|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » 24 hours of lemons » Belvedere ( RSS)
-
|
We've spent many months following the progress of Belvedere Adrian 's 1966 Plymouth Belvedere race car , but we've never mentioned the theme this team will be using. Now, anyone from California will tell you there's only one possible theme for an old Belvedere... That's right, the Foster Farms Chickens, aka The Foster Imposters ! A pair of Arkansas factory-farmed chickens flee their trailer park and head to California, so that they might be killed, eviscerated, and served up as meals by Foster Farms. Their vehicle? A beater '67 Belvedere! Thus was the idea for Team Faster Farms Chickens born. Since Adrian had a free '66 Belvedere already, all that was needed to convert it to an Impostersmobile was the application of '67 headlight bezels and trashed grille... …and some light blue house paint. The Imposters' Belvedere has one yellow door, so the race car's original color was retained there. Now let's watch another ad! These chickens are serious...
|
-
|
As the Bent Belvedere inches ever closer to 24 Hours Of LeMons Thunderhill readiness, team captain Plymsole has decided that the duct-tape-and-speaker-wire electrical system isn't going to be very reliable on the track. Time to tear out all the scary old stuff and start over fresh! Now, they could have followed my example and spent about 88,000 hours scratchbuilding a space shuttle wiring harness , but there's no need for that madness when you've got Jack Astro (of Project Car Hell Theme Song fame) on the team! The old wiring really is scary- the kind of thing you often find in a 42-year-old Detroit beater you got for free. How about heavy-gauge wire splices made from ring terminals held together with a screw and "insulated" with crumbling electrical tape? The horror! But new wiring stuff costs money, and these poor bastards have the misfortune of frequent garage visits by a LeMons judge , who is sure to jack up his bribe requirements to stratospheric heights if he...
|
-
|
newVideoPlayer("/BelvedereHorizontal_476.flv", 506, 423,""); Preparation of the extremely bent '66 Plymouth Belvedere obtained for free by Belvedere Adrian (aka Plymsole ) for the Arse-Freeze-A-Pa-Looza LeMons race continues, with the suspension and brakes functioning- mostly- and the 318 grunting out sufficient torque to turn junkyard tires into glorious smoke on command. The car is still being used as a daily driver by one team member, and he says the Project Car Hell stencil on the door gets a lot of attention from the ladies. Of course! Make the jump for even more Belvedere hoonage. Some of you may have recognized Black Metal V8olvo pit crew hero and Audi Fox wagon owner Shawn in the video above; he ended up getting shanghaied by the Thunderhill-bound Burning Brain Belvedere team, for whom he plans to show the Size Matters Fury guys a thing or two about which Plymouth rules the racetrack.
|
-
|
Sometimes you can bash away on your low-budget race car for a full dawn-to-dusk weekend, yet it's still not ready. That's when you need to take drastic measures... It was clear that Belvedere Adrian's '66 Plymouth Belvedere would need to have the front brakes upgraded from drums to discs if the team wanted to race at the 24 Hours of LeMons race in December. So, courtesy of a '73-76 Mopar A-body donor car, the team had the parts needed to do the swap . On Sunday night, after completion of the brake job (and some more straightening of bent suspension components) the ritual Burning Gasoline-Soaked Cardboard Helmet Of LeMons was placed on the youngest team member's head and ignited. Next step: swapping 318s between the race car and the Sawzall Convertible Belvedere . galleryPost('BentBelvedereSuspThrash', 7, 'Belvedere Brake Thrash');
|
-
|
Remember the extremely hoontastic sticker in the back window of Belvedere Adrian's 24 Hours of Lemons project car? Well, he got so many questions about the origin of the sticker (which was apparently a truck stop in Ely, Nevada, in 1981) that he went ahead and had some printed up. He's sold most of them to friends and coworkers, but he's going to offer the rest to Jalopnik readers as a sort of fundraiser for the Racin' Belvedere Roll Cage Fund. Team Belvedere has tons of heart but ounces of cash, you see (look, they found a new fender!), so here's your chance to help them out! For $6 (the Mopar-themed price of $4.40 plus $1.60 shipping) he'll send you one, and for $10 you get a pair. These are 11" x 3" stickers, suitable for placement on any bumper already sporting a Disc Brakes Are For Cowards sticker and a Driveshaft Through The Skull Warning Label . To order, send an email to BentBelvedere@gmail.com .
|
-
|
After screaming himself hoarse as a spectator at the last 24 Hours of LeMons race at Altamont (and preparing to hitch up the ol' Serro Scotty to meet me and the Loverman up at the Thunderhill LeMons race), Belvedere Adrian has obtained a wrecked '66 Belvedere and is in the process of readying it for some CRX-sideswipin' mayhem at one of next year's LeMons events. galleryPost('AdrianBelvedereTop', 6, 'Belvedere Prepares To Race, Part 1'); Prior to coming into Adrian's possession, this car had had an unfortunate incident involving high speed, drum brakes, and a row of parked cars. The engine mounts were torn out and the right fender was crushed all the way back to the firewall (note the headlight trim located about an inch from the door). Here's a couple of members of Team Belvedere (including Jack Astro of Project Car Hell Song fame) taking a break from their labors. That Poly 318 engine is quite wide, but it's a bulletproof powerplant, ideally...
|
|
|
|