Day 0

It's friday, the day before the 24 hours of lemons. There's a practice session at altamont raceway today. I take a day off work while Jason takes a half day. Our plan was to finish up the car, get it down to hayward to get an alignment at Motorsports Technique, since Jack said he would sponsor us an alignment, then head to Altamont Raceway to get a practice session in. That pretty much went out the window when we were still trying to get the car buttoned up, we didn't get a chance to even get the car on the trailer until the sun was setting. As soon as we drove it on the trailer, we notice a pool of water under the trailer. The water pump was leaking! It looked like it was leaking from the hose, so I grab a screw driver and try to tighten up the clamp. It's already tight, so I really crank down on the hose clamp until I feel like I'm about to break the clamp, then the leak stops. Hmm, we're gonna need to keep an eye out on that. It now starts to rain, and we start to put a tarp over the car and secure it with bungee cords. We then start organizing our spare parts, tools, welder, etc. to throw in the truck. By the time we get everything sorted out and loaded up in the truck it's completely dark. So much for the alignment or practice, looks like we're flying blind and doing a parking lot alignment job. In about 2 miles, our tarp we put on the car almost flies off because it's acting like a parachute. We stop on the side of the road and use tie downs, thinking that it won't stretch like bungee cords. That lasted about 2 miles before half the tarp lets loose and is now flapping against the side of the car. We stop over at home depot to suvey the damage, and notice that the metal o rings ripped right out of the tarp. We go grab one more tarp and decide this time to put it inside the car in between the roll cage. That seemed to do the trick, and we no longer have any more tarps taking off and plastering itself onto car's windshield.

We roll into the Fairfield Inn in Tracy dead tired. We roll the expensive stuff like the welder and generator into our hotel rooms for safety, and prepare to get to the track as early as possible tomorrow morning.