time and maybe we should do some work too.  While working on the contents of the shop fridge, it is the perfect time to let the suggestions flow about what we need to do next since ZAE is a bit worn out after this race.  I can start the list with tires since the set I picked were a little sketchy.

Also, here are some photos of the weekend in no particular order.  Enjoy

Running ahead of the Geonome into the hairpin

Our best weapon at BS inspection

Great crew enjoying fine food and sunset

Those are very green shirts, with no dirt, so it must be the start of the weekend

Getting ready for our first night practice

Too much back-pressure in the exhaust, no problem -- we have the Sawsall

Running at night, where does the road go?

Not Done Yet

Well, the saga is not done yet. Xo, Cindy and I are home, but the Z is not. On the Benicia Bridge the trailer experienced a tire failure. We slogged through, sand storms, snow furies, highway stop and go traffic, and a clogged toilet, but a tire failure stopped us cold.

After rummaging arround looking at 18 spare tires that are on the truck, trailer, and RV. None have the right bolt pattern or size. So, being that it was 10:00 o'clock in Martinez next to a Shell oil refinery, we started looking for a place to shelter the trailer. Low and behold in Martinez there is a friendly Walmart. After buying a lock and having a strange talk with the store manager, we were able to leave the trailer and Z on a flat parking lot surface. We then left our fallen solider and pushed on home. At 12:34 we got home and found a bed. My first real sleep for 41 hours.

Today the plan is unloading the RV, cleaning the RV, leave the tire rim for the trailer to be mounted with a tire, returning the RV, get home to pickup the truck, pickup the fixed tire, drive up to Martinez, have some nice words to say to the Walmart employees, replace the tire on the trailer, drive the truck and trailer home, unload the trailer, drive to Tracy, have some harsh words with the Travlyn Toys employees, return the trailer, and finally drive home.

What could go wrong??

Stuck...

The pass is closed at Donner Pass. We've pulled over at "Burger Me" in Truckee to figure out what is next.

On the road

We are all packed up and on the road.

Great weekend. The car has some definite new issues that we'll have to address but it was well sorted out and ran great the full 24 hours.

Checker flag

Claus had rain for the start of the run, and then as things dried up he really started turning fast laps.

Ended up in 17th place, including picking up two spots on the last lap. One car spun and he reeled in the other. Very exciting finish.

1 hour to go

And Cindy has an awesome breakfast ready to go.

And Now Xo went offroad

We are almost up to the 23rd hour and the packing crew had an "Opps". We didn't have much room to get the truck to the trailer and Xo put a wheel off into the ditch and the truck was stuck. We put the whole crew on the tailgate put to adjust the weight and had just enough to get it out of the hole. No harm done.

2 hours to go...

And Kirsten was hit coming in to the second to last corner before her pit stop and switching drivers.

A quick trip through the penalty box and counter to the general all-fault rules (also known as this is lemons and we all suck rule) they let us drive through and sent us to the pits to check for damage.

The hit was to the rear quarter panel and it spun Kirsten around. She manage to save it and kept the car on the track and there was no damage beyond replacing some tie wraps and some new paint we'll need to apply. Claus was on the track in less than 10 minutes.

We are now in 21st place with 5 or so cars within 5 laps ahead of us so we may yet move up to a top-twenty finish.

Go Claus.

Good morning

We are almost up to 7 am with 3 hours of racing left. I came out of the car at 6:30 after dealing with rain, snow and dark for most of my drive and a broken wiper stuck halfway up the window.

That said, it was a fun drive as most of the teams slowed WAY down and I drove a little more aggressively. Passing is way more fun than being passed.

The pits stop was quick. The wiper problem was a wrench dropped in the channel the wiper motor sits
in. Remove that and replace the fuse and the car was good to go.

Kirsten is now in the car zooming around and the plan is to put Claus in to finish the race out.

3:20 am

Claus ran after Rod and ran almost to 1 am. He had a fast run, but he only got about 6 laps during practice so I think he was itching to go set fast lap. He ran clean and went about two hours an then Doug took his next turn.

Doug was fighting high winds when an another car hit the wall and shut down the track. It took until 2:00 am to get the track live again, so Doug came out of the car and Tony went in. Big milestone as that gets us past the 16 hour mark and this is now the longest we have run in a weekend.

With Tony on the track he should be there till 4:00 am and then it is my turn again. Current standings- we are running in 26th.

Another long pit stop

Rod came in from his stint and the driver change was going smooth until we realized we have a cracked front rotor. We do have spares this time, but we woke the crew up and Rod jumped from the driver's seat to the mechanic seat. He swapped both front rotors in 30 minutes.

We also have an issue where we are bottoming out the suspension and the right front tire has an extra groove in it. A sledge hammer made some more fender space so that was a quick fix.

Just as we finished though, they announced that they were black flagging the track because of a timing issue in HQ. Big bummer for us to be off the track for 30 just before they closed the track (and it was killing Claus who has waited ALL day for his turn).

At this point we are past the half way mark and at last check we were in 28th place. Spirits are high.
They just announced the track is live again, so Claus is off for his first stint.

I get a cookie

To cut down on the number of black flags we used to get, we have added a new incentive. If a driver doesn't get into trouble, they get one of Cindy's homemade cookies when they get out of the car.

I started around 5:00 tonight and ran till just past 7:30, and I earned my cookie.

We put new tires on the car before the stint and the tires I found in Reno are not up to the abilities of the ones we usually use. The first couple of laps were pretty scary. The pit crew suggested that I slow down, but that was advise I did end up following. They should have promised a second cookie. In any case I had a long yellow flag session while they changed corner workers and the tires improved a bit with wear and then I could settle into a nice run.

The sun is down and Rod is in the car now turning his laps. After that we'll put Claus in and we should be at the halfway point of the race.

Race update

Doug ran a very long stint after we let him back on the track and got into no more trouble.

Tony hopped in the car at 3:00 and immediately picked up our first black flag for passing under yellow. The penalty was a stop and go and he is back on the track and I'm sitting on deck.

Back on the track

It was a 30 minute pit stop to get the car back on the track. The exhaust had been pushed off and with what was left of the tubes was pointing at the rear brakes. That was quickly solved by cutting off the exhaust past the mufflers so that was left of the tubes was pointing down.

The longer job was swapping out the front ball joint which was also taken out. From there we re-aligned the car.

We lost a headlight somewhere too (just the glass, not the bulb) so clear tape fixed that.

Finally, the video had been hit, so a minor repair there too.

With all the sorted out, we sent Doug back on the track with a stern "calm drivers get a cookie, crazy drivers don't" message.

In other bad news, we are going through tires at an alarming rate. While we are right by the tire rack center, they can't get us tires until Monday. So I've called every tire shop from here to Reno and Xo and I are now off to sparks to get our backup set.

When you don't have a passenger seat you make do. ... (photo by the team's hippie Xo)

First off road excursion

Doug is in the pits and we have repairs to do. I'll post more when we have sorted out the issues. Quick summary... Lost the exhaust and a ball joint.

First pit stop

1 hour in. We are done with our penalty laps and now in 47th place. Kirsten is out of the car and Doug is getting in.

Green flag

And the race is on

Cars are getting on the track

We had the seat belts set up for our bigger drivers, and the safety check at the track entrance stopped Kirsten from going on the track. We are adjusting the belts now and will get her onto the track soon. 10:00 is supposed to be green flag and 24 hours to go...