Clegko's Blog

FinalGear Racing 2010: New Car, Same Crazies

My teammate for the FinalGear Racing Team just posted the first pictures of our new car over on the FinalGear Forums, and I thought I should post them all here for you lot to have a gander at, as well as the press release that goes along with them. Enjoy!

Final Gear Racing returns to the track in 2010.

By PunisherBass

Hello my fellow Final Gear members, I finally bring official news on what we’re doing in 2010 when it comes to the 24 Hours Of LeMons and the story of just what the hell went down at The Lamest Day in 2009. Let me deal with the ugly part of this first. Going back to the very first LeMons Final Gear did in 2007 there had been some problems between team members over things both on and off the track, and at The Lamest Day everything came to a head.

It started with almost all the work on the Buick being pushed back till the very last second. The car didn’t arrive at the track till 4PM an hour before inspections closed. When it rolled into the pits that afternoon it still didn’t have new front brakes or roll cage padding. The race seat, lights, radiator, rear brakes, kill switch, and several other things were done either the previous night or that very morning.

There was also a known electrical issue and a bad CV boot, neither problem was fixed that night nor were the new front brakes installed. Serj, who was made Captain, said not to fix either and that everything would be fine, while the Crown Vic had it’s front and rear brakes done. Because of this the front brakes glazed over after 40 minutes of racing and had to be replaced, a few hours later the CV boot gave out and that had to be fixed along with the now major electrical problem. These issues were totally preventable but were not dealt with because I don’t know why.

The next set of problems was of a personal nature. Serj had a friend of his, who we’ll just call “Chad”, helping on the car. Chad showed up to the race on Saturday and instantly began acting like a complete and total asshole. He continuously refereed to the LeSabre as “his” car, ordering people around, and questioning everyone about their race qualifications as if he had to approve of them first before they would be allowed to drive “his” car. To say this annoyed the other team members to no end is an understatement. Things ended with two team members going back to the hotel and not returning, while I drove 600 miles back home due to a family emergency.

NOTE: That is what happened from where I was standing. There is more to the story, but at this point we just want to put it behind it us and move on.

So after that debacle, we will be using this as an opportunity to make some changes and have a clean fresh start for Final Gear Racing. Starting with…

1: The #42 Ford Crown Vic and #24 Buick LeSabre will no longer be run under the Final Gear banner or have any association with Final Gear at all. The same goes for Serj and his brother. That means we’ll be getting a new car, which I’ll get to a minute.

2: We will not be accepting donations this year. After you, the Final Gear community, were so generous last time, it’s not right to ask you to reach into your pockets once again.

3: We want the Final Gear community to be able to get more involved with the team. So in the near future we will be holding a contest for people to help design a new Final Gear Racing logo and shirt.

4: Driver selection will be handled much differently, more details on that later.

Now onto our 2010 LeMons plans. Previously the most races we had run in a year was two, this year we plan to run three.

June 19-20
Capitol Offense (Washington DC/West Virginia)
Summit Point Motorsports Park, Summit Point WV

September 11-12
Yee-Haw, It’s LeMons Texas (Houston TX)
MSR Houston, Angleton TX

October 23-24
Rod Blagojevich Never-Say-Die 500 (Chicago IL)
Autobahn Country Club, Joliet IL

The last race in Chicago is one we’d like to focus on as the first true USA Final Gear meet ever. We figure it’s location would allow a lot more people to come out when they couldn’t in the past.

And now for what you’ve all been waiting for, meet the newest member of the family…

That engine is powering a 1997 Pontiac GTP, possibly the best LeMons car we’ve ever had. If you think I’m crazy for saying that, let me give you some reasons why I’m not.

*pic*

1: It’s a second gen W body, it offers a far superior suspension setup compared to anything we’ve had in the past. The platform has a good selection of aftermarket parts that we can take advantage of, in the past we were limited to OEM spec.

2: It’s powered by a SUPERCHARGED Series II 3800 V6. It’s the big brother of the NA 3.8 we had in the LeSabre, it’s also the same engine I have in my Park Avenue Ultra. It produces 240hp and 280lb ft of tq in stock form, but with a little bit of work they will make 300hp without breaking a sweat. The only downside is that the supercharger requires us to run 93 octane.

3: The transmission is a 4T65E-HD, again the same transmission I have in my Buick. The HD unit was given some beefed up internal bits along with stronger drive shafts and CV joints. These transmissions can also handle over 300hp with no problems, GM used them to backup the LS4 in several cars. In the GTP it features a “performance shift” button that raises the shift points.

4: This will also be the lightest car we’ve ever used. We expect the car to weigh between 2700 and 2800 lbs once it’s stripped out. The LeSabre weighed over 3400lbs and the Crown Vic over 4000lbs. With less weight and more power than ever before, things will be very interesting out on the track.

5: Thanks to the aftermarket, we can replace the stock 11 inch rotors with dual piston 13 inch rotors in the front and 12 inch rotors in the back. We never had options like this with previous cars.

Normally these cars still cost around $2,000 or more depending on their condition, but we lucked out on this one. There are several reasons why we got the car so cheap. First, there was some major snafu on the paperwork and the car can’t be titled for road use which alone rendered the car almost worthless. Second, as you can see from the pictures the paint is in piss poor shape, I’d say atleast 85% of the clear coat is just GONE. Third, this car will not pass an emissions test since the previous owner removed the mufflers and (poorly) welded in some straight pipes. The car also leaks like a sieve in several locations. Put that together and you end up with a car no sane person would want to buy… except us.