I'd like to welcome a new member to the forum :-)

Started by BigMike, April 13, 2010, 10:24:27 PM

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BigMike

If you hadn't noticed, we got a new member to the forum today :)

Welcome Brad! I have known Brad for at least 3 years. We took a couple classes together at state. Brad graduated last year and moved to Colorado to pursue his Masters Degree. :)

Brad was fortunate enough to have raced in the very first 24 Hours of LeMons events ever. Yeah, his team entered a 1980s Toyota Tercel and their team name was the "Pirate Ninja's with Lasers" ! hahaha that's awesome! They learned a lot from their first event and stepped up to a 22R-E powered Celica GT-S.

This evening I gave Brad a call and we spoke for quite a while. He has a lot of experience and can offer a lot of tips and advice to our team! He has been out of the LeMons scene for about a year but still had a lot of great stories to tell.

The #1 piece of advice he gave me is this: don't take this too serious. I hate this advice but we need to realize that anything can happen and if it does we need to go with the flow.

He told me of a time where in the middle of the race, they brought a car in from the field and ordered told the team that some lady who was a girlfriend or wife from some other team -- a complete stranger -- is going to drive for a leg (an hour or whatever). And get this, this lady had never driven a manual car before. So for a half hour or so the team went out to the parking lot and quickly taught the girl how to drive stick. She actually ended up doing quite well and when her time was up, a different team asked her to drive for them and she went back out for a second leg!

So basically it sounds like anything can happen and we need to be ready to go with the flow.

Brad said that their first time out they learned A LOT and got to see how other teams work and what their competition is like. When the entered the Celica, they were more serious than they were with the Tercel.

But he warns that anything can happen. One time some idiot in a Capri or something hit the side of their car and completely wasted an entire strut assembly. Yeah, the car had like 8 degrees negative camber and the tire was rubbing on the inner fender wall. It turned out that some near-by team in the pits had a spare strut assembly from a VW Rabbit, and after drilling a couple new holes it bolted right in!!

Anyway, I recommended Brad check out our forum in case we have some questions, we can ask an insider who has a great passion for racing :D

It was nice catching up with ya Brad, talk to ya soon-
BigMike
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     My 1987 Supercharged 4A-powered 6-speed MR2

BigMike

I think I found a picture of their Celica! Brad is the 5th from the left right below the guy with the hat:

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     My 1987 Supercharged 4A-powered 6-speed MR2

BigMike

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     My 1987 Supercharged 4A-powered 6-speed MR2

brads03zx3

Hey thanks Mike!

I'd like to humbly mention, I'm kinda good at this racing gig.  I'm the crew chief/lead mechanic for the DG Spec Scion tC World Challenge race cars.  Right now we are leading the points championship and young Robert Stout is the youngest driver ever to win a World Challenge race (last weekend at Long Beach).




I also have a Time Trial license through NASA and I'm the 2008 ST champion for Fresno region SCCA.  I'll be moving to SoCal shortly and am willing to work with you guys if you need.  I'll be acquiring an NX2000 and have offered to take some people for laps (and possibly offer up a driver seat).  There will obviously be some difference with FWD/RWD, but not much difference at all for newbs.  I know Buttonwillow very well.


As Mike mentioned, I would strongly recommend lightening up a bit, don't take it seriously.  Go out there with the sole intention of having as much fun as you can.  That is what we did our first race, and I can honestly say I've never had that much fun EVAR!  This was the first time I had ever been on track.  Never autocrossed or anything.  We had a 1986 Toyota Tercel hatch



We found that 14" VW wheels had a reasonable offset, and we could find a tire easier than the stock 12x4.5 or whatever it had.  You can see how ridiculous the car looked.  We had the best theme for that year and people all over the paddock were talking about the car.  We had some crappy Sumitomo tires that lasted the entire race (we had like 1 spare) and brought way too much fuel.  I think we got like 18 mpg on track LOL.  We started with 30 minute stints to ensure all 6 of us got in the seat.  We somehow managed to get a front ford focus sway bar modified enough to fit on the rear of the car, but unfortunately it broke before I got to drive it.  Another competitor tried to take us out and completely destroyed our FL strut.  Our neighbors with a broken VW rabbit allowed us to scrounge parts after finding that nobody within 70 miles stocks an '86 Tercel front strut (who'da thunk) and the junkyards are closed Saturday nights.  The VW strut fit surprisingly well with some mods and welding (the tophat design is completely upside down from the 'yota).  By the end of the weekend I was passing cars and just having a blast.

Here I am setting up the car that wrecked us...I worked on him for several laps


And the douche tried to turn down on me


The second race we ran the 83 Celica GTS pictured above.  The car was obviously faster with nearly twice the power and probably 3 x's the torque.  RWD was fun as well as can be seen by my Formula D move here


While the car was faster, and we spent quite a bit of money on it, the poor thing didn't finish the race.  I think the alternator went to shit and fried the ECU.  The fuel pump might have gone bad, I don't really know.  It was disappointing, and even moreso because we expected to do well.  Go out there with no expectations of even finishing, and it will be great!!

Mike has my number and can get in touch with me any time.  In fact, he sent me a text yesterday mentioning your ridiculous theme.  I think it is fantastic!  Good luck and have fun.

BryanH

Hey Brad.  Congrats on your racing successes, it must be really rewarding to win a race as crew chief!  While you were at Long Beach I was a few miles away at the El Toro ProSolo.  Great racing weather in SoCal last weekend.

I've seen your Focus at autox events before, and could have sworn I had pictures of it. I can't find any right now though. 

BigMike

#5
Hey Brad, awesome pictures and intro -- much better than what I gave ya ;) It would be cool to hang out with you sometime this year if possible. The last time I saw you was at that Senior fair event in the Student Satellite - feels like it was 5 yrs ago

Quote from: BigMike on April 13, 2010, 10:24:27 PM
Brad said that their first time out they learned A LOT and got to see how other teams work and what their competition is like. When the entered the Celica, they were more serious than they were with the Tercel.

Quote from: brads03zx3 on April 22, 2010, 10:19:10 AM
As Mike mentioned, I would strongly recommend lightening up a bit, don't take it seriously.  Go out there with the sole intention of having as much fun as you can.  That is what we did our first race, and I can honestly say I've never had that much fun EVAR!

.....

Go out there with no expectations of even finishing, and it will be great!!

Hey Bill,

Regarding going crazy with our engine, I suggest we do the following:

Keep the engine that is already in the car, run the JDM MAP system, only do basic engine mods (baffled oil pan, cams & gears, and what's already on the car (Nology Hotcore wires and TRD header). Let's just be satisfied with 125 HP or so, my TODA flywheel, the 6-speed conversion, and go run the Buttonwillow event this December and learn the ropes.

Then, with that experience under our belts, we'll enter in the March 2011 Sears Pointless race and for that race we'll go all out with your rebuilt engine with the early model lightweight internals, MicroSquirt + dyno tune, my crank scrapper, etcetera...

What do you think? I think that with the car below 2,000 lbs, 6-speed, and 120-130 HP, we will put up quite a fight anyway... Maybe we don't need the megasquirt? We'll find out if we do or not after our first event since we'll know the competition. But until then let's roll with what we've already got
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     My 1987 Supercharged 4A-powered 6-speed MR2

BigMike

Quote from: brads03zx3 on April 22, 2010, 10:19:10 AM
Mike has my number and can get in touch with me any time.  In fact, he sent me a text yesterday mentioning your ridiculous theme.  I think it is fantastic!  Good luck and have fun.

hahahaha check it out: http://bigmike.marlincrawler.com/forum/index.php?topic=71.0
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     My 1987 Supercharged 4A-powered 6-speed MR2

Sirdeuce

Are you sure the stock engine will have enough GRUNT to squirt down the track? Wouldn't want to seem like the poor thing was bound up. Maybe we could tune it to at least have a good smoothe movement. We'll lighten it and work on a good flow.
"I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on wakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning."

brads03zx3

As shown in the photo above, I was passing cars with 62 hp.  That was Toyota's CRANK rated HP over twenty years ago.  120HP and 2000 pounds is pretty darn quick.

My buddy Lorin Mueller was at the Pro Solo event at El Toro.  I heard he did pretty good ;)


I'll be making a trip to Fresburg within the next couple of months.  I have a lot of people I need to catch up with, I'll try and keep you in mind.  Senior fair event...was I drunk at that event, or was I...nevermind I was definitely drunk LOL

Sirdeuce

"I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on wakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning."