We’re back in the Midwest once again, for the fifth visit of the 24 Hours of LeMons to the Autobahn Country Club and this year’s running of the Doin’ Time In Joliet race. With more than a hundred teams entered, we’ve got a total of five former overall LeMons winners on the premises (a Camaro, two BMW E30s, a 300ZX, and an MR2) and many more potential contenders. You can read LeMons Supreme Court Justice Judge Eric’s race preview for more details on the likely class contenders; right now we’re going to look at some of the more interesting cars and teams that showed up for the traditional car inspections today.
With a good half-dozen or so Porsche 924s and 944s here, we expect to see many errant engine parts scattered over the tarmac and many teams staring blankly at 20-hours-to-replace dead transmissions. This race will be run in one long session that starts Saturday morning and ends at midnight, so hard-to-repair cars such as these will be at a disadvantage without the usual Saturday night wrench-fest.
Of course, this 944 has General Motors 4.3-liter V6 power… and the Porsche transaxle. This ought to be interesting.
German cars with ill-advised Detroit-sourced engine swaps are nothing new in this series. Here’s a Mercedes-Benz C230 that showed up at the wrecking yard owned by one of the team’s members. After selling off everything of value from the car, they rummaged through the yard for a suitable replacement engine.
Which, naturally, turned out to be a “Pinto 2300″ out of a Ford Ranger.
Japanese cars also get strange engine swaps in LeMons racing. Here’s the Pabst Blue Racing Nissan Maxima, which features mid-mounted Cadillac Northstar V8 power.
Pabst Blue Racing has suffered from repeated transmission problems in past races, mostly caused by nervous breakdowns of the transmission’s electronic control unit. The poor transmission ECU thought it was still installed in the Cadillac STS drivetrain-donor vehicle, and it was not happy with the inputs it was receiving from its new home. As a result, the team replaced— or maybe supplemented, we’re not sure— the shifter with this set of switches. With this new rig, the driver merely reaches over with his gloved hand during the whirling chaos of wheel-to-wheel road racing, fumbles at the switches in the hope of choosing the correct gear, and overrides the tranny ECM by actuating internal transmission solenoids via direct electrical stimulation. This should work perfectly.
The Pabst Blue Racing car is a gloriously bad idea, but it’s positively sane next to what LemonAid Racing has done with their Geo Metro. This car won Class C and the Index of Effluency with its original three-cylinder Suzuki engine, but then the team decided that they wanted more power. Rather than go the boring route and drop in the “big-block” four-cylinder Suzuki engine, the members of LemonAid Racing lost their presence of mind and went big crazy.
Yes, that’s a BMW six-cylinder engine out of a late E30. The Metro also received a narrowed E30 rear suspension; the driver had to be moved back a few feet to make room for the cruelly butchered firewall. Somehow, this car ended up weighing more than the team’s E30 race car, so we’re not expecting it to run away with anything this race.
After finishing in the top five in what seems like a dozen Midwest Region LeMons races, the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers and their naturally-aspirated Volvo 245 are back for another shot at that ever-elusive overall win.
After installing a Fat Man atomic bomb, a Little Boy atomic bomb, and a covered wagon atop their Civic, the Team Formerly Known As Oregon Fail now has a gigantic Led Zeppelin installed.
The BRIBED stencil used by the LeMons Supreme Court this race features an homage to the great Brougham Edition cars that were once so popular in this part of the country. BROUGHBED!
Why don’t more teams race V12 Jaguars? You can get a running XJ-S for less than scrap value these days, we love British cars, and no LeMons engine sounds as good as the big twelve.
Sure, there might be some drawbacks to this approach, but what other car with this much power gets put into Class C?
The Union of Pentastar Racers have brought their confusingly Soviet-themed Duster, or maybe it’s a Shadow or a Sundance, back for another shot at Mitsubishi-powered Chrysler glory.
As Billy Dee Williams would say, the Mitsubishi 6G72 almost works every time.
Great themes abounded. Here’s the “Cougar” (actually a Ford Probe) of Burnt Rubber Soul Racing.
We also have a real Cougar, covered in blinding orange reflective tape for added irritation.
Zero Budget Racing redecorated their Class C and Index of Effluency-winning Chevy Chevette Diesel with this patriotic Domino’s Pizza-influenced theme. Why?
It turns out that Domino’s used a fleet of specially configured Chevettes as delivery cars in the 1980s.
Domin8′s Pizza: “Sluggish, Surly, ‘Splodey Delivery.”
The RUN-EXP Ford EXP has returned for another attempt at Class C victory. Can it beat the Jaguar?
That and many other pressing issues will be settled Saturday. Check back later for the race results.
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