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I recall seeing a lot of Mazda ads at the Monterey Historics , thumping their chests about their racing prowess… but not a single mention of the 24 Hours of LeMons anywhere , in spite of the fact that Mazdas have now won three of the last four events ( Protege , RX-7 ) and always contend. If Mazda's marketers had half the smarts of their engineers, they'd run a global advertising campaign centered on cars like the Endurance Karting Miata, which hung on for the win in New England today. Maybe a slogan such as "Even when it's an old beater, it will still be fast" could be a big hit, and it beats "Zoom-Zoom" by a long shot. In other big news, three of the top six cars today were Alfa Romeo Milanos! Make the jump for the complete final standings, courtesy of UDMan (and thanks to Drumhurrin for the photo above: 1 – 90 – Endurance Karting Miata 2 – 29 – Kielbasa Kids Honda Civic 3 – 60 – Scuderia Limoni Alfa Romeo Milano 4 – 0 – Keystone Kops Volvo 244 5 – 06 ...
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Those of you who read Judge Loverman's account of serving on the 24 Hours of LeMons South Supreme Court might be telling yourselves "That's interesting, but I really want to know how to give my alleged 500-buck race car an unfair advantage at the next race and get away with it!" Of course you do, because- in the the immortal words of my uncle and early gearhead influence, Dirty Duck : "There's two kinds of racers- losers... and cheaters! " Back in the 60s and 70s, Dirty Duck was crew chief for quite a few dirt-track racers in rural Minnesota and Wisconsin, and a staple of my childhood was hearing his tales on how he'd discourage any idea of claiming a $5,000 car under a thousand-buck claimer rule. One particularly effective approach was the installation of a steel plate that could be made to scrape on the driveshaft with the pull of a lever. The driver would wait for the last few laps of race (at which point he'd have a huge lead), pull the lever...
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Reflecting on the recent South Carolina round of the 24 Hours of LeMons , one of the best parts of the whole weekend was walking around the pits during the night break, when all the teams were wrenching away on their cars. It was a strangely beautiful mix of frantic frenzy and drunken stupor. The big American ex-cop cars were all replacing their brakes, the small high-strung foreign machines were all worried about their head gaskets, but everyone was still managing to thoroughly enjoy the agony. Per dollar, there just isn't any better way to soak in all the emotional and mechanical ups and downs of motor racing than participating in a LeMons race. galleryPost('lemonsnightwrenching', 6, 'Nocturnal LeMons Repairs');
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Now that I've had a chance to go through my photos of the 24 Hours of LeMons South event, it's time for the traditional LeMons Über Gallery! You'll see a set of photos for every car that managed to roar (or sputter) onto the track in Kershaw, South Carolina, plus links to team websites and other citrus-flavored goodness. Any of you LeMons South racers who want the uncropped, full-resolution photos of your team's car should email me with a request and I'll hook you up. If you feel like punishing the Gawker server hamsters some more still haven't gotten your LeMons Über Fix after checking out these shots, take a look at the LeMons SF '08 Über Gallery , the Arse Freeze-A-Pa-Looza LeMons '08 Über Gallery , and the LeMons SF '07 Über Gallery . #00, Euro Trash One of many BMW E30s- almost all sporting 325e emblems and low-RPM tachs- at the race; we were suspicious of this car during BS inspection , but LeMons Supreme Court Chief Justice Lamm decreed that it...
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When you get a bunch of car freaks together and introduce them to the concept of the 24 Hours of LeMons, you always hear a lot of talk about what low-budget car should be the fastest . After all, it's all about being quickest around the track, right? The reality generally doesn't work out that way, however; while the winning Krider Racing Integra did in fact have the best lap time at the LeMons SF event, most of the time there's little correlation (for example, my team's Volvo had the fourth-fastest lap time at Altamont, yet finished 15th). It's consistency and reliability that'll get you the checkered flag at LeMons. This was made vividly clear in Kershaw last weekend, when only one of the five quickest cars even cracked the Top 20 places. Still, we should honor the teams who managed to build such fast machines on such a tiny budget. The car with the overall quickest lap of the entire race was the 50th-place Superkak Racing '94 Mustang GT, with a time of 1:06...
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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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As the checkered flag dropped at the 2008 24 Hours of LeMons race here in South Carolina, the #2 Mazda RX-7 finished in first place overall. The fastest lap of 1:10.268 around the 0.96-mile road course from the Team She Got It All entry proved to be not quite as fast as some of the Miatas and BMWs, but apparently the boys figured out a way to make the Wankel reliable. Congratulations to the team on a fine drive!
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Can a dead-stock LT1-powered Caprice cop car keep up with a bunch of speedy imports? Probably not, but the Punisher Racing Caprice is holding a close second place behind the She Got It All RX-7 . Stay tuned for the exciting finish!
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newVideoPlayer("/LemonsSouthPeoplesCurse.flv", 494, 290,""); Here it is, the moment of carnage for Team Salazar Racing's E30 BMW 3-Series. With an overwhelming display of hatred from the other LeMons racers, the people elected the blue and white Bimmer as "The People's Curse." Cheaters beware, this is the fate that awaits you!
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As we've seen before , pissing off your competitors in the 24 Hours of LeMons tends to backfire in dramatic fashion. Here's how it works: at the end of the first day of racing, each team votes for the team whose car they most wish to see destroyed the next day. The team with the most votes gets a date with a large piece of construction equipment. Today, the "winner" was Team Salazar Racing and their BMW 325. Make the jump to see the whole gallery and get the rest of the story. galleryPost('PeoplesCurseSouth', 9, 'Salazar Racing BMW 325 Faces The Jaws Of The Excavator'); When these guys came to us for the BS Inspection judging , we were pretty sure they were cheating like crazy on the budget numbers (hint: NASA stickers on your intentionally beater-ified BMW don't help), but that's just racing. Sure, there was some grumbling from the (allegedly) more legit BMW teams about perceived high-buck engine mods, but it was the very enthusiastic- some might...
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While we've been blown away by the quality of the facilities and workers at Carolina Motorsports Park - by all accounts, the best venue in the history of the 24 Hours of LeMons- and the incredible friendliness of all the competitors has us staggering beneath the intake of barbecue and beer forced upon us, the teams here haven't reached the level of the California races when it comes to the whole theme thing. That will come in future events, of course (and LeMons will definitely be back here next year), but this time we've seen only a few teams with the full car-decoration/team-costume treatment. One bunch that stands out is the Barry Goldwater-themed Corporate Machine Cadillac; while we think it's a bit of a cop-out to go with a right-wing theme in a conservative region of the country (how about a George McGovern theme next time?), we can't argue with the execution. Good work, guys! galleryPost('CorporateMachine', 8, 'The Corporate Machine Cadillac At 24...
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They're back on the track for Day Two of racin' at the 24 Hours of LeMons South, and lust for the checkered flag has turned all these formerly polite Southern boys into a bunch of PCP-overdosed Junior Johnsons, with dramatic spinouts galore (yes, we'll have some action shots in a little while). A contributing factor to the higher speeds today is the less crowded track. Why less crowded, you ask? Well, when you pay $500 (or "$500") for a race car, you don't always get 100% bulletproof reliability. galleryPost('BrokenPartsSunday', 6, 'Five Hundred Dollar Race Cars And Their Reliability Issues'); What we have in the gallery here is a thrown Celica rod, a melted Cadillac brake caliper, a broken CRX camshaft, a blown XR4Ti head gasket, and so on. But not all these cars stayed off the track permanently; the guys in the Zappa-themed Utility Muffin Racing Team broke their cam during practice on Friday afternoon, drove like madmen to the nearest junkyard...
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At last report, the Beertech BMW 318i was leading the race, and a bunch of other Bavarians were close behind. Now that the dust has settled and all the cars are back in the pits getting pounded into shape for tomorrow, we find the BMWs have been shoved aside by a rotary: the Team She Got It All Mazda RX-7. The Malt Liquor Tech Racing BMW 325e holds the second-place spot, and the Punisher Racing Chevy Caprice is in third. Hmmm... maybe we shouldn't have believed those Caprice guys when they said they had a stock LT1 in that rolling monument to iron oxide. Make the jump to see a blurry photo of the list of top finishers... and be sure to come back tomorrow for the balls-more-to-wall action of LeMons South Day Two!
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newVideoPlayer("/lemonsonboardspin.flv", 494, 410,""); If this on-board footage from Team Schumacher Taxi Service's Toyota is any indication, the "Chemical Ali" punishment of a certain black-flagged Mustang was certainly effective. Apparently the dizzying aroma causes you to lose control and spin into unsuspecting racers. In this case, the victim was one of my personal favorites on the track, a brown 'n dirty BMW 6-Series. galleryPost('lemonsonboardspin', 3, 'Chemical Ali Strikes Back');
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Some of you may have thought that my Chemical Ali punishment was on the harsh side, but I'm actually the nice judge in the good-cop/bad-cop team we have going. LeMons Supreme Court Justice Loverman has devised a punishment he calls the "Diabetic Discipline," and it goes something like this: We take some bribe money and send a local guy- we tried to find one with a cruel streak- out to buy the most grotacious food products he can find. Since this is South Carolina... well, make the jump to get the whole story. galleryPost('DiabeticDiscipline', 3, 'Diabetic Discipline Punishment Adds New Dimension To 24 Hours of LeMons'); We got Potted Meat Product. We got everything out of the Little Debbie playbook. We got hot sauce, Circus Peanuts, Junior Johnson Pork Cracklins, and sardines. We've even got some kind of blindingly sweet crypto-cherry soda called Cheerwine. Best of all, we got canned pork brains! So here comes a team with a driver who passed on a yellow...
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