Jack Astro, creator of the Project Car Hell Song, was behind the wheel heading into Turn 1, everything looking fine... right up until the moment when a correct-overcorrect-oh shit sequence took place and the car flipped over. It ended up on its wheels and nobody was hurt, so we say that's a happy ending.

Not so happy for Mr. Astro, however, who now proclaims that my off-the-edge-of-the-map excursion was nothing: "Your shame is weak!" But hey, the Belvedere is running fine and will be driving the 120 miles back to the Bay Area tonight (sadly, the "Why Am I On My Roof" LeMons rule means no more racing for the Chickens this weekend), at which point it will resume being the daily driver for one of the team members. Now that's a race car!

In other news, our favorite Chevy Cavalier race car also flipped over (wheel bearing failure, followed by wheel leaving car, followed by upside-down adventures). Again, we're pleased to report that nobody was hurt.

And... the People's Curse just happened. The victim: The Blues Brothers Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, which aroused much skepticism about its budgetary honesty (the manual transmission sure didn't make the right impression, and the fact that it was waaaaaay faster than the other Crown Vics on the track contributed). There was some talk in the pits about aggressive driving on their part, but Chief Perp Lamm disagreed and told the executioner to take it easy on the Crown Vic... which is now back in driving condition after having the doors, trunk, and hood torn off. I'll get a People's Curse gallery up as soon as possible, but for now I need to get back to spotting for teammate WhatWouldJesseDo, who's out there in the V8olvo.

Since there's a trophy for Most Dangerous Banned F1 Technology, the Chickens decided they'd take a shot at it. While their first choice was a Chapparal-style Sucker Fan, budgetary constraints nixed that option pretty fast. Instead, they opted for the Hillbilly Wing, an ironing board that flips up to provide crucial downforce under acceleration, deceleration, turns, bumps, or steep grades. The video above tells the whole story.



They've also added some nice audio features. Yes, that's the Super Chicken "Charge" call!

Just to make things more interesting, the folks at Foster Farms Chicken got wind of the Faster Farms crew and contacted them. Rather than get all corporate and crush them for copyright infringement, etc., Foster Farms took the high road and issued an official press release:

CALLING ALL RACE FANS: ‘FASTER IMPOSTERS’ TO RACE AT THUNDERHILL IN WILLOWS IN 24 HOURS OF LeMONS
WILLOWS, Calif. –
The “Faster Imposters” – a take off on Foster Farms’ popular advertising characters – are gearing up for the race of their lives midnight to midnight December 27 - 28 at the Thunderhill Raceway Park, in Willows, Calif. It’s 24 Hours of LeMons, an all night race of 100 broken down, beat up cars just trying to cross the finish line.
Faster Imposter Race Captain Adrian Smith and his teammate are such fans of Foster Farms’ Foster Imposter television commercials that they’ve put together nearly an exact replica of the 1960s Plymouth Belvedere featured in the ads and plan to race dressed in Imposter knockoff chicken costumes. Of course, they’ll bring the stuffed Foster Imposters along for moral support. The Foster Imposters are the junk food eating chickens that can never quite make the grade to be fresh, natural Foster Farms chickens. The Faster Imposters are also trying make the grade.
“It's very important that the car lasts long enough for all of us to have a chance to drive some of the roughly 15 hours,” said Smith. “Getting this wonderful beat-up old Belvedere up to snuff has been a challenge. Just finishing would be honorable in an old 60's Plymouth,” comments Smith, who has a soft spot for the old Belvedere cars and has collected and rebuilt several.
Given that, their race strategy is:

- Save the car, don't drive it beyond its means
- Pit safely and effectively
- Have as much fun as humanly possible!

Be sure to check in this weekend for 24 Hours Of LeMons Arse Freeze-A-Palooza coverage; I'll be pretty busy with judging and racing, but I'm sure I'll manage to sneak in some live updates here and there. I got to lovely Willows last night and found Belvedere Adrian at his teammate Al's shop (that's Al as in Al's Rapid Transit, a name that should be familiar to West Coast Mopar guys), conveniently located just a couple miles from the track. He was busy gluing stale pizza and donuts to the race car's dashboard, in order to replicate the Foster Imposters' ride as accurately as possible:

The old wiring really is scary- the kind of thing you often find in a 42-year-old Detroit beater you got for free. How about heavy-gauge wire splices made from ring terminals held together with a screw and "insulated" with crumbling electrical tape? The horror!


But new wiring stuff costs money, and these poor bastards have the misfortune of frequent garage visits by a LeMons judge, who is sure to jack up his bribe requirements to stratospheric heights if he catches them blowing past the 500-buck spending limit. Mr. Astro is an electrician, however, specializing in wiring up office buildings, shopping malls, etc, so he has the solution…


DIN Rail and terminal blocks! He's working on wiring a hospital now, and some new equipment came with DIN rail terminal blocks in European-spec colors (you can't use the wrong colors- somebody might get zapped) so into the trash bin they went. Hooray for scavenging your race car parts from a dumpster!


This stuff is great- you can just keep stacking blocks on the rail, with as many inputs as you like and there's no problem adding new stuff- attaching wires is just a matter of poking a screwdriver into a slot and inserting the wire in the correct hole. The green blocks are grounded to the rail, which is screwed to the car's body. Want to add a police siren and an ooogah horn? Easy!


First, the guys who like to think things out before they start cutting holes in the car- that seems kinda weird, but whatever- make a wiring plan.


A couple of rails mounted behind the glovebox door will provide power to instrument panel items. Note the street-sign mounting plate.


The Black Metal V8olvo team donated our car's unneeded fusebox to the Belvederians (one of our team members works for a transit bus manufacturer, so we have a nice free bus-grade circuit-breaker box in our car), and the Volvo 240 unit turns out to be an excellent universal fusebox (as long as you don't mind those funky European ceramic fuses). Here it is mounted on the dash; the wiring will go through that split-loom-edged defroster vent.

Under the hood, blocks on either side of the engine compartment. That blue conduit stuff is Blue ENT, commonly known as "Smurf Tube" for obvious reasons. It's tough and easy to work with, and plenty of short pieces get tossed in the dumpster- aka Race Car Parts Bin- at job sites. They're replacing the old electrical system bit by bit, so you can see some of the scary old stuff side-by-side with the safe new stuff in this shot.


For brake lights, fuel gauge sender, and weird trunk-mounted secret weapons, there's another wiring outpost mounted in the rear of the car. Note the handy wiring diagram drawn in Sharpie on the sheet metal.

Some of you may have recognized Black Metal V8olvo pit crew hero and Audi Fox wagon owner Shawn in the video above; he ended up getting shanghaied by the Thunderhill-bound Burning Brain Belvedere team, for whom he plans to show the Size Matters Fury guys a thing or two about which Plymouth rules the racetrack.

It was clear that Belvedere Adrian's '66 Plymouth Belvedere would need to have the front brakes upgraded from drums to discs if the team wanted to race at the 24 Hours of LeMons race in December. So, courtesy of a '73-76 Mopar A-body donor car, the team had the parts needed to do the swap. On Sunday night, after completion of the brake job (and some more straightening of bent suspension components) the ritual Burning Gasoline-Soaked Cardboard Helmet Of LeMons was placed on the youngest team member's head and ignited. Next step: swapping 318s between the race car and the Sawzall Convertible Belvedere.