bikesandcars
True Classic
HI everyone, we had a great time at the lemons event last weekend, thanks for everyone's help getting us up to speed on X19's and for lots of cheap-tricks for getting more performance out of the car.
I'll get some pictures up shortly, but we havn't had time to organize them yet.
Friday testing was uneventful, everyone learned the track and we discovered that the little x19 handled and braked very well. The power seemed a little off (and flat at 7K), but not enough to start major diagnosis.
B.S. Tech inspection went well, they liked the fiat and our mariokart costume http://jalopnik.com/5567558/bs-inspections-at-the-capitol-offense-24-hours-of-lemons/gallery/9 no penalty points.
As the most experienced racer I took the Saturday morning stint and we found ourself in a solid 3rd place after an hour. Because we had 6 drivers all new to the event we voted on driver-changes every 45 minutes, so we started losing time in the pitts.. At 4:00 in the afternoon we were a solid 15th place (overall) in striking distance of a top 10. Too bad at 4:30 the car started running poor, seemingly starving for gas and/or having a cranky igniton. We drove the car until 5:30 trying to diagnose / fix the problem, but it fell on its face and we spent the rest of the day (until 8:00) trouble shooting.
It turned out that new plug wires and a cleaned carburetor did wonders for the car.
Sunday morning we were ready to go again, but the first driver had some bad luck and we had some chicken or egg combination of popped expansion tank hose / blown head gasket that drained our coolant and fried our engine. We saw the fluid leaking but the driver didn't notice, the radios had a mystery glitch, we just missed him with the pit board, and by the time he got in for a black flag the engine was cooked. It still turned though, and we did what is probably a world-record pit stop for head gasket / valve guide adjustement (2 actually hit the intake valves), and re-installation in less than an hour and a half....but when we fired it again cylinder 2 was taking on water (connected to the coolant system).... end of day
thanks to everyone here for the help. We're going to keep running the fiat, we had a great time. I'm not sure what we'll get back from lemons as a budget, but we'll try to put something together. I"m thinking VW 16-Valve engine, but for now my next step is to take apart the current engine and try to get everything running again.
I'll get some pictures up shortly, but we havn't had time to organize them yet.
Friday testing was uneventful, everyone learned the track and we discovered that the little x19 handled and braked very well. The power seemed a little off (and flat at 7K), but not enough to start major diagnosis.
B.S. Tech inspection went well, they liked the fiat and our mariokart costume http://jalopnik.com/5567558/bs-inspections-at-the-capitol-offense-24-hours-of-lemons/gallery/9 no penalty points.
As the most experienced racer I took the Saturday morning stint and we found ourself in a solid 3rd place after an hour. Because we had 6 drivers all new to the event we voted on driver-changes every 45 minutes, so we started losing time in the pitts.. At 4:00 in the afternoon we were a solid 15th place (overall) in striking distance of a top 10. Too bad at 4:30 the car started running poor, seemingly starving for gas and/or having a cranky igniton. We drove the car until 5:30 trying to diagnose / fix the problem, but it fell on its face and we spent the rest of the day (until 8:00) trouble shooting.
It turned out that new plug wires and a cleaned carburetor did wonders for the car.
Sunday morning we were ready to go again, but the first driver had some bad luck and we had some chicken or egg combination of popped expansion tank hose / blown head gasket that drained our coolant and fried our engine. We saw the fluid leaking but the driver didn't notice, the radios had a mystery glitch, we just missed him with the pit board, and by the time he got in for a black flag the engine was cooked. It still turned though, and we did what is probably a world-record pit stop for head gasket / valve guide adjustement (2 actually hit the intake valves), and re-installation in less than an hour and a half....but when we fired it again cylinder 2 was taking on water (connected to the coolant system).... end of day
thanks to everyone here for the help. We're going to keep running the fiat, we had a great time. I'm not sure what we'll get back from lemons as a budget, but we'll try to put something together. I"m thinking VW 16-Valve engine, but for now my next step is to take apart the current engine and try to get everything running again.
