Wayne, aka Stratocastrator, was at the wheel and walked away from the wreck without a scratch. Being a veteran of decades of balls-to-the-wall dirt-track racing, he didn't consider this to be much of an impact.

Wayne's tough, but it turns out that the Volvo 240 is even tougher! You know all those ads Volvo used to run, touting the rollover protection of the 240? They weren't bullshitting- the roof wasn't even mashed down to the roll cage! According to team captain Hellhammer, all the car needs to run again is a new left front wheel.

But you don't care about all that stuff- you want to witness the carnage! OK, we're happy to oblige:

Thanks to Larisa Wolf for the photograph at top!

The video below, provided by the V8olvo team, tells the whole story. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, and the Volvo will be ready to race later this morning. It seems unlikely that the TR7 can be fixed, but you never know what miracles of duct-tape repair might happen at a 24 Hours Of LeMons race!

We've got some still photos of the action as well, thanks to Jesse of the Killer Bee MGB team.

It all started about two years ago, when I caught the 24 Hours Of LeMons jones, bad. How bad? Bad enough to put a team together, drop a Ford 302 in a Volvo 244, and enter the notorious Altamont "Demolition Derby" LeMons race back in early '08. With a Scandinavian Black Metal theme, the car needed to look evil! And thus began the saga of the Screaming Skulls...

Nowadays, my beater '92 Civic sports a pair of clattery, chattery "talking" skulls that use up pretty much all of the hatch area's storage capacity. When I hit the brakes, the jaws open and close (with enough force to bite through a celery stalk; yes, I've tested the bite power) and the eyes gleam a menacing- yet safe- red.

They're loud and annoying, but totally worth it. All it took was a few bucks in parts and hundreds of hours of time.

First, I needed a couple of plastic skulls. It turns out that "factory fourth" med-student skulls are dirt cheap on eBay. They're cheap because they tend to have different colors for the cap and face, or maybe some missing teeth, or just ill-fitting parts. None of that mattered for this project, so I ordered two right away.

My initial plan was to use vacuum motors, or "suck power," to actuate the jaws. I grabbed a couple of heater-vent vacuum actuators from a Chevy Astro Van and started cutting holes in the skulls. They're made of very dense, heavy plastic that's quite easy to drill, cut, and grind. I started the project by drilling out the eye sockets and cutting another hole at the base of the skull for the steel pipe that will form the "neck."

The illuminated red "eyeballs" were made from a pair of steel-and-glass Alfa Romeo warning lights, pulled from junked Alfa Spiders. Junkyard tip: always grab these lights when you see them; the quality is excellent and they're easy to mount on your homemade instrument panel projects.

The jaws on the cheapo plastic skulls don't include a reliable hinge mechanism for the jaw, so I went with a homemade rod-and-tube arrangement. Drill some holes, push the pipe through the jaw holes and a piece of tubing, then JB weld the ends in place.

Here you can see the pipe T fitting epoxied into place at the base of the skull, as well as the installation and wiring for the eyeball lights.

The Astro Van vacuum actuator goes into an aluminum spacer plate that mounts between the skull and its lid. There's a rod going down to the jaw. During high vacuum (engine deceleration), the actuator will suck the jaw closed; mash the gas pedal and the resulting low vacuum will let the springs pull the jaw open. Now repeat these steps with a second skull!

We mounted the skulls on the car's roof, hooked them up to a vacuum port on the intake manifold, and went racing. The skulls worked, but the jaws only opened at WFO throttle and it was a chore to get the springs adjusted for the correct tension. Clearly, I'd need to go to electrically-operated skulls next time!

I didn't have to look far to find electric actuators for the upgrade; most Volvo 240s came standard with power door locks. I sold the actuators that came with our car to meet LeMons budgetary requirements, so I had to hit the junkyard to get some more for the skulls. Here's a promising candidate!

Here's a mugshot of a typical Volvo 240, to make your junkyard shopping trip go faster.

First step is to remove the window crank, armrest, and door panel.

There's the actuator! A few turns of the wrench and a snip of the cutters and it shall be mine.

Voila! One more and I'm done.

My junkyard shopping isn't through yet, though; I'll need some relays and a turn signal flasher to create the "brain" that will control the skulls. Next stop is a 1980s BMW for some Bosch relays. This E30 looks promising.

There we go! This project requires three SPDT relays per skull, for a total of six. No problem finding Bosch SPDTs on an E30- just look for the ones with five terminals, including two labeled "87a" and "87b." As for the turn signal flasher, I like the old-fashioned cylindrical ones from pre-1990s Detroit cars; these skulls will use Chrysler K-car flashers.

The control circuitry is pretty simple: the power to the eyes and the coil of Relay #1 goes through the turn signal flasher (I added a taillight bulb, labeled "Load Bulb" in the diagram, inside the skull to provide enough current draw to make the flash rate a bit faster). When the coil on Relay #1 activates, it causes the coils of Relay #2 and Relay #2 to activate, which reverses the polarity of the power leads going to the lock actuators in the skulls. This causes the actuators to deploy down ("lock") as well as up ("unlock"), which means springs won't be necessary to close the jaws.

Speaking of jaws, I decided to improve the linkage with a double-jointed arrangement.

Some modification to the lock actuators was necessary to attach the jaws.

Now it's time to start playing with wires.

Here's a quick bench test of the circuitry. Hey, it works!

And it works when installed in the skull, too!

There's just enough room in the skull for the relays, flasher, lock actuator, wiring, and load bulb.

It's going to be a tight fit to get the lid installed, but it should work.

And remember, everything has to be done twice!

For Black Metal V8olvo Mark II, I decided to get some anatomically correct plastic skeletal arms (also cheap on eBay) and rig up the skulls so they appear to be backseat passengers. Add a T-shirt and it looks pretty good.

I hooked up the wiring to what became known as "The Metal Switch" on the race car's instrument panel. Pulling the Metal Switch activated the skulls and caused Opeth to crank from the in-car PA system. Oh, they'll love this at the track!

Some cheap blond costume wigs gave our skulls more of a "dead Swede" look. Add some evil black robes and spiked Hammer Of Thor V8olvo medallions and we were in business!

It looked great on the race track!

I'd be going on to a new theme for the race car, so the skulls were retired. What to do with them? I know- brake lights for my Civic! First step was to find an unused circuit in the fusebox to get some power. There's no sunroof on my car, so the sunroof fuse it shall be!

It would probably be more sanitary to tap into the brake light switch at the pedal, but that would mean running more wires to the back of the car. Instead, I'll just splice into the taillight wiring harness.

Since I've got junkyard relays all over the place, it's no problem to find one to actuate with the signal from the taillights. This will go in the spare tire well in the hatch.

A little carpentry work will be needed to mount the neck-pipes in a way that will be visible in the car's back window.

Because safety is so important, I'll use these long bolts through the spare tire (which is clamped to the floor) to hold the Skull Shelf in place.

A couple of wingnuts and it's fixed pretty firmly. As long as I don't wreck at a speed above, say, 15 MPH I shouldn't get bashed in the back of the head by 30 pounds of plastic skulls. Don't try this at home unless you find some way to mount the skulls more solidly.

I don't want the wigs coming off the skulls when I open the hatch, so a few hairstylist-approved sheet-metal screws will ensure that they stay in place.

Because following drivers at night won't be able to see anything of the skulls but four glowing eyes when I hit the brakes, I'll need to illuminate their faces. The rear side marker lights from a mid-80s BMW 7 series are just the right size, so it's off to the junkyard for some more shopping.

Some coat-hanger wire and an easy wiring job and the face lights are in place. I'll bend the wires so that the lights will be hidden below the edge of the window, out of view of drivers behind the Civic.

Here's the shelf installed in the car. I've cut holes in the hatch floor and carpeting for the mounting screws, and the wiring harness connects to the skulls via a 2-pin connector, making it easy to remove the whole unit when I get tired of the lack of cargo space.

The skulls look good installed, although the noise they make when I hit the brakes is a bit maddening. Sort of a "Ka-CLACK! Ka-CLACK! Ka-CLACK!" racket, which irritates nearby drivers nearly as much as it irritates me. The slightly different cycle rate for each skull's turn signal flasher means that they rarely sync up.

The whole rig looks quite snazzy. Amazingly, I rarely get pulled over by Johnny Law while driving this fine automobile.

My long-suffering neighbors have given up any hope of me ever driving a nice car. I like to get their hopes up by bringing home the occasional brand-new press car... which then leaves a few days later.

One skull has a ponytail, so you can tell them apart.

Here's what it looks like at night. Success! The puzzled looks I get from tailgaters are worth the effort... maybe.

This was by far the most dramatic battle for the finish in 24 Hours Of LeMons history. Nails were being bitten all the way to the final second, with the Krider Racing Big Sausage Integra and the Ford 302-powered Mustard Yellow Volvo Doing 45 In The Fast Lane Volvo 244 locked up in an epic lead-swapping war for most of the day. How did it end? With the Integra on its roof in the final turn and the V8olvo roaring to victory! Thankfully, the only injuries to the Acura's driver were to his pride. It's going to be hard to top this, but you never know what you'll see at the 24 Hours Of LeMons. Check in later for the Top Lemons Of LeMons post! Here's a bit of in-car video, with De Lorean owner Evil Clint at the wheel (sorry about the crappy image quality; a certain leaky-slushbox-equipped Supra sprayed transmission fluid on the camera lens).

Of course, Justice Lieberman and myself, being so closely associated with the team, are required to recuse ourselves from judgment if and when the Mustard Yellow Volvo Doing 45 In The Fast Lane shows up in the Penalty Box... and that means they'll be at the not-very-tender mercies of Chief Perpetrator Lamm. So, they're almost certainly hosed if they get the most insignificant of black flags. Meanwhile, breathing down the neck of the Ford 302-powered Volvo 244 is the Blanco Basura Honda Prelude (which finished second at the Goin' For Broken LeMons) and the Krider Racing Big Sausage Acura Integra. Krider, as you may recall, won the Altamont '08 race. Sadly, the Italian Stallions Fiat X1/9 has fallen to 22nd place, and both the Sprite and Mini are suffering from severe penalty and/or broken-parts issues.

First, let's talk about those prizes, which are indeed quite cheap fabulous. First, there's one each Black Metal V8olvo and Faster Farms Chickens team T-shirts. These shirts were designed and printed by South Carolina road racer and über-artist Walker Player Canada, creator of the famous Driveshaft Through The Skull safety warning symbol; you didn't see them at the race because it wasn't exactly T-shirt weather at Thunderhill that weekend (though you can buy your own Faster Farms shirt on eBay, courtesy of Team Captain Belvedere Adrian). I'm also throwing in a copy of LeMons Chief Perp Lamm's book, You Are What You Drive.

And who gets this truly cheap fabulous stuff? SnowBot, that's who! As it turned out, the unexpectedly good performance- in fact, shockingly good- of the Eyesore Racing Frankenmiata, Italian Stallions Fiat X1/9, and- most of all- the winning Metro Gnome CBR900RR-powered Geo Metro totally hosed everyone's predictions, but SnowBot's cumulative error was just 1,106 laps… two laps fewer than runner-up UDMan. If UDMan had been a little less optimistic about the chances of Team Unsafe At Any Speed (he guessed 300 laps, they did 239), he'd have won… but we understand that he's biased about Corvairs, so I'll send him a Black Metal V8olvo shirt as well.

Of the readers who made semi-coherent predictions for all the teams on the list (note: All lap totals are unadjusted for BS Inspection bonuses and penalties. Lap-total guesses for no-show entrants were thrown out. Since Pendejo Racing showed up with a Jaguar XJ-S instead of the expected Alfetta, I just used the XJ-S lap total in my calculations… because, really, what's the difference?), here are the Top 10 rankings:
#1: SnowBot: 1106 laps
#2: UDMan: 1108 laps
#3: Lemons Lover: 1315 laps
#4: SmalleyXB122: 1346 laps
#5: LWW: 1353 laps
#6: Skaspy: 1368 laps
#7: Solracer: 1455 laps
#8: SuperAsiaOne: 1551 laps
#9: Murilee Martin: 1565 laps
#10: Kelly: 1587 laps

So, SnowBot and UDMan: Email me and I'll get your cheap fabulous prizes sent out!

The roof-mounted vacuum-powered skulls have been retrofitted with electrical innards and anatomically correct arms; when you pull the Metal Switch (a BMW 2002 hazard-light switch) on the dash, a PA speaker blasts Immortal, the skulls' red eyes flash, and the jaws snap open and closed.


We'll have a how-to on this project later on, but for now all you need to know is that Volvo 240 door-lock motors move the jaws, and a turn signal flasher hooked up to a set of three Bosch relays controls them. Sadly, it appears that the VDO designers who made these lock actuators never anticipated a duty cycle involving nonstop up-down-up-down operation for hours at a time, so the skulls have had some reliability issues.


The drivers of a Swedish car must be armed with Thor's Hammer, aka Mjöllnir, so I made some for the team out of rusty steel and spikes. A few junkyard trips netted a bunch of Volvo emblems, while various emblems provided many numeral 8s (BMW 318s, Mercedes-Benz 280s, and Volvo 850s were good sources). You don't want to step on one of these babies barefoot!


Add some post-Halloween clearance-sale monk costumes, and there's your Black Metal V8olvo uniform!


Your metal is weak! That's what the Swedish text down the sides of the car means.

It seems that the hose between the Ford power steering pump and the Volvo steering gear was sturdy enough to hold together for all of the LeMons SF '08 race, plus about 15 laps of practice today, and it chose to let go during mid-high-speed chicane. Hello, concrete barrier! Before you could say "Salvage Title Collision Repair," everyone got to work with implements of destruction, while team member Stratocastrator headed into town to get the tractor shop to fab up a new pressure hose. 45 minutes later, back on the track! Yes, the V8olvo has a new paint job now; I'll put up a gallery of its new look later on.

Meanwhile, judging is going quite while; the Chief Perp is subbing for me while I do some practice laps (which involved some serious- if ungraceful- throttle-steering hoonage on this track) and write a bit for y'all. Check back later for some judging highlights!

The Black Metal V8olvo had just one mechanical failure its first time out: the power steering belt came off the pulleys a couple times during the course of the race. That's because we were using a grab bag of scrounged accessories on '84 Volvo DL's 1986 Ford 5.0 engine, and… well, those of you who work on small-block Fords know all about the maddening lack of compatibility between components used on various flavors of the Windsor engine. After the race, we messed around with spacers, shims, new brackets, and so on, and got the pump's pulley more or less in the same plane as the pulley on the balancer, but we needed insurance.


Next stop, the junkyard! I grabbed an idler pulley off the serpentine-belt-equipped V6 in a mid-90s Chrysler Concorde and brought it back to Hellhammer. About 10 minutes later, this Space Shuttle-grade rig was in full effect. All it does is push down slightly on the outside of the power steering belt, preventing it from flying off the pulleys at high speed. Works great!

With a mere 13 weeks remaining until the Arse-Freeze-A-Palooza race at Thunderhill, it's time for teams to get serious about car preparation (and those of you who haven't even started, we have one word of advice for you: PANIC!). While the Bent Belvedere was getting its cage installed in Livermore and ArmandBengle was- we hope- installing twelve exhaust pipes on his team's Jaguar XJS, several members of Black Metal V8olvo headed up to the West Sacramento shop of Evil Genius Racing to participate in a long day of LeMons Wrenching Hell in the 97° heat.


There's enough interesting machinery on the premises of ERG to make most veteran Jalopnikers drool uncontrollably; in addition to swarms of Spec Miatas everywhere you swivel your fevered optics, there's a pair of cars getting prepped for the Carrera Panamericana (Corvair Corsa and Mitsubishi Evo), a vintage-racer Mazda RX-3, and a trio of Mazdas fixin' to race in the 25 Hours Of Thunderhill. Even the parts car/way-in-the-future-project storage area (see above photo) has some great stuff. And of course, there's 24 Hours Of LeMons machinery all over the place.


A couple of shop employees have been bitten hard by the LeMons bug- yeah, it's contagious- and so they went and found themselves this Ford Fiesta. If they can avoid the Size Matters Chrysler, they should do pretty well at Thunderhill. And because it's way easier to race when you get a parts car, they've found a real winner…


This crazy Fiesta airport shuttle! Apparently this handcrafted gem was used at some rural California airport to haul passengers across the dirt taxiways out to their Fokker Trimotors, and it's still got plenty of life left in it (we think it should be used as the race car, but the team had already put the cage in the other Fiesta by the time they picked up this one).


Remember the 242 Turbo parts car we got for free when we were building the V8olvo? After donating most of its electrical connectors to the V8olvo's wiring harness, plus numerous brake and suspension components, plus a bunch of parts to other teams at Altamont (including a front strut to the Bernal Dads), what was left of the 242T went to the Evil Genius, who figured he'd make some sort of race car out of it… someday.


Well, someday is here, and Evil Clint (of Yugo fame) is busily installing hacked-up precision camber-enhancing strut tower tops, while John "Evil Genius" Pagel has scrounged up a free Volvo 16-valve head to attach to the headless B23 block sitting in the car. Let's hope it works! And, speaking of scrounging…


Since quite a few bits and pieces off the 242T were missing, John went searching for a dead, unwanted Volvo and found this 70s 244 whose erstwhile owner was eager to have it hauled away, high scrap steel values or not. You may have noticed that it's sporting the doors from the V8olvo, and there's a reason for that…


During the course of the Altamont race, the V8olvo's sheetmetal took quite a pounding, emerging from the race in a state sure to bring tears to the eyes of any proud Göteborg resident. The car was in fine shape, mechanically speaking, but gutted doors + lots of contact = ugly Volvo. So, John swapped the nice doors off the new parts car with the nasty doors off the V8olvo.

After we de-window-fied the doors, we got to work with hammers, pry bars, and porta-power, straightening out the fenders and quarterpanels. I worked on installing some super-secret Black Metal electronic gear (let's just say the angry spirit of Odin will be audible at the track) and we got busy trying to meet the Chief Perpetrator's new safety regs. Yes, there must be a metal bulkhead between the vehicle cabin and the trunk, you can't have any holes in the firewall, and an electrical cutoff switch is now mandatory- it's like we're afraid of fire or some such silliness! What's next, outlawing roof-mounted 55-gallon drum fuel tanks? Banning M80-hurling hood-mounted mortars?


There were Volvo parts everywhere, several Miata engine transplants taking place, a lowrider '70 Cadillac getting a primer paint job, and at least one Ford 302-powered Swedish burnout in the parking lot. All in all, a good day.


As for the Quadra-Bumper, that's what you get when you remove the bumpers off a pair of Volvos in order to strip the unsightly black plastic covering and expose the gleaming aluminum beneath; it just makes sense to start stacking them on the one Volvo with bumpers still attached!

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.

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?

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.

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.