Test Day Complete & Car In One Piece!

Some of the crew made it down to Wakefield Park for the innaugral test day of our lemon. Besides the 25km/h test run around the car park this was the first time the car had been driven in many years, and we sustpect the first time that the car has stretched its legs in anger... and she performed like a true champion in the making!

With the exception of the throttle being stuck open momentarily (it was promptly fixed) the car car didn't miss a beat all day. The lads managed to squeeze out 72 laps over a few different sessions, with Luc, Matt, Jase and Scotty all managing to punch out some laps and get valuable time behind the wheel.

Whilst it was a great deal of fun we did learn some very valuable data in the process.

We now know;

1) She works! We have absolutely no doubt that the '24 hours of LeMons' will be a race of attricion. Reliability (and not speed) is likely to decide who is in the top few teams during the event. Event organisers have indicated that there's going to be a 'large' number of cars enter, so the race will be like dodgem cars on steroids for the first few hours. After that we're thinking that a significant part of the field will be eliminated in the first half of the race due to critical component failure. This shake down gave us our first chance to understand what, if anything, is likely to break first!

2) Fuel consumption: Fuel consumption (and therefore total usage) is determined by a few variables, though largely two main elements. 1) Lap times & 2) Engine revs. We were estimating that we'd chew through about 0.4L of ULP per lap by doing lap times between 1m 20s and 1m 25s. To give you an idea, at Wakefield Park a 1600 Formula Ford does about 1m 06s and the 1200 Formula Vee's which Chris and Luc race do about 1m 16s. The quickest lap we managed in the Suzuki Lemon was 1m 18.5s, and that was flat stick with a tail wind! Our original estimate was close, with 1m 22s lap times being about the target we're aiming for and this cost us about 0.36L per lap.

3) Brake and tyre wear. The brake wear was negligable, so we're right with what we have. Tyre wear wasn't too bad either. For us to be in a position to stay on the track and get through 24 hours of racing we think we're going to need to get through two full sets in total.

So all in all a very productive test day which now gives us some areas to focus on as we continue to prep the car.

What's next for us? Two key things;

1) Get the proper race seat fitted. This has to be a proper race seat which allows for the racing harness to be installed.

2) Have the roll cage fitted. The parts have been ordered and it will be fitted over the next few weeks, so watch this space!