New Hampshire Lemons race

[gmreider]

If any of you guys from the New England states are interested , we will have two SAAB entries @ New Hampshire motor speedway on October 23-24-25. The prime mover SAAB is " Norma" #20 from eEuroparts.com and then there is the "other" SAAB 900 from 'PENNA. SAAB MAAB" #13. Norma has seen a lot of action and is a seasoned veteran, but #13 finished in one piece in May @ NJ . and is coming a long way to play. Look for us on the track or North Garage #12. Like all good competitors , we are sharing space.

Looking forward to meeting some new faces and seeing some new SAAB street cars.

[DeLorean]

well, I am looking forward to this as well, should be a good time

[DeLorean]

Of course, the day before I am still getting things together (spare parts, etc). We should be ready though

[Jordan]

Our car is still up on jackstands

[gmreider]

Our car is still up on jackstands

Maybe that means you are preparing it with great precision ?? I'm loading spares in the truck and washing the car later.
Then on the trailer and pointed out the driveway for tomorrows departure.

[Jordan]

We definitely are :)...its just the brakes being bled. Old brake master finally gave out last race.

[DeLorean]

We will have a spare ABS unit in case of this, I am not expecting we'll need it, but most likely it's the original for that car which has well over 200,000 on it. If need be I could have the whole thing swapped in about an hour. Fingers crossed we'll keep our shit together this weekend, and even have a fun time!

[DeLorean]

I just got home from the race late last night, We had couple tech issues.... Day one was great. I drove first. Very exciting with 115 cars on track initially, Frequent yellow flags & quite a few incidents. Very fun, stressful, and fun, fun and fun. Easily one of the most exciting and funnest things in motorsports I have done to date. When I finished the 1st 2 hour leg (and we needed a hot-fuel & driver change), we were running in 7th place overall (135? entries, 115 that actually started)

Adam Goral was observing our first hot fuel of the day and was of the opinion we were doing it all wrong. He was right, as on take off we had lost nearly 20 positions. We need a faster fueling system. Next Driver was Jason, and I'll let him give his impressions, but I think he had a blast too. After he was out of fuel, we changed to our 3rd driver Jon Lausch, and fueled again (after correcting a minor issue)- our exhaust falling off. After he was off, our somewhat slower fuel stops, and slightly slower average lap times (and eeuroparts team also having their own technical issue with their brake master cyl) we were running neck and neck, with the eeuroteam typically averaging about 2-4 seconds faster lap-times than we were, & they were catching up. At the end of day one eeuro was right on us, only 2 positions behind the PA saab maab car, as they also had lost some time due to some brake issues, I think we had an extra 5 minutes or so of track time so we were still ahead. At the end of day one we were both still easy contenders for top 20...

As Jordan said to us at the beginning of day 2 "It's all fun and games untill someone breaks the trans" - I figured, Meh... We have a trans cooler and our trans was rebuilt with the best of the best parts we had and it was working perfectly. It was raining Sunday morning, and that really made things interesting out there. I drove first again, and started gaining some positions as soon as I went out there. About an hour or so into Sunday, the "bang" happened. As I was charging up the hill getting by some traffic, full throttle in 3rd, 3rd gear exited the situation and the trans instantly started making loud rock tumbler noises.

That was that for us. I had a spare trans, however we figured that we would probably have the car back together just in time for the checkered flag to drop, so we figured it was not worth all the effort for a few minutes of racing.

I still can't wait for the next time, and I am still hopeful we can get a trans in this thing that can hold together, the car is proving itself to be quite reliable in every way at this point except for the dang transmission.

[Crazyswede]

I just got home from the race late last night, We had couple tech issues.... Day one was great. I drove first. Very exciting with 115 cars on track initially, Frequent yellow flags & quite a few incidents. Very fun, stressful, and fun, fun and fun. Easily one of the most exciting and funnest things in motorsports I have done to date. When I finished the 1st 2 hour leg (and we needed a hot-fuel & driver change), we were running in 7th place overall (135? entries, 115 that actually started)

Adam Goral was observing our first hot fuel of the day and was of the opinion we were doing it all wrong. He was right, as on take off we had lost nearly 20 positions. We need a faster fueling system. Next Driver was Jason, and I'll let him give his impressions, but I think he had a blast too. After he was out of fuel, we changed to our 3rd driver Jon Lausch, and fueled again (after correcting a minor issue)- our exhaust falling off. After he was off, our somewhat slower fuel stops, and slightly slower average lap times (and eeuroparts team also having their own technical issue with their brake master cyl) we were running neck and neck, with the eeuroteam typically averaging about 2-4 seconds faster lap-times than we were, & they were catching up. At the end of day one eeuro was right on us, only 2 positions behind the PA saab maab car, as they also had lost some time due to some brake issues, I think we had an extra 5 minutes or so of track time so we were still ahead. At the end of day one we were both still easy contenders for top 20...

As Jordan said to us at the beginning of day 2 "It's all fun and games untill someone breaks the trans" - I figured, Meh... We have a trans cooler and our trans was rebuilt with the best of the best parts we had and it was working perfectly. It was raining Sunday morning, and that really made things interesting out there. I drove first again, and started gaining some positions as soon as I went out there. About an hour or so into Sunday, the "bang" happened. As I was charging up the hill getting by some traffic, full throttle in 3rd, 3rd gear exited the situation and the trans instantly started making loud rock tumbler noises.

That was that for us. I had a spare trans, however we figured that we would probably have the car back together just in time for the checkered flag to drop, so we figured it was not worth all the effort for a few minutes of racing.

I still can't wait for the next time, and I am still hopeful we can get a trans in this thing that can hold together, the car is proving itself to be quite reliable in every way at this point except for the dang transmission.

were you running a limited slip in that transmission? think it was a gear tooth failure?

[DeLorean]

It was an open diff stock 91+ trans, we had looked at everything very carefully before we put it together and pretty much used the best of what we had to build it. The most annoying part of the failure was absolutely no warning signs, no odd noises, no shifting issues that I experienced. It was working just fine, shifted great, and then it just blew up Just after it happened I pulled the side cover, it's the typical failure. Just cleaned all the teeth right off 3rd gear.

[Geoff]

Too bad about the gearbox. That seems to be a pretty common issue, boosting uphill in a car with a seemingly good transmission and then, "tink" you have a rock tumbler.

I thought about coming by to check things out but I had so much to get done this past weekend I didn't end up leaving the house. Plus spectator admission was $30 so I was having a hard time convincing myself it was worth $60 for the two of us to come say hello to you goons

[Jordan]

Let us know next time Geoff and we can probably smuggle you guys in.

[Luke]

Sounds like both teams had great weekend even with the unfortunate gearbox issue. I bet if you look at the cluster gear 4th wasn't far behind. One of reasons I gave up on a turbo motor in a Saab race car. Of course then I found out that the only thing less reliable than a 5 spd trans under a turbo was an 11:1 B motor.

[tirediron]

glad you guys had fun. i intended on coming up but a 5 hour drive back home from ny on sunday morning didn't let it happen.

my friends turbo Volkswagen broke at least one trans and a few halfshafts also. of course a trans in one of those can be changed in about an hour pretty easily.

[Jordan]

Was that the matte black car with big flares? That car was stupid fast...