Building a Vanagon LeMons Race Van

[Alan Brase]

[newfisher]

Good news! Glad you guys are back on the track.....any updates?

[Pondo]

They both finished... but I don't have the details. It was impressive watching the Kommandos on this course.
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85 Weekender WBX

[syncrodoka]

https://www.race-monitor.com/Results/Session/5733059

[insyncro]

As with most "racing", have a spare driveline ready to swap in helps.

[Alan Brase]

[greggearhead]

[Zeitgeist 13]

It's an endurance race, so quickness and cornering is kinda moot if your rig can't make it through to the end.

WBX = 2

Offbrand = 0
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Casey--

'89 Bluestar ALH w/12mm Waldo pump, PP764 and GT2052
'01 Weekender --> full camper
y u rune klassik?

[Tristar Eric]

What an incredible event! And an epic weekend for us.

It all started Friday. We signed up for the test and tune track time. With a 5 mile course, I wanted a bit of seat time to memorize the track. Andrew and I put in some hot laps before the weather decided to turn. The van at this point was really running well.

Saturday morning Seth took the first session. His times were really consistent and by the time he came in we were way up in the overall standings. I was in the van next, and this is when I turned the fastest lap times. A full tank of fuel only got us about 20 laps before the engine would go into fuel starvation from the G forces of the turns. When we would fill we could only get about 10.5 gallons into it.

Andrew was next up, and everything was going well. Then disaster struck. we noticed Andrew hadn't come around in over 8 minutes, when we looked over to the back side of the track we could see him being towed in. He gave us the universal hand gesture of the hand slicing off your neck and we knew we had serious problems.

The engine had completely locked up, that could only mean we lost a major component internally. We huddled and decided to see if we could find a replacement, all the smart phones came out and we got to work.
30 minutes later we had found a guy on Craigs list that had one. Problem he was about 100 miles away. We quickly jumped into the Sprinter and set the cruise control to 85 mph. We arrived to find an Armenian guy that had a small shop space crammed full of engines all the way to the roof!
He had our engine hanging by a chain off of his fork lift. We made the deal and headed back.
It was about 9:30 when we pulled into the gates and it was dark. The track lights turn off at 10:30, luckily Go westy had brought some really good LED shop lights. The swap was on!
When we pulled the pan we noticed a bunch of metal bits, rod cap, piston clips, rings etc. The number 4 rod had spun a bearing, then it broke free, locking the engine solid.
By 2am, we had the new engine in, we washed up and crashed.

7am the next morning we started it up with only one minor error, we swapped the coil plug with the throttle position sensor. eep!
Coolant bleeding went well, and we were on the track at 8am. I took it easy for the first dozen laps, or so I thought. I was actually turning some pretty quick laps. I came in and Andew went out for a full tank, we swapped again, another 10.5 gallons. I ran about 20 laps and was expecting Andrew to be ready to finish off the race. When I met him at the pumps he wasn't in his driving suit... that meant I was going to have to drive another 50 minutes! yikes.
The last few laps were quite interesting, it seemed that some teams were really trying hard at the very end to gain very little, and I managed to get hit twice. Once by a black GTI that didn't notice a giant white and green Vanagon slipping by on the left. He left paint all the way down the right side of the van. The second incident was totally a dick move by an over eager BMW driver that dive bombed me into a corner, as he went by his fender caught the front bumper and ripped it completely off. It went skidding off the track as we crossed the finish line with the checkered flag. I stopped and picked it up on the cool down lap.

Overall a great weekend! Having two Vanagon teams side by side at the track is absolutely awesome. Wish there were more!

We got a lot of compliments and respect from all the drivers and teams. Most of them saying how shocked they are to see a vanagon handle and go as fast as we do.

A huge Thanks to Tom Lengle for building us a locker transaxle for our van. This track was such that we didn't need the locker, but it was peace of mind to know that we had it if we needed it. The transaxle worked flawlessly the entire weekend. Thanks Tom!

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Vanagon/Transporter flares here: www.terrawagen.com
[email protected]

[dhaavers]

So fun! Just...yeah.


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86 White Wolfsburg Westy Weekender
"The WonderVan"
<EDITED TO PROTECT INNOCENT PIXELS>

[Tristar Eric]

Here's some video footage from Sunday with our new engine.

I was following Go-westy on a warm up lap...

Enjoy!



Link

_________________
Vanagon/Transporter flares here: www.terrawagen.com
[email protected]

[dhaavers]

So fun! My family has now confirmed my crazed obsession for having watched this twice through...

Who's driving? Nice job getting into the paint for the better/best line...I cheered out loud when you got past the Westafarians!

Thanks so much for posting this - other than my job, the best 14 minutes of my day so far!

- Dave
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86 White Wolfsburg Westy Weekender
"The WonderVan"
<EDITED TO PROTECT INNOCENT PIXELS>

[dobryan]

Nice!

Someone needs to tell the driver of the westfarian the meaning of late apex.

Your lines looked great.
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Dave O
'87 Westy w/ 2002 Subaru EJ25 and Peloquin TBD

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." Robert Louis Stevenson

MD>Canada>AK>WA>OR>CA>AZ>UT>WY>SD
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=620646

Building a bus for travel in Europe (euroBus)
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=695371

The Western Syncro build
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=746794

[Tristar Eric]

That was me driving, this was the beginning of Sunday. The idea was that I was going to follow GW and then do a lap at 80% so they could see the faster line. When the traffic bunched up and the yellow flag dropped, I took about 13 spots while everyone was sleeping!

I turned the fastest lap at a 4:01 and change. I think the fastest GW lap was close to 4:08, not enough to make up the 27 laps we were down Sunday morning. I think by the end of the day we took 10 back, a few from them still having issues with leaking fuel, and one off road excursion.

The team work between the two teams is absolutely amazing, we all pitch in to keep the Vans running and on the track.

I need to shout out to all the sponsors, Terrawagen, Burley Motorsports, T3 technique ( amazing front sway bar ) Tom's Syncro shop, Van Cafe, Go-Westy ( new diff ), Weddle, Seth's Garage, Smallcar Performance,
Shaun Supanich ( the Euro siren ), Craigs list! hope I didn't forget anyone.

Next race vs GW is in December at Sears Point. See you there!

Eric
_________________
Vanagon/Transporter flares here: www.terrawagen.com
[email protected]

[WestyBob]

My palms were sweating on that 13 position capture

[vegpedlr]

[carl4x4]

well done on the event This in-car video from an Miata has a few seconds of following you: https://youtu.be/hUNYJTGvXco
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1969 UK Karmann Ghia build http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=518789&highlight=

[Waldi]

Nice job from all !
Fun to follow both teams on the events.

I would like to see a mTDI powered Sika driving circles around you ;P
If somebody has the cash, it would be a pleassure for me to build one and pull it over the atlantic

Did anyone of you calculate the lost time on fueling against a diesel, who needs the half of fuel ?

[vwlovr]

good report Eric, although that last stretch you said you were going to come back and top off the tank, hence why i wasn't suited up...besides you deserved to see that checkered flag!

anyway it was insane fun per usual, despite the long night on saturday, here's a few pics i have of the weekend...

the carnage...

i felt pretty bad about blowing the motor, after being in the car when the clutch grenaded in the first race i was starting to feel like a bad luck charm. thankfully when i'm not blowing up shit, i'm at least turning pretty fast times. I ended up with a personal best of like 4:05:3, not far behind eric's insane 4:01:8 lap. next time we'll have to get a 3.0L subi in there and get in the sub 4's.

the late night install...

the crazy engine warehouse in sacramento...

oh, and after the first race i felt like i needed to do something awesome to thank eric for the chance to race (and then mechanically destroy) his awesome van, so I made him a LEGO version of our race van...

[vwlovr]