24 Hours of LeMons Chicago: The Winners!

For the 24 Hours of LeMons’ fifth go to to the Autobahn Nation Club in Joliet, Illinois, we began factors off with inspections of some strange-O engine-swapped machinery on Friday, then ran one particular lengthy race session that started on Saturday morning and completed at midnight. With the lack of a break between sessions, mechanical issues tended to knock automobiles out of contention for class leads but heightened a close to-panic-stricken sense of urgency among the teams that wanted their automobiles kept on the track at all costs. We saw considerably madness, considerably heroism, and a lot disappointment, and we rewarded 9 teams with certain-to-be-cherished LeMons trophy hardware. Here are your 2014 Doin’ Time In Joliet 24 Hours of LeMons award winners.

Only a handful of Nissan Z-vehicles have done very nicely in LeMons racing (even though Z-based teams have been really numerous over the years), which tells us that the 3 teams that have won a number of races (one particular of which is Saab-powered) are nearly alone in overcoming the reliability issues of the breed. Group Back To The Previous just added one more win by receiving 318 laps with their ’85 300ZX at Autobahn. These guys weren’t driving the fastest auto on the track— in fact, 41 teams (out of 96 total) racked up quicker very best lap occasions than did the Back To The Past Nissan— but they raced cleanly, didn’t hurt the car, and practiced impeccable pit-stop approach, and in the finish they’d won by a not-very-comfortable fraction of a lap more than the LemonAid Racing BMW 325i. Back To The Past won the 2012 Heaps In the Heart of Texas race, followed by 2014 North Dallas Hooptie race, and now they are the Class A and general winners of the 2014 Doin’ Time In Joliet race.

In Class B, Point-O-Eight and their BMW-ized Ford Escort GT took the class win by 4 laps, finishing with 306 total laps and P10. This team has been competing in Midwest Area LeMons racing for a couple of years now, and they’ve gone from difficult-luck components-breakers to strong class contenders throughout that time.

The Schnitzelwagen 1972 Volkswagen Sort 3 Squareback glommed the Index of Effluency trophy at the 2012 Autobahn race, but that wasn’t enough for these air-cooled Volkswagen fanatics. They wanted a Class C win as nicely, and after a half-dozen attempts (involving many broken engine elements) they’ve reached their purpose. Der Schnitzelwagen’s drivers beat their closest class rival, the Windy City Racing BMW 2002, by 4 laps.

There had been a number of strong candidates for the Most Heroic Repair award at this race, but Milwaukee’s Pabst Blue Racing team out-sweated the rest, the group members shredding their knuckle flesh to the bone in most relentless style even though patching their rear-wheel-drive-converted, Cadillac Northstar V8-powere Nissan Maxima collectively in time to catch the checkered flag.

The PBR car broke a connecting rod on the second lap of the race, punching massive holes in each sides of the engine block. Numerous teams faced with a a lot significantly less serious problem— say, a blown head gasket in a Honda Civic— just pack up and go residence at this point. The notion of getting and swapping a large, complex engine in a weirdly fabricated mid-engined race automobile would appear as hard as pushing a peanut all the way to the leading of Pikes Peak with one’s nose to such a team, but Pabst Blue Racing is produced of sterner stuff.

The a single vibrant spot for PBR was the ease of getting a junkyard Northstar in the Midwest on a Saturday afternoon. Illinois junkyards have a tendency to be properly-stocked with early-90s Cadillacs, and it wasn’t long prior to an allegedly very good engine (the donor auto had the word “RUNS” scrawled on its windshield) was back at the PBR pit space. The entire significantly-modified Cadillac suspension subframe had to be dropped out the bottom of the Maxima, followed by hundreds of huge and tiny tasks to be accomplished in order to get the replacement engine installed.

Practically 12 hours soon after the initial engine blew up, the Pabst Blue Racing Maxima was prepared to go with its new engine. Unfortunately, it overheated just 3 laps soon after its glorious return to the track, and the team finished 96th out of 96 entries. So what? A nicely-earned Most Heroic Fix trophy!

The LemonAid Racing Geo Metro managed to win both Class C and Index of Effluency trophies, 3-cylinder engine and all. Right after the LemonAid guys got an overall win in their BMW 3-series (yes, the one that they made into a rolling monument to Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha) last year, they decided they wanted a tougher challenge, so they opted for a powertrain upgrade in their Metro.

Yes, that’s a BMW M50, driving the Metro’s rear wheels. This lovely abomination ended up weighing a lot more than the team’s E30 (excess weight tends to be a issue with swaps like this), but the group had high hopes for its road-racing achievement. Sadly, it suffered several mechanical failures, wasn’t specifically quick, and turned a mere 43 laps.

Meanwhile, the LemonAid E30 spent most of the race in P1, but a late-innings black flag for a dramatic off-track excursion gave the lead to the Back To The Previous Nissan. For ruining their completely great Geo Metro with a backbreaking 10,000-man-hour drivetrain swap and missing the general win in their BMW due to a single driver error, we gave Team LemonAid the I Got Screwed award.

The United Partnership of Pentastar Racers have been properly on the way to taking home a Most Heroic Repair or I Got Screwed trophy— racers who pick members of the extended Chrysler K-Auto household tend to be key players when it comes to these 2 awards— when their 1992 Plymouth Sundance Duster clanked to a halt early in the race.

The Mitsubishi 6G72 V6 engine under the Sundance’s hood refused to run correctly, due to undiagnosable fuel-delivery and/or ignition and/or cosmic-ray difficulties. The members of the United Partnership of Pentastar Racers are, to a man, engineers employed by Detroit auto makers, but curing the maddening ailments of their engine controls seemed beyond the abilities of modern day science. They attempted swapping fuel injectors, then arrived at the junkyard too late to buy a replacement engine computer.

At that point, I offered a terrible suggestion: cut a hole in the flat best surface of the 6G72′s intake manifold and mount a random carburetor borrowed from any team that would loan one particular out for a handful of hours. By the same implies, scrounge up a low-pressure electric fuel pump and a crappy fuel-pressure regulator and give the carb with the right fuel flow. At initial, the UPOPR engineers had been also fastidious in their engineerdom to even contemplate such a hair-raisingly crude kludge (maintain in mind that these guys scratchbuilt their personal digital instrument cluster and then added wireless telemetry for the exhaust-gas temperature of each of the engine’s cylinders), but a combination of race fever and the offer you of all the needed carburetor-associated bits from the crazy New Zealanders of Apocalyptic Racing did the trick.

In a really quick time, the Aisin carburetor was mounted onto a freshly-hacked hole in the Mitsubishi’s intake, the linkage and fuel plumbing was in spot, the hood had been sliced to clear the carb, and the group just necessary to wait for the RTV to cure in order to get back onto the track.

It worked! 2 far more laps of racing, with the auto hitting 85 mph at one point. Then the RTV sealant began operating, causing enormous vacuum leaks and sending the Plymouth back to the pits. Nevertheless, it was a single of the most triumphant moments in all of LeMons hooptiedom, and for that we honored the United Partnership of Pentastar Racers with the created-for-the-occasion Never Listen To Judge Phil award.

The 24 Hours of LeMons Supreme Court justices constantly decide on a recipient for the Judges’ Decision award, and this time the judges (which included Hooniverse writer Eric Rood and radial aircraft engine-powered MR2 builder Marc LaBranche) gave the trophy to a group that didn’t even bring a race vehicle to the track. Team Muenster Energy suffered repeated trailer and tow-car mishaps on their way from Wisconsin, damaging their race automobile beyond repair in the method. Rather than just give up, they came to the track and watched the race, offered to lend a hand to teams in want of assistance, and typically had a significantly more good attitude than we see from most teams who don’t get to race at all. The LeMons Supreme Court justices approve of this, and so we gave Muenster Energy the Judges’ Selection award.

The Organizer’s Decision went to a group that place a lot of work into creating their Mustang into a convincing flying pig, full with heavy and drag-inducing oil-drum snout and massive plywood wings, even although they typically contend with the quickest teams for an general win. The Flying Pig Racing vehicle appears spectacular on the track, and it generally finishes in the best 5 (this race, it was P3).

We believe that all the quick teams must decorate their automobiles this nicely.

The leading prize of LeMons racing is the Index of Effluency award, offered to the team that accomplishes the most with the least probably vehicle. About halfway through this race, we decided that 2 teams stood out above all the others in the IOE race: the Sir Jackie Stewart’s Coin Purse Racing Ford EXP, and the Afunzalo Racing Fiat X1/9.

Whichever of these 2 got the most laps by the time the checkered flag waved, we decided, would get the Index of Effluency trophy.

The Fiat, even though really slow, was slightly quicker than the Ford, but the 2 stayed neck and neck for hour soon after hour.

Then, disaster struck! Actually, disaster (in the type of repeated mechanical woes) had been striking both teams all day, but the EXP suffered a catastrophic balljoint failure late in the afternoon and came in on the hook with the front wheels pointing in markedly different directions.

The EXP was repaired amazingly swiftly, but the Afunzalo Racing Fiat X1/9 constructed up sufficient of a lead to beat Sir Jackie Stewart’s Coin Purse Racing by 6 laps. Congratulations, Afunzalo Racing!

Not sufficient LeMons coverage to satisfy your hooptie-racing jones? You can verify out more photos of the Doin’ Time In Joliet race right here, you can adhere to the updates from LeMons HQ on the 24 Hours of LeMons Facebook web page, and you can usually preserve up with the most recent LeMons news at the Inexplicably Presented By Car and Driver LeMons Roundup page.

24 Hours of LeMons Chicago: The Winners!