We’re back at northeastern Colorado’s High Plains Raceway for the fifth annual B.F.E. GP 24 Hours of LeMons, and we may have the highest percentage of great race cars we’ve ever seen at one of our races. The quantity of teams may not be so high— just 42 teams were willing to make the trek to this aptly-named event in the far reaches of rural Colorado— but the quality is top-notch. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights from Friday’s inspections.
For the first time ever, two Hyundais are competing head-to-head in a LeMons race. A proud day for Koreans!
In fact, both cars are 2002 Accents. We hope to see a Scoupe, XG, or Tiburon soon.
Several teams drove up from Texas, including Wine-O Racing and their Toyota Solara. You’d think that a 21st-century Toyota would be pretty quick on the race track (compared to, say, an ’82 Datsun Maxima), but we’ve learned (after several races) that such is not the case with the Wine-Os.
After I was heard on-camera referring to this car as “astonishingly sluggish” at the Sebring Race in July, the Wine-Os’ case for getting put into Class C (with the slowest, i.e., best LeMons cars) became much stronger. They’d started out in Class A, finished in the cellar, then “competed” in Class B, finished in the cellar, and importuned the LeMons Supreme Court to please put their damn-near-new Toyota into Class C.
Since they had such great Colorado-themed end plates on their decklid wing, the Wine-Os finally got Class C, though with a bit of a lap handicap. You’ll see the reason for the handicap in a moment.
Speaking of the things that make my home state special, the BRIBED stencil for the 5th B.F.E. GP incorporated several Colorado icons: legal cannabis, beer, and Subarus.
Back to the fine Class C cars of this race, at long last we’ve finally got one of the cars we most want to see in our race: an Opel Manta.
The Manta will be competing in Class C against the Grumpy Cat Racing 1950 Dodge pickup, complete with flathead Chrysler six-cylinder engine, winner of the Index of Effluency at the Return of the LeMonites race in Utah a few months ago.
The Grumpy Cat’s 218-cubic-inch engine ran the Utah race with approximately zero oil pressure and an increasingly catastrophic oil blow-by problem. The team found a replacement engine (Chrysler flathead sixes are worth scrap value these days, more or less), but didn’t have the rebuild done in time for this weekend’s race. Knowing that we have outlawed fire-hazard jug-and-hose blowby-recovery systems, they rigged up this innovative blow-by condenser system. According to Grumpy Cat Racing logic, the fine oil particles being spewed into the crankcase will be directed into this old car radiator atop the engine, where the oil will condense back into a liquid and flow back into the oil pan instead of being sprayed onto the track.
We expressed skepticism about this admirably ingenious yet incredibly janky rig, and so the Grumpy Cats managed to score a complete, running engine-donor vehicle on the day before the inspections: this early-50s ex-TWA airport tug, with Chrysler flathead 230 power and 17:1 differential gearing. Because it weighs about three tons (the “body” is made from inch-thick cast iron), the scrap value of the shell should make this spare engine free. When the 218 gets black-flagged for smoking/spewing/exploding (as we feel certain it will), the Grumpy Cat crew simply yanks the 230, swaps it into the Dodge, and gets back on the track. No weak points in this plan!
The great thing about Class C in LeMons is that you can win it even if you do have to swap an engine, sometimes even if that engine is a couple states away. Even with that in mind, the Manta and the ’50 Dodge teams might be worried about the Blue Flag Special AMC Pacer wagon. This Pacer won the Index of Effluency trophy at the 2012 B.F.E. GP, where it was glacially slow, but now it has a secret weapon under the hood.
Yes, that’s a Jeep 4.0 straight-six engine with an Eaton supercharger yanked off a junkyard-ubiquitous mid-90s GM 3800 V6. It’s already looking like a great-yet-terrible idea, right?
It gets even better! Feeding this engine is a Hitachi SU carburetor, originally one-half of the carb setup on a Datsun 240Z. So, a carburetor meant to provide fuel for 1200 CCs of naturally-aspirated engine displacement is now feeding 4000 CCs of blown engine.
At least there’s a homemade relief valve to spare the fuel/air-delivery system in case of backfire.
And, naturally, a Flavor Flav-size boost gauge, pulled off some large piece of stationary industrial-process equipment.
The car that made jaws drop the lowest, though, was the Sordick Racing Renault R5 Turbo replica. Based on a Le Car that was buried beneath tons of river silt in last year’s Colorado flooding and featuring livery in homage to the Calberson-sponsored, Ragnotti-driven WRC Group 4 R5 Turbo, this car turned out to be a masterpiece of low-buck engineering and fabrication.
In the back, where a real R5 Turbo would have a 158-horse hair-dried Renault Cléon engine, there’s a 190-horse Nissan V6 drivetrain out of a flood-victim Infiniti I30t. We’ve seen quite a few tiny-car-with-mid-engine-swap rigs in LeMons, and they always take a race or three to get the major bugs sorted out. This car has never driven more than about 50 feet with the Nissan engine, so the LeMons Supreme Court put it in Class C. Will it run away with the class? Maybe, but that’s not the way to bet.
Speaking of ill-advised engine swaps, how about a late-70s Toyota Celica with supercharged GM 3800? This car actually went into Class B, because some of the team’s larger problems might have been solved by now.
We saw some good team themes, including these fairly well-executed Bill and Ted costumes.
Rocket Surgery Racing was back with improved Fifth Element outfits.
Here’s a first: one of the very few manual-transmission-equipped early-90s Toyota Camrys sold in the United States.
The favorite to take the overall win has to be the Back To The Past team, whose Nissan 300ZX has won three previous races. Their car will be down on power at this mile-high elevation, but BTTP makes few mistakes and rarely breaks their car.
Be sure to check in Saturday night to see how the first race session goes!
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1rL5KMt
via Agya
