Drivers' schools are incredibly fun and the best way to improve your driving prowess. Track days can be incredibly useful for honing your skill once you have been on track enough to catch your own mistakes. While incredibly useful tools for learning to drive fast, neither can touch the 24 Hours of LeMons for having fun with motorsports. I have previously written about the basics of getting to a LeMons race, and what happened at our first race. The team just finished another race, the 2010 Arse-Freeze-Apalooza at Buttonwillow this past weekend, where we finished 68th of 173. Better than half made us happy, because the head gasket blew with an hour and a half left in the race.

Track driving is certainly a specialized skill and racing is a step beyond that--in addition to driving a car at the limit, you have to deal with numerous other cars on track who may decide to pass you at any time. In crapcan racing things are even crazier because most folks don't care much if the car gets hit and many of them have little to no experience driving on a racetrack, much less in anger.

Track Experience

The biggest piece of advice I can give is to get some track experience before heading out on track in your first LeMons race. Street driving, or even autocross shares very little with driving on a racetrack, and there is no adequate preparation aside from sufficient time on a track. Even if you have done a lemons race, going to a much less crowded HPDE or other track even twill be very information--rare are the times you get to take an unmolested line, much less lap, at a race.

Many Races

The first time you go to a 24 Hours of LeMons event, you'll find at least three different types of race teams: those who built something that doesn't belong on a racetrack; the teams there to win; and the teams that are just there to have fun in any way possible. Don't get me wrong, everyone is there to have fun, but the former two have very specific goals in mind. The folks who bring a Fiat 600 or a limousine aren't interested in winning the race outright--they're looking for the Index of Effluency, or simply testing their own mechanical mettle.

By the same token, some teams come with the intent to win the speed race--they have a reliable, quick car, know how to do fast pit stops, and don't intend to spend time in the penalty box. If it's not obvious who these teams are, check the time sheets after a couple hours of racing; they are the ones on the lead lap or just behind. Figure out which cars belong in this group, do your best to stay out of their way, and certainly don't hit them.

Caution Wave

If you've done other racing or track days, one of the first things you'll notice about crapcan racing is the number of yellow flags thrown. When you have hundreds of $500 cars on a racetrack with inexperienced drivers, problems happen often. At the Arse-Freeze-Apalooza, Jay said that the recovery crew did 75 tows on Saturday alone. Oftentimes, cautions will be thrown well ahead of what you can see if you're closely following a pack of cars. For this reason, you'll see folks who have been racing a while throw up their hand by the rear-view mirror and wave when they see a yellow flag. This way, everyone behind knows that they are going to slow for caution, and you should too.

Photos by Marshall Pierce.

Since I have access to a Closed Course and a Professional Driver, I recently did a study of my M3's gas mileage at different speeds. Since all cars are geared differently and exhibit vastly different aerodynamics, this won't hold much water (gas?) for any other vehicle.

I've been doing autocross and track days with my 1997 BMW M3 for long enough that I can offer some insight into the brake pads available for E36 M cars. What follows are the brake pads that I have driven, in order of heat handling. If you only drive on the street, the top of the list is where you want to be. If you have a race car, the bottom is your domain.

EBC Greenstuff

An awesome street pad, thanks to producing much less dust than stock. I drove these pads at my very first HPDE with the National Capital Chapter of the BMW CCA; the track is not their forte. By the end of the second day, I had burned through 3/4 of the pads, and the car was putting out clouds of smoke braking into turn 1 on Summit Point's main circuit. Unsurprisingly, this was accompanied by significant fade.

Like stock pads, these will work for your first track experience if you are conservative, but I wouldn't recommend it. Thanks to their low dust, EBC Green Stuff work great for street pads and even the occasional autocross.

Hawk High Performance Street (HPS)

The HPS are biled as a stock-replacement pad and I would agree with that. They dust a bit less than BMW OEM pads, and provide a little bit more fade resistance. For track use, the HPS is much like stock or the EBC Greenstuff mentioned above--they'll work if you're new & conservative or slow.

Axxis Ultimate (ULT)

These are quite similar to the HPS--less dust than stock, good feel even when stone cold, and a bit more heat handling capability than stock. They work great for street driving and autocrossing, but are only good for limited (read: slower) track use.

Hawk High Performance Plus (HP+)

The HP+ are a good compromise between track and street pads. I recently used them for a fade-free weekend at Thunderhill with ambient temperature of 70-80F. Unlike a full-on track pad that is downright scary on the street, the HP+ is decidedly OK on the street. The first stop of a drive (or after not using them on the highway for a few minutes) will be a bit longer than stock pads, but not the Flintstones feeling of track pads.

Hawk Blue

I am lazy, so I put my pads on at home before driving to the track, so I got to experience these on the street. To begin with, the first stop from neighborhood speeds takes about twice the distance you expect, and the initial bit is nonexistent. After a couple more low speed stops, the brakes have enough heat to work just fine, but they still squeal as though you are murdering cats with each brake application.

On the track, the Hawk Blue is an awesome pad. Being a true track pad it takes some heat before they really work, as described above. Just like you need to get your tires and brain up to temperature, with a track pad you need some heat in the brakes before they will do what you expect. You should be driving judiciously on your out lap anyway, so this ought not be a problem. The wear on these is much better than any of the aforementioned pads--a day at Laguna Seca burned less than one quarter. If you have been going to the track for a while, or if you've gotten fast enough to begin feeling fade in your existing brake setup, get some track pads.

Goin' for Broken was the first 24 Hours of LeMons event for Team BVD Skidmark. None of us had ever done LeMons before, and only a few of my teammates had even been on a racetrack previously.

In The Beginning

This all started when Matt asked if I had heard of this 24 Hours of LeMons thing...in fact, I had. I was on the verge of starting a team for the first East Coast races before I moved out to California. In short, we rounded up some other folks and submitted an application for Goin' For Broken 2010 at Thunderhill in May.

Just as the website says, we got our confirmation for the race 10 weeks out in Early March. To start, I called a meeting of the prospective team members to get together and pay the entry fee, which was $1,500 for our 6 driver team. I had also drawn up a very rudimentary budget by talking to a friend of a friend, and running some quick numbers--it worked out to about $1,000-1,500 per driver, all said and done.

Since we had a committed team, the next move was to find a $500 car. Since submitting the application for the race, a few of us had been trolling Craigslist to get an idea of what was out there. The week after we were accepted, a BMW 325es showed up, which seemed like a very good option to me. I have been a part of the BMW community for a number of years, and do all of my own work on my e36 M3.

We've Got a Car

Once we had a car, the first order of business was to get a roll cage installed. I looked up a few race shops in the Bay Area and stumbled across Evil Genius Racing. Of the places I called, they were by far the most helpful, and even had the cheapest offering; turns out, John is very involved in the 24 Hours of LeMons, so we couldn't have found a better shop.

Before getting the cage installed, we had to clean out the car. We spent a couple of Saturdays with 3 or 4 guys just removing the car's interior--everything from the car's interior. When we were done, the only thing left was the un-bolted driver's seat, the windshield, and the back window. John had advised that we even remove the dashboard, so that they could install a dash bar, resulting in a safer cage.

The only other work we did at that stage was fixing the brakes. When we got our car, the brake pedal went to the floor. Having never worked on crappy cars, I wasn't sure what the problem was, but figured it to probably be the master cylinder. We tried swapping the completely worn out pads, and the gouged rotors to no avail. It was indeed the master cylinder. A trip to Pick-n-Pull and we had a replacement, solving our brake issues.

Finally, we trailered the car to Sacremento, and left it with Evil Genius. The next weekend, we sent a team to pick up the car, complete with roll cage. It was starting to look like a real race car now.

Racecar Preparation

Aside from the roll cage, the 24 Hours of LeMons rules mandate a bunch of other safety gear. Bill found a race seat of the type recommended by John at Evil Genius Racing, a Kirkey Intermediate Road Race Seat on Craigslist. After a test fit it was abundantly clear that the seat was much to low to actually drive. We made some calls and, once again, John at Evil Genius came to the rescue, suggesting we use some 2 inch square tubing to get the seat higher. We ordered some 2 foot long pieces on the internet along with some grade 8 bolts to mount it. After a bunch of drilling and test fitting, the seat ended up fitting atop its brackets with the square tubing underneath.

Other things included mounting the fire extinguisher to the transmission tunnel (in reach of the driver) and mounting the center brake light, since we had removed it's stock mount along with the rear deck. Other things to comply with the rules included painting numbers on the doors & hood, securing the battery, painting tow locations, and installing the kill switch--that last one being a bit difficult. Our BMW, like most, is equipped with a rear mounted battery, which gets power to the front of the car through a single, huge cable running along the passenger side. The cable itself took 20 minutes to cut through, but with it severed, Ryan was able to get the kill switch itself wired up in another hour of work. We used a single-pole double-throw switch, running some 2-gauge cable from the original battery cable over to the left of the steering wheel, making it accessible by both the driver and anyone outside the car. The second throw was used to interrupt the positive line heading to the ignition coil, which we did with some 8-gauge speaker wire.

To The Races

After all of this work, the car was ready to go and we headed to the track. At the track, we rigged up a few things, including some probe thermometers for monitoring the water & transmission temperatures. It turns out, these hack gauges were the best thing in the world--they feature temperature alarms that make sure you know when something has gone wrong. Without a doubt, having the alarm go off after our water pump belt broke kept us in the race.

If you have ever thought about doing the 24 Hours of LeMons or had the desire to race at all, get a team together and do it. It's a bit of work, but entirely doable and an incredible amount of fun.

This past weekend, Team BVD Skidmark participated in its first 24 Hours of LeMons, the 2010 Goin' For Broken at Thunderhill Raceway outside Willows, CA. The team consisted of myself, two folks from Genius.com, and three guys that were part of CSH. In the end, only 5 of us drove the car at the race, because one of our team was quite sick in the lead up to the race.

Getting There

We loaded up Cheesy Gordita Crunch, named after a shopping list found in the glove box, on Thursday night before the race, along with all of our tools in the van. Matt & his wife Lynn drove the van, Bill, Tristan, Quynh, and I were in the RV that we had rented, along with a weekend's worth of food from Costco. The drive up to WIllows is pretty boring, and not much fun when you're driving an RV and a van with a trailer. All was going well until about 10 that night when one of the inside rear tires on the RV de-laminated with a loud thud, followed by a thumping from the flail that was left on the tire. The latter sound was reminiscent of the sound that Cheesy's original tires made when we bought the car.

Luckily, we were only a mile from a gas station, and only a few miles from Willows itself. We pulled into the gas station for the night, parking behind it. At 6 the next morning, I got up and called the RV rental roadside assistance line; they said that a tow truck could be there to swap the wheel within an hour. We sent the van & car ahead to claim a good pit spot while the rest of us waited for the RV to get fixed. The wheel replacement didn't take long and the team was reunited in the paddock by 8 AM. We unloaded the tools, pulled the car off the trailer, and signed up for the Friday practice session ($200 + $50 per driver).

Friday

The pre-race practice session was supremely useful—all of our drivers got a chance to hot lap on the track and get a feel for the car that hadn't been driven since we brought it across The Bay months before. Everything felt good and Cheesy did great all of Friday. I had been on the fence about doing the track day because I thought we might be using up what little life the car had. Getting out on Friday turned out to be a perfectly good thing, however, because it bolstered everyone's confidence in their own abilities, and our confidence in the car.

We did tech inspection with a few issues: tape the rear lights, tape the positive battery breakout in the engine compartment, and wire the clips for the harness. Bullshit inspection was pretty easy for us, given that we had a bone stock car and are pretty clueless. Having an e30 brings immediate scorn from the judges, but the fact that ours is the efficiency model and has an automatic helps. The Starbucks cards that Matt bribed the judges with helped, too; it also didn't hurt that our engine's intake is green from moss that was growing on it. In the end, they only gave us 5 penalty laps, mostly for having a crappy theme—really, we just had a car seat bolted to the roof and some huge Firefox stickers on the car.

At the end of the day, we swapped tires from the hard as anything, 55 series on 14" e30 wheels to the set of fairly low-profile tires on 16" wheels that had come with Cheesy. We cooked some burgers and headed out for a track walk at the end of the day.

Saturday

I got up at 6:30, grabbed a shower (luxurious Thunderhill!) and roused the team. I made some eggs, we gave the car a quick check, and headed off to the driver's meeting at 8. The meeting was as expected—a rundown on flags, an admonition to not drive crappily, and some quick words about logistics for the day. With that, we headed back to the paddock and I suited up for the first stint.

I got out just before 9 and circulated a couple of laps with the handful of cars out there, until the green flag dropped. On the third lap, I managed to spin in turn 9. I could blame the different tires on the car, but that really just adds to the fact that should have been taking things more slowly 3 laps in at the beginning of my stint. I had gotten overzealous. We were penalized to re-theme the car, and we quickly applied spray paint to implement the original "skidmark" theme that we had originally thrown around months ago. I headed back out for a little more driving, and set the fast lap for the team that stood for the day.

After my stint, Tristan went out and spun in 11. Back into the penalty box, we made an abbreviated walk of shame thanks to the Judgemobile's music dying. Bill took Tristan's place and was out for a while before also spinning in 11. We saw the judges again and were ordered to get the very first Cone of Shame in the race. Since they were pretty unimpressed with a team getting 3 black flags before Noon, we found the biggest cone in the entire paddock, and returned to attach it to our car. With a tow strap and some zip ties, we had the cone on and the car was back out there. Matt did a stint and then Josh got in the car.

Josh came in after about half an hour, and one of the cooking thermometers was wailing: it had hit the target temperature of 200 degrees fahrenheit. The roast wasn't done—the engine was hot. He shut it down and upon opening the hood and the missing water pump belt was pretty obvious. As the chief mechanic, I proceeded to bark some orders to the team and jumped under the car to fix the problem. After a brief struggle getting the forward-opening hood off, and dealing with the alternator with a broken belt-tensioning belt, the engine was back the way it should be. With the hood reattached, I went out for a stint.

We had a bunch more uneventful, but terribly fun driving the rest of Saturday and that evening, talked with a bunch of the other competitors. We ended up selling our extra rear brake pads to the Ninja team (all black e30 with a HUGE sprint car wing) and got tons of advice out of the trade. We talked with a bunch of judges and learned about the Bob Ross penalty that they applied to any car with a good expanse of paintable sheet metal.

Sunday

The second day of the race started with unintended excitement. Matt started the car just before the driver's meeting and it spewed automatic transmission fluid—the adapters of our hacked-in ATF cooler had failed. Thankfully, we had thought ahead a bit and left all of the stock hookups unmolested. With some quick Vice-grip work, we managed to hook the ATF lines back up to the stock cooler and get out onto the track from the beginning of the day. Josh & Matt did morning stints and then I headed out. At Matt's suggestion, I started shifting the car, rather than just leaving it in drive the whole time; this lead to a new fast lap for the team of 2:37. Much better than Saturday's 2:46, but a far cry from the leaders who were running better than 2:20. Even though we weren't super fast, the added power out of turns allowed us to pass a number of other cars.

At the end of the day, we were in 65th place out of 108 runners—pretty damn good for a completely new team with a stock, automatic racecar. After this experience, the entire team is pumped to do more LeMons races. While track days and HPDEs are awesome, those can't hold a candle to wheel to wheel racing, especially when you're in a car that is cheap and you're OK with driving like you stole it.

24 Hours of LeMons: highly recommended.

If you're into cars, a weekend at the racetrack is as good as it gets. The local chapters of car clubs (BMW CCA, PCA, FCA, SCCA etc.) rent a track for the weekend, organize instructors from member volunteers, and allow you to Drive Like You Mean It on a real racetrack while teaching you to be a much better driver. Track weekends are variously called Driver's Schools, High Performance Driver Education (HPDE), or simply track days. The weekends aren't cheap — the NCC BMW CCA I used to drive with charges $430 and the GGC BMW CCA $525 — but are worth every penny. Your first time can be quite daunting, since it's hard to know what to expect or how to prepare. Hopefully this overview of my most recent day with the Golden Gate Chapter at Infineon Raceway will be helpful.

Inspection

Two to three weeks prior to the track day, I get my car inspected by a mechanic I trust. They usually charge an hour of labor, but if you're lucky you can get it thrown in with some maintenance you require — ask other club members. All clubs I know of require an inspection to ensure that your car is in tip top shape for being pushed to the limit. Common to all such inspections is that you have sufficient brake pad material left (more than half the pad) and that the brake fluid has been changed within the past six months. Other than those two specifics, most cars in good condition won't need anything special done to work on the track, especially your first time.

Packing

On the Thursday before my track weekend, I start packing. I have a track/autocross box that contains paper towels, windshield cleaner (Stoner Invisible Glass), a quart of oil, a good air gauge, duct tape, the manual for my car, a couple of common wrenches, a torque wrench, a breaker bar and a bottle of white liquid shoe polish. Every day at the track I will use the glass cleaner to keep my windows super-clean, the air gauge to set my tire pressure, and the torque wrench to check my wheel bolts. I often end up adding a bit of oil throughout the course of the weekend and I've found the duct tape useful on a few occasions to fix that stupid plastic undertray on my E36.

As for the shoe polish, it's one of the best tools for adjust air pressure. Simply put a bit of shoe polish on the sidewall of the tire and onto the shoulder block of the tread; when you get off the track, see where the polish has disappeared and adjust the tire pressure accordingly.

Additionally, I pack my portable air compressor (though most tracks have air available), a couple of towels, my helmet, and tech inspection form — the last two being a absolute requirements, since you can't drive without them.

Personal stuff I bring includes a cooler filled with lots of water, some sandwiches, apples, and energy bars. Being something of a photographer I bring along my camera, since hot cars driving on a racetrack makes for good pictures. I also toss in some reading material and the Eagle Scout in me requires a bag with a complete change of clothes. If you're coming home each day (which I do, since the track is only about an hour away), you probably don't need the extra clothes, but do bring a sweatshirt and jacket, even if the forecast is for highs in the 80s. For those of us who live in urban areas, we aren't used to being up at 6 in the morning — it can be pretty cold then. Also, unlike that NASCAR crap, you will drive rain or shine and in cold weather, always with the windows down. It won't be a fun time if you're cold.

Friday

On Friday, I come home from work, pack all of my gear into the car, and head to bed around 10PM. I won't actually get there until 11 and probably won't fall asleep until later still, but since I have to leave the house at 5:30AM to get to the track by 7, I make the effort to get a good night's sleep. Why 7AM? The drivers meeting will be at 8AM, the instructors will do ride-along intro laps thereafter and the track opens at 9AM. All track events require everyone to attend the drivers meeting and, like the rest of the day, things run a very strict time table. Renting a track is very expensive and everyone wants to make the most of it, so be on time and build yourself some extra cushion, especially if it's your first time out.

To The Track

Harley Shaiken had a piece on Marketplace yesterday arguing that high labor costs, the sticking point for Senate Republicans concerning last week's bailout, are not a prime reason for the US auto maker's downfall. I don't feel the need to break apart Shaiken's short argument, because he sums it up well in the final sentence, "A superior product, high productivity and high wages pave the road to a healthy economy and a decent society." We can all agree that workers in Detroit have high wages and the indigenous car manufacturers even have good productivity; but a superior product? Not a chance.

The prime reason that Asian cars sell so well in the United States is because they have a superior product at nearly every price point when compared to the US companies. Often features are not what makes domestic cars pale compared to their Korean & Japanese counterparts; usually a general air of cheapness, from bad switchgear and low-grade plastic to unsorted suspension American cars are made to a much tighter budget. The reason? High labor costs at the plants of domestic auto makers, an average of $78 vs. $45 for non-union plants, force those car makers to make up for these costs elsewhere. The only way to compensate for such a large disparity in costs is for the US manufacturers to cut back on the amount of money put into their product, hence the low-quality cars.

Anyone who pays attention to the car world from an efficiency perspective has no doubt heard of the popularity that diesel engines have in Europe, but lack in the United States. Diesels post significantly better distance per volume of fuel (miles per gallon, furlongs per peck) than their gasoline counterparts. I've always wondered how much of this disparity can be accounted for by diesel fuel's higher energy content. A quick search turned up some statistics (See table B-4) produced by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Center for Transportation Analysis which lists a gallon of diesel as containing 38.6 MJ per liter and gasoline as posesing 34.8 MJ/L. Not that big of a difference; gasoline has 90% the energy content of diesel.

How is this reflected in the mileage of a real car? Well, let's look at a Volkswagen Jetta which, until recently in the US, could be had with a 1.8 liter gasoline engine or a 1.9 liter diesel. The gas engine gives 19 MPG city, 27 MPG highway for an EPA combined cycle of 22 MPG (VW Jetta 1.8L gas). The diesel gets 28 MPG city, 39 MPG highway and 32 MPG combined (VW Jetta 1.9L diesel). Working from the combined numbers, the diesel powerplant achieves 45% better mileage with fuel that contains just over 11% more energy content. Not a bad deal at all.

The next question is how this all works out for the environment. Historically, diesels have produced much more environmentally destructive exhaust containing more NOx and particulates. Recently, however, diesel fuel in the United States has been switched to an ultra-low sulfur variety which, in turn, allows for particulate emission control technologies to be employed, reducing the airborne matter released by diesel engines. Do the changes mean significantly cleaner emissions? I'm not sure, because the stats are difficult to find. Perhaps I'll find them later.

I have finally put a video on YouTube. This is people having fun in G and H lots during winter at RIT. Keith did the filming, I did the editing and the drivers are anonymous.

It's not often that I praise any of the American auto manufacturers, least of all Chevrolet. This isn't because I'm a European car fanboy or otherwise prejudiced against American cars but simply because they churn out so much crap. The chronic problem for manufacturers is that of least-common-deonminator, good-enough, penny-pinching engineering.

Though I'm a little bit behind the ball, Chevy announced that they would be making a panel-van version of their retro-styled HHR mini-SUV; this is the first good idea to come out of the C-shop in a long time. Small businesses have needs to transfer things just like larger ones. Plumbers and contractors have a reason to have a full-size van, since they want to carry around a lot of tools and spare parts. If you're not into construction, however, that's a bit much. Beyond being more vehicle than you want to buy and getting terrible gas mileage, it's difficult to park and maneuver. Sure, you can get a minivan for your small business but that leaves you little area to put logos and it's also too low, down below the windows. Furthermore, a minivan is still often more space than is necessary. So you could look at small hatchbacks such as the Mazda 3 or Honda Accord which are nice, but a little bit too small and still offer little space for advertising on the outside.

The HHR is just the right size; it's Goldilocks' preferred size, providing enough room to care somewhat bulky items (flowers, small catering gear, computers), a few cubbys for tools and some good space for plastering a logo on the outside. I really think this is perfect for small business like florists, computer support and even someone like Charm City Cakes, who are often on Food Network transporting a wedding cake in a huge Econoline van.