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Though the cars themselves must cost less than $500, the cost of the required safety equipment pushes the build cost of a typical LeMons car well above two grand. That stuff is worth every penny! Here we see the Timmy's Kids '81 Audi 4000 getting into big trouble down Thunderhill's long straight and bashing into the concrete barrier. The driver was totally OK, thanks to his 5-point harness, helmet, and cage (as were the drivers of the Plymouth Belvedere , Yugo GV , and Chevy Cavalier that flipped during the race). Here's the aftermath, courtesy of Mad Science 's camera. Thanks to Patrick of Huey Newis And The Lose for the video!
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Moving your race car's battery to the rear of the car helps reduce the nose-heaviness problem inherent in most front-engined designs, but heavy-gauge battery cable is mighty expensive stuff when you're on a tight budget. When you're trying to squeeze under that $500 limit at the 24 Hours Of LeMons, you won't be buying any new cables… but your friendly wrecking yard has the solution! BMW E30s are easy to find in the self-service yards, and they came right from the factory with a very nice trunk-mounted battery setup. The big self-service junkyard chains generally have a single price for all battery cables, which means that the 15-footer that runs from the trunk to the engine compartment will cost the same as a skinny 18" job from a Sentra. When the Half Price Sale is on, we're talking about $7 for both cables and terminals; not a bad deal for 20 pounds of copper! For its trunk-mounted battery setup, the Black Metal V8olvo used some 1-gauge welding cable I'd hoarded...
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Not all the cars at next month's 24 Hours Of LeMons Arse Freeze-A-Palooza are as gloriously twisted as the CBR900RR-powered Geo Metro or Ghettocharged Frankenmiata , but even a run-of-the-mill Fox Mustang can show up with a great theme . That's exactly what's going on with Team Huey Newis And The Lose , who have painted their '85 Mustang in a painfully 80s pink-and-gray combo and are now assembling team uniforms comprised entirely of Members Only gear. Yes, these guys have a rich cultural vein to mine with their schtick, and you can read their mission statement (and see all the photos) by merely making the jump. galleryPost('LTH08HueyNewisIntro', 6, 'Huey Lewis And The Lose Prepare For Thunderhill Racing Action'); Here is the letter written by the esteemed wordsmith Warren G. Taylor (Ok, his middle initial isn't G. but it should be.) that got us accepted into the race. yes, its both silly and true. To whom it may concern, I have been enlisted, through...
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! After a 24 Hours Of LeMons race, I like to do a PCH pitting the #1 and #2 cars against each other, but this time it's going to be a bit different. You see, the #2 car in Houston was a 2nd-gen Camaro, and they're really easy projects- cheap, simple, and with ridiculously easy parts availability. That means we'll be going for a Japan-versus-Germany 80s Hot Hatch Challenge today, and you Camaro fans can console yourselves with the fact that you can fix most problems on your cars with a pipe wrench and zip-ties. For that matter, the Toyota Corolla FX16 is almost too reliable to show up here, but most of them spend their entire lives with the tach needle bouncing around the 8 grand mark and the body panels scraping telephone poles, with repairs performed by 19-year-old hoons with $9.98 Taiwanese socket sets and 12-packs of Steel Reserve to provide...
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The race is over and they're packing up the Traveling LeMons Circus now. The winner more or less led the race the entire time, flag to flag. To absolutely nobody's surprise, it's the Team SCHWING Toyota Corolla GT-S FX16, which avoided penalties, ran fast laps, and finished several laps in front of the #2 car (the Bikini Racer Camaro). I've got thousands of photos of the action to show y'all, but they'll have to wait until the carnies have packed the Tilt-A-Whirl back into the trailers. Check in during the week for further Yeehaw It's Texas LeMons madness!
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Today we're going to check out a car that proves what a small world this really is; I was over at the parents' place the other day- yeah, I'm still on speaking terms with them in spite of having been given a girl's name, since it's that name that's given me the gravel in my gut and the spit in my eye- and my mom asked, "Have you seen that race car parked down the street?" Race car? Sure enough, parked about five doors down from my childhood home, here's the El Moto Loco VW Golf from the 24 Hours Of LeMons SF race in May. One day you're scraping fenders with a car on the race track, and a few months later it's lowering the property values in your parents' neighborhood! These guys had some great Lucha Libre costumes, and they'd probably have made a run at People's Choice if it hadn't been...
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Last time we simultaneously crushed and seared our fingers in the red-hot vise of the Hell Garage, the Shelby-ized Dodge Omni beat hell out of the Shelby-ized Dodge Shadow in the poll. Today, with the New England 24 Hours of LeMons race coming up in just a few days, we're thinking about the kind of car it takes to win the most prestigious trophy of the event. No, that's not the one that goes to the so-called "overall winner" (although a team does get some heavy-duty bragging rights by taking that honor ). We're talking about the coveted Index Of Effluency trophy, the one given to the team that achieves beyond all reasonable expectation in a seemingly hopeless "race car." You contend for the IOE by showing up in a looks-fast-on-paper car that everyone knows is going to blow up for sure (e.g., Maserati Biturbo, Merkur XR4Ti,...
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After Seatbelt123 and the rest of the Quattro Libre team piloted their Audi 4000 to a respectable 23rd place at the 24 Hours of LeMons South event last weekend, they decided to upgrade to some fine Italian steel for their next race. What better choice than the Alfa Romeo Milano , with its insanely complicated and fragile innovative De Dion tube/rear-transaxle drivetrain and neurotic bulletproof Italian V6? And- can you believe it?- it turns out you can get two of 'em for under 300 bucks! What could go wrong? Look out, Tunachuckers , you've got serious competition for the Index of Effluency trophy! galleryPost('EffluencyMilanos', 6, 'Two Alfa Romeo Milanos For 299 Bucks'); [eBay Motors]
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! We had what may be our all-time closest vote yesterday, with the 4x4 Econoline beating the lowrider Econoline 202 votes to 200. Today we're going racing! We've had Arse-Freeze-A-Pa-Looza LeMons PCH and the LeMons San Francisco PCH , and now tradition dictates that we have a LeMons South Edition PCH. Just in time for teams still hoping to make the deadline for the Yeehaw It's Texas LeMons event! With Mazda RX-7s taking the first two places at LeMons South (not to mention three of the top ten at the Arse-Freeze-A-Pa-Looza ), you've got to figure you're looking at one of the all-time great budget race cars. Light, simple, and powered by a wailing rotary that's sure to give your competitors a migraine by the time the race is over... and you can get 'em for peanut shells! Say, this '85 RX-7 with an asking price of only $200. Two...
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Just finishing a single 24 Hours of LeMons race can mean a one-way trip to The Crusher after the race is over, as was the case with the Team Come From Behind Probe . After all, a couple days of metal-crunching, rod-throwin' action tend to be rough on a sub-$500 car. That's what makes the glorious career of the Eyesore Racing CRX so great; Soichiro's little 2-seater not only finished three races, it placed 7th at the October '07 Altamont race, 7th again at the December '07 Thunderhill event, and took the coveted People's Choice award (along with a respectable 18th-place ranking) at the May '08 Altamont race. However, even a Honda can't live forever, and team member Wrappedinbacon sends us this photo of Eyesore Pimpin's dearly departed race car. Jump to read his description and see the entire Eyesore CRX Greatest Hits gallery. galleryPost('DOTSJEyesorePimp', 3, 'Rise And Fall Of The Eyesore Racing Honda CRX'); I saw the post about the rotting...
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Now that the 24 Hours of LeMons shit-talking has begun , I find it necessary to present some more evidence to show that the V8-ified Volvo 240 is Your Best Race Car Value, even though it means giving away some tricks to our real competition (i.e., the other teams driving Swedish steel). You see, some teams are coming up with this crazy talk about how they've got the best bang-for-buck with their Cavaliers or MR2s and such, but are there countless MR2s sitting in back yards, just waiting for some kind, trailer-equipped soul to come haul them away for free? As we've seen, perception of the poor brick-shaped Göteborg machine has gone from beloved daily driver to gas-swilling outcast recently, with local junkyards bursting at the seams with 242s, 244s, and 245s. That means that a Craigslist ad with the headline "DEAD VOLVO WANTED, WILL TOW" gets an immediate response. We had observed that many teams gave themselves a big advantage in the pits (both for parts to use on their...
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Looking at the top teams of the 24 Hours of LeMons race last weekend, we thought it was great that a Detroit car finished in second place. Of course, Neons make great race cars, so no huge surprise there... but what about an '85 Chevrolet Cavalier wagon finishing in the Top Ten? That's not a typo- a Cavalier finished ninth! Better still, one of the team members is our own commenter Xargs , who was justifiably disappointed that I didn't get any shots of his car at the Altamont LeMons event a few months back. galleryPost('THLCavalierTop', 6, 'The Two Wheels Too Many Cavalier Part 1'); Xargs sent in some "before" photos of the car- does that look like a dominating race car? It turns out that a torquey V6 and front-wheel drive do pretty well at the racetrack; this car was contending at Altamont, too, but a tractor tire-versus-oil pan conflict knocked it out of the running at that race. Team Two Wheels Too Many relocated the radiator to the rear of the car...
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