Jungle Motor Sports: THE RUST-OLEUM SPRAY & SLAY: 24 Hours of Lemons @ Road America 9/7&8

Monday, September 9, 2024

THE RUST-OLEUM SPRAY & SLAY: 24 Hours of Lemons @ Road America 9/7&8

We brought a knife to a gun fight, again. Lemons uses three classes and the biggest factor in deciding class placement is how the judges like your "theme" aka car decoration, costumes, etc. Ours was considered weak and they seem to hate spec Miata's so even though we a basically stock battle hardened Spec Miata with a 1.6l they put us in A class. Most A classed cars are 15+ seconds faster than us. In fact many B class cars were 10+ seconds faster. After 14 hours of racing, we finished something like 40th over all out of 140, and 16th in class.

This is the driver side rear hub failure that happened a few hours into the race Saturday. Fortunately I had a rear spindle with a bearing and hub already pressed in. In and out in under 15 minutes. This also meant we lost the rear brake pads somewhere outside of the track, the spares we had were retired Hawk Blues from Spec Miata racing, a completely different bite and wear characteristics. This forced us to do three pad changes, two of them HOT. The rear caliper also took some damage from the accident, but we made it work. A front hub/bearing also decided to give up. Fortunately the only thing that happened is the driver spun, and when he came in the wheel had a 3/8" of play in that wheel! We also warped not, one but three sets of rotors!

Video of the hub failure!

Approximately 140 lining up for the start of the race Saturday.

Friday night, all race cars are paraded into Elk Hart Lake for a car-show, here are pics of cars I thought were interesting. Of coarse it was obligatory to visit Sebkins.