New for 2004 are the Mad Cow Tech Tips. When we find a new or better way to do something to our Legends cars, we are happy to share the wealth with our fellow competitors. If you have a tech tip you would like to add to the list, please send your suggestion to anthony@madcowmotorsports.com. We will do our best to get your tip added to the list for all to enjoy!
Legends Tech Tips
Shocking News!
At various times, we’ve had people look at the Mad Cow cars, just as we look at other cars, for ideas on how to do things better. One of the things we’ve been asked about occasionally, is why the shocks are mounted upside down. Now, we could tell you that it makes the shock damp differently, but in the words of a famous ex-President, “But that would be wrong!”.
The real reasons have to do with maintenance, and surprisingly, handling. The handling part is probably marginal, but inverting a shock puts more of its weight in the “spring” category, reducing unsprung weight. This helps handling, thought whether or not most Legends drivers can tell is another question. A better reason is to make maintenance easier. It is simpler and faster to adjust the aluminum collars that control ride height when they are inverted.
Now, as to why we sometimes run the rear shocks inside or outside of the frame at different tracks, well, we can’t give away every secret, can we?
The Rest Of The Story
600 Racing has a new safety bulletin that points out the obvious- don’t misalign the holes in the firewall with the holes in your seat for the shoulder belts. Duh.
that’s not our tech tip.
What 600 should have added was to follow the instructions from your seat belt provider that say don’t let the shoulder belts have more than 5 degrees or so of downward angle when the driver is in the car. The problem is that for drivers that are over 5’ 10” or so, using the seat in anything but a 90 degree angle to the floor results in a mismatch between the requirement to run the belts through the existing holes in the seat and firewall and the requirement to maintain the belts at 5 degrees or so from horizontal when in use.
Virtually all of the tall drivers in Legends who use the standard seat holes and the as-delivered firewall holes from 600 will find that their shoulder belts go UP and then DOWN over their shoulders, breaking the 5-degree rule.
So what, you ask? Well, the reason for the rule is that in a serious crash, belts that come up and over and then down over the drivers shoulders will tend to compress the driver down in the seat in a hard impact. That has the real potential in turn to cause a spinal compression, which is often a one-way ticket to paralysis. So there is a real reason to pay attention here.
The solution? Bring the belts over the TOP bar in the cage instead of the second one. Make higher holes in the seat if you need to. And, if necessary, petition 600 for a spacer so you can run the belt higher if you need to.
And That’s the rest of the story (apologies to Paul Harvey)
Lose 10 ugly pounds- instantly, or your money back!
Well, maybe not 10 pounds, but you really didn’t believe that anyway, did you?
Every race team wants to optimize the amount of unsprung weight in the car. Unfortunately for Legends drivers, there is very little you can do—trick lightweight calipers, aluminum rotor hats (indeed, anything but a one-piece iron rotor) and most everything else one might do to reduce unsprung weight is explicitly outlawed by the rulebook. So what’s a racer to do?
One common trick is to take new rotors and shave them down to the minimum thickness. You’ll lose a little thermal mass (bad for road racers, who should look elsewhere for ways to lose weight) but will drop some weight. Better still, you will have dropped that weight from the rotating mass, which should mean better braking (assuming you aren’t loading the rotor to it’s thermal limit) and better acceleration. This little trick won’t give you a length at the end of the straight, but combined with other subtle changes, might make a difference in a race. In a 30-lap race, just 3 hundredths of a second increase per lap gives you almost a second. That might be the difference between “there” and “almost there”.
One caveat: this is arguably illegal. The rulebook says that any attempt to reduce weight by removing metal is prohibited. But it does allow wear to the minimum rotor thickness. Of course, no one can tell if the rotors you have are worn from wearing against the brake pads or worn from being under a rotor lathe. So its up to you- they are “worn” either way, aren’t they?
And you have lost that ugly weight after all!
Mounting new running boards- the easy way
Our Crew Chief for the 34 car is a pretty savvy manufacturing engineer during the day. So when we were putting new running boards on the 34 car (the old ones had begun to look like dried-up taco shells) I looked to Dave for a way to mount the new running boards using the old holes already drilled in the frame. You could of course, just drill new ones, but after a few times you’d have a really ugly frame rail with lots of extra holes that are ugly, yet not big enough to save any measurable weight. The problem, of course, is that if you lay the new running board over the frame rails, you can’t see where the holes are to drill into the running board for the rivets. As expected, Dave Delivered!
Dave’s simple idea was to first remove the old running board, then run a strip of 200 MPH Duct Tape from the inside of the frame rail, over each of the old holes. The existing hole can be felt by running a finger over the tape, and a pen used to trace the exact location of the hole. Repeat for each hole, then pull up the tape from the frame rail, drop the new running board over the frame rail and apply the tape over the running board. You now have a perfect template to drill the new running board! This is one reason why Dave is the #34 Crew Chief.
Legends FAQs
What is a Legends car?
Legends cars are purpose-built race cars constructed by 600 Racing (http://www.600racing.com). The cars are available with 10 different body styles, all from the early NASCAR era of the 1930s and 40s. The cars are rough replicas, but with a modern NASCAR-style chassis, fiberglass body-- and in 5/8 scale. They are about 10 1/2 feet long. The cars all must weigh no less than 1100 pounds empty and at least 1300 pounds with driver. They are powered by versions of the Yamaha XJ 1200 engine, which, in Legends trim yields about 125-130 HP. They all use the standard 5-speed transmission and it is shifted with a sequential shifter. Tires, shocks, suspension design and most everything else is strictly regulated so racers can hope to have the potential for a competitive car with relatively (for racing) very low cost.
The differences, in general, are in the preparation and the driving.
Who can drive a Legends car?
Depending on the track, you can be as young as 14 to run a car. Several drivers compete in their 60s and the Mad Cow Motorsports drivers are a youthful 30’ something and 50’ something this year. New drivers to the series will usually be asked to put yellow tape or paint on their bumpers to identify them to the other drivers on the track. This sometimes feels like more of a target than a warning. J
What's it like to drive a Legends car?
If you've never been racing before, you might not necessarily want to start with a Legends car as they tend (like Formula 1 cars) to be on the knife-edge at the limit. They are hard to recover in a spin (think about a vehicle with a 72" wheelbase and a 60" track and it should be obvious why). And the racing is terrifically close, and at most tracks, pretty hard-fought. The cars have Dodge Viper-like acceleration from rest but run out of steam at about 130 mph, depending on gearing. On the other hand, it's a great series for the young driver with lots of experience in Karting (where, like Legends, momentum is everything) or quarter Midgets. And several current NASCAR stars like Kurt Busch (2004 Nextel Cup Champion) came from the Legends series.
The cars are really fun, but you do have to respect them as they are essentially open-wheel race cars and every season at our home track some people lock tires with the inevitable results (someone ends up in the air- and comes down wrecked bad).
What does it cost to race a Legends car?
This is a question like "how long is a piece of string"- there are answers all over the map. Once you have a car, each season could be run for anywhere from a couple of thousand dollars to as much as $15,000, depending on your appetite for parts, tires, etc. A new car starts at about $15,000 and runs up, depending on what you add to it. A good used car ($8,500 to $12,000) a trailer ($2,500 and up, sometimes WAY up), some tools ($1,000-$3,000) a budget for fuel (about $25 per event for racing fuel), tires (from $500 for a set of 4), a budget for crash parts - and you will need them - and you can run the season. A set of tires can last all season if you don't need to run up front. If you plan on being competitive, plan on at least two sets of tires, or more. Well-maintained engines can last for 2+ seasons with new sealed engines running around $4,000. A rebuild costs around $3,000. A “built” engine begins around $5,000.
Are Legends cars safe?
As far as race cars go, they are really pretty safe. They are built with the traditional NASCAR-style cage/chassis. The suspension bits are designed to dissipate energy as they break off in a wreck, as the best CART and F1 cars are now designed. Our Mad Cow cars run a fire system, which in the teams opinion, should be required. And our drivers use HANS devices (http://www.hansdevice.com) to protect them against the kind of thing that killed Dale Earnhardt. For the statistical point of view, in all the years there has been Legends racing, only two drivers have ever died in a Legends car wreck, which is significant when you consider the great number of cars, the wide range of driver skill sets and the condition of some of the tracks on which cars race.
What do I need to do to a Legends car between races?
You need to check every suspension bolt and engine bolt as these cars are vibration creators like you've never experienced. You should change oil and filter every race or two. Tires, wheels, fuel lines, brake lines, etc need to be checked before every race, as you would with any race car.
In general, the cars are exemplars for the low-maintenance race car. But as with any complex mechanical device that is used hard, it responds well to preventative maintenance.
Do they run regular fuel?
The engines are designed and jetted from the factory to run 91 octane. If you keep stock jets, 93 is fine. You can run race fuel to some small effect (we use Elf 110 race fuel) if you take advantage of it by rejetting the carbs.
What about resale if I move up or out of Legends racing?
600 Racing is the largest manufacturer of race cars in the world. So there have been a lot of Legends cars built since the early 90s when the series first began. In general, that's a very good thing as it insures a ready parts supply and a stream of new cars every year to keep the new-car market filled. Aside from the usual updates and condition, there is very little to separate a new Legends car from a well-maintained older one, so values tend to remain high for well-maintained, good-condition cars with a history. As with all things, don't expect to get top dollar for a worn-out junker. But a used car is a good way to start, especially if you are reasonably mechanical and have an experienced Legend racer with you to help examine the car.
Do the Legends cars only race on ovals?
No, in fact many Legends drivers turn to these economical little cars as a way to keep road racing after they've blown their resources in regular production cars, etc. To be specific, road racing is sanctioned by NASA (http://www.nasaproracing.net) , the SCCA (http://www.scca.org) also allows Legends (and their sister series, the Thunder Roadsters) to run in sports racer classes and many racers find them to be great autocross cars in the Modified classes. Of course, there is also great interest in running Legends on dirt ovals, in addition to the asphalt oval racing that most people associate with the series.
What are the classes? Will I have to race against pro racers when I start out?
Legends races are usually class into three classes: Pro, (for the seasoned driver who wants to compete at the top sector of Legends racing), Semi-Pro (for the new drivers who are not yet ready to jump to the Pro class, and Masters (for those drivers over 40 years old). The Semi-Pro class has a subset called "Young Lions" for drivers under 16 and the Masters class has a subset called "Golden Masters" for drivers over age 50. Most everyone starts out in Semi-Pro.
What's with the Mad Cow thing?
Well, we thought it would bring some attention to Mad Cow disease, and more precisely the terrifying analog of CJD, the human variant. We also thought it would be fun to have cars in cow "colors" . Finally, we thought it would bring a smile to the kids- and even the rest of the competition who get passed by the "fastest herd on the track"!