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We've seen the Top 70 cars of the Yeehaw It's Texas 24 Hours Of LeMons , but that was only one photograph of each car. Now it's time to really load-test the Gawker image server, by checking out all our shots of the participants' machines; just make the jump and you'll see a gallery for each vehicle that managed to get onto MSR 's track, plus links to team websites, accounts from drivers, and more! Because the Gawker server hamsters explode into flames when they try to spin their little wheels fast enough to cope with one big Über Gallery, I've broken it up into three parts, each accessible by clicking the appropriate image below. Once you're done here, you might as well continue to torpedo your productivity by checking out past 24 Hours Of LeMons Über Galleries, including Detroit-ish '08 , New England '08 , South '08 , San Francisco '08 , Arse Freeze '07 , and San Francisco '07 . And now, arranged by car number, the Yeehaw It's...
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First of all, I must make it perfectly clear that all serious 24 Hours Of LeMons aficionados consider the Index Of Effluency trophy, which goes to the team that accomplished the most with the crappiest car, to be the real winner of the race. However, winning that prize requires a combination of guts and madness that no amount of advice could ever give you, so we're just going to give you the inside scoop on grabbing the checkered flag for your team at the race by finishing the most laps. This is the real 200-proof stuff here, folks, straight from Rob Krider of Krider Racing , Jeremy Gunter of Team SCHWING , and David Swig of Motoring J Style . Between the three of them, they've got two wins and at least four Top Five finishes, so pay attention! First up is Rob Krider, whose Krider Racing team won the LeMons SF 2008 race in an Acura Integra and grabbed fifth place at the LeMons Arse-Freeze-Apalooza 2007 race in a Nissan Sentra SE-R. When I was behind the wheel at Altamont, I latched...
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The Yeehaw It's Texas 24 Hours Of LeMons was a roaring success, with high speeds on the track, heroics in the pits, and Texas justice in the penalty area. We had everything from a Baja Bug to a Lexus LS400 on the track, and you'll see 'em all here; even the Supra that blew its engine 10 seconds before the green flag dropped makes this comprehensive list of the Top Lemons Of LeMons Texas! Make the jump to see this fine collection of racing machinery; if this isn't enough LeMons for you, check out the top cars from Toledo '08 , New England '08 , South '08 , Altamont '08 , Thunderhill '07 , and Altamont '07 . We'll have more LeMons Texas posts for you during the week, including an in-depth look at some of the new punishments we've devised for on-track miscreants (e.g., the John McCain Uphill Battle Penalty and the Barack Obama Change We Can Believe In Penalty, among many others). Once we've gathered sufficient team-provided photos and videos...
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newVideoPlayer("/BLOHorn_Test_494.flv", 506, 423,""); Ford's Nanny Key is pretty effective, but how do you punish drivers for such dangerous acts as turning or accelerating? Bring seven bucks to the junkyard, my friends, and you'll find everything you need to build the Ozzy Osbourne Inertial Penalty Horn! galleryPost('OzzyHornHell', 3, 'Junk Jaguar Horns, Pendulum Switch Encourage Good Driving Behavior'); This all started out when the Sarah Palin punishment at the 24 Hours Of LeMons Toledo race raised the bar for innovative ways to penalize lousy drivers on the race track. I'll be judging at the Houston race this weekend, so a special Texas-themed penalty would be needed. But what? Then I remembered: In 1982, Ozzy Osbourne was arrested for pissing on the Alamo, drunk and wearing a dress, and his albums were burned by enraged mobs throughout the Lone Star State. And what was Ozzy's day job in Birmingham, before Black Sabbath hit it big...
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A week or two (or three) after every 24 Hours Of LeMons race , we put up a big, browser-crashing collection of all the photos we were able to scrape up of all the cars. Yes, it's Über Gallery time once again! Because the Jalopnik guys on the scene were pretty busy beating their Celica into shape , we don't have quite as many photographs as we've had from past races (such as New England '08 , South '08 , SF '08 , Thunderhill '07 , and SF '07 ). However, many teams responded to our call for photos and accounts, so there's some good insider stuff to be seen here. Photo credits and thanks to The Mustache Race Team , Micah Jones, Nick Pon, Joey Church, Drew Colwell, Ben Ellinger, Eric Driscoll, Typhoon5000 , Chris Campbell, Alec Peeples, Art Hare, David Spinnett, Chris Droste, David Houser, and Billy Elliot. We had to shorten some of the accounts below, in order to keep our server hamsters from flying off their little wheels due to excessive speed; turns out...
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It's 2:00 AM on race day in a nondescript warehouse farm just outside of Detroit. Bryan and I are bending the roll cage hoop while Bill cuts the mounting plates and Ben notches tubing. Our Celica-turned-race car sits dejectedly on jack stands, gutted and ready for welding. Preparation work that normally takes weeks is being compressed into two days and crucial safety equipment is being fabricated on a college-term-paper timeline. A final pull on our tubing bender and a vital component of the tool breaks. This is racing. It had been 24 hours of non-stop work, final checks and double checks, desperate scavenging for tools and parts which under normal circumstances would take weeks to acquire, but favors are called in, neighbors lend a helping hand, and the impossible becomes possible. We manage the installation with no time to spare, and the skies have opened up and poured down flooding rains upon Detroit, slowing our rush to the track We arrived at Toledo Speedway about an hour after...
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We're still in 24 Hours of LeMons racing season, and that means it's time to show the top finishers in the most recent race: LeMons Detroit-ish, aka LeMons Toledo! In fact, we've got shots of all the cars that managed at least one lap in Toledo last weekend (which featured more Crown Victorias than a typical police chase ). When you're done here, be sure to check out the top cars from other LeMons events, including LeMons New England '08 , LeMons South '08 , LeMons SF '08 , LeMons Arse-Freeze-A-Pa-Looza '07 , and LeMons SF '07 . If you're on one of these teams and would like to see your photos and/or account included in our upcoming LeMons Toledo Über Gallery , send them to me ASAP! #1: Sofa King, Toyota Supra #2: Junk Player Special, VW Jetta #3: Caintmakit Racing, Acura Integra #4: The Latch-Key Kids, Dodge Neon #5: Size Matters Chrysler, Plymouth Fury #6: SharT Attack, BMW E30 #7: Team Non Sequitur, Acura Integra #8: Pleasant Valley Racers/Team...
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Once again it's time for the latest 24 Hours Of LeMons Über Gallery, in which every car that managed to get out on the racetrack gets its own set of photos. The 24 Hours Of LeMons New England had an excellent assortment of cars, plenty of black-flag drama, and broken parts all over the track, and you can see all the details merely by making the jump. Thanks to UDMan , Drumhurrin , TheEastBayKid , MagicalTrevor , Rob Leone, Michael Prichinello, Brian Shorey, and Johan Schwartz for the great photos! Since I wasn't able to make it to Connecticut in the flesh, I can't provide quite as much description as I'd like for each team, but we've got some firsthand accounts from some of them and UDMan did a bang-up job of taking notes and relaying information across the continent (in addition to taking most of the photos you see below). When you're done here, be sure to punish the Gawker servers some more check out past LeMons Über Galleries, including LeMons South 2008 , LeMons...
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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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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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We got a look at the Top 50 Lemons of the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Altamont on May 10th/11th, but what about the other 40 cars? Some finished just a few laps shy of the Top 50, while others seemed to bring out the yellow flags and tow trucks each time they sputtered onto the track. That's why we're doing the Official Jalopnik Über Gallery, which has a separate gallery for every single car that came to race. Many of these cars are veterans of previous LeMons races; check out the Thunderhill LeMons Über Gallery to see some familiar faces. Plenty of the galleries below contain 20, 30, even 70 photos, not just the three apiece you see on this page; to see an entire gallery for a car, just click on one of the thumbnail images and navigate within the gallery from there. We've done our best to spell team names correctly and to get the makes and models right, but mistakes do happen (and some cars- the #69 taxi comes to mind- just resist identification once they've been LeMon-ized...
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We really want to love art cars, but the problem with a lot of them is that the artists involved just don't get cars . For every genuinely awesome Camera Van or Pedal Regal , you get a hundred beater 323s with plastic army men or dinosaurs epoxied all over the sheet metal. But take heart, fans of car-as-art, because the participants at the 24 Hours of LeMons race continue to raise the bar with the themes for their cars; check out the gallery below for a sampling of some of the art cars we saw at the race at Altamont last weekend. Thanks to photographers Zack Spencer and Amy Judd for contributing photographs. galleryPost('AltamontArtCars', 9, 'Art Cars of the 24 Hours of LeMons');
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We showed you the Top 44 Lemons at the Altamont race last October, followed by the Top 50 Lemons at Thunderhill in December, and now it's time to see the results from the Altamont race last weekend. Get any group of car freaks together, bring up the concept of the 24 Hours of LeMons, and you're sure to get endless debate about which cheap heaps should dominate. Well, here's where reality comes into play; this is how things actually played out on the track. We'll show the other 40 cars later on, when we put up the traditional LeMons Über-gallery, but for now it's time to examine the beaters, clunkers, and buckets that came out on top! #1: Krider Racing - Death Proof #2: Spirit of San Diego #3: Motoring J Style #4: Axles of Evel #5: Box Wrench #6: Pit Crew Revenge #7: Tresulators #8: Mother Cluckers #9: Onset #10: Team 60 #11: Fancy Junc #12: Size Matters Chrysler #13: Third Time's A Charm #14: Dilligaf #15: Black Metal V8olvo #16: Duwey Chydum and Howe Taxi Co #17...
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Team Black Metal V8olvo was fortunate enough to get some track time at a Volvo club event at Thunderhill last week, and so we got the car all put together and trailered it on up to Willows. It worked pretty well, with our modified Thunderbird springs and swaybars and 242 Turbo brakes giving the car decent handling and stopping, and while the Ford 302 couldn't keep up with the wild-ass super-boosted turbo four-bangers on the other cars, it was able to get out of its own way. But then the car started running hot... You see, we'd been inspired by Team Two Wheels Too Many and the rear-radiator setup they'd put in their '85 Cavalier, and we figured we'd do the same in our Volvo. Well, actually, I was the one who thought it would be a good idea, if we're going to be placing blame for ensuing badness. Just get the biggest truck radiator we could find at the junkyard, put it in the back seat, and add some big electric radiator fans. Run some muffler piping forward to the...
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So we solved the throttle-linkage problem on our V8-ized Volvo race car, but what about electrical stuff? The factory wiring, switches, and instruments weren't going to work with our new engine. In fact, we'd torn out every scrap of wire in the car, preferring to start with a blank electrical slate. As the creator of the Junkyard Boogaloo Boombox , I figured whipping up an all-junkyard instrument panel on a shoestring budget wouldn't be too much hassle. I was able to scrounge up an old Auto Meter temperature gauge and a few toggle switches in my Boxes-O-Car-Crap™, and a street sign nice piece of sheet aluminum materialized in the garage, but what about the rest of the stuff? The only really important gauge in this kind of race car is the tachometer. Sure, we could clamp a big ol' aftermarket tach on the steering column (and, in fact, the team members were able to produce a couple of high-quality tachs from their personal stashes), but we'd get dinged for such an extravagance...
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