It was wet, bumpy and messy. The rear end on blown shocks and 460 treadwear tires made flying out around the sweepers a joy, the front was bouncing all over the place. Super frantic racers were passing me left and right. Jesus, I thought, it's the first lap of 24 hours. The car seemed to be actually ok. Nothing was really wrong. It was just a piece of shit with shitty tires and a blown suspension. Everything checked out! I drove for about an hour, and passed it off to Curtis.
Curtis took it easy around the course first time out, feeling out the car. We all agreed that the car had to last for 24 hours and although it felt good to try and compete while we were out on the track, we really hadn't set up a competitive car. Curtis took care of business with no problems. We were somewhere around 29th place after 2 hours. Gian was next up.
Gian got behind the wheel and took on the course like a natural. Unfortunately for the car it had a huge roll cage in it blocking visibilty around the a-pillar and no passenger side mirror. On a three quarter mile track with 50 some cars, seeing your opponents is not always easy. Basically a purple gran prix came out of no where, cut Gian off, Gian stomped on the brakes and boom, under-steers into a pylon. And well in 24 hours of Lemons, hitting anything on the track results in a penalty. Time to throw the dart.
Some of the more harsh penalties included covering the driver with 50% Saro Corn Syrup 50% water mixture followed by feathers from a pillow. There was also the popular Max Mosley where two Nazi Strippers paddle your backside while you order and deliver tea to the judges.
Gian threw the dart at the, in my opinion, best possible penalty. Barnyard! The next thing we know, an arc angel is welding a pig to our roof. I was pretty excited, Gian was not.
Nonetheless, we didn't have to wait out the 30 minutes that are usally required for penalties and Gian was back out on the track with a tail light and pig on the roof. I was hoping we could just keep adding things to that roof throughout the race.
Next up Darnell took the driver's seat. We were required to have four drivers and Darnell stepped up at the last minute. He had experience racing, so I said, hey what the hell. First round out he was burning up the track. We had found our ringer. We rose to 24th place. Things were looking up.
It had been about 3 or 4 hours by now and coolant was starting to leak from the radiator around the upper rad hose. I had always turned my VWs off to let them cool down, but because we were running straight water, turning the car on and off caused spikes and expansion in the coolant system making the leaks even worse. Live and learn. We filled the expansion tank up and I hit the track.
First lap around I'm flying past people. Then i realize oh yellow flag. But it's not like a bunch of people waving yellow flags, it's just some yellow stop light on the side of the track. Either way I got black flagged with a couple others who didn't see the caution and had to wait it out. 15 minutes. I was back on the track, but shortly after the only gauge remaing low coolant level light went on. Good thing nothing else worked, we would've been pulling in all day!
At this point, I belive our VW gardian angels came out of no where to save the day. We were pretty tired and just staring at an overheating veedub engine. 4 guys from Ann Arbor rolled up to ask us some questions about participating next year and I told them it was a good idea to run a 16v if they like overheating cars. They said, eh no problem and got to work under the hood. Thanks God! They spliced the fan switch to run the fan at top speed through a relay independent of the coolant sensor. Duh! I was tired. Gian also saved the day with a little Radiator leak fix. Everyone was feeling good, we had a crew of about 6 now and I was ready to get back in the car.
I had been out on the track for maybe 45 minutes. I was trying to get a lot of laps in. The coolant issue had seemed to subside but the car was getting pretty shakey and running like crap. The engine had gotten a lot louder and the engine just wasn't liking life. The right wheel was chattering around every corner and the left front wheel was bouncing all over the place. I was redlining second thinking, how much longer can we do this. The coolant light started flashing and I thought I better bring it back in.
This is where I really start to lose track of time. All I know is that once it got dark, I don't remember much of the sequence of events until we were out at 2 in the morning. So there's a big gap in my mind from about 8 until 2 in the morning. Or maybe I was just on the track a lot longer than I had thought. Or by track, I mean pit.
The VW boys were in the pits and they went to work. I sat in the car in my harness as Gian and 4 guys jacked the car up and diagnosed the problem. Bent tie rod on one side and blow ball joint on the other. Hey let's go ask that team in first place with a huge trailer and a parts jetta if they have a ball joint! Hey guess what? The guy is a VW tech and has over $5000 in dealer parts, and well I know this sounds rediculous, but was bought an OEM Ball joint for $42.70. No joke, straight up dealer cost on the track, what are the odds. And once again, I thought this was a LeMons race??
I got out of the car while everyone cranked on the suspension. The leak on the radiator had fixed it self from the sealant we bought and everything once again was looking good. It felt good. We had a race team, I was a driver and it almost felt like real racing. It was about 10:00 and I was off again on again with these little issues for awhile. Then I hit the back of a Plymouth Furry.
Nothing bad happened to the car. Purley cosmetic. We pulled the fender a bit so it wouldn't hit the tire and I gave the keys to Curtis. Curtis started throwing the car around the track like a pigskin on Labor Day. We were gaining once again, but all the pitting had put us down in 34th. He put in about 2 hours or just under and brought the car in sounding quite loud. Uh...exhaust leak...sure that's it..just race the thing.
We were all getting pretty tired and it was maybe around 1:00 or 2:00am at this point. Darnell got in the car and took it out to the track. I got on the phone and saw the car coming back into the pits. Ok, ok I thought, no big deal. But the front end was crunched down and it didn't look good. I popped the hood and saw a shattered upper radiator flange and ripped up radiator hose torn up from the alternator. Shut it off. Damn, where's the parts store at 2:00 in the morning?
Our fighter was weak, don't know how many more rounds he could go.
We had already used our get out of Jail free card all evening, but our crew was back to look at the situation. We needed a radiator and hoses. Or that's what we thought at the time. The "VW dealarship at pit 22," had a new one for a Mk3 for $200. Eh, I think we're going to try something else. Because we still don't have hose or know if anything else was damaged from the impact. One of the new crew that we had inherited said he would drive back to Ann Arbor and get a radiator from his garage. Man I thought, that's nice, but really it'll be over 2 hours before you get back and I'm starting to see visions of piano bars and sandy beaches. They said they were coming back in the morning around 10:00 for the conclusion of the race. I decided to make the executive decision and let the team sleep until morning when the boys would be back with some radiators.
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