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By Andy Kress It was a good weekend! A little rain, but otherwise mostly excellent weather. Of course, it was Mother's Day weekend, which caused some problems, if you know what I mean. Seemed like there were a lot of women, families, dogs, etc. there this weekend. It was a pretty nice, festive atmosphere. There were two Milanos there (the only Alfas), ours (Scuderia Limoni) and Greg Sefarian’s (Team Pro-Crash-Duh-Nation) from Long Island. After working hard on the car to get it ready for the New Jersey race “The Real Hoopties of New Jersey”, I had not spent any time with the crew for the two weeks before this race. Lon Barratt had done a lot of good work on the cage and some other safety stuff. New tires were mounted. Finally, they had removed the fuel tank nozzle restrictor so we could actually fuel the car quickly. I timed a 5-gallon fuel dump in 25 seconds — not the usual 4 minutes. Outstanding! We were good to go. On Saturday, both cars ran well. For most of the afternoon, Greg ran in second. Our team got pushed down early on when someone who shall remain nameless (but whose initials are Kevin Redden) earned a couple of black flags that dropped us down to 12th. Then Greg had a power steering failure of some sort — PS fluid on the hot headers and copious oil smoke bought him a black flag. In the paddock, after a few minutes of lookin', talkin', and one cut power steering belt later, they were back out. That cost a few laps and by the end of the day Greg was in 7th place, I think — but with bigger biceps. We were in 9th. Not too bad, we had ‘em where we wanted ‘em. At the Saturday evening break, our car had exhaust issues and we decided that we needed to replace the front pads. Fortunately, Greg's car was good and his crew could concentrate on the important stuff: preparing and serving their now-traditional Italian dinner of spaghetti, meatballs, garlic bread, and salad for everyone — and I mean everyone! There must have been 30-40 people going through there. Beer and wine in cheesy straw basket bottles — most excellent. I can assure you it is real hard to be on your back under the car while smelling all that cooking on the grill. Kevin and I were, shall we say, motivated to finish up. The Sunday racing started at 9 am. At 8 am, the track P.A. system played “Bang Your Head" by Quiet Riot, which seemed appropriate. There was a driver meeting at 8:30, and at 9 am it was, “Gentlemen, try to start your engines!" Greg decided to change his Milano’s rear pads before they went out and managed to get it done just in time to send his hot shoe Ryan out. Whilst Kevin and Brian Shorey finished the exhaust work under the car, I replaced the front wheels and noticed a lot of front wheel bearing play. We took the wheels off, checked, and there was more play than looked reasonable. We tightened things up as best we could, but they were still a little too loose for peace of mind. Kevin bravely (foolishly? Coraggio il mio figlio) went out for the first session but came in after about an hour with the driver side front wheel rumbling. Really glad he had the good sense to come in right away. We swapped the inner bearing (fortunately, I had brought a bunch of that stuff with me), and sent him back out. The frickin’ bearing was complete toast (parts fell out while handling it), and we were in 10th place. So we have a new policy (some are slow learners): After each race, repack and retighten the bearings. Replace each season. Things went reasonably well for both teams. Team Pro-Crash-Duh Nation was flying, and then Ryan got black flagged for something or other. I never did find out why, since he was too hot about it to get a good explanation. Brian came in during his session (next to last of the race) with a hell of a whine from the transaxle area. Didn’t sound like gear whine; more like a supercharger whine. Checked in the engine bay and the supercharger was quiet, so that wasn’t it. Too bad — had to be the gear box. Greg offered that he’d had a similar whine from his tranny, which turned out to be the rod that the reverse idler rides on. When the box gets really hot over a long time, the rod moves a little, and the gear rubs on the back of 5th gear. Or something like that. In any case, that did not sound too bad, and whatever it was, we were not going to fix it now. We elected to send Brian back out for as long as it lasted. Brian finished his shift without further incident. Lon went out for the final session and the box lasted the whole way and gradually got quieter — in fact, Lon did his fastest lap in this session. At the end of day, Greg’s car finished 4th and we were 6th — but a lot of laps behind 1st. Hell, everybody was a lot of laps behind 1st. 2 through 7 were very tightly bunched, with mostly only a lap or two between them all. It was a fairly small turnout as these things go — about 60 cars at the start. The track was in the chicane/chicane configuration. The fastest cars (only a couple) had best laps in the 1:28s. Then a handful were in the 1:29s. Our best was 1:30.177 (Lon) and Kevin had a fast lap just one hundredth of a second behind. On Saturday, our drivers ran 2-hour stints; on Sunday, the sessions were 1 hour, 45 minutes. There was the typical LeMons stuff. A Toyota Supra (naturally aspirated straight 6) from Vermont that ran in the 1:28s, but went through the two sets of used(!!!) brake pads they’d brought by 2pm on Saturday. I think they managed to get something from AutoZone and kept soldiering on until about 4 when their engine blew. The car was frickin' fast. It screamed by pretty much everybody in a straight line, and it wasn’t bad everywhere else, except maybe under braking — a little problem there. The Kielbasa Kids’ Honda (now team Goin' Nuclear: "Nuclear power, the other white heat") flew to a pretty smooth and painless victory. I think they were 20+ laps ahead of the 2nd place car. At the presentation ceremony, Jay Lamm (the 24 Hours of LeMons big poobah) made a special point of how the judges had been all over the car and it was completely legit — a stock beater Honda Civic with slight tuning, smoothly and cleanly driven to first place. Right. The frickin’ car ran by everybody — straights and corners. It certainly is well driven. There was the usual load of LeMons madness. For example, the Honda Accord across from us blew its engine early on Saturday. They finally located a suitable donor in Rhode Island, bought it, drove(?) it to Loudon during the night, plucked the engine, and installed it. They got the thing on the track at about lunch time. “Team Milf Racing” ... maybe it was karma. The Scuderia Limoni drivers reported that the Milano brakes were awesome, all day long (thank you, Carbotech). All of the previous brake problems seem to be well behind us. Also, this set of tires seems to have a lot more grip than the last set (same Dunlop Star Sport Direzzas or whatever the heck they are). Maybe Dunlop QC is not what it needs to be. We were glad for the 6th place, considering the wheel bearing and gear box problems. The exhaust held up, but we need to change the stupid flange joint to either the ball swivel type like on the other down tube, or just get a slip fit. All in all, it was a lot of fun. We’re now getting the car ready for the Summit Point “Capitol Offense” race — on Father's Day weekend. (Can't catch a break with the family weekend schedule conflicts.) For those of you keeping track, this is where we had our engine melt down (literally) after an hour of racing last year. Sooo ugly. However, those who managed to keep their Milanos running reported that the track suited the cars well (or vice versa). This is also the track that the winning team ran an S500 Mercedes and managed to convince the organizers that they only had $500 in it! Should be fun. Things to do include (but not limited to):
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(Click on the thumbnails below for a larger view, and then
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