[Racer Duck]

After receiving several requests and procrastinating for a while, I've finally decided to "go public" with a thread that sort of chronicles our (my racing team's) experiences in short track racing beginning with the 2008 season. I'm a little late in getting this started as we just completed the 3rd race of the season last night, but will get you caught up as quickly as I can.

Let me first state, that being on the staff at GoTeamsGo has opened my eyes about how many racing fans are also fans of other athletic sports. And it seems many folks will root for someone they know, even though they may not know much about the sport that person is participating in. I'm not asking you to root for my and my team, but to take a chance on liking another sport you may not know much about.

With that said, I will be posting one or more "replies" to this thread as well as some pictures for each race we attend. I'll also try to answer any questions you may have about the class(es) we race in, the cars and how they're different, or any other (pertinent) question.

To get you started, I'm posting the link to our team's website. I created this site about 5 years ago and recently did some housecleaning and updating. There's still more to do, so don't be surprised if it changes over time. Our website is Lovellmotorsports.com.

[Racer Duck]

In the interest of speed, I'm copying the account of the first race of the season that I posted at out website along with a picture of the car. (For the uninitiated, make sure you have your "magic decoder rings" with you, 'cause I'm gonna use phrases you may not understand and will not explain unless you ask -> don't be afraid to ask questions!!!)

The first race of the season we participated in was the Texas Super Racing Series (TSRS) -a Late Model series- season opener at Thunderhill Raceway in Kyle, Texas (just south of Austin.) This particular race date was shared with the only NASCAR Campers World West race in Texas in 2008. As such, the TSRS race was the "opening act" for the NASCAR race. Following is my account of the weekend posted at our website.

WOW! We finally got everything together and made the first TSRS race of the season with the Late Model. Though we showed up at the track for practice and qualifying on Friday with a short list of items to do, we were able to get everything done and make the show. If you look at the pictures in the Gallery you'll see there are no decals on the car in the first and 2nd shot (except for the numbers, that is.) The sponsor decals as well as the contingency decals didn't show up 'till Saturday!

After qualifying (22nd of 26), we decided the setup was not going to work and we needed to take the car back to the shop (less than 15 miles) and change it. We had tried a new style setup called Big Bar Small Spring, or "Big Bar", and never got any time to test it. In practice it became clear we needed much more time experimenting with this setup to get it right. Firday night we completely switched the setup to the more conventional "Big Spring" setup. Plus we were experiencing some vibration that we believed was caused by the drive shaft. Constructing a rear transmission bracket took care of that problem.

Saturday we had to start the race last because we took the car off-track after qualifying. We also didn't get any practice time on the new setup so we had no real idea whether we'd gotten everything as it should be or not.

The race was a 50 lapper with a 30 minute time limit 'cause the NASCAR Camper's World Series was the headline event and we were the "opening act." And they were gonna be on live TV. I saw some cameras going during our race, but don't know if anything was ever, or will ever be, televised.

So, how'd we do? Very respectible for where we started and the fact we were on a green setup: we finished 17th. And even more important, nothing was torn up! Hardly a scratch on the car! We have some issues to resolve before the next race, but they're all minor.

Here's a pic if our Late Model shortly after we got to the track Friday. Notice the complete lack of decals other than the number.


FYI: the body is a 2008 ABC Dodge Challenger body from ARP.

[Racer Duck]

Our 2nd race was at Houston Saturday.

We qualified 13th and finished 5th. You can find a write up of the race at Texas Speedzone. Qualifying results are in post #2 and race description is in post #9 which also included the unofficial results.

As soon as I have pictures I'll post them along with a more personal perspective of the event.

[In the Pink]

That was one helluva race!!! I wish I had known while I was watching it that you were in it. I kept listening to the line up for someone from Lockhart, since I didn't know your name, but I never heard Lockhart mentioned. Would love to hear your perspective!

[Racer Duck]

Thanks Pink. My son's the driver .. his name is Cory Lovell. Picture of the car is a couple posts back.

I thought you were gonna be in New Mexico or someplace like that?

[Racer Duck]

I had forgotten I had uploaded this pic.
THR 4-19-08 014 small.jpg
This is from Driver Introductions at the first race. The guilty parties caught in the act are (from left to right): Rick (crew chief & sponsor), Chris (fiberglass & mechanic), Justin (my grandson and our "runner"), Daniel (mechanic), Charlie (me, patriarch, sheet metal, sanity, day-time unpaid help) and Cory (driver, master of all things automotive, our guiding light.) Not pictured: Billie (Cory's wife, keeper of all things important, timekeeper, radios, food, pictures - she's taking the picture) and James, aka Jamie, (spotter, mechanic, fabricator - he's up in the spotter's area.)

[clutch]

RD, that is sooo cool....wanna come over there and watch you guys run a race or two

[Racer Duck]

Originally Posted by clutch

RD, that is sooo cool....wanna come over there and watch you guys run a race or two

thanks. I'd love to have you. I'll even buy the BBQ!!!

[Racer Duck]

Funny how reality pops up when you least expect it, isn't it?

Our last race was a fairy tale and we sort of thought everything was mostly OK with the car. After all, we finished 5th and didn't get a mark on the car. What could possibly be wrong with it, right?

Unfortunately, it's a "racecar" .. that means there's always something...

During our rest period we discovered we put the rear end together wrong. Which is probably why we've had that vibration. Before we tear it apart, we need to make a tool to adjust the "locker". We'll do all that next week, after the race Saturday.

Tonight we "scaled" the car and in the process found several things that weren't as they should have been: one of the deck lid pins was just about to fall out; a fastener was missing off the quick change cover and several others were "messed up"; the adjustment on the panhard bar was way out of wack; and we think our radiator fan is on it's last leg... Plus there's a "little" thing: the rubber insulating pad at the driver's feet came off and needs to be re-glued. Also, my son decided the decal on the brake bias adjuster knob was wrong - it showed the wrong direction for increasing forward brake, so we had to hunt down the right decal and get it installed (don't really know why, he can't read it when he's racing anyway!)

We also have had time to digest the info we'd gotten at the track in the form of "helpful hints". As a result we've changed our left side shocks to some that have "adjustments" for compression and rebound. We've set them up with the starting benchmark and will see where we need to go from there .. at the track.

Last weekend our engine guy packed his camper and went to the coast. In the process, he was trying to "clear out" his shop a little (I think he was missing his fishing gear or something), so we went and got all our "stuff" that had been underfoot for a while. That "stuff" was our brand new motor for the Super Late Model. Actually, the brand new part is the short block (our HMS crank is the only thing that survived from the last motor) .. the upper end has been rebuilt and we have lots of pretty, shiny new stainless steel valves (we decided to go the "cheaper" route and forgo the titanium valves at $100 a pop!) We also decided to have the front clip replaced by our local Lefthander rep, which means we need to take everything off the front of the car: fenders, bumper, air ducts, wiring, plumbing, brake lines, and doors. Also discussed doing a complete new paint job .. a plain simple white. But we've got so much to do to get it back in race-ready condition, a paint job is the least of what we need to do.

We're hoping we have found all the grimlins in the Late Model and that the car performs as well or better than the last race.

One last thing. Our Late Model practice and qualifying lap times are recorded at MyLaps as well as the race results. Just search for "TSRS" or "Texas Super Racing Series" and look for my son, Cory Lovell.

As I was reading this post over looking for errors, it suddenly dawned on me that I might have confused some of you: we have 2 race cars - one is a Late Model and one is a Super Late Model. We're currently racing the Late Model. The Super has been sitting up for a couple years because the local series (ROMCO which became USRA) went away (closed it's doors) and the only SLM series we can race in are in Denver or the Mobile-Pensacola area .. a long drive for a weekend... But we've decided to give it one more go and see if we can be competitive.

[clutch]

You ran 5th, she still looked purty.......and then you broke it back into pieces!

Racing is time a time consuming and expensive exercise huh? It must be rewarding though, when your efforts are reflected at the track

Thanks for that update RD

[Racer Duck]

Originally Posted by clutch

You ran 5th, she still looked purty.......and then you broke it back into pieces!

Racing is time a time consuming and expensive exercise huh? It must be rewarding though, when your efforts are reflected at the track

Thanks for that update RD

didn't break it, just found some places where it was "stressed"

Racing can be as expensive or as inexpensive as you choose. If you are the kind of person who has to have a good looking car, then the cost goes up proportionally. If you are the kind of person who is always trying to improve your car and your talents, again the costs go up proportionally.

Without getting into the "majors" like ARCA, NASCAR, etc., the national traveling series are the most expensive (ASA, NASCAR Camping World, WoO , USAC Silver Crown, etc.), then the local traveling series like our TSRS series.

The most expensive car to race in a local or regional traveling series is a Super Late Model .. usually weighing between 2500 lbs and 2900 lbs on 10 inch tires with a 600+ hp engine and lots of "exotic" things like magnesium bellhousings, mini clutches with reverse mount starters, gun drilled axles, aluminum drive shafts, lightweight body panels, multiple ignitions and dry sumps that cause the costs to skyrocket. But ask anyone who's watched them run and they'll tell you it really gets your adrenalin up! You can imagine what it's like if your racing instead of watching!

[Bob Tanner]

Speaking of...

I couldn't make it due to a family obligation but someone told me they thought T. Wade won last week"s Miller race here in Mobile? Correct?

[Racer Duck]

Originally Posted by Bob Tanner

Speaking of...

I couldn't make it due to a family obligation but someone told me they thought T. Wade won last week"s Miller race here in Mobile? Correct?

Maybe they confused T.Wade with Chris Davidson .. they're both SLM shoes from Houston. Chris is Greg's son and Greg has been campaigning in the south for decades!!!

Last time we saw Chris, we asked him about someone to put our quick change together "right". He said he'd do it for us .. but we never followed up. Probably should have .. we're beginning to think it's a big part of our performance problems at the moment.

[Racer Duck]

Quick results from last night: we qualified 19 of 21 (very disappointing, but we were on old rubber so some of it was understandable) and managed an 11th place finish, almost unscathed (a slight bump from a good friend who finished just in front of us.) Full results at MyLaps. Gory details to follow .. after I recover from exhaustion

[Racer Duck]

Figured I'd better get this done before I got busy and forget.

This past Saturday we had our 3rd race of the season in our local Late Model series. It was held at our home track which happens to be only 15 miles away. When we pulled into the pits just before lunch, we automatically started looking for available spots in the "low rent section" of the pits, figuring the ones with concrete pads were already taken by those who came to Friday night practice. Imagine our surprise when the "pit boss" put us in one of the prime spots (with a concrete pad) right next to the tech area, pit road, snack bar, and restrooms. Never thought we'd be granted that kind of honor. But we have a good looking car, don't cause trouble, and try to keep our pit area cleaned up so I guess it was "our turn."

There were only two 10 minute practice sessions and we were gaining on it, but still were not "there". In fact, after we'd changed a couple shocks and the sway bar we went out for the last minutes of the last practice session only to be given the checkered flag (session's over) as we were coming around on our first lap.

Then came 2 hours of meetings. Yeah, that's right. They had meetings for each class in the garage and no one on the track for 2 solid hours. I found an older friend and we kibitzed for about an hour in his son-in-law's trailer (his son-in-law is our millionaire friend who we helped get his car setup last year - he finished just in front of us in the race later that night.)

And so went our day. Boiling hot (luckily the trailer we were borrowing had A/C and offered some shade, but I still got a bit too much sun on the arms and back of the neck), boring, and we weren't as good as we'd hoped.

Qualifying went a bit worse than we'd hoped: 19th of 21. A downer. But we were on old tires and knew that was part of our poor showing.

In the race we stayed on the lead lap as long as we could, but the two leaders were running away from the pack by almost half a second a lap. And our car seemed to get worse (looser) as the race went on. When it was over we'd managed to only loose the one lap and finished just behind our friend in 11th. No damage to the car, but our friend was leaking rear end lube and the entire front of the car and windshield is covered with red spatters (shows up really well on a white car!)

While we were standing around after our race (we had the first race after the intermission followed by another 4 or 5 after us) shooting the breeze, we had an unusual event: a pretty little girl about 13 or so came up and asked for my son's autograph. Actually she didn't know who drove the car, but wanted the "driver of that car" to autograph her program. Usually the fans show up in groups, but this girl was all by herself.

Sunday we finally decided that a major part of our problem (besides the old tires) has got to be the way the rear end was put together and the "locker". Checking the locker's website confirmed it's "broke" .. so we're getting ready to pull the rear end, tear it apart, rebuild the locker and adjust it according to the manufacturer's specifications (imagine actually following directions!!!), then reassemble the rear end (again following the manufacturer's directions) and put it back into the car.

We also have a small oil leak in the front main seal that requires we pull the engine to fix. (The whole underside of the car is oily. Yuck!)

The next race is this coming Saturday in Wichita Falls and we'd already decided we weren't going to go. Part of the reason is the highway patrol is starting to enforce a law that requires 1 ton truck drivers pulling a trailer to have a CDL license, a log book, and TxDOT numbers. My son-in-law, who has a good sized welding business, recently had one of his trucks (a dually pulling a flat bed trailer) stopped in Wichita Falls and shut down until he could get a CDL driver up there to drive it back to Austin. Both the truck and trailer are brand new, wasn't overloaded nor speeding .. just a routine stop .. and they nailed him for $2000 in fines. We understand from some of the other racers that the Florida cops around Pensacola are doing the same thing.

So, we're taking a different approach: we're gonna race an asphalt modified locally (it's a lot cheaper!) We have a friend who's keeping his race cars at our shop; one is a Super Late Model and the other is a modified. The modified's engine is blown and there's some body damage from the ensuing wreck. Turns out our Late Model engine is completely legal in the modified and our friend has been wanting us to take his modified out and race it. So, this evening we moved the 4 race cars around so we can start getting the modified ready to race in 2 weeks. Meanwhile we're gonna take our time (maybe as much as a month) getting the Late Model ready.

Plus we're preparing for one or two more additions to our "car lot" .. we have a line on another Super Late Model in North Carolina that might be available for almost hauling it away. If it's as good as our friend says, we plan to replace our SLM with it since ours needs a front clip. Then we'll take our SLM and convert it to a Late Model over the winter and probably sell our current Late Model. And there's some body swapping that needs to happen where, basically, we're gonna bring our friend's SLM up to date body-wise so he can run Mobile and Pensacola and use his body on our SLM turned Late Model 'cause it's legal in the local series. If we don't get the NC SLM, we'll buy a new chassis and body with the money we make off selling the Late Model. And we're looking at buying an enclosed trailer for the longer trips (we have an open trailer we usually use at the local track.)

There's other things going on that could work to our benefit also. But it's too early to talk about them. Now if we could only find some sponsors!