The 24 Hours of LeMons Traveling Circus has returned to The Ridge Motorsports Park in Shelton, Washington, for the fourth annual Pacific Northworst 24 Hours of LeMons. Due to scheduling issues with the venue, we had to do the car inspections starting at oh-dark-thirty on Saturday morning and then drop the green flag for the race itself immediately afterwards. That means we’re mashing the traditional inspection post into the traditional first-day-roundup post, in much the same way that a Corolla can be mashed into an MR2 to create a twin-engined race car. Here we go!
In honor of a well-known Washington-based company, the traditional BRIBED stencil incorporated the face of Clippy the Office Assistant.
Junkyards are full of cheap superchargers these days; the easiest to find is the Eaton unit installed on various GM cars with Buick 3800 V6 engines during the 1990s. Here’s one on a Buick 215-cubic-inch V8. Quick, guess the car!
That’s right, we’ve got the third Rover SD1 to make its LeMons debut during the summer of 2014. This one features an Eaton blower, draw-through carburetor fuel-delivery system… and a spot in Class C. We expected Team Odin’s Rover to spray many pounds of finely granulated engine parts out the tailpipe within several laps of setting tire to track, but that’s not what happened. By the end of the day’s grueling race session, Team Odin was in P34 overall (out of 63 entries) and second in Class C.
Leading Class C was the Saturn SL2 of Team Car Error Panamericana, a car that’s been competing in West Coast LeMons races for many years and has yet to bring home a trophy of any sort for its team. With a massive 33-lap lead over the Rover, the Car Error Panamericanas look to be in pretty good shape, but you just never know what will happen in the most interesting LeMons class.
The ADO17 “Landcrab” of Silversleeves Racing was the quickest of the Class C entries, what with its Mazda V6 yanked out of a Ford Probe, but… well, it’s a Landcrab. Still, P46 isn’t so bad for a car like this.
We had high hopes for the 1974 Ford Mustang II of Low Road Racing, figuring that an automatic-equipped, 2.8 V6-powered Pinto sibling might have a shot in Class C, but there’s a reason that Mustang IIs sell for a tiny fraction of the price of slightly older Mustangs. P55 at the end of the race session.
The “Megadethdrap” graphic on the Mustang’s hood pleased the 24 Hours of LeMons Supreme Court very much.
We’d only had two Chevrolet Corvairs in LeMons prior to this weekend, and so the sight of the ’60 of Team Transcontinental Drifters was an exciting one.
Unfortunately, 54-year-old Detroit compacts with loose engines aren’t in their natural element on a road course, and the Transcontinental Drifters left an alarming trail of smoke behind their Chevy each time they limped onto the track.
27 laps, good for 57th place out of 63. The team has all night to fix their Corvair, so perhaps Sunday will be a better day for Corvair race fans.
The very Bondo-ized ’52 Hudson Hornet of Chase Race won the Index of Effluency trophy at the 2013 Pacific Northworst race, but a hub failure put the old Hudson on the trailer after a mere 84 laps on Saturday. Hudson parts aren’t easy to find in Washington state on short notice.
The Flying Baldini Bandits thought they’d improve their chances in Class B by adding a Toyota Previa supercharger to their Honda Civic’s lackluster D15 engine.
Sadly, the Baldinis neglected to do sufficient research about the direction of rotation of their engine versus that of the Previa blower, and it turns out that their boost levels weren’t so high on a backward-spinning supercharger.
Actually leading Class B, and in an astonishing P3 overall, the Jeep Cherokee of Petty Cash Racing proves that independent front suspension is overrated for road racing.
On the same lap as the Cherokee, the ONSET/Tetanus West ’89 Chevy Cavalier won’t need much of a stumble on the part of the Jeep team to take the Class B lead.
We’ve seen many LeMons cars sprayed a quickie coat of pink paint and labeled as “Barbie’s Corvette,” but finally we had a team find a real Corvette (a C4, of course) and Barbie-ize it. The Silversleeves Racing ’84 Corvette (yes, this is the same team that runs the Landcrab) is the perfect Barbie Corvette, right down to its dreaded Doug Nash 4+3 transmission and its even-more-more-dreaded Cross-Fire Injection fuel system.
Best of all, this Corvette comes with Barbie’s Racer Friend Kate, complete with pink cardboard box! Unfortunately, the car had all the expected reliability issues you’d expect from a worn-out ’84 Corvette, and it finished the day in P36.
Of the fast Class A cars, though, somebody needs to be leading, and this time it’s the old familiar Model T GT, a car that often ventures to the LeMons races with smaller car counts and takes the “shark in the aquarium” role. This time, the LeMons Supreme Court issued a five-lap handicap to the T GT, which the team managed to overcome by the end of Saturday.
Four laps back of the Model T GT, we’ve got the Ford Thunderbird of the Killer Whales. This Class A battle will come down to which team’s drivers are better at avoiding black-flag-triggering mistakes.
The Fox Mustangs? Most of them blew up in short order.
In fact, even more than the usual number of race cars were up on jackstands as the day wore on. Some will get back on the track on Sunday, some won’t. Check in later to see how this madness sorts out!
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