Scuderia Limoni

I won’t bore you with a blow by blow of the entire race as that would take longer to write than the race was. I’ll just bore you with some of the more notable events as I remember them, probably not in correct chronological order but we were operating in a sleep deprived mode so it is all pretty much a blur. First task was to get everything unloaded and then get the car over to tech.

A shot of our motley crew just after getting the car off the trailer

Prepping our car for tech and one of the other Milano’s in the pits before the race,
not sure why they all have their helmets on already!

After getting everything set up we went over to tech and got though everything with the exception of the way we had our seat belt harness attached. They told us what to do to fix it so we did that (after much head scratching and trial and error but Brian finally got it). Anyway, we got back in line and quickly passed tech after that.

Lon is happy we just passed tech

Next we needed to get by the BS judges… These guys would look over the car and try to determine if it really was a $500 (or less) car and doc you laps if they didn’t believe you. They really weren’t liking the idea that we could get a Verde for less than $500 and they didn’t like my spreadsheet of expenses, “I could make one of those easily” says Jay, so I ruffle the pile of receipts and hold fast. He goes and looks under the transaxle and mumbles something about us not doing anything to it (we weren’t sure what we didn’t do) so it must be under $500 and we squeaked by without getting docked any laps. One of the other Milano teams was docked 3 laps for some minor bs’ing, the worst was the “Chard Beef” team that was docked 100 laps! We had brought some Italian beer for bribes but made the rookie LeMons racer mistake of bribing the tech guys instead of the BS judges, that won’t happen next time!!!

The Miata going through the BS judge scrutiny (we were next in line)

I was the first driver out for the race which started under a fairly long (10-15) minute yellow flag (no passing) so we could get used to the course. Once the green flag finally dropped it was hammer down! This was my first experience with wheel to wheel racing so I was a little nervous, but less so than if it had been my normal track car (summer daily driver Verde)! Things went pretty smoothly for most of my first stint as I was trying to play it safe and conservative.

Me suited up and getting ready to go, Lon and Tom taking it easy (sitting in for Greg?)

Waiting in line to get out onto the track for the first run

We had walkie talkies in the car with an ear piece with a push to talk button on them that we wore under our helmets. This allowed us to have a spotter say when the flags changed so we didn’t get penalized (nasty things in this race!) for passing under yellow when we didn’t know. Also used it to allow the drivers to say when they were coming in so the pit crew and new driver were ready. For the first couple sessions they were working fine.

By the time I got the ten minute warning from Greg I was feeling quite comfortable and lap times went down (at least I think so, no way to check) unfortunately the red mist started to descend and I didn’t catch myself… Was right behind our friends in the Jag and wanted to pass them before pulling in so stupidly tried to pass on the fastest part of the track on the inside and found out the hard way that we had way more brakes than tires by locking up the wheels as the Jag cut down in front of me for the chicane. I smacked into the left rear quarter of the Jag and then bounced off right into a cone! I proceeded directly off the track into the penalty box to await my doom. Turns out they hadn’t seen the hit (and the Jag driver didn’t even notice that I hit him either!) so they asked me why I hit the cone and I did a little fast talking and got off with just a 5 minute penalty (phew! they were being a little easy on the first offense too), most of the time during the race when a cone was hit it was a 30 minute penalty and with roughly 35-40 second lap times that adds up to falling behind by a LOT of laps! I learned my lesson on that one and backed off on the risky passes for the rest of the race.

They allowed us to do our driver change while in the penalty box so Lon hopped in and took off as soon as our time was up. Not good…first driver and already one penalty! So much for showing our team members with less track time how it is done, I felt ashamed (but not too bad though, how many times do you get to smack a Jag and not have to pull out the insurance!!). As the Jag pulled in for their driver switch I looked and it didn’t even have a mark, we had a nice dent in our right front quarter panel though. Told him I was sorry about hitting him and he said “You hit me?”, guess that’s what almost 5000 lbs will do for you :-).

Lon was doing very well and having a good run and after a while called in to say that something felt funny so he was coming in. When he got in he said it was a bad vibration so we figured it was the broken right front fender piece from my altercation with the Jag so we taped it up with duct tape and told him to go back out. As he was backing out of the paddock we noticed that the right front wheel looked like it was severely bent, wobbling really badly. As we yelled for a new wheel we looked a little more closely and then kicked ourselves for being so stupid. None of us had checked the lug nut torque since we had last put the wheels on in the barn, three of the lug nuts were within a couple threads of falling off and the other two were on their way! Needless to say, we weren’t going to make that rookie mistake again as we made sure it was someones only job at each stop to make sure they were still torqued down. Lon went back out and commented how much better the car felt now (he’s a BMW guy after all) and finished his run without any other issues.

Lon screaming by the stands

Next up was Tom, this was going to be his second ever time on a track (lot’s of AutoX experience though) so we all counseled him to just take things easy and go for a clean run. He settled in nicely and did really well! Nice clean run with no mishaps, we could ask for no more. He did surprise us a little bit by coming in 10-15 minutes early so we all went scrambling down from the stands and to the paddock at a dead run! He did the smart thing and just came in when he felt he was too tired to drive anymore rather than try and stick it out and hit a cone or worse. He just about fell out of the car as he was getting out!

When he came in it was time for our anchor man, Brian. He went ripping out onto the course and put in a good show and clean run. Having the most track and racing experience of us all he came off the track much less tired that the rest of us!

While Brian was just driving onto the track for his first run, the previous owner of the car showed up and just happened to be near Andy and Lon when he saw it and excitedly shouted that that was his old car going onto the track! He asked Lon (not knowing that he was one of the drivers of the car) where I was and they sent him over. I saw him walking up and it took me a second to place him but then it came to me. We hadn’t told him what we were planning to do with the car as he had clearly been quite attached to it when Brian and I picked it up in January. He had found the blog and saw all the pictures of the hidden rust that we found and understood that it probably couldn’t have been saved (for a street legal car) without a lot of $’s. He didn’t look happy but he didn’t pummel me with a tire iron either! Sorry George! But it sure does make a kick ass race car!

All of our second runs for the day were much more relaxed as we now knew the track and who to avoid and who to dice with. Towards the end of these runs the fuel system started acting up a little. Anytime the car got below 3000 RPMs it would backfire, cough, and stutter until we were able to get it up over 3K again, then it would take off with good acceleration again. Thinking this might be a fuel pump problem Brian and I had both tried turning on the spare fuel pump but that only seemed to make it worse. Brian found that feathering the throttle would keep it from happening but at the price of the needed acceleration. The only point on the track where this was an issue was in the chicane just before the short straight. For most of the race so far we had been able to out drag almost all the other cars (except the other Milano’s!) on this short stretch because we knew we could go into the sharp turn at the end of it much faster than they could so didn’t have to worry about scrubbing speed before the turn. This fuel problem caused us to lose all our low end acceleration right at the biggest choke point on the track which put us in danger of having the pack converge around us right before the turn, not good! We decided to run out the day with this issue rather than waste a lot of time in the pits trying to diagnose it and figured we’d fix it Sunday morning before the race started up again.

During Lon’s second run of the day he started having some of the red mist descend since his first session had been clean and ended up trading some paint with the yellow Jetta at the sharp turn after the chicane. He managed to avoid the black flag for that transgression so was able to continue racking up the laps. Now we had a dent from a Jag and paint from a Jetta on the right front quarter, what next? Well I’ll tell you…ketchup on the other side! His red mist didn’t clear fast enough and he ended up taking out one of the cones on which they had hung fishnet stockings with packets of mustard and ketchup in them to help spot the hitter! Somehow he managed to slip by yet again unnoticed! The flagger was frantically looking at the pack of cars going by to try and figure out who hit it but I guess Lon got lucky in that he didn’t get any yellow mustard on our black paint and they couldn’t see the ketchup.

About half way through my last run of the day I noticed that the temperature had spiked all the way up to 250 and that the temp light was flashing. This has happened on my other Verde occasionally on the track so I just turned on the heat and cranked up the fan all the way and kept an eye on it for 3-4 more laps. Usually on my Verde I will see an almost immediate drop in temp but on this one the light kept flashing and the gauge kept pointing due north. I called it in on the radio and headed back towards the paddock, as I was driving through the paddock area the temp finally started dropping and had gotten down to about 190 by the time I shut off the car. The guys added some more water to the overflow tank but it didn’t appear to be very low. I went back out on the track and soon called in that the temp was back up to max but the light was not back on. I decided to watch it for another lap or two then make a call…at the end of the second lap I noticed that in my nervousness this time I had been looking at the fuel gauge instead of the temp! I called back in and sheepishly admitted my mistake. None of them believe me that I was looking at the temp gauge the first time now…but I know I was looking at the temp gauge the first time as I’ve been through this multiple times before! Also I know I was watching the gauge drop while coming into the paddock. Anyway, they can believe what they want (more on the gauge later). After that the car continued to run well right at the normal temp, I have no clue what was going on! Turned out to be an apparently unnecessary pit stop but better safe that sorry.

A nice shot of the three amici towards the end of day 1

By the end of the first day we had crept up the ranks and were sitting in fourth place. We were quite excited as we hadn’t expected anything even close. The 5th place team was only a couple laps behind us but the sixth place team was on the order of 80 or so laps farther back. We decided we’d be more than happy with a top 5 finish (the 5th place team had been steadily getting closer all day so we assumed they pass us on the second day), but if we could keep 4th that would be great. We were a good 40 or so laps out of third so didn’t expect to be able to make that up without something major happening ( ).

At dinner late Saturday night we all agreed again that all we needed to do was to run a clean race and we should easily take 4th or 5th. As we broke for the night we split up morning duties, Lon, Tom, and Greg would fill up the fuel jugs and get us some more drinking water while Brian and I headed off to the track to turn in our People’s Curse vote and to try and sort out the fuel issue with the car.

The next morning when Brian and I got to the track I immediately set to work on the car. I had thought that the problem might be that the cold start injector was just not turning off or that it was leaking theorizing that we were running way too rich. First think I noticed is that the cold start injector electrical connection was already unplugged so it couldn’t be firing so I hooked up a fuel pressure tester to see if it was leaking and it wasn’t. While watching the fuel pressure we were also able to determine that the return line was not blocked as it never shot through the roof. We found that the fuel hose going to the pressure regulator looked a little dicey so while Michael (one of our pit techs shared with the other Alfa teams) replaced it I set to work cleaning some of the grounds again. We futzed around with a few other things but didn’t find any smoking guns so we buttoned everything up and hoped for the best.

Before the festivities started for the day we parked all the Milano’s next to each other for a group shot.

The three Milano’s and their teams!

Next up was the People’s Curse where they usually crush one of the cars or at least beat the snot out of it. Jay explained that they wanted to do things a little differently this time. The chosen car would be run at full throttle with the oil filler cap off and the other team captains would be able to put in whatever they wanted as long as it fit through the funnel…

Jay explaining how the People’s Curse would be dealt with

He then told us to run back to our paddock areas and get what we wanted to put in and stuff would keep going in until the engine stopped. We went running back and spent too much time trying to decide between crushed tortilla chips, mayo, mustard, or chunky salsa. We finally picked the salsa and rushed back only to find that it was already over! I think some ball bearings, sand, and other goodies went it. Didn’t manage to get any pictures, but I think there are some floating around some of the other sites.

After that was over it was time for Tom to suit up and head out as our first driver for the day. We had decided to go with longer 1.25 hour stints this time to cut down on the number of driver changes and also to refuel a couple gallons at every pit in so we could quicken the driver change as it was a lot closer to the track entrance than our paddock spot.

Tom headed out and we all went to the stands and had just sat down to watch the race when we got a frantic call from Tom saying that the engine had stopped and he couldn’t get it started again. I figured it might be the cold start injector plug not being connected (for why he couldn’t start it, not why it stopped) so as the tow truck was pushing him around the track and into the paddock area we were running like wild men down to the car. We caught up to him and got the hood up, I reconnected the CSI plug and told him to try it and all we heard was a zap zap zap which I immediately knew was the coil cable, well it had fallen out of the coil! I jammed it back in, slammed the hood shut and told Tom to fire it up. It roared back to life and we sent him back on his way, total elapsed time, from when he left the track…less than one minute. They had just put out the green flag (started on yellow again) when he was pulling back onto the track. We felt like a NASCAR pit crew! The rest of Tom’s run was uneventful and he racked up the laps nicely.

Getting a little help off the track due to a coil wire that fell out

I was up next and we made a really quick driver change (we were starting to get the hang of that). Actually I haven’t mentioned to this point that the fastest way to change drivers was actually through the passenger side of the car as the double bar on the driver side cage made it to tight of a fit with the suite and helmet on. As I rolled out into the track I checked the temp gauge and noticed that the stupid thing was now reading zero! I checked it again every few laps and it didn’t move and the car continued to run fine so decided the heck with it and kept going. I didn’t call it in as I knew it would only get me more grief from my teammates! The rest of my run went well and I even managed to pass the leading cars once each, I’m sure they had their slow drivers in but I’ll take what I can get!

Next up was Lon, we did another quick driver change and refuel and he was off. I guess he hadn’t quite learned his lesson the previous day as the red mist hadn’t quite cleared because after a while he was black flagged for touching the dirt with the tires too many times and brought in for a penalty. We went running over to see what was up and he managed to sweet talk his way into a very short delay and was soon off and running again. Phew! The rest of his run was incident free and he made some nice passes and kept our standings firm. We had learned sometime during my or his run that the 5th place team that had been catching us had dropped out with stripped splines on their spindles so we were assured 4th if we just didn’t screw up and the car didn’t break. I asked him about the temp gauge while he was running and the stupid thing was working fine again! Messing with my mind!

Later on we learned that the second place team had also dropped out with something broken and as soon as we caught up to their number of banked laps we rolled into third place! The next closest team was a pile of laps behind us so all we had to do was keep clean and rolling and we’d take third.

Brian was up next and was going to be ultra conservative to keep our standing. As with the previous driver changes we did this in the fueling area and put in some extra fuel. We asked him to turn the key to the on position to check the level to make sure we had enough before he took off but he was too excited and said “I’m good” without checking and took off. Normally we had someone suited up in their Nomex driving suit anytime someone was due to come off as the refueler had to wear fire protection. Since this was the last run of the race we all unsuited and went into the stands to watch. He was doing very well and keeping to his promise and letting some other cars go by so as to keep out of trouble. About 40 minutes into his run he started yelling something incomprehensible into the radio. We asked him to stop yelling and try again and we heard the dreaded “fuel! fuel! fuel!”! We ran as fast as we could all the way back to our paddock and I crammed myself into my suit and jammed my driving shoes on (didn’t bother to lace them up) and ran back to the refueling area. We dumped in a couple more gallons and got him back out within one minute, we really were starting to feel like a NASCAR pit crew!

He got back out and into the fray. For the last 15 or so minutes of the race the flaggers actually took out the blue flags with yellow stripes for the first time (to tell drivers to let a faster car pass them) and was only used for the top three cars in the rankings. The only problem is that I think quite a number of the drivers didn’t have a clue what it meant or were oblivious! Anyway, Brian finished the race clean and we came in third. Pretty darn good as our goal had been to just finish the race! The other two Alfa teams had been slowly climbing the rankings and finished 5th and 6th so we had 50% of the top six cars being Alfa Milano’s! What a race. We are definitely doing this again next year if they come back!

Brian crossing the finish line in 3rd place!

Here we are getting our “Least Chance of Winning”award…to an Italian car? C’mon!

Too tired to write much now but much to our astonishment (and to that of many others present) we came in 3rd!  We had been 4th for quite a while after working our way up the ranks and the 5th place team got within 2 laps of us at one point but dropped out with stripped splines on their axles.  The team in second place also dropped out with car troubles so all we had to do was run a clean race with no penalties (or just little ones…) and we’d take third.

We managed to do it and also won the “Car Most Unlikely to Win” Award.

The most amazing thing was that the other two Milano’s in the race finished and managed to climb all the way up to 5th and 6th place in the final hours!  So 3 of the top six cars were Alfa Milano’s, who’d have thought!

More later with pictures and a some movies.

Just a short update today as I’m rather exhausted…

All three Milano’s are still in the race.  Our team is currently in 4th place but only up 2 laps over the 5th place team who have been slowly catching up to us.  We are currently about 40 laps behind the leader.  The top 5 cars are all fairly close, it’s pretty amazing the difference between the 5th place and 6th place cars is over 100 laps right now!

All in all we are extremely happy with how we are running and other than a fuel delivery issue for the last few sessions the car has been running very well, the other Milano’s haven’t faired quite as well so have lost quite a number of laps while in the paddock debugging issues.

That’s it for now.  If anyone is coming down on Sunday we’ll see you there!

Well we had a rough night last session and still had a list of stuff we needed to complete so we did a second session in two nights. This one was just Brian, Tom, and myself.

First up, since the car was still on the lift was to put the pinch bolt back in that holds the driveshaft up front. We forgot to put that back in last session and as we were cleaning up I was wondering what this big bolt was that was laying around. Just as I was falling asleep in bed after the session at 1:30 AM or so it came to me what it was so I got back up and sent myself an e-mail reminder!

Next up was to get the engine fan override switch operational and to fix the fuel pump switch (man that fuel pump has been a pain!). We spent quite a bit of time going over the wiring diagrams and testing things with a volt & ohm meter to figure out what we needed to do. We wanted to use the front fog light switch to be able to turn on the fan override but quickly learned that that switch only did something when the lights were on (duh). We ended up pulling out the fuse box and re-routing the switched power (when the headlights are turned on) to a constant 12V source on the back of the fuse box. That would allow the switch to work all the time, not just when the lights were on.

I was getting ready to start welding the rest of the window net mounting brackets on when I heard more cursing coming from the engine bay. Brian was testing again for volts coming out of the wires he was about to splice into the engine fan wiring and was getting nothing. We spent the net half hour or so trying to figure out what was going on, finally I hear “Try it again…I’m an idiot!”, so I hit the switch and the fan comes to life. Turns out that the wires had fallen down below the radiator and there was another set (the wrong ones) of the same colour sitting in plain view so he had grabbed those!

Brian testing the wiring we need for the fan override

Next we needed to debug the fuel pump switch, it was always turning on the second pump whether it was pushed in or not. As we played with it we found that the switch would actually turn off the pump when it was half pushed in! So we needed a new switch…we tried a couple of the others but none had as many posts on the back as the defroster switch which we were using and wouldn’t fire the pump. I dug around upstairs in the barn and managed to locate another one under a pile of other parts, we plugged it in and it worked like a charm!

While we were messing around with the electrical stuff we decided to get the electric mirror switch hooked up and back in. Normally this switch sits on the center console piece in the Milano’s but since we didn’t have that we needed to improvise. I had grabbed the necessary wiring harness from the console we pulled out of the car and Brian managed to snake it up behind the heater controls so he could mount it in the hole left by removing the ash tray, looks good and works well!

While Brian and I were playing electrician Tom was busy making a nice mount for our in car communication system (walkie talkies) that we will use to communicate with the driver during the race. We will have some headsets attached to them that will go under the helmet but due to the noise levels we will still have to use the push to talk rather than the voice activated.

Once that was all done I was able to start welding on the remaining tabs for the window net. Had a few problems getting it started but after that it went smoothly. Note to self…don’t wear shorts when welding!

Me welding on the window net mounting tabs

Me testing out the newly installed window net

Feeling caged in!

Once I was done with the window net install Tom was able to get into the car and finish putting the rest of the roll cage padding in. I had had to take some of it back out to put the second bar in as well as the window net tabs so Tom had to do a lot more cutting, shaving, and fitting as well as decimating the local zip tie population, it will take years to recover!

While Tom was finishing the padding up front I was cutting some off of the rear of the main horizontal bar to allow our in car camera to be installed (one of these: http://www.goprocamera.com/index5.htm). In my tests the video is quite good but the audio is pretty poor, we’ll see how it goes.
Once Tom was done with the padding Brian got out the industrial sized shop vac and proceeded to suck up all the crud in the car. Now it is so clean you (well Brian anyway) could eat off of the floor.

Brian playing maid

Tom & Brian doing final interior inspection

Once the interior cleaning was done it was time to load the car into the trailer!

 
Trailer open, just about to move the car in

 
Car in the trailer and ready to head out to the track, a whole day early!

We managed to finish up a whole hour earlier than the previous night, 11:30 PM instead of 12:30.

Brian and Greg are heading down to the track tonight (Friday) and Tom, Lon, and myself will just get up early and drive down on Saturday morning.  So far the schedule looks like this:

Friday, 22 August 2008
No pit access available Friday; early arrivals must park in the spectator
lot until 7am Saturday morning.

Saturday, 23 August 2008
7am: Gates Open
8-11 am: Check-In and Tech (NO CHECK-INS PAST 11 am)
11:30 am: Mandatory Driver’s Meeting
noon-9:30: Race Session I

Sunday, 24 August 2008
9am: Gates open
11 am: People’s Curse
11:30 am: Mandatory Driver’s Meeting
noon-5pm: Race Session II
5:30pm: Trophies for Winners, Weeping for Losers
7pm: Gates Close
7:30 pm: Man-Eating CHUDs Rise from Sewers

If anyone decides to come down and watch some stop by and say hello!

Well we started out last night with a relatively short list of stuff we still needed to do on the car just to tie up loose ends. We thought that we should be able to wrap most of it up by 7:30 or so after which we’d give the whole car a once over to make sure we didn’t miss anything.

Right……….

I started the session by working at getting the passenger side exhaust manifold out so I could replace it with one that didn’t have one stud eroded mostly away. After the usual yanking, twisting, and cursing it finally came out and I got the replacement one in. I had a few issues with one of the studs in that one too and ended up having to back it out and clean it up with a tap & die set and had to dig around to find a nut that actually fit it correctly (the one that was used on the previous set turned out to be the wrong pitch but due to the corroded nature of the stud you couldn’t tell!). We needed to get the driveshaft out so I we had to take the side exit exhaust out again which was no big deal since I already had the manifold disconnected.

While I was getting the side exit exhaust out Brian and Lon were working upstairs at the tire balancing machine to try and balance our wheels. I wasn’t getting a good feeling when I kept hearing cursing and screams of frustration… Turns out a number of the wheels we were counting on are bent quite badly! When we put the tires on them we had not tried to put them on the balancer so didn’t realize they were bent. The other problem is that they couldn’t even get the set of phone dial Verde wheels to fit on the balancer so we could see if they were bent too. Turns out the center part of the wheel is too thick to allow the balancer cap to bite on any of the threads on the machine!

We decided pull the wheels/tires off of Brian’s GTV6 and run with those and use the bent ones as a last resort emergency set so Lon and Tom worked at swapping the race wheels/tires currently on the Verde with those on the GTV6. Lon had to cut out for a family thing (in the middle of crunch week!?! Where is his dedication???) so that left just Tom, Brian, and myself. We saw that Greg’s chair was looking a little lonely so we found a suitable substitute for his sitting around job:

A stand (sit?) in for Greg

After the exhaust was removed again Brian and I took out the drive shaft and then Brian went upstairs to the press to get the yoke and the center support out. The center support was in TERRIBLE condition, basically not supporting anything and was definitely the cause of the driveline vibration. Luckily Brian had one lying around in the parts stash and it was quickly swapped. When we went to put the driveshaft back in we could only get it in about 1/4″ or so and then the splines wouldn’t go in any further. We were getting rather frustrated and pulled it out again and Tom noticed that there was a flat area on part of the splines, duh! Once we had that oriented correctly in the flywheel it went in like budda! At least we were able to knock that off the to do list.

Brian finishing up the driveshaft reinstall

After that was back in I finished up reinstalling the side exit exhaust (again) and we lowered the car and started it up, no exhaust leak sounds anymore! Another one off the list. Now we were finally making some progress.

Once that was done Brian and I decided to tackle the window net install while Tom worked on the hood pins.

Tom made pretty quick progress on getting the hood pins and and they look really good! The clasps are even tied off to the grill so we won’t lose them. It pained me to see a big drill bit going through a Milano hood but then I remembered that the hood was probably going to be rather dented and crappy looking by the end of the race…

Tom’s excellent hood pin installation

We took out all the parts that came with the window net install kit and quickly realized that it wasn’t going to fit right (without a lot of hacks) without putting in the optional second door bar on the roll cage (AutoPower sent these extra bar parts along in case we wanted to install this optional piece that I guess is now required by SCCA or something). We hadn’t really wanted to install it as getting in and out of the car is already hard enough and this would only make it worse (especially for Lon ). After much hemming and hawing over possible alternatives we decided to just put the optional bar in and be done with it. First I tacked in the top brackets with the welder while Brian held them steady for me. Then we hung to net to determine how high we had to mount the optional roll cage bar. While doing this we noticed that they had sent us pieces that were about 1.5″ too long so Brian and Tom had to piece together something to cut it with since Brian doesn’t have an abrasive cutoff saw in his tool collection (Tom and I both have one at home but a fat lot of good those were doing us!).

Once they got it cut to size Tom took off as it was getting quite late but we wanted to at least get it welded in so we hung out a little longer. It turned out that the notch cut in the tube was also not correct for the angle so I had to go at it with the grinder. Finally I got it close enough and I tacked both ends in while Brian held it for me. Once he got out of the way I finished off the welds. We decided to leave the rest of the installation until the next day as it was already well past midnight.

Rollcage second (top) door bar installed

I took a picture of the excellent work Tom and Brian did filling the sunroof hole, very nice looking!

Nicely done roof patch to fill the sunroof hole

This session was short staffed with only Brian and Tom attending but they managed to knock off a fair amount of stuff, but no pictures :-(!

Brian had noticed some fairly bad vibration while idling after our test drives so they started out looking at that. They took off one of the exhaust hanger brackets that looked like it might be hitting but on closer examination it looked like the driveshaft center support might be the culprit so we’ll have to look at that during the next session.

During the test drives we had determined that we needed to put the side view mirrors back on for better rear vision than the rear view mirror was allowing so they dug them out and put them back on. I had brought the adjustment switch home with me (electric mirrors) so I’ll have to bring that in for the next session so the driver will be able to adjust the mirrors while belted in!

During one of the last work sessions Lon had got most of the brake cooling ductwork done, all that remained was to enlarge the holes in the floor and install the floor ducts. Tom & Brian got those installed, missing only the big hose clamps to connect the hoses to the floor ducts, that’s also on the list for next session (do you see a pattern here?).

We had been thinking about using the original sunroof metal to allow us to seal the sunroof hole in the roof but it was problematic because it used a gasket all the way around which made the panel about 1/4″ too small on all sides to allow us to attach it easily. For this session Tom brought along a piece of sheet metal and fabricated a nice cover for the hole and then they pop riveted it on along with some RTV and then painted it to match our colour scheme. I haven’t seen it yet but it sounds real nice! With all the rain we’ve been having this may be a VERY worthwhile investment!

They also removed the passenger seat as we don’t need that for the race (and could use the space for other stuff). While doing the test drives it turns out that Brian, Lon, and myself can all drive with the seat in the same position but Tom needs to adjust it some due to his shorter legs and the seat rails hadn’t been greased since before the last ice age so it was rather tough to get them to move. We didn’t want this to slow this down during the race so they greased them up and they move much easier now. Another good reason to have all the drivers participate in the test drives!

Here’s the to do list for the next session, still looks long but is a LOT shorter than it has been and mostly minor stuff that wouldn’t prevent us from racing:

• Change passenger side exhaust manifold
• Fix tied off starter cable near master cylinder
• Wire up engine fan override
• Label fuel pump and fan override switches
• Figure out mounting for in car camera
• Deal with engine fan
• Do wheel alignment
• Install walkie talkies
• Balance wheels
• Install hood pins
• Make mounting for Autoforce tester
• RainX the windshield
• Install window net

This should be the last work session before the race, fingers crossed…

Well we finally got enough of the car together and working well that we decided it was time for a test drive (and with more than a week to go until the race!).

We trailered it over to a local decent sized parking lot and around 6:30 PM after a good portion of the cars had left started taking some test runs. One of our documentary friends was on hand to capture the first test runs for posterity (and hopefully their film…). Things went well, the car was running well and the exhaust was not very loud at all, in fact it sounded much louder in the car than out of it. Should pass the db level check with no problems!

The steering was a little heavy so we will have to play with the alignment a bit but changing to the normal wheels instead of the wider race wheels will help some too. The engine fan was occasionally making some bad noises so we will probably swap that out for a spare. The ultra wide rear view mirror is almost useless…the roll bar takes up a lot of the rear viewable area so it looks like we will have to put the side view mirrors back on.

Lon had brought his new driving suit along to make sure that he could actually get into the car while wearing it without tearing it.  Glad to say that that test was a success too :-).

All in all a very successful test, found a few issues we need to deal with but nothing really bad.

Here’s a link to a movie of the test drives:
http://www.alfamilano.com/Lemons/Lemons_Milano_Test_Drive.wmv

Me and Greg on a test drive

Brian and Greg just about to head out for another test drive

Lon cooling down after his smoking hot test drive in his new driving suit and shoes!

Brian just about to take our documentary camera man out for a spin

We made a ton of progress this session knocking things off the to do list!

While I was changing the spark plugs Greg was hard at work (for once) finishing up the graphics on the car, looking quite professional now! A couple sessions ago we decided to redo the door graphics so that they would be easier to see so Tom & Greg painted a white background on the doors and hood to provide a better backdrop for the applied graphics, came out nice!

Greg finishing up the graphics

Additional hood graphics

Our redone door graphics

Our bumper motto, fitting for an Alfa!

During a couple sessions we were talking about various racing movies and our favorite lines and one that we thought particularly appropriate was from Days of Thunder…”Drive Through the Smoke” being that this is an Alfa (my Verde is up to two packs a day ). We asked one of Brian’s daughters to paint the quote on the rear bumper. Came out real nice, we might take some grief because of the addition she tacked onto the end of the quote :-).

While Greg was working on that Tom, Lon, and Brian were working on getting the fire extinguisher bracket and seat belt harnesses installed. The fire extinguisher bracket was installed on the transmission tunnel for easy access. I had made some mounting plates for the harness bolts out of some sheet steel I had lying around from one of my welding projects as we couldn’t find any of the minimum required size 3 inch washers locally, they did the job nicely. Now it is really starting to look like a race car!

Tom completing install of fire extinguisher bracket

Seat belt harness installed

While we had the car back on the lift so as to be able to drill the holes for the harness and put the mounting plates in I started working on the exhaust leak between the manifold and down pipes again. I had looked through my spare parts stash at home and found a couple more manifold gaskets that we thought we try between the side exhaust down pipe and the manifold to see if that would fix the leak. I took the whole thing apart (again) and put the new gaskets in and then put everything back together again and…….the leak was still there! Looks like one of the studs coming out of the manifold has most of its thread rusted away so I just can’t get enough bite to close up a little gap. It is runnable the way it is but I’d really like to get it fixed so I’ll be digging through the spare manifolds at home to see if I can get the studs out to replace them with a new set of studs (like I did for the drivers side manifold). The only problem is that the studs have a tendency to weld themselves in and shear when you try to get them out, I’ve got at least 3 or 4 like that in the parts pile. Time for lots of penetrating oil and heat along with a delicate touch!

After his grueling graphics session we find Greg in his traditional perch…

Greg in his usual perch…

While the car was still up on the lift we decided to drill the initial pilot holes for the rear brake cooling ducts just above the rotors. Once the car was back down Greg got up out of his chair (!) and tied off the the dryer hose for the ducts to the roll bar, still need to finish up the attachment to the floor. Due to the coolness (pun intended) of the install we figured that AutoDelta would be proud to have their name on our mod!

One of the brake cooling duct hoses

While he was working on Brian, Lon, and I were trying to figure out why the fuel gauge wasn’t working. At first we suspected the sending unit but Brian had two in his parts pile and when we hooked them up to the harness and tilted them back and forth (to simulate empty and full tanks) they didn’t register on the gauge either. I had also brought along another instrument cluster that I had in my parts stash that I know worked fine and it was also not registering the fuel level. We spent some time trying to figure out exactly how the wiring worked using a volt and ohm meter but were having problems, didn’t seem to be working as we expected. We knew exactly which wires (purple and purple with black stripe) we were dealing with and decided to trace the routing one more time (goes down the passenger side for some strange reason) only to finally find that one of the wires had been cut in half! Once we spliced it back together we had a working fuel gauge again!

While they were getting the wire spliced back together I worked on putting the dash back together.

Dash back together

Fuel gauge working again!

Almost forgot! We were trying to figure out why the car was running somewhat rough and had a tendency to die when the gas was hit so pulled off the air flow meter to see if we had forgotten to take out the screwdriver that we were using to force the fuel pump to be on without cranking the engine. Well, the screwdriver wasn’t there but Brian said the air flow meter flap seemed to be dragging on something so I pulled it off and cleaned the gunk out with some electrical cleaner and there was still a metal on metal scraping sound when the flap was pushed, not sure how that happens, did an elephant sit on the housing or something?!? Luckily I had brought along a spare so we put that on and started up the car and it was a night and day difference! Running nice and smooth now!

There were a bunch of other things that we also got knocked off of the the to do list:

Checked the cap & rotor - Not in the greatest condition but no worse that the used emergency spares I had in the trunk of my Verde so we just cleaned them up with a wire brush and put them back on.

Check alternator - Just wanted to make sure it was putting out more than 13.5V when the car was running.

Install rear view mirror - We couldn’t use the stock rear view mirror because the roll cage was in the way. Brian had one of those three foot wide rearview mirrors laying around so we installed that.

Install roll cage padding - Got that all installed.

Fix air box mount - One of the air box mounts, rubber mounting with two studs in it had sheered in half. We didn’t have spare (and couldn’t get the original off anyway) so we nano glued and safety wired it back on.

Get upper radiator hose away from fan frame - Not sure why the hose was touching the fan frame as all these parts were stock but we didn’t want it rubbing so we trimmed a little off the hose and pushed it farther onto the thermostat housing and that did the trick.

Safety wire the oil filter - Didn’t want to take any chances that the oil filter would spin off (Brian being anal!) so we put a large hose clamp on the filter and safety wired that to the old A/C bracket mounting point, there is no way it will spin off now!

Clean up engine bay and interior - I used compressed air to blow all the hidden leaves and other crap out of the engine bay, the air was quite thick with dust and junk for a while!

At this point we decided the car was ready for its first real test drive so we decided to do it the next night in a local parking lot after most of the cars had left for the day.

We got a bunch of things knocked off the todo list this session!

First up was to replace the drivers side exhaust manifold that had one of the studs broken off of it. I happened to have a spare at home and found some nice new studs to put in it. With the power steering pump and ABS stuff out of the car it was a nice quick job to swap out the manifold. Turns out it was missing one of the nuts already!

While I was working on that Brian was wiring up the backup fuel pump to the defroster switch in the dash. After messing around with it for a little bit it finally started working perfectly!

Brian wiring up the backup fuel pump switch

Once the switch was working we lifted the car back up and started working on the mean looking side exit exhaust. Gene, one of our AONE buddies stopped by to help out a bit so I had him help me get the down pipes connected to the manifolds. On the first try we realized that the stock downpipes have an extra spacer that the new pipes didn’t so we ran out of thread on the studs before the pieces were tightened enough. We couldn’t find anything to use as spacers so we just used a stack of washers on each stud and were able to get things looking nice and tight. While Gene and I were working on that Tom was fabricating a bracket to allow us to hang the rear of the side pipe to the stock Milano hanger.

Tom explaining the finer points on making an exhaust bracket…

Tom got the rear of the exhaust hooked up with the new bracket and we started up the car to see how it sounded. We were worried that the side exhaust would be quite noisy and that we might not be able to use it. Turns out it actually sounded a little less noisy than the stock exhaust (even with the obviously loud air leak at the manifold connection)! Not sure about under full throttle though, we’ll have to check that out. We had to take everything apart again to try and see if we could fix the air leak. It looked like only one side was noticeably leaking so I pulled enough of it apart to get at the little wire rings used to hold the spacer on (stock) as we thought they might be preventing the seal, we also noticed one of the washers was bent so obviously dragging on the pipe. While Brian filed that down, Gene and I worked at getting the little wires off. After that we got everything back on and tightened down a couple more turns and the leak was noticeably reduced, although not completely eliminated. I’ll need to source some gaskets to put between the downpipes and the manifold spacer to try next time. Anyway it was quiet enough for now and good enough for a road test.

While we were working on that, Tom was working on better securing the fuel lines in the rear. He used some metal strapping and securely attached them to the underside of the car.

Meanwhile, Brian and Greg were working on flushing the brake system with some new ATE Super Blue. Greg was sent up in the car on the lift to do the pumping while Brian was underneath doing the bleeding. That went smoothly except for one bad front bleed screw which was soon replaced. Greg was enjoying just sitting around again! After that was done it looked like I had done a good enough job on the rear calipers that they didn’t need any adjusting (ahem).

Greg sitting around again…

Once the brake bleeding and exhaust work was done we were able to lower the car (and let Greg out) and get on with the final few tasks for the evening.

I had brought along my helmet so we could check clearance while sitting in the Recaro seat (my helmet is the biggest, more room for the enhanced brainpower!). I wanted to do this as my helmet hits the roof in my Verde unless I lean the seat fairly far back, which we cannot do due to the rollcage in the Lemons car. Turns out with the sunroof junk removed and the headliner there is at least an inch of headroom even with the seat in my normal driving position!

Testing head room with helmet on, Tom doesn’t like the colour of my helmet!

Once we had that verified Tom and Greg got to work on the “bodywork”. Tom was shaving down the expanding foam to the contours of the body while Greg was cutting out the masks for painting some additional numbers on the car. Tom got most of the foam nicely sculpted and then painted it black, you almost can’t tell it’s there :-). Meanwhile Greg finished up the sticky backed masks and the applied them with some help and then painted the purple base coat.

Tom doing some body work

Applying the mask for some more number painting

While they were working on that Brian decided to screw down the brake cooling air vents.

Brian looking pleased after screwing the air vents

While that was going on I decided to try and repair a couple of the Bosch connectors attaching the wiring harness to the sensors on the thermostat. All that needed to be done was to replace the plastic connector part. The pins are held in to the connector with little metal tabs that can be pressed down with a very small screwdriver which will allow them to be pulled out of the connector. We found a couple connectors on spare wiring harness so I pulled them off and was able to quickly replace them on the car.

Another thing we had noticed was that the fuel gauge did not appear to be working so Brian grabbed a couple senders and tried them out but there was no change in the gauge so we determined that it was probably the gauge. Brian pulled apart the dash and got the cluster out so we can replace it with a spare cluster I’ve got in my parts stash.

Dash and instrument cluster removed, this is forward progress???

That about wraps it up for this session, all in all a LOT of progress!

No pictures again this session, sure makes for a boring read!

This session we had two primary goals, fix the dang primary fuel pump and get the brake pads changed. Lon was tasked with replacing the primary fuel pump (we had verified that the wiring was all correct and there was voltage at the pump), Brian was to do the front pads and I stupidly took on the task of the rear pads. We also decided to pull the exhaust so we could see if the side exit exhaust Brian had laying around would fit. Greg was going to touch up the paint on the car numbers and help out with the exhaust.

First we rolled the other cars out of the barn so we could get the Milano up on the lift and we were finally able to do so without using the board across the front! We put the front lift arms under where the front of the roll cages bolts into the new floor patches and it works great!

Lon got working on the fuel pump and after some hassles with the mounting brackets got the broken one out and the “new” one in pretty quickly. While he was doing that we decided to change the tranny/diff oil while the car was up on the lift so Brian started working on that. Once that was complete he was able to quickly get the front brake pads changed (the easy ones!).

I started in on the rear calipers and realized that I had left my “how to” printout from the alfagtv6.com tech articles on my desk at work in my rush to get out so had to puzzle it out how they worked again. The caliper pistons weren’t moving much when using the adjusters but I was able to get them moved just enough to eventually beat the pads out. Once they were out I wasn’t able to get the pistons to move so had Brian push in on one as hard as he could with his finger while I fiddled with the adjustment nut, something finally gave and it moved all the way in with a gurgling snap, good, only three more to go! Brian then went to work with Greg on getting the exhaust out. I managed to get one more piston most of the way in on that same caliper but could not get the inner on the right side to move at all. Lon came over and we put a box end wrench in there and he applied a lot of pressure while I messed with the adjuster and he got it to move all the way in. I tried the same technique with the right outer and it finally moved and with a loud splat shot a bunch of break fluid at my face :-(. After some more fiddling and cursing I was finally able to get all the pistons in just enough to be able to easily slip the new race pads in (Carbotech from Andy at Performatek).

While I was fighting with the rear brakes Greg and Brian were working on getting the exhaust out (except for the manifolds). The muffler came out about as easily as I’ve ever seen one come off as did the center resonator. The catalytic converter was another story though. The nuts holding the down pipes onto the manifolds looked rusted on so some penetrating lubricant was sprayed on and let to work its magic for a couple minutes. As soon as I heard Brian say “Wow! The nuts on the passenger side came off easier than any other car I’ve done this one” I knew we were doomed! Sure enough, both nuts on the driver side were rusted on and one of the studs snapped while trying to remove it. The other nut was in bad shape so that it wouldn’t hold a socket on it so we could just break the other stud. Brian had to resort to grinding the nut off. Of course the spare manifold that he had had one of the studs broken off as well! Later that night when I got home I checked my stash of manifolds and out of the three spare sets I have only one had didn’t have broken studs in it, in fact it had none at all, I managed to find a decent pair in my nuts & bolts stash so we should be all set for replacing the manifold in the next session.

The good news is that it looks like the side exhaust should bolt up fine, we will just have to fabricate a bracket to hold up the rear.

As we were putting stuff away for the night Greg started doing some of the paint touch ups to the numbers on the doors. While he was doing that I jumped in to verify that the new fuel pump was working. The car started right up and seemed to run well, I didn’t leave it running long as with no exhaust piping in it was rather loud and I didn’t want to piss off the neighbors!

The priorities for the next session:

- Replace drivers side manifold
- Install side exit exhaust
- Bleed the brakes
- Wire secondary fuel pump to switch in dash

Basically we need to get the car “roadworthy” so we can take it out and make sure it runs consistently for a couple hours at least!