Everything that I touch, starts to melt... like my clutch.

I started tearing down the engine today. I haven't gotten too far into it, just as far as removing the gearbox and looking at the clutch and pressure plate. If the rest of this engine has been put together with as much care and attention to detail as everything else has so far, it's going to be an adventure of epically bad proportions. The clutch was (barely) held on with 3 different length bolts. Most of them were finger tight. The teeth on the flywheel are about half way worn off and it looks like the flywheel was resurfaced with a die grinder equipped with a 36 grit pad. It's not even close to flat, you can see where it was only being touched in 2 places by the clutch. The clutch itself is the cheapest piece of crap I've ever seen. It looks like compressed cardboard. The bolts holding the bellhousing had no lock washers or even flat washers. Just bolt heads right up against the aluminum. I hope it wasn't a professional shop that did this work. Some doof in his garage I can forgive, sort of. But any shop that does work like this needs to not be in business.

This is what happens to a clutch...

...and a flywheel...

...when you let this guy work on your car.

Caveat Emptor

My brothers and I bought this Sprite for my dad for his 80th birthday last November. It's a very handsome little car and seemingly in very good shape. We knew that the syncros weren't working as well as they should, but that wasn't a deal breaker. The previous owner had the car for about a year and really hadn't cracked into it very far. He had the brakes done, which work very well by the way for 4 wheel drums. But hadn't done anything else. He purchased it as a very nice older restoration. Which is what we purchased it as. We bought it for a very reasonable price. For the last 6 months it's been a fun and reliable car. However last weekend on the way to a car show in Shelton, WA it started smoking and some alarming noises began issuing from the engine bay. Having owned British cars for years we swiftly came to the realization that we'd be rebuilding this engine very soon. The compression test showed that cylinders 1 and 4 had good compression, 130. 2 and 3 were below 100. Minimum is 120. Sounds like bad rings.

Hmm, blue haze in the air and a fluid stripe on the ground. Sadly, par for the course in a 50 year old British car.

It doesn't take very long to remove an engine from a car that only has a handful of moving parts.

Oliver may be in pieces all over the garage, but he still puts on a happy face.

It has the proper smooth side gearbox, but this big missing chunk of the bell housing is not so proper.

Uh, I thought you drained the gearbox.

Ick. Pretty nasty looking exhaust gasket for a "recently rebuilt" engine.

Tomorrow I'm going to start the engine teardown. Judging from the lovely pearlescent oil that turned completely black and gross in 3 (yes, 3) miles, it's not going to be pretty. Should be fun though. :-)

A little diversion

We signed up for Arse-Freeze-Apalooza in November at Thunderhill raceway. You might remember that this was the event we originally signed up for and didn't make it to. Naturally we feel compelled to conquer this event. However this is still some months off and Pujo! needs surprisingly little work to get him ready for this event. Mostly we just need to transplant the less f**ked up transmission and alternater from the parts car and we'll be doing a major redecorating job on the car (we'll keep the theme secret for now). Plenty to do, but also plenty of time.

Good thing too. My dad's '61 Austin Healy Sprite decided it needed some attention and blew its engine. From the sounds coming out of the block, I'd say there's plenty o' bearings and rings just itchin' for replacement. So, for the next couple of weeks I'll be chronicling a full engine rebuild on cutest little engine you ever did see. 948cc's of fury. 42 raging horsepower. Doesn't sound like much, but it only has to move 1400lbs of car. It's pretty peppy.

Oliver and Shannon, almost too much cuteness for one picture.

Good Morning America!

So Good Morning America was at Reno all weekend, filming a segment on the whole race. We got some good interview time, we may even be in the segment. Look for the guy in the gorilla suit. ;) Sorry for the short notice, though, it airs tomorrow (Saturday) morning, check your local listings, but usually about 7AM.

:::Saturday morning update/edit::: for those that missed it, the link is
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7714415
and we did get our air time, this very shot above! :)

Now on FB

Yes, you too can become a fan of Pujo! on Facebook. Search for Pujo! (the exclamation point is included) and you should find him under Celebrities-sports teams.

Shock and awwwww....

What an incredible weekend. A year after we started this project, we finally got to experience the 24 Hours of LeMons. We met some really cool people, had some really good competition and Pujo! miraculously survived the entire race. Not without incident, but he'll be fixed up and ready for another LeMons event in no time.

On Friday during the practice our oil cooler lines proved to be too short and were loosened up by the engine torqueing. Pujo! left about a quart of oil on the track and we started scrambling to fix the problem. Fortunately NAPA in Fernley is geared towards farm vehicles and built us a couple of 8AN hydralic line extentions to make sure we had enough slack in the oil lines to prevent them being pulled on by the engine again. Pujo! really needs his oil cooler. This engine quickly heats up to fusion temperatures if it has to rely on the factory cooling system. Once the oil cooler was sorted out we could run the engine as hard as we wanted and the temp gauges never climbed into the danger zone at all.

Saturday had its share of downtime too. The shift linkage broke during Doug's session and we had to lock wire one of the push-pull rod back onto its lever. This took about 20 minutes to diagnose and repair. Doug went back out on track and was black flagged about 40 minutes later for passing under yellow. This apparently used up our Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card we bribed the judges for and we didn't have to do any of the embarrassing punishments, but we did have to replace Doug with another driver. Alan had an altercation with a Mustang during his session and got the DMV punishment. He had to wait around while one of the judges located the proper forms to fill out and slowly made his way over to us. We took turns filling out the 4 obnoxiously complex forms and were in the penalty box for about 25 or 30 minutes. The Mustang driver denied running into Alan initially then argued with the judge about the it being "unfair" that he was being punished for something that was "obviously" not his fault at all. The judge deemed him a whiner and ordered him to eat a jar of baby food, then he had to go get his entire team and return to the penalty box. I'm not sure what they did to them but I later saw the same Mustang on the track with a pig welded to the roof and a rat welded to the hood.

Sunday was a little more interesting in the breakdown department. During Alan's session first thing in the morning the shifter arm for 3rd gear jammed up and couldn't be unjammed. We actually bent some of the linkage trying to get the transmission out of 3rd. After about 40ish minutes of trying to fix the problem we threw our hands in the air and said, "Hell with this, just drive it in third." And we did. For the next 4 hours. No shifting. No neutral. 3rd gear only. And do you know what? Pujo! was brilliant. That car toughed it out and finished the race. 33rd overall with nearly 2 hours spent off the track for various issues. Looking at the results showed that we set one of the 5 fastest laps of the day with a broken transmission. I believe that if we had spent the whole time on the track, we might have finished in the top ten.

Even I originally thought that racing a Peugeot in an endurance race was a bit of a joke. I certainly don't think that now. What a brilliant car. It did everything we asked of it and more. It shrugged off an impact with a much heavier Mustang (we heard the hit all the way over in the pits) and has very little damage to show for it. It spent 4 hours with its transmission jammed in 3rd and didn't complain, it actually sped up. I'll be proud to pilot this car in another LeMons race. I know the other Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys will be too.

The competition started early with the CESM. Alan and Scott are seen here playing iPhone air hockey in the tow rig on the way.

*&%$#@*!!!! Shift %$#@#$ linkage!!! Owww! @#$&*$!! I broke a nail!!

Would you believe this little scuff...

...Was caused by this titanic chunk of American iron?

'Nuff said.

1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and reverse are for sissies!

"Hey guys! I'm waving this thing around and a Peugeot just drove under it! Are they skiing in hell, or what??"

To finish 33rd, first one must finish. And that's a victory in itself.

We're home.

As I feared, we had no internet connection at the lovely Lazy Inn in Fernley, NV. Ah well. I tried once to get into the blog via my cell phone, but as it's Sprint instead of one of *your* fancy iPhones, I couldn't even get to a sign-in page to post, and as verbose as we Cheese Eaters tend to be, I imagine that thumbing our daily novels would have gotten old quickly.

So, for those of you sitting on the end of your seats, we actually finished the race. Yes, really. Plenty of drama, a few breaks, one penalty, but we finished with 171 laps, in the top third overall. Full details will be posted by the many drivers, over the next week or so as we decompress, there are many many stories to share.

I'll leave you with this.

Here we go!

No photo at the moment, it's officially Oh-Dark-Thirty. (yes, 4:30 in the morning) and we're off to miss one of the most historic events in history today. I can't sleep.
Yes, you read that right, I said "miss." It's Memorial Day Weekend in Seattle, and there's no rain in the forecast for Monday. They say it rains here all the time, but locals know that isn't true. You can, however, count on rain on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July pretty regularly.
So anyway, here we are at Monkey Central,sometime later today our crew will arrive to finish loading the truck with suitcases, beer, easy-up tents and other necessities, and we'll be off just as soon as we can. I am bringing the laptop with me in the hopes of providing (how did Karina put it?) amusing anecdotes from trackside, or at least summaries in the evenings. No guarantees. Heck, based on what happened last December, there's probably an official Nevada State Gambling line on the odds we'll even make it to Reno!
But, the car is on the trailer, we have the hotel address and directions to the track, and the glamorous part of the adventure begins today. Wish us luck!

The Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys Kick It Nerd Core.

We Cheese Eaters take our motorsport enthusiasm seriously and we never choose the easy path. We favor unusual and difficult to love cars. But our enthusiasm has always been about the car, not ourselves. We've decided we're not a team. Not really. We're more like a tribe. What better way of showing tribal membership than enduring a rite of passage? I'm not talking about getting naked, painting ourselves with mud and chicken feathers and dancing around a bonfire (though that does sound like fun) until we feel one with the Universe. We went for simple and direct. Bret, Scott and I all got tattoos yesterday. And not just any tattoo, but the nerdiest kind possible. The three of us now proudly bear the periodic table symbol for lead on our right feet.

Bret, brave man that he is, went first.

Apparently, getting a tattoo tastes like lemons. How ironically appropriate!

...and the results are in.

Scott is stoically awaiting his turn in the chair.

The look on his face and the fact he only has one butt cheek on the bench tells me that everything is fine and I have nothing to fear.

My turn! Yay!

Feels so good, I think I'll go have some teeth drilled next!

Nerd core all the way!!

Pujo! attacks the track! Then the track counter attacks...

Pujo! finally got a chance to see what a real race track is like. Sadly only I was able to see what Pujo! is like on the track. Initially everything seemed pretty good, but I became concerned about a distinct lack of power. Handling is nice and neutral, braking is excellent, but the power just wasn't there. After about 15 minutes I noticed the temp gauge start to climb, I reduced my speed to right around freeway speed to see if it would cool off, and it did for about a lap, then it began to climb again. I wasn't overly concerned but through my ridiculously padded and insulated helmet (I'm rendered effectively deaf in the damned thing) I began to hear an alarming rattling sound from the engine compartment. Right about this time a '64 Mustang with a dry sump ruptured a line and dumped about 30,000 barrels of oil on the track. Fortunately I'd already slowed to about 30mph by the time I reached the Mustang Valdez oil spill and stayed on the track. Sadly the same couldn't be said of an Acura and an E30 (S**t, those things are friggin' everywhere) some sea otters and about a dozen arctic terns. Once I'd passed the environmental disaster and climbed the hill back towards the paddock, Pujo! decided he'd had enough and passed out by the side of the track. The radiator overflow then boiled over and clouds of steam billowed from beneath the hood. I tried to restart to keep coolant flowing but Pujo! refused to wake up. Once we rolled him back into the pits and gave him a chance to cool off, he restarted normally. Except for the disturbing rattling noise. We figured at that point we had a bad connecting rod bearing. I was glad we brought the trailer. After a 2 hour delay while hundreds of volunteers scrubbed the otters, terns and track with loving hands and Dawn liquid dish detergent, we finished the rest of the day in Bret's Miata and Brent's M3.

The next day Scott and I got to work on Pujo!. Embarrassingly the overheating appeared to be caused by an improperly burped cooling system. There was plenty of water left in the overflow bottle, but the radiator was several inches down. Since I was the last one to drain and fill the thing, the blame rests squarely on me. The lack of power turned out to be from a crack in the accordion hose between the MAFS and the turbo. Most cars won't run at all if that happens, Pujo! simply gets tired. Luckily, the old black car (remember Pugly from way back when we started all this?)had a good one it wasn't using any more. What about the alarming rattle from the engine, you ask? We pulled the oil pan and discovered the chain driving the oil pump was loose and could clatter against the timing chain cover. Thankfully all really simple and quick fixes.

Pujo! lives to drive another day.

Pujo! leading a 911. Well, ok, running away from Germans. At least he's not hiding in the sewers yet.

Pujo! being held by the Axis powers after he'd surrendered for the day.

Battle of the Banned (F1 technology)

During a team meeting a few weeks ago we came to the conclusion that what this car really needs to give it the edge is some banned F1 technology. Active aerodynamics, that's what we need. I think the Faster Farms guys were clucking in the right direction with their bowling ball actuated ironing board wing. Brilliantly hillbilly that was. We're going with a more sophisticated approach. Brent (the artful) Picasso gave me a napkin sketch of his idea for a control unit.

Seemed too simple at first glance. My daughter disliked the flow of the drawing and betterized it.

This was starting to show promise. A few more tweaks and we had a working sketch.


I love it when a plan comes together! Now we just have to build it before Reno.

Ha! Suckers!

We're taking Pujo! to Pacific Raceways in scenic Kent WA for the Northwest Alfa Romeo club track day on the 23rd. While I was signing up I noticed the "tech form" link. This tech form must be filled out by an ASE certified mechanic. Uh-oh, I thought. So, rather than click the "unregister" button, I figured what's to lose?

Last Friday I drove Pujo! to the nearest ASE certified shop and handed over the form with an explanation of what the car was built for.

"Really." said the man behind the counter "An endurance race for $500 cars? You mean like a demolition derby?"

"Well, I hope not." I replied "Anything short of a Caprice Classic is going to get seriously injured if it hits this thing."

"Ooookay..." said the man.

Seriously, this car has been rear ended harder than Elton John. Rolled, dropped, lifted by a giant forklift. There's Bondo on the roof. I personally do body work on it with a sledgehammer because any lesser tool just isn't sufficient. This thing has survived situations that would make Superman squeal with terror. A Honda or VW would just bounce right off and not leave a mark.

But, I digress...

After a short wait a nice young man named Carlos took my keys and headed for the parking lot. It took him a moment to figure out how to get in over the anti-intrusion bars. He even put a nice, clean paper floor mat on the floor. Two other technicians looked on in disbelief as Pujo! rolled into the shop followed by a subtle cloud of blue smoke. Soon Pujo! was up on a lift for all to see, displaying more evidence of past impacts than your average moon.

Carlos looked at the damage and said, "You race this, man?"

"Yes. Yes, I do." I said proudly.

He looked again at the crumpled floor pans and wrinkled frame rails and then looked at me as though I were obviously dangerously insane.

"F--k.... you're crazy, man." He said, shaking his head.

"Yes. Yes, I am." I said proudly.

Rather than argue with me, he signed off on the car and sent me on my way.

I hope the Alfa guys have a sense of humor.

Join the Comprehensive Reinvestment in Autocross Program!

Hi all,
Here's an only semi-simian post from your old pal Breauxt. I have found the recent discussion about public policy and economic impacts of legislation on a number of racing lists I'm on coincidentally amusing given the work I've been doing recently on a personal project I'm sharing with Ed Montgomery. I shouldn't be sharing this information just yet, as the PR roll-out is not scheduled to start moving until next week. Ed is, I guess I need to now refer to him as "Mr Montgomery" now; anyway Ed is the new Car Czar for the US government.

This is kind of weird in that Ed is just a dude I happen to know from Maryland with no more experience with the auto industry than you or me. But he's an enthusiast and loves cars and driving fast. He had an SS 396 Nova for a while as a young guy, and then moved on to more realistic machines as he pursued his doctorate, got married, and had kids. We all know the drill. He's got a Pontiac G8 now and is a cool guy.

I happened to meet him through work, oddly enough. I work with clinical research data and early last year was visiting Johns Hopkins in Baltimore on business. After my last data model review session, I was walking around the historic campus with my camera and spied Ed's G8 in a parking lot. I hadn't seen a G8 yet, so was giving his car a good bit of attention. He came out to his car to go home and couldn't help but notice me laying on the ground looking at the suspension of his car. This of course sparked a conversation. It turns out he has been a user of some research administration software my team built and we've, by now, become pretty good friends.

A few months ago, Ed and his family (he's got adorable kids, twins!) were visiting my family in Italy. On this visit I knew I'd be playing tour guide to the Montgomery clan and so had rented a 'big' car - in this case a 5 series BMW. I typically rent the cheapest buzz-bomb I can get, knowing I'll be mostly driving my parents' Peugeot (a perfectly adequate 308 diesel). The big Bimmer was the perfect ride for touring around northern Italy. My family and Ed's would caravan from restaurant to winery to historic race track in the Bimmer and the Pug, each time flipping a coin to see who would have to suffer the indignity of riding in the Peugeot for the next leg.

At one point, on the superstrada near Lucca at just over 190 kph (that's about 115 mph), I commented to Ed, "How come GM can't make a car like this? We're cruising along at a ridiculous speed and the people in the back seat are asleep". He piped back, "Bret, GM does make cars like this. My G8 is a prime example, as is any Cadillac". I initially scoffed at Ed as being a GM apologist, but then remembered that his dad has an S class Benz. Ed is no stranger to quality motoring. The conversation shifted to the power perception holds over even an educated public (myself being an example - a fan of the G8 assuming it was an order of magnitude less "good" than my 5 series rental).

Skip forward a few months and Ed and I have been chatting with increased seriousness about how a manufacturer can bridge the "perception gap" that exists with the American car companies. I had since taken test drives in a variety of American cars: G8, Malibu, CTS (and CTS-V Whoa Nelly!), Fusion, Mustang, etc. I found these all to be decent cars. There is no reason these cars and their stablemates should be being outsold by foreign products. In particular, not a car as boring and uninvolving as a the Camry.

As the financial apocalypse settled in, and the North American car manufacturers became the pariah of the national media, I became incensed. The news readers on CNN, FOX, and MSNBC would talk about how the "Big 3" weren't building efficient cars and I would scream at my television, "I just got a real world 50mpg in a week long test of a mid-size Ford Fusion Hybrid! Toyota's large SUV's are so inefficient that they might as well be clubbing baby seals in comparison to the domestic SUV's!"

A plan hatched in my mind. What if the domestic manufacturers took a grassroots approach to grabbing control of the perceptions of their products? After all, who does a person ask for car advice? A car guy, of course. What if the most prolific car guys (and car girls!) were privy to the real quality and performance of domestically manufactured vehicles? These folks would be evangelists unclouded by public perception or marketing influences, because they'd be driving the real products, right now.

I had written little more than an executive summary of the concept of seeding perception among the "car intelligentsia", when Ed started getting calls from the Obama Administration about a "high level" position. Ed had been helping me craft my proposal as a behavioral marketing experiment that I'd hoped to see conducted at Wharton or Harvard's business schools. However, as Ed started being vetted as a candidate for "Car Czar", we started thinking about the real and immediate market influence a program like ours could have by being federally funded. What if we gave 1 year free leases of America's greatest cars to America's biggest real world car fans? These are the thought leaders who impact the average Joe's buying decisions.

Now that Ed is Car Czar, our idea has been given a green light! We have 10,000 slots open for a one year lease of a premiere American car. I'm driving a CTS-V (and loving it, by the way) and am doing my part to show the country that American cars are just as good as anything in the market!

Here's where I get in trouble: I'd love to see as many "drivers" get handed keys to these cars as possible. Who really cares what some fashionista is driving anyway? I contend that racing enthusiasts and participants in autocross will have a bigger impact on public perception.

Want to get your name on the roster of candidate drivers early? You'll get the pick of the best cars available to the program: including Corvettes (yes Z06 is included), Mustangs of all varieties, the new Camaro, all the V series Cadillacs, as well as the hybrid offerings of the domestics (I don't think those will have much pull with this crowd). Click the link below to go to the website for this new program. This is a new site and it hasn't been announced yet. You'll want to act fast as the PR machine will kick in probably next week.

looflirpa.net

Top 10

Yet another compilation of the best car chase movies of all time had me thinking of the team today.
Blah blah, lots of lists, lots of cool movies. But in the number 2 spot: Ronin.
I quote, in part (emphasis mine):

#2 Ronin (1998) | Video Clip

Although it will never be regarded as Robert de Niro's best dramatic performance, 1998's Ronin doesn't land on our list for its dialogue. In unbelievable realism, viewers are treated to chase scenes with sport sedans such as a BMW M5, Peugeot 406 and, perhaps most famously, an Audi S8.

....

There are few actors that can capture the mixture of terror and exhilaration involved in a car chase quite like De Niro, while Jean Reno is the only actor who could make driving a Peugeot an exercise in steely manhood. Director John Frankenheimer pretty nearly perfected the art of filming gritty car chase sequences in 1966's Grand Prix.

Whew! I'm anonymous so this doesn't count against my 15 minutes of fame.

Jonny Lieberman from speedsportlife.com and Judge extraordinaire for 24 Hours of LeMons interviewed us about our adventures in Peugeot Hell. Like Dante before us, we gave him an earful.

Click.

However, he forgot my name by the time he posted it. Perhaps he'll also forget about all the crap wrong with our car when he's Judging it at Goin' for Broken.


-Sean "Other Guy" Green

Aunt Bea lives on!

So we got a call on our answering machine last week.

"Hi, this is Russell from Spokane, I think you're the previous owner of my truck, I found some... well, it's financial information in it, would you please give me a call back? I have a few questions about the truck"

Yikes. We thought we got every last scrap of paper out of it before signing over the title to the insurance company. Whatever did he find? What questions does he have on the truck? Is this possibly a scam? Well, after several attempts, we finally made contact the other day.

Aunt Bea definitely lives on with a salvage title, she is not being parted out. She's *sniff* living on a farm in her dotage! No really, this guy's brother found Aunt Bea at a local auto auction for apparently a good enough deal that he bought the truck sight unseen. He wanted to know the mechanical details, what had been worked on recently and so on. Sean was able to make this Spokane farmer a very happy man by telling him what a new truck it was under that poor smashed body, new engine at 60,000 miles, new tranny at 70,000, how strict we were at taking care of that truck because we relied on it to tow us over many mountain passes. So, that Silverado is now a "plow truck" ... sounds like a nice good working life. :) We even told him that we'd named the truck, and he felt it was a good name, told Sean he'd keep using it, LOL.

So, our anthropomorphized truck lives on, and has not been parted out for mechanical bits. That makes us happy. :) We even gave him the web address to this blog, so if you're reading this, hello!

(oh, and the financial thing was apparently a life insurance policy statement, and not a paystub or anything tooooo personal)

We're Goin' for Broken!

We've been accepted into Goin' for Broken in May! With any luck, we'll actually make it to the event in one piece. Hopefully it'll stop snowing by then. We have a new tow vehicle, Aunt Faye, to replace our dearly departed Aunt Bea and I'd rather not risk her health on an icy road to Reno.

Speaking of snow, we were snowed out of a Bremerton Sports Car Club autocross last Sunday (3/15/09, beware the ides of March)fortunately we got a look at the WDOT traffic cams before we bothered leaving the driveway. It was snowing hard at my house, but it wasn't sticking. Bremerton on the other hand got 3 1/2 inches in about an hour and a half. Does Bing Crosby dream of a White St. Patricks day?

Pujo! looses his racing virginity

We took Pujo! out some development flogging at an autocross event in Bremerton.



We found the handling to be surprisingly good tolerable and at no point did we scrape any of the door handles on pavement. We did, however, notice a bit of rubbing still happening on the back wheels. They make a loud screeching noise when cornering hard. More sledgehammer and cutting work is called for in the rear.



This was a unbelievably freaking cold weather event - yes, that is snow in the picture below. It was part of the WWSCC's Winter Slush Series and you can see that we didn't do too poorly. The inconsistent times tell the tale of intermittent fuel delivery, intermittent electron flow, and screechy tire to fender contact induced throttle lifting. The little penalty numbers? Those speak to driving mistakes.


As regular readers of this blog [are there any?] know, we Cheese Eaters are not big fans of snow. This event allowed us to, as they say, get back on the bouncey, unstable french POS horse.
.


Our horse showed off its Franco-Bastardly nature by starving for fuel at inopportune times. We believe the fuel pickup in the réservoir d'essence gas tank was bent in the trailer tumble into the ditch on Christmas Day. A frightening drive to the second nearest gas station temporarily resolved the starvation issue. However, we still had myriad a few electrical gremlins interrupting our combustion events. We enlisted the aid of an English driver to assist in sorting some of these issues. Some say his nipples are positive ground points and he speaks fluent reverse Swahili, all I know is he's called the Stig.



Now that the first event butterflies is out of the Pujo!'s system, we are looking forward to tuning him for endurance racing success. Team Captain Sean is on top of things and leading the way.

One Peugeot, over easy

Turns out that we were very lucky and the only damage to Pujo! was superficial. A few well-placed whacks with a big sledgehammer took care of the dents that were keeping the door closed and a few more got the trunk closing normally again.

That taken care of Doug and Sean replaced the broken out rear window, driver's door window and rear quarter window with lexan which not only is almost invisible but is indestructible and lighter to boot!

Next up on the to-do list was to figure out why the passenger-side rear tire was rubbing. Our best guess is that when the trunk was welded back on after the last accident (before we bought the car) that something wasn't perfectly straight. Sean solved the problem by cutting out some of the fender liner and the pounding out the fender lip with the big sledgehammer (which is getting to be our favorite tool these days). That made a mess of the paint on the already damaged right rear but a little touch up of Krylon Cherry Red made things as good as new (well if you are looking at the car from 50 feet away and have bad eyesight).

One funny thing that happened is that when Sean took the wheel off he smelled gasoline and saw that some fluid was leaking from the general area of the gas tank. Worried, we emptied the trunk (which was still full of our spares for the race) and discovered that a couple of quarts of diff fluid in the trunk had sprung a leak in the accident and had made a big gooey mess of things. But in a twist of fate the rollover had also liberated a big pile of fine dirt which had been trapped in the bottom of the driver's side rear fender and that made an excellent oil dry!

Next week we're planning to look at a few more small issues and then the plan is to take it to the March 15th autocross at Bremerton for a shakedown cruise!

LeMons is not a car race

On the LeMons email list "Mario" summed the event up this way and I couldn't agree more:

I think everyone is missing the point. This is not a race for Race Cars. It's a race for Idiots.

Just call us the "équipe d'imbéciles"!