Snagged another podium finish. 3rd place at Iowa Speedway in the Chump car series. This was a true 24hr race and what we live for. Our little hamsters have trouble keeping pace but we can be more reliable over the long grueling race than others.

We are off to Gingerman on Friday for our first lemons event of the year!

We tested the car Sunday during a local SCCA autocross event with three drivers. All three finished within .060 of each other. Pretty impressive!  We found a small fule leak so that saved us some time at the track and are ready to start our points races for the 2011 Lemons year!

We have rigged up a mount for a Galaxy Tablet and will be streaming the race live via Justin.tv. Ride in the car for the race! Click ( http://www.justin.tv/freecandyracing ) to watch live feed starting saturday!

We finished 6th at the ChumpCar event at the Iowa Speedway. Would have been 4th if it wasn’t for a pesky ignition switch issue.

Look how sexy we are!

Anyway we are now preparing for our MAM race. Just have to replace a wheel bearing or two and get the brakes back in order and we are good to roll.

Also two drivers from Free Candy will be joining Strange Racing at High Plains Raceway this weekend for a Lemons event. (Chip and Jeremy)

Free Candy is also signing up for the Autobahn event in October! Hope to see you out there.

So, the fear of super hot temperatures is turning us into a bunch of girls.  We made up this home made cool suit pump last year, but the event ended up being cold so we didn’t use it.  The event this weekend is going to be cold, so we decided that it might be worth installing.   

So john showed us all how it’s done and put the cooler into the car for us.  Now to get all the damn shirts made… are you sure we can’t all share?

He even went all out and fabbed up a little switch plate for us,

Thanks John, this looks great, I can’t wait to feel the icy coolness in the 95 degree heat this weekend…

GET READY TO RACE!!!!!

We have been accepted to the Lemons race at MAM this August 28th and 29th.

After spending time fixing our head gasket issue and firing it back up we quickly realized the water pump needed replacing. John hammered this out quickly. It’s pretty amazing what a water pump with 190K miles it looks like.

With some of our suspension updates we needed to make some adjustments to our front fenders.

We are ready for chump car!  The car runs and drives great. The new additions should make us a bit more competitive. Be sure to come on out this weekend and enjoy the excitement of a 24hr endurance race in our backyard!

We are gearing up for the Chump car race in two weeks at Iowa Speedway. Got a few things to do to the car since our last race at Nelson Ledges for Lemons. We have to complete our Head gasket install and a couple minor safety items inside.

We are also registered for MAM with Lemons in August!

Make plans to come on out June 26th and 27th and join us in the paddock at Iowa Speedway!

Well, it survived.  Not only did it survive, it didn’t really have any major issues that I know of the entire day.  I believe all 6 of us were able to flog it and it didn’t seem to have any issues.  Surprisingly, the brakes held up without issue, the engine didn’t kersplode, and it broke down at least 2 times less than Jeremy’s car..

Here’s the Days Events as I saw them.

1.  Arrived, got car rolling on track for first laps.

2.  5 minutes later, realization that the tires are rubbing quite bad, the rusty side digs into the tire more than the “less rusty” side… must be fixed.

3.  Jamie gets a board and starts to pry.

4.  Not having a whole lot of luck, Pat found a sack of hammers, this is a small ass hammer, and would likely be useless for what we’re trying to do.  We need a 3# hammer or something.  (Note: take big hammer and/or sawzall to Nelson)

5.  hammering the rust off, squishing metal, bashing stuff.

6. Back out there for more testing

7.  5 Minutes later, (Little known fact, Jeremy is afraid of the noise a Honda makes when it’s being “tweaked”)

8.  This seemed like a great idea.  See, what was happening here is 2 of them jumped on the car, while another innocent bystander held a 2×4 chunk.  The idea was that when the car came down, it would use the 2×4 to push up on the metal.  I’m ashamed to say this actually worked pretty well.

As a result, the sunroof likely doesn’t open, as the roof has dented in a fair amount where Mikey was jumping on it.  But it doesn’t matter, we got the tires to stop rubbing (mostly anyway)

The car ran like a champ, pretty much as soon as one person brought it back to the paddock, another would hop in and take it right back out. 

Lastly, I got this picture stitched together of all of MAM.  Click this link to get the full size image.

All of these images available at: http://chipthurston.smugmug.com/LeMons/09Aug-MAM-Civic-Shakedown-Pt-I/9373024_yXbAz#627400719_wRtar

-Chip