Even though we vowed to crush Team Make:Way's Escort like a drained beercan beneath our hobnailed racing shoes (as the Lord Humungus would say about their car, what a puny plan!), the little slushbox-equipped Escort managed to evade the wrath of Odin and hang on for a respectable 33rd-place finish at the race. They had a scary moment when a front wheel parted company with the vehicle on the track, but for the most part they kept on knocking out lap after lap. Good work, Make:Way, and next time we hope to see some junkyard turbocharging on that thing! [MakeWayRacing.com]

We've seen the cars that finished the race, but what about the ones that spent more time in the pits than on the track? Our pit space was sandwiched between a couple of never-say-die teams: the Snowspeeder Pilots Association, whose MR2's engine ate its rod bearings, and Team SSPP22, whose Volvo 780 Bertone broke its steering rack as an appetizer and damn near everything else for the main course. Then there was the Wedginator, which was pushed or dragged off the track more often than British Leyland workers went on strike, and the Car & Driver Fiero, which held the dubious title of Fewest Laps Completed, thanks to clutch-related maladies. Heroes, all of them! Let's take a look at some of the repairs we caught on film in the pits; thanks to Zack Spencer and Amy Judd for their photographs.

We really want to love art cars, but the problem with a lot of them is that the artists involved just don't get cars. For every genuinely awesome Camera Van or Pedal Regal, you get a hundred beater 323s with plastic army men or dinosaurs epoxied all over the sheet metal. But take heart, fans of car-as-art, because the participants at the 24 Hours of LeMons race continue to raise the bar with the themes for their cars; check out the gallery below for a sampling of some of the art cars we saw at the race at Altamont last weekend. Thanks to photographers Zack Spencer and Amy Judd for contributing photographs.

We followed the exploits of LTDScott and his Team Porcubimmer during the run-up to the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Altamont, and some of you are probably wondering how it went for the "Pricks Outside" guys when the real deal went down. Well, we have good news and bad news for you: the good news is that the car looked amazing (as did the coordinated team outfits), but the bad news is that a cascade of mechanical woes kept the Porcubimmer off the track for much of the weekend. Fuel system, clutch, you name it. When it was on the track, however, it was fast; for a glorious- if regrettably short- time on Saturday, the spiky 325e was in the #1 position. Take heart, Porcubimmer fans- we're pretty sure we haven't seen the last of this car's angry face! [Porcubimmer.com]

We showed you the Top 44 Lemons at the Altamont race last October, followed by the Top 50 Lemons at Thunderhill in December, and now it's time to see the results from the Altamont race last weekend. Get any group of car freaks together, bring up the concept of the 24 Hours of LeMons, and you're sure to get endless debate about which cheap heaps should dominate. Well, here's where reality comes into play; this is how things actually played out on the track. We'll show the other 40 cars later on, when we put up the traditional LeMons Über-gallery, but for now it's time to examine the beaters, clunkers, and buckets that came out on top!

#1: Krider Racing - Death Proof
#2: Spirit of San Diego
#3: Motoring J Style
#4: Axles of Evel
#5: Box Wrench
#6: Pit Crew Revenge
#7: Tresulators
#8: Mother Cluckers
#9: Onset
#10: Team 60
#11: Fancy Junc
#12: Size Matters Chrysler
#13: Third Time's A Charm
#14: Dilligaf
#15: Black Metal V8olvo
#16: Duwey Chydum and Howe Taxi Co
#17: Red Bear
#18: Tokyo Auto Wreckers
#19: Eyesore Pimpin
#20: F1 BMW
#21: Chicks and Dicks
#22: Team Tread Lightly
#23: Team Tango
#24: Autobahn Society Racing
#25: Excalibur
#26: Group of Fools
#27: Jamaican Racing Team
#28: Bernal Dads Racing
#29: Lemon Warriors
#30: Delinquent Racing
#31: Cliché Racing
#32: Flying Hyundai
#33: Make:Way
#34: El Moto Loco
#35: Uber Vogel
#36: ZZ Uber
#37: Scuderia Punk Rock Chef
#38: Team 31
#39: Team California Mille
#40: No Power Rangers
#41: Volatile RAM
#42: The Flakes
#43: Volcano
#44: San Jose Scalawags
#45: Redemption Racing
#46: Carpet Pissers
#47: Turdlingua
#48: Autodenta
#49: Mustang Sally
#50: Down Under

When racing started at Altamont on Sunday, we knew we had some catching up to do; thanks to overestimation of fuel consumption, some pit slowness, and a penalty incurred by yours truly (more on that later), we started the day in 44th place out of 90 cars. We had the power, we had the skilled drivers, and we had a block of Swedish steel that could shrug off hits from the biggest opponents. And, speaking of the biggest opponents, a certain bullying orange Plymouth fared quite badly in a series of paint-trading incidents with our own WhatWouldJesseDo; see that orange paint on the tire in the image above?

Last October, the highest-placed Detroit car at the 24 Hours of LeMons Altamont race was the Spirit of San Diego '81 Chevy Malibu, grabbing a not-too-shabby 20th place. This time around, minus the fins and plus some mean-looking black paint, a good ol' American V8/rear-drive machine has left all them furrin cars (save one) eating Detroit exhaust, as the Chevrolet drivers finished a mere three laps behind the #1 car. We're not sure what they changed (though the Malibu does appear to have wider, lower-profile rubber now), but it sure worked! By the way, I'm still working on the traditional Top 50 Cars and Über Gallery LeMons posts; you'll get 'em soon.

Those of us at the 24 Hours of LeMons race on Saturday afternoon were beyond heartbroken when Court Summerfield died at the wheel of the Team Cant Am Volvo 242 Turbo. Not only was Court's death a major loss for the LeMons racing community, it was also a tough blow for the city of Alameda; he lived on the island and worked at Ole's Waffle Shop, which is as much a part of the city's soul as are old cars parked on the street. I hung out with Court before the race on Saturday morning and I'm still unable to believe that this could happen to such a nice guy and great driver. The words of his wife made us feel a little better, however: "It was really just something that he was happy doing. I'm sure the way he went, he was happy." Check out the Cant Am Volvo in action during happier times, at Altamont and at Thunderhill Photo credit, above: Gianna Babb [San Francisco Chronicle]

With all the excitement of the race, I totally forgot to post photos of what the Black Metal V8olvo actually looked like by the time we had it all painted and bedecaled. Thing is, we didn't have time to apply the decals until we actually got the car to the racetrack. First of all, some commenters have wondered about the skulls mounted on the front edge of the car's roof. Those aren't just decorative skulls that just sit there. Hell, no! These are anatomically correct med-student skull replicas, and they're equipped with crowns of plumber's tape, Fiat indicator lights for eyes, and Dodge minivan vacuum motors operating the jaws! With high manifold vacuum (i.e., idling, cruising, decelerating), the vacuum motor pulls the skull's jaw shut; low manifold vacuum (i.e., gas pedal mashed to the floor) allows springs to pull the jaw open. I'll write up the fascinating details of how to build such important racing accessories for yourself, but for now let's check out the nice "before getting beat to hell" photos of the car.

We masked off the original Volvo blue paint for the vaguely Boss 302-influenced stripes and shot the rest of the car with black rattle-can paint.


Thanks to AFX Digital, we got some nice decals for the car, including these BØSS 3Ö2 emblems.


The car came with "Happiness Is A Scruffy Dog" license plate frames (front and rear), so we decided to keep the front one on the bumper.


And here's the car in action. I'll post a gallery of the Black Metal V8olvo in all its battle-scarred glory soon, very soon. That car brushed off some ludicrously hard hits that would have put flimsier machines out of the race for good, and it shows it.

In the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Thunderhill last December, we watched a Nissan Sentra SE-R place fifth (if not for a wheel stud failure, they'd have done even better). We thought the Krider team members were pretty cool guys, so it was great to see them at Altamont; this time their ride was an Acura Integra with a grisly horror-movie theme. They drove consistently quick laps, didn't break down or get destroyed by a big Mopar, and their pit stops were very efficient... and now they've got a trophy to show for it. Congratulations, Krider Racing! Note: I forgot to mention that the team donated their prize money to a fund set up for the survivors of Court Summerfield.

The inaugural race of the 24 Hours of LeMons season just concluded and we're being told it looks like the winner's Krider Racing in their Integra. Murilee will have more shortly from Altamont but he predicts our very own Team Black Metal V8olvo will come in somewhere in the top 20. Give 'em all a round of applause for not only finishing after yesterday's tragedy, but for making all of us damn proud. Keep your eyes on our 24 Hours of LeMons Altamont tag for more coverage throughout the upcoming week. (Photo Credit: PK Kool via Flickr)

Just received the following text message from Murilee: "[Team Black Metal V8olvo has] gone from 44th place to 19th so far today." Continue following the team's progress along with all our coverage here.

So we put in the Loverman followed by Viergangfuchs this morning and started knocking off some quick laps, passing like crazy and moving up to the 20s in the standings; Mr. Baruth has our best lap time, with 51 seconds. Now the Evil Genius is driving, and he's also fast as hell. However, the level of competition is getting ratcheted up, tempers are flaring a bit out there, and we're dishing out and receiving some damage in the heat of the action; the front suspension just needed some major toe adjustments after a bit of mutual metal grunching with our friend Xarg's Cavalier wagon. Sorry, guys! Meanwhile, the Porcubimmer, after leading for a while yesterday, has been de-quilled by various mechanical maladies; full report later.

There was definitely a sense of gloom hanging over the pits this morning, but just about everyone here felt that we ought to go out and have fun doing what the late Mr. Summerfield loved doing: racing. The number of cars out on the track is quite a bit smaller than what we had yesterday, as mechanical failures take their toll (though Jay Lamm's rigorous "don't hit each other" policy is working well, with not many cars getting sidelined by enduro-style damage). Team Black Metal V8olvo is now in Full Hammer Down Mode, with our fast drivers out there and our car rising in the standings (at last check, we were #34). Our goal: to be the fastest Swedish car! I may not have time to post for a while, as I'm on pit duty and my driving turn is coming up shortly, but will do my best.

While Murilee and the rest of Team V8olvo musters on with thoughts still on yesterday's tragedy at the 24 Hours of Lemons race at Altamont, we here at the Jalopnik Detroit bureau are lending a helping hand with coverage. We've just received news from the Gulf 39 team on the identity of their teammate behind the wheel of the Volvo 242 Turbo along with a little more detail on the preliminary on-scene investigation by the California Highway Patrol. We'd indicated to the team we only wanted to know the name after they'd had the opportunity to notify family, so although we're assuming that's been done already, we still wanted to make sure to include the name after the fold of this post to make certain it's been taken care of already. With that in mind — the short, but full, e-mail after the jump.

The CHP reported that the car was in working order. No mechanical failure seems to have appeared...the impact was estimated at 50 to 60 MPH...Cort Summerfield was 46 years old (02/01/1961)

Again, our deepest sympathies go out to Mr. Summerfield's family, friends and teammates and we fervently hope the accident doesn't harm what until this point was one of the great examples of grassroots motorsports in action.

Something that really jumped out at everyone upon arrival in the Altamont pits yesterday morning was the incredible themes some- in fact, most- teams applied to their cars and costumes. Your typical art-car gathering -with its plastic army men glued to 80s GM G-bodies- would be put to shame by the decor on the race cars and drivers that we saw assembled at this race. Even previous LeMons events couldn't compare. How could anything bad happen at such a gathering? Sure, such a sentiment doesn't have very solid logic behind it- yes, racing can be dangerous- but when you see teams with themes as elaborate as the Eyesore Pimps (formerly known as Eyesore Racing), the tendency is to feel that the risk doesn't apply. All of us are going to show up at the track today and try to regain some of the sense of absurdity that we know and love about this event; will keep you posted.

We all saw the report from Murilee just under an hour ago, and now we're hearing from numerous sources that the 24 Hours of LeMons race has taken a tragic turn. Our sources tell us the driver of the Volvo 242 Turbo in Gulf Oil colors (pictured above before the race, and below from the Thunderhill LeMons race last year) has died. We're waiting on more as we hear it from team V8olvo as well as others at the Altamont 24 Hours of LeMons. If this news ends up being true, our prayers, thoughts and well-wishes go out to the family, friends and teammates. All we do know for sure is that racing has been halted for the day and will supposedly resume again tomorrow. Although if it is true, that may just be wishful thinking. Updated below the jump — and with new photos below thanks to Mark Pitts.

MOST RECENT UPDATE: 01:27 PM EST - 05/11/2008

UPDATE: If you remember, the 242 Turbo was actually the inspiration for the choice of the V8olvo.

UPDATE #2: The V8olvo happened to be right behind the 242 Turbo when it crashed. We're told it went into the wall at speed which made our team think perhaps something happened before the crash to the driver.

UPDATE #3: We have confirmation from a source with close ties to the team that there was indeed a fatality. We are withholding the name and other identifying characteristics until we're given the OK from the family and team.

UPDATE #4: The folks over at Bryan's Message Board have been chronicling the adventures of "Team Porcubimmer" — as such, a few of the forum fan-boys (and girls) were in the stands at Altamont. Here's one of their recaps of what happened:

he shot forward and sped up right before the turn, and went head on into the wall. didn't break, didn't turn...i didn't see anyone bump him. best guess is that he passed out and his foot just acted like a lead weight... but that's just based on the fact that he blasted forward so suddenly and made a beeline for the wall...took them forever to get a fucking tarp up. i was up in the stands with my dad, and he was really upset that it took them so long to do that.

Yes, of course it's speculation — but the rest of the account helps provide more verification for what we've been told was seen out at the track.

UPDATE #5: We've just received the following e-mail from a team member of the victim of the crash with his name, age and a little bit more detail on what may have happened:

The CHP reported that the car was in working order. No mechanical failure seems to have appeared...the impact was estimated at 50 to 60 MPH...Cort Summerfield was 46 years old (02/01/1961)

I was just about to post on some teams' heroic repair sessions and show some fender-to-fender racing action, but then the thing we all fear happened: the Volvo 242 Turbo in Gulf Oil colors hit the wall, hard, and the driver was injured. They've had to cut the roof off the car and now they're extricating the driver; we'll let you know more when we hear about it. For now, pray to whatever gods, cosmic forces, etc. you can think of that this brave-ass racer comes out of it OK.

And here comes pride up the backstretch! I'm the next driver up, so this will be brief: right now our friends on Team Porcubimmer are in first place! Black Metal V8olvo is in "preserve the car" mode, so we're running in the middle of the pack now. The car seems to be doing all right, although those of you who predicted that the Mercedes-Benz radiator would leak have been proven correct (not a serious leak, fortunately, and we have a spare).

As we told you earlier, the V8olvo's got a bunch of fancy new decals as the team finishes getting it ready to run in just a short while at the 24 Hours of LeMons at Altamont. Here's our favorite. Now wish 'em luck in the comments below.

We've spent the morning applying stickers, discussing driver strategy, and being hectored by Mr. Lamm about all the horrific penalties that await overly aggro drivers (in honor of Mother's Day, one penalty involves being forced to eat an entire meatloaf while another team member plays the role of the mother, hovering and shouting that the victim is the Least Favorite Child). I'm pretty busy now, but stay tuned for more live action when I get a breather! [24 Hours of LeMons and 24 Hours of LeMons Altamont coverage]

Teams competing in the 24 Hours of LeMons race can check in and get their cars past the tech inspection judges on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. Teams showing up on Friday get first shot at the good pit spaces, and Team Black Metal V8olvo decided to claim some real estate today. Tech inspection went smoothly and we're cleared to race.

All the cars we saw were quite well-prepared, with the full complement of safety equipment. We didn't see anyone busted for blowing past the $500 price ceiling, but we only saw a handful of the 90 entrants go through the inspection... so we'll see how that plays out.


Plenty of Swedish steel at the race this time, including this Volvo 244. Yes, it's a 244! We counted at least five Volvos besides our own (including a 780 Bertone with a Swedish flag on the roof), plus several Saabs, and most of the cars haven't even arrived yet.


This 242 Turbo was at the Thunderhill 24 Hours of LeMons race back in December.


Hey, is that a Merkur XR4Ti?

24 Hours of LeMons race weekend is just about here, and we're heading out to Altamont for the early check-in and tech inspection today. Señor Loverman has applied the all-important V8 emblem to the trunk lid, we've got our checklist all checked, and we're going to be throwing some elbows as we vie for the best pit location. Stay tuned for some live race coverage on Saturday!

Team Black Metal V8olvo was fortunate enough to get some track time at a Volvo club event at Thunderhill last week, and so we got the car all put together and trailered it on up to Willows. It worked pretty well, with our modified Thunderbird springs and swaybars and 242 Turbo brakes giving the car decent handling and stopping, and while the Ford 302 couldn't keep up with the wild-ass super-boosted turbo four-bangers on the other cars, it was able to get out of its own way. But then the car started running hot...

You see, we'd been inspired by Team Two Wheels Too Many and the rear-radiator setup they'd put in their '85 Cavalier, and we figured we'd do the same in our Volvo. Well, actually, I was the one who thought it would be a good idea, if we're going to be placing blame for ensuing badness.


Just get the biggest truck radiator we could find at the junkyard, put it in the back seat, and add some big electric radiator fans. Run some muffler piping forward to the engine, cut some holes in the trunk, and we become invulnerable to battle damage!



Piping through the firewall bulkhead and along the passenger side, inside the rollcage. The whole setup was ridiculously cheap, and seemed like it should work well.


I picked up a couple of fans from early-80s Mercedes-Benz sedans, and grabbed another from an 80s BMW 7-series.



Cut out a template from cardboard to make a nice aluminum shroud...


...and a third fan in the trunk, blowing air out through a reverse scoop cut into the trunk lid.


Should be airflow aplenty here!


Seal up the gaps between the passenger compartment and trunk with aluminum tape and Foster's cans.


Cut some holes in the doors and add some Toyota MR2 side scoops for added cooling. What could go wrong? Nothing, or so I thought.



So, the car gets to the racetrack, and everything seems fine.


But after a few laps, the water temperature kept climbing past the danger point, regardless of speed or number of fans operating. At this point, the primary theory among the team members was that the 302's tired water pump wasn't moving enough water, since the three German fans moved air like a hurricane. But there was no way of knowing.


And no way of testing, because at that point disaster struck! Team member Jesse (you might know him as triple-DOTS owner WhatWouldJesseDo) was behind the wheel on the track when the engine suddenly died and wouldn't restart. Track adventures ceased at that point.


Once we got the car back to the shop, it turned out that the oil pump had seized and snapped off the roll pin holding the distributor drive gear in place. We were actually fortunate that the Ford engine drives the oil pump from the distributor, because that meant that the engine quit immediately (rather than continuing to run at full throttle with no oil pressure). But at this point we were worried that our worn-out well-seasoned engine might not be able to handle the rigors of a long endurance race (especially after seeing the Sin City Lemons LTD throw a rod in its 302 at the Thunderhill race in December).



Anyway, the weekend became a grueling all-out, bloody-knuckled wrenchathon. We had to get the engine out of the car, swap in an oil pump and distributor from one of Crew Chief Hellhammer's collection of old Ford 302s, then convert the car from a radical rear-radiator setup to a standard front-radiator rig... all with a week to go before the race! Oh yes, and paint the car if we had time (cue madhouse laughter).

It's not trivial pulling an engine and swapping an oil pump while it hangs on a lift, but Hellhammer has the chops to get it done pretty quickly.


All the work on that nice shroud, discarded! That stung, bad. We probably could have made it work, if we'd had time for more testing... but we didn't. Off to the junkyard with me, to search for a V8 radiator that would fit in a Volvo 240, preferably with the inlet on the passenger's side of the car.


Hmmm... a great big Mercedes-Benz 560SEL should have plenty of cooling capacity, eh?


The width was just right for our car, but the height was about 3" too tall. But we had a workaround planned for that issue.


First, a frame to support the new radiator, tied into the strut tower brace we'd already built out of square tubing.


We rigged the Mercedes mounts to work with our frame, and it's all nicely isolated with rubber bumpers.


The pair of Mercedes fans we'd had in the rear of the car (and, of course, new wiring to control them from the existing circuits) go in the front now, along with an engine-driven fan. Perhaps the engine-driven fan would be enough, but we don't want to take chances with overheating at the race.


The Benz used a remote radiator tank, so we had to find a place for it.


As for hood clearance, we just cut a big slot for the radiator and upper hose. Folks who swap V8s into street-driven Volvos usually use Corvette radiators (because they're short and wide, like the radiator space in a Volvo 240), but we weren't going to find a Corvette in Pick Your Part with the clock ticking.


Is this right out of the Lord Humungus' motor pool or what?


Hellhammer broke out the welding gear again and fabricated this cowcatcher-esque radiator-protection cage that goes behind the grille. Not quite as indestructible as a radiator in the back seat area, but still pretty tough (especially with that huge Volvo bumper in place).


Looks pretty good! Note the Volvo seat belts as hood hold-downs.


A solid 3-day weekend of 12-hour days for us, reminiscent of the panicky last hour's thrash you'd see teams doing in the old Junkyard Wars... only ours went on and on and on, for day after day. I considered trying out for that show, back in 2001 or so... even talked about putting a team together with a cubemate at a dot-com job who had a part-time gig as a welding instructor, but- as usually happens- we never went anywhere with the idea. Well, we got laid off from the job and went our separate ways... and next thing I know, she's on the Metal Maidens, winning The Great Race (that's her on the left). The jealousy! But now I think I know what that sort of fabrication-against-deadline adrenaline feels like!


The out-of-town team members are here, and we're ready for some wheel-to-wheel, Scandinavian black metal-inspired action at Altamont this weekend. From left to right: Necrobutcher, Mr. Blöödwrënch, and Count Chocunakh (aka Señor Loverman, yours truly, and Jack Baruth). I'll be pretty busy at the race, but will try to get some live coverage for y'all. Oh yes, our Black Metal V8olvo Mission Statement (cue Opeth): Most Grim and Frostbitten Necrowrenches Bloodlustfully Blaspheming the Forbidden Forsaken Fjord Sacrilegiously Perched Atop the Unholy and Inverted Mountain of Altamont.

When you spend all your spare time for months beating a sub-$500 car into a 24 Hours of LeMons racer, you develop a powerful thirst. Team Porcubimmer decided early on in their build that their thirst would be quenched exclusively by those red cans from Mexico, and then they decided that the smell of stale beer in the garage was so good that they'd save all the empties. So now the question: how many cans did they guzzle? You can submit your guess at their site, and the winner will get a team "Pricks Outside" T-shirt. [Porcubimmer.com]

When your V8-powered Volvo race car already has a 5-speed, Fiero wing, and hood scoop, what more do you need? That's right, a great big Swedish Rebel Flag on the roof! We had this planned for quite a while (though several commenters read our minds and suggested the idea), and we finally made it happen last weekend. Before you go and read Señor Loverman's TTAC writeup, make the jump to check out the blow-by-blow. [The Truth About Cars]

The car was already blue, so that meant that we just needed to put some yellow bars on the roof. Yes, we have other worries (cooling system problems and a garbooned oil pump during our test driving at a Volvo club meet at Thunderhill last week), but we might as well not even bother showing up if we have no Swedish Rebel Flag!


I'm sure my Swedish immigrant ancestors would shed a few tears if they could just see this. Of course, they left Sweden, so maybe not.


But we're the Dukes of Göteborg! We need stars!


13 stars, to be exact. I'll write more about our all-weekend engine-and-cooling-system thrash session in the days to come, and of course you'll get to see the full paint job soon.

When we started out to build a V8-powered Volvo 244 for the May 10-11 24 Hours of LeMons race, most of the team members assumed we'd be using the good ol' C4 automatic transmission. You know, automatics are way easier to swap, with no troublesome clutch linkage to futz with. But Crew Chief Hellhammer (formerly known as Dave) pointed out that he's built plenty of manual-equipped rods, and then he directed our attention to several Ford V8-compatible T-5 5-speeds (and no C4s) sitting in the weeds behind his shop (he's been working on a '57 Ford project, so his stash-o-parts is heavy on Ford running gear). With our minds filled with images of slushboxes overheating and dying at last year's Altamont race, we decided to go with three pedals instead of two... then held our collective breath when it came time to make it happen for real.

As it turned out, this is a ridiculously easy swap (well, by the standards of weird engine swaps, that is). The 5-speed shifter even lined up perfectly with the hole for the Volvo's automatic shifter. A bit of crossmember modification and it was in place.


What really had us worried was the potential nightmare of rigging up clutch linkage. We grabbed a Volvo clutch pedal and cable assembly out of a manual-trans 244 at the junkyard and settled down for what threatened to be agony-packed days of fabrication.


But no! The Volvo cable hooked right up to the Ford transmission and worked fine. We were stunned. Of course, all the time we saved on this project was promptly eaten up by a thousand other details, but we aren't complaining. We forgot to grab a shift boot in the junkyard, so we fabricated a crude bracket and zip-tied a piece of inner-tube rubber in place. Now if we can just keep from breaking U-joints and differentials at the track...

If you potential Volvo 240 racers want to see a good reason for relocating the fuel filler on your cars, just take a look at the photo above. Yes, that's a Volvo 245 that got bashed in the right rear during a 2006 24 Hours of LeMons race, and that scary gasoline-filled balloon hanging from the fuel filler area is a latex glove ziptied over the end of the busted-off filler tube. We can thank Ecurie Ecrappe for being so helpful to a competing team by performing this totally safe Field Expedient Repair; thanks also to EE member TheEastBayKid for sending in the photo. [Hardtuned]

While the Black Metal V8olvo crew was working on the rear of the car, we took care of the Number One Priority immediately by installing a Fiero wing. Now, you'd think that such a wing would radiate such an impenetrable aura of cool that no other driver would dare hit our car, but we figured it wouldn't hurt to get some cheap insurance by dealing with one of the most vulnerable points on the Volvo 240 race car: the fuel filler. By all accounts, LeMons Volvos tend to get hit in the right rear, which knocks the fuel filler pipe loose and causes a fuel leak, which makes the guys with the black flags get all upset (and they've got a two-strikes-yer-out policy on fuel leaks). It's an easy fix, though!

Look at that fuel door, just begging for a '75 Buick to bash it in about a foot during the race. Can't have that!


So, all you need to do is cut the original filler, reattach it to the fuel tank at a different angle, lengthen it with about a foot of fuel-proof flex hose added to the middle, and cut a hole in the trunk lid.


A simple bracket and hose clamp to hold the assembly in place, and we'll be ready to fill 'er up without opening the trunk. An impact hard enough to do harm to this filler would need to be apocalyptic indeed, given that it's inside the frame rail and protected by a lot of Volvo double-thick sheet metal to boot.


Even though we'll be able to fill up the tank without opening the trunk, we don't want a rear impact to jam the factory trunk latch and prevent us from reaching the trunk-mounted battery (more on that later). Fortunately, I scored some crappy-yet-functional (and felicitously pocket-sized) hood pin assemblies on a junked car and we were thus able to replace the trunk lock assembly with something less likely to get stuck in the event of a trunk-munching rear-ender. Now imagine hundreds of such small projects and you'll understand the kind of sweat a 24 Hours of LeMons team works up prior to the race.

When we added a great big hood scoop to our V8 Volvo LeMons racer, it immediately became apparent that something was missing from the picture. But what? Walking around to the rear of the car, it hit us: we lacked a wing! Skeptics might point out that a wing would be aerodynamically meaningless on a brick-shaped car running on a track with top speeds of about 60 (the crueler skeptics might even refer to a wing as "useless dead weight"), but we know that's hogwash- the bigger the wing, the faster the car!

With Half Price Day coming up at the junkyard, we had to select our wing carefully; after all, $9.00 is quite an investment. We considered going for an MR2 wing, but some quick measuring led to the discovery that the wing off the Pontiac Fiero GT was just the right width for our car.


Into the Civic with the other half-priced loot! The Fiero GT wing is especially nice because it mounts on any flat surface via four easily-drilled holes.


Because we wanted to try to get some test time at a track with a "No Brake Light, No Service" policy prior to the actual race, we picked up some Chrysler minivan brake lights to mount on the underside of the wing.


Look at that safety!


By our calculations, our Fiero wing adds 50 horsepower and infinite coolness.

Now that the 24 Hours of LeMons shit-talking has begun, I find it necessary to present some more evidence to show that the V8-ified Volvo 240 is Your Best Race Car Value, even though it means giving away some tricks to our real competition (i.e., the other teams driving Swedish steel). You see, some teams are coming up with this crazy talk about how they've got the best bang-for-buck with their Cavaliers or MR2s and such, but are there countless MR2s sitting in back yards, just waiting for some kind, trailer-equipped soul to come haul them away for free? As we've seen, perception of the poor brick-shaped Göteborg machine has gone from beloved daily driver to gas-swilling outcast recently, with local junkyards bursting at the seams with 242s, 244s, and 245s. That means that a Craigslist ad with the headline "DEAD VOLVO WANTED, WILL TOW" gets an immediate response.

We had observed that many teams gave themselves a big advantage in the pits (both for parts to use on their own cars and for horse-trading leverage with other teams) by bringing parts cars to the last couple of LeMons races, and we were determined to do the same. As an added bonus, with a parts car you can pick and choose the best shocks, brake calipers, etc. to put on your racer. I figured I'd put up an ad and then offer the standard wrecking-yard 50 bucks to those who responded, but I hadn't banked on the desperation of those who are sick of staring at the immobile hulk of a dead Volvo day after day, month after month. Once my Craigslist ad went up, I had three responses within the same day, one of which came from the owner of an '85 242 Turbo that was in a back yard just a few miles from Black Metal V8olvo HQ. This car had been purchased a few years back by a guy who stripped it of all the turbo goodies and some other pieces, and he wanted it gone from his yard ASAP. The price: free! Needless to say, we had the trailer over there within 20 minutes of talking to the guy.


Yes, the Turbo 242s are highly sought-after cars, but this one was pretty well trashed. It did have three Draco rims, a usable battery, decent shocks, and thousands of little parts that would save us many schleps to the junkyard over the following months.


Doesn't look like there's anything of use in that thoroughly grody leather interior, but we grabbed the steering wheel and the clock for the race car...


... and the wiring harness proved to be incredibly useful when harvesting connectors, relays, and wire to use in the race car.


Don't weep over this 242T's fate, Volvo lovers- its shell shall live on in racing glory, for the Evil Genius himself will be gutting this car and turning it into a full-on (Volvo-powered) racer in the near future! Don't you love a happy ending?

We were trying to take the high road with this racecar thing, not thump our chests too hard about the way our Ford 302-powered Volvo 244 was going to annihilate the competition at Altamont... but then the gentleman in the photo above, Jason Torchinsky of Team Make:Way, decided to throw down the gauntlet with this taunting email:

And, yes, we'll be at Altamont— we're looking forward to helping push your car off the track and console your sobbings with the gracious tone of a victor

Now, Mr. Torchinsky owns a Reliant Scimitar, so you figure he'd know a thing or two about futility.

So let's talk about Make:Way's car. It's a 1993 Ford Escort; they claim that they were reduced to buying one of the weakest, most shoddily-built vehicles ever to creep out of Dearborn under its own so-called power because "nobody sells anything interesting AND running for $500 or less." This speaks volumes about their lack of experience with cheap car shopping. Why, you can get V12 Jaguars for $500!


Or, if you want something that can contend on a budget, what's wrong with a nice Cavalier wagon? Cavalier wagon owners will pay you to take their cars, and Team Two Wheels Too Many has proven to everyone's satisfaction that they kick ass at the racetrack. Now, the Escort isn't what you'd call the ideal car for the Altamont Motor Speedway, but spinning out repeatedly will be the least of their problems.


You see, Volvos are all about the safety. Because of that, they have massive aluminum battering rams for bumpers. Here's our car. Lesser cars will bounce off these bumpers like ping-pong balls off the side of a Big Boy locomotive.


And what happens when you get into a paint-trading situation with a vast hunk of Detroit iron, like f'r'example the Size Matters Fury? Well, if you're driving a Göteborg brick, you might get an unsightly dent or two... but a freakin' Escort will disintegrate like a popsicle-stick tower having a piano dropped onto it from ten stories up! We won't get into the terrible things that take place when a front-wheel-drive car takes a hard shot to a front wheel (which occurs about every 17 seconds at Altamont), because Team Make:Way will be too busy trying to get out of the way of the faster cars (i.e., damn near all of them) to worry about that!

Why, it's all we can do to keep Horgh himself from getting on the first plane from Norway to come out and teach these Make:Way fellas a lesson about Black Metal they'll never forget!

Any of you other teams headed to the Altamont race have something to say to us? Go ahead and crank up your wheezing propaganda organs and send me your best taunts- we'll print 'em!

So we solved the throttle-linkage problem on our V8-ized Volvo race car, but what about electrical stuff? The factory wiring, switches, and instruments weren't going to work with our new engine. In fact, we'd torn out every scrap of wire in the car, preferring to start with a blank electrical slate. As the creator of the Junkyard Boogaloo Boombox, I figured whipping up an all-junkyard instrument panel on a shoestring budget wouldn't be too much hassle. I was able to scrounge up an old Auto Meter temperature gauge and a few toggle switches in my Boxes-O-Car-Crap™, and a street sign nice piece of sheet aluminum materialized in the garage, but what about the rest of the stuff?

The only really important gauge in this kind of race car is the tachometer. Sure, we could clamp a big ol' aftermarket tach on the steering column (and, in fact, the team members were able to produce a couple of high-quality tachs from their personal stashes), but we'd get dinged for such an extravagance by the flinty-eyed LeMons judges, who will be looking to add up all the nickels and dimes in each car. No, it would have to be a junkyard tach, preferably from a V8-equipped Ford product. And looky here- an 80s Mustang GT, and it's Half Price Day today!



Sure enough, it's got the perfect tach for our 302, and the junkyard vultures have already torn the cluster halfway out.


A few brutal hacks with a big prybar carefully removed fasteners and the cluster is ready to yield up its treasure...


Look at those easy-to-wire connectors on the back of the tachometer. Perfect!


With tachs going for just $5 on Half Price Day, I thought about getting this Camaro tach as a backup, but decided to pass.


You can find plenty of high-quality toggle switches in the junkyard; just look for cars with aftermarket security systems or extra fog lights.


When we performed a wiring harness-ectomy on the Volvo, we saved all the wire and connectors. Hundreds of feet of high-quality Volvo-grade wiring just ready to be reused. Yeah, we're being cheap beyond belief, but that stuff costs money!


Next, out to the workbench for some cutting and drilling. I decided to make one panel with the tach and a pair of idiot lights (for added "You better pit RIGHT NOW!" urgency, we're using side marker lights as oil pressure and temperature idiot lights) and another panel with switches and the less important gauges.


The Mustang tach needed some slicing and grinding to go from the factory cluster to our aluminum panel, but it wasn't too difficult. Note the Volvo harness connectors; both panels need to be easily removable for troubleshooting and repairs during construction.


A little black spray paint (left over from making the last batch of PCH Tipster T-shirts) to reduce the glare problem, and it's ready to install! Not exactly show-car quality, but I think this tach/idiot-light panel captures the spirit of the 24 Hours of LeMons.


I found a nice pocket-sized reasonably priced VDO voltmeter in a junked Rabbit, and the clock and fuel gauge from our free 242T parts car (more on that über-score later) made a total of four gauges when added to the water temperature gauge. Six switches, a Fiat power-on light, and a starter button from an old Gillig Phantom bus round out the controls.


How to attach the panels to the rollbar behind the wheel? Muffler clamps! This way the panels are adjustable with a few turns of a wrench.


"That wiring is more complicated than the Space Shuttle!" grumbles a teammate, but compared to the Junkyard Boogaloo Boombox it's practically austere! Now that it's all zip-tied and protected by split looms, it looks pretty clean. However, I'm pretty sure my teammates will be pulling all my toenails out with rusty pliers (or, perhaps even worse, start calling me "Joe Lucas") if the car DNFs due to electrical problems.

Somewhat crude-looking, but effective... and built for next to nothing!

It seemed like such a great idea a few months ago: Over here, we had a $100 Volvo 244. Over there, a free Ford 302 engine. A little welding, a bit of cutting, some duct tape, and voila! Easy V8 Volvo for the 24 Hours of LeMons, you betcha! Actually, we all knew we were taking on a ridiculously ambitious somewhat challenging project, especially since sweat and ingenuity would have to substitute for dollars in order to get under the $500 budget, but we've got the junkyard scroungers and fabricatin' maniacs to get the job done. Here's one example of the many critical details that must be dealt with when putting together a Frankensteined beast like ours: the throttle linkage.

Our '84 Volvo DL's original Red Block engine had an elegant cam-and-linkage throttle-control setup that involved a 90° shift in rotation axis before getting to the throttle body, as shown in the photo above. However, we're stuffing a V8 with an ancient Holley 600 into the engine compartment. Everything's different. How to connect the gas pedal to the carb in some way that won't fall apart on the race track no matter how enthusiastically our leadfooted team members stomp on the pedal? Not only that, how can we do it for free?
Here's where the value of having veteran hot-rodders on the team once again becomes obvious. Wayne put the Holley on the workbench, grabbed the Volvo throttle components and some other bits discarded from the car during the gutting process, and proceeded with the drilling, bending, welding, and pounding.



In less time than it took for us to listen to all the songs on "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" on the garage boombox, he had the throttle mechanism working like it came that way from Göteborg. One item checked off a very long list!

The 429 Mustang II put up a good fight in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll, but only a French or Italian car really stands a chance against a Triumph GT6 when it comes to true Project Car Hell. Still, every so often you need to let a PCH underdog take on one of the superpowers. We're going to try it again today, with a British machine squaring off against a German-American mashup, only this time the theme is much different. One thing I've noticed with the cheaper PCH cars is the Super LeMons Potential many commenters observe in the entrants, and so today we're going to look at a couple of cars that would immediately bestow Legend In Their Own Time status upon any team entering either one in a 24 Hours of LeMons race. Each is priced below the $500 mark, each could (in theory) be a credible race car, and each would leave onlookers stunned with a potent mixture of awe, fear, and pity.

When you're showing up at the track with your $500 race car, four cylinders under the hood is ho-hum. Six is a little better, and eight will get you some respect. But when you pop the bonnet and reveal a V-12 beneath, the resulting shocked silence in the pits will be gratifying indeed. Now, there's no way in hell you'll ever get a German V12 machine for under $500 (well, no way that will convince the LeMons judges, at any rate), but folks have this completely justified totally irrational fear of the V12-equipped Jaguar XJ-S... and that means it's deal time! Say, a deal such as this 1991 Jaguar XJ-S (go here if the ad disappears) with an asking price of $500 (which smells like an actual price of more like $300, or some "game room things"). It comes with two V12s, so you have to figure you can make one runner, right? Hell yes! Then you're sure to be able to sell off plenty of unneeded parts on eBay (hey, if I can sell $350 worth of parts off an '84 Volvo, anything is possible) after you've gutted the half-ton of leather and wood from the car. Now, since it's a '91 you'll need to deal with some of the Lucas electrics if you want the engine ECU to function, but maybe all those Prince of Darkness jokes have no foundation in real experience! Get a rollcage in it, put some Cherry Bombs on that sweet-sounding V12, and get ready to leave those peasants in their lesser cars in your dust at the race!

Roaring onto the track in a V12 Jag would get you some respect, all right, but you wouldn't appear to be a total madman with that choice. Sure, your team would look like the greatest mechanics who ever lived if your Jag managed to finish 25 laps under its own power, but where's the Lunatic Factor? That's why you need to consider a car with a 5/95 weight distribution, primitive suspension, and a flimsy fiberglass body. Something, for example, such as this VW-based dune buggy with Olds Toronado transaxle assembly (go here if the ad disappears), which has an asking price of only $450 (or a "NEW OR NEWER HIGHER END LAPTOP"). It doesn't come with the 455 engine, but that's no problem. You see, that transmission has the BOP bolt pattern, which means a huge range of Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac V8s- all available in $50 junker cars in a location near you- may be bolted right in. Oh, and did we mention that Cadillac V8s also used the BOP pattern? No? That means the 500-cube V8 out of the Eldorado will bolt right onto this baby! Just imagine it, if you can: a spindly VW dune buggy with a five hundred cubic inch engine hanging off the back! You might have some oversteer problems at the race, not to mention interesting handling characteristics when you pull the front wheels off the ground under hard acceleration, but you'll have the advantage of a wide berth from all the other drivers on the track. We recommend a really good roll cage, and even better life insurance!

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Not long after I joined a 24 Hours of LeMons team, I attended a barbecue at a friend's house. Friend's husband, Darren, is a motorcycle mechanic, so naturally all the gearheady guys gravitated to the garage to look at grimy machinery and listen to The Atomic Bitchwax on the garage boombox... and then I saw it. Just lying there on top of a box of Honda pistons was an old battered Mr. Gasket Street Scoop. Yes!

Turns out it came installed on a '65 Chevy pickup Darren bought for bike-hauling purposes, and the first thing he did upon taking delivery of the truck was to remove the scoop and fill in the crudely hacked hole in the hood. "I must have that scoop for the race car," I told him. "How much you want for it?" I didn't quite grab him by the lapels and shake, but there was no mistaking my air of urgency.


Darren's price was very reasonable, as in free ("What the hell do I want with this redneck thing? Take it!"), and now we've gone ahead and installed it on our Ford 302-powered '84 Volvo DL. Sure, we still don't have the car moving under its own power yet, nor do we have working brakes, but priorities are priorities!


Team members Wayne and Dave are proud of their precision hood-modifying handiwork, and rightfully so. I figure this thing is good for at least 100 horsepower, maybe more. You see, it's a well-known automotive fact that you get 100 horses per scoop (and another 50 for each inch of tailpipe diameter, not to mention 25 for each square foot of wing surface), so this gives us quite an edge over the competition.

I felt certain that Team Black Metal V8olvo would have the only car at the Altamont with a ridiculous engine swap... but I thought wrong! Scratchy Bottom Racing has outdone the Lunacy Factor of our Ford 302-powered Volvo 244 by grabbing a $149 1976 Triumph TR7 and stuffing the 231-cube Buick V6 out of a '77 Pontiac Ventura into its engine compartment. The important question here (other than "can a Triumph survive being one of 90 cars on a one-mile road course?") is whether the influence of the Prince of Darkness can ever be completely expunged from a Malaise Era British Leyland machine. [Scratchy Bottom Racing]

We're going to follow the exploits of some of the 24 Hours of LeMons teams that have members who comment here regularly, and today's team is Freds4HB's Scuderia Punk Rock Chef. They're going to be racing a 1977 Datsun 280Z, they're based in the East Bay, and apparently the "chef" part of their name is for real. I hope that means they'll be whompin' up eatin' vittles for all of us! These guys and Team Porcubimmer have really set the bar high for team logo quality, so the rest of us better start making nice with our graphic-artist friends. [ScuderiaPRC]

When we were at Evil Genius Racing to get the cage put in the Black Metal V8olvo, we couldn't help but notice the bright red Yugo GV parked by the shop. Turns out the little Balkan pseudo-Fiat belongs to laboratory assistant and expert welder Evil Clint, who picked it up for next to nothing and is contemplating turning it into a 24 Hours of LeMons car. If he does... well, a Yugo would be a likely shoo-in for the People's Choice award, but it's a good thing Evil Genius Racing builds such solid rollcages- just imagine being in a Yugo on the same track as, say, the Size Matters Fury! Make the jump for more photos.

My favorite part? The "Use Only Geniune Yugo Service Parts" sticker on the air cleaner. You wouldn't want to put any low-quality parts on your Yugo, would you?