You remember the 24 Hours Of LeMons SF 2008 People's Choice-winning Eyesore Pimpin CRX, of course. The Eyesore Racing CRX showed us that pimpin' really ain't easy, and neither is finishing the race with a little Honda that's had the crap beat out of it while finishing in the Top Ten in three previous LeMons races.


Sadly, the Eyesore Racing CRX pimpmobile's racing career was over. Crushed! That meant it was time for a new car.


Mazda Miatas usually do quite well at the 24 Hours Of Lemons; a Miata won at the LeMons South event (and another got the People's Curse in Texas). The Eyesore guys managed to find a pair of totally crunched Miata wrecks, plus enough worn-out engine parts to assemble a possibly serviceable powerplant, plus a rusted-solid turbocharger. What next? Why, break out the galvanized plumbing fittings and rig up some turbo plumbing above the engine! Here's what Eyesore Racer and Jalopnik commenter Wrappedinbacon has to say about this rig:
The additional fuel to support the turbo's boost is done caveman-style—with a mechanical fuel pressure regulator. We bought a used one for $20. It's very simple—it squeezes down on the fuel return line when boost increases. Presto, fuel pressure increases, which forces more fuel through the stock injectors.

With the regulator handling things during boosted operation, the factory airflow meter is sort of just along for the ride. Keep in mind that we intentionally kept boost low—the turbo only generates a light breeze of 3.5-psi of boost. Now, I wouldn't say that the driveability is perfect (it isn't) or that our car will go the distance (just look at the turbo installation) but cost was the overriding priority. That's why our car still has the stock Miata exhaust manifold.

The turbo itself was free—it came from a Mexican Domestic Market (MDM, yo) Dodge Stratus and was rusted solid when we got it. The rest of the turbo installation consists primarily of scrap iron and MIG welding rod. The radiator enclosure is the sheetmetal of one of our team member's old hot water heater shed. Coolant lines are galvanized EMT electrical conduit from Home Depot. The engine was rebuilt with a two drills and recycled gaskets.



After god-knows-how-many hours of labor, they got their turbocharged, intercooled Mazda B engine putting out 140 horsepower with 4 pounds of boost. Sure, it's probably going to start spitting red-hot exhaust valve chunks out the tailpipe about 25 laps into the race, but what a glorious 25 laps it will be! Those guys on Team Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys and their Peugeot 505 Turbo had better watch out! Now go check out the whole Ghettocharged FrankenMiata story here!

We loved the idea of an LS400 in a LeMons race; after all, a big, complicated Japanese luxury sedan with a 32-valve 250-horse V8- particularly a total beater purchased for under $500- should do really well on the race track! What could possibly go wrong?


And the Highbrow Ghetto LS400 acquitted itself quite respectably… right up until it blew both head gaskets and seized the engine, that is. Judge Loverman and I hung around with the Highbrow team for a while on Saturday night, as we made the rounds of the pits, and we started talking about what use we might, as judges, make of the now-dead Lexus. With some creative inspiration from our friend Jack (Daniel's), the Highbrow guys remarked upon the legendary inaccessibility of the Toyota IUZ-FE's starter motor. "Really?" we asked, "Just how hard is it to get to that starter?" Well, it turns out that Toyota's engineers figured that inside the engine block, beneath layer upon layer of intake, coolant pipes, etc., would be the best possible place for the starter.



Thus was the Lexus Starter Challenge conceived. We decided we'd hold in in reserve for a team whose multiple busts for lousy driving had them on the brink of being put on the trailer for the rest of the race… and then the perfect team showed up in the penalty box for the fourth time in as many hours.


That's right- the Team Unintended Acceleration Audi 90 Quattro, which was nearly as difficult to control on the track as was the spinout-champeen Merkur XR4Ti. Hey, isn't the Quattro system supposed to make cars safer? They were on thin ice late in the day on Sunday, getting close to being 86'd completely from the track, so when they showed up again we figured we'd give them a penalty guaranteed to keep them out of trouble for a while. We offered the team a choice: a pint of metal shavings in the crankcase, or the Lexus Starter Challenge. Hey, how hard could it be to pull a starter?


"The book" says LS400 starter replacement is something like a 7.5-hour job, so we were counting on at least a few hours of Audi-free serenity on the track while the team performed the extraction. Meanwhile, the Highbrow Ghetto guys were having a tough time controlling their outbursts of hysterical laughter.


What we didn't bank on, however, was the mechanical skills of the Unintended Acceleration crew, multiplied by all the extra hands they had wielding wrenches. After spending a few extremely comical minutes crawling around the engine compartment in a doomed-to-failure search and uttering such plaintive queries as "Does this thing even have a starter?" they traced some heavy-gauge wiring to its likely location and started in on the intake manifold.


Just over an hour after they started, here's the elusive starter! Good job, guys! These guys were able to sample nearly all of our finest punishments, including the Obama Change We Can Believe In… and more!


Team Unintended Acceleration also got the Ozzy Osbourne Inertial Penalty Horn treatment, and I set up the switch to trigger the twin Jaguar horns any time the Audi accelerated, intentionally or not. In the video above, you can watch the poor Audi driver being so apprehensive about the OOIPH in the car that he can't find the entrance to the track; if you just want to hear what the horns sound like in operation, fast-forward to about 3:00 into the video.

This all started out when the Sarah Palin punishment at the 24 Hours Of LeMons Toledo race raised the bar for innovative ways to penalize lousy drivers on the race track. I'll be judging at the Houston race this weekend, so a special Texas-themed penalty would be needed. But what? Then I remembered: In 1982, Ozzy Osbourne was arrested for pissing on the Alamo, drunk and wearing a dress, and his albums were burned by enraged mobs throughout the Lone Star State.


And what was Ozzy's day job in Birmingham, before Black Sabbath hit it big? He worked on a British Leyland assembly line, testing horns! Naturally, the Ozzy Osbourne Inertial Penalty Horn would require horns from a BL product. While you might find the occasional MG or Triumph in self-service junkyards, 70s Jaguars are always plentiful. Mount the pair of genuine Lucas Electric horns (high- and low-pitch units) on a crude bracket screwed together from scrap plywood, then add a Bosch-type relay pocketed at the junkyard (you can skip the relay, but the high draw of the horns will fry the switch contacts after a few applications, due to arc-welding-style sparking). Mount the bracket close to the driver, but not so close that he can reach it while strapped in!


The inertia switch- which is two-dimensional version of a pinball-machine tilt switch- can be made from junk just lying around; in this case, a piece of plywood (notched for easy zip-tie attachment to a roll cage bar), some coat hanger wire, plumber's tape, and a plastic windshield-washer tubing tee. Like all serious projects, the whole mess is held together with JB Weld.



The switch contacts are the plumber's tape on one side and a big Honda steering-wheel nut pocketed at the junkyard. Depending on how the switch is oriented, the contacts will close when the car accelerates, or turns, or decelerates… or when it hits a big bump, or gets a big gust of wind inside.


To get power, the alligator connector from a dead timing light clamps onto the car's battery. I added a 20-amp fuse inline and covered it with lots of electrical tape.


How to get the power from battery to relay? Cut a hole in the hood with this step drill and run the cord through the side window opening! Ram a sheetmetal screw into the car's floor near the horns and you've got your ground. Hey, they're $500 cars, right?

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.

That's right, we're talking about a gallon gas can zip-tied somewhere under the hood, with a junkyard electric fuel pump hooked directly to the battery (or, if you're doing a really sanitary job, off a jumper wire plugged into a switched circuit on the fusebox) and feeding the carburetor, which you might even disassemble on the car's hood and hose off some off the more egregious crap deposits with carb cleaner spray (and, much like one of my other Really Dumb Ideas, we suggest very strongly that you don't try this at home). Thing is, it's not easy to find a fuel pump suitable for carburetor use; most carbureted cars have mechanical fuel pumps, and a fuel-injected car's pump cranks out too much pressure for a carburetor to handle- we're talking 60 PSI instead of the 5 or so you want. Adding to the fun, those junkyard vehicles that do have carb-friendly electric pumps generally keep them buried beneath many layers of inaccessible parts or- worse- in the gas tank, ensuring a knuckle-shredding, gas-stinking three-hour adventure to pull one. However, back in those days you could count on being able to find two vehicles with easy-access, reliable electric fuel pumps that would work just fine with your Q-jet or Solex or whatever: the Chevy Luv pickup truck and the mid-70s Honda Civic. The Luv- actually an Isuzu TF- had an easy-to-reach cylindrical pump located on the frame rail, while the Civic's was behind a panel under the rear seat. I preferred the Civic pump, even though it was slightly harder to extract from the donor vehicle, because it was easier to mount on a crude homemade bracket (see above) and attach under the hood of your Buick Apollo with a couple of sheetmetal screws. These days, sadly, you usually can't find either one of these vehicles in the self-service junkyards, mid-70s machinery now having mostly been crushed. I try to not to get burdened beneath a big load of old car parts, but I'm going to keep this Civic pump!

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...

...you see, I'd put together a special Black Metal V8olvo Team Playlist, containing songs to inspire us as we wrenched our way to V8 Volvo Glory and leaning heavily towards Scandinavian black metal... but then a song from The Stooges' Raw Power came on and it was just perfect. Naturally, we had to listen to the whole album, over and over, for the rest of the day. Look at our intensity in the video above, our singularity of purpose. God help those other teams at Altamont, now that we've found the ideal Wrenching Album!

But that got me to thinking: sure, you've got your album that's ideal for a specific project (and when you're on a team full of guys who came of wrenchin' age over a 35-year-span, from the 60s through the 90s, the Stooges are one of the few bands that can really bridge all the generational boundaries), but what about overall favorites? For that matter, is the album even a relevant form these days? Let us blow off our work on this fine Friday morning, as we look busy for The Man while discussing this extremely important matter! I'll prime the pump with my personal Top Ten, and (though I readily admit that my musical taste isn't quite as cool as, say, Herr Johnson or Señor Lovermman) hope it provides sufficient inspiration to get all of you Project Car Hell vets to share your lists with us:

#10
Quincy Jones & Ray Charles: In The Heat Of The Night Soundtrack

This album, the soundtrack to the 1967 Sidney Poitier film, has just about everything you need for the full garage experience. Scary chase-through-haunted-woods themes, rough-edged blues, weird gospel, 60s bubblegum pop, even a supremely twisted country song (see above). You'll maintain your focus on all those little tiny carburetor bits as long this album blasts your garage.

#9
Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed

Words cannot describe how incredibly sick I am of the Stones (well, words can describe it, but it would take too many of them to do the job right) and just about all "classic rock," for that matter. Have you noticed how classic rock stations always play "Under My Thumb" every 10 minutes, to remind the Baby Boomers of a time when it was considered the height of cool to crush a proud woman's spirit- yeah, the good ol' days! Yet... Let It Bleed is a work of fucking genius when you put it on your duct-taped garage boombox, open your toolbox, contemplate the project in front of you, and follow the "THIS RECORD SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD" advice printed on the album cover. Maybe the key to this album is that the band members were all hopeless junkies when it was recorded... which means it's not too late for their ancient, unspeakably rich asses to redeem themselves- come on lads, you owe it to the fans to pick up the needle again!

#8
The Residents: Stars & Hank Forever

Here's a good example of an album I only listen to when I'm working on a car project. I'm a big Residents fan, of course, but this album's profoundly twisted versions of John Philip Sousa marches mixed together with Hank Williams covers don't really sound right until I have a wrench in my hand.

#7
Dr. Dre: The Chronic

Yeah, every annoying 14-year-old wannabe rebel kid in every suburban cul-de-sac in America was playing this album over and fucking over for the entirety of the early 1990s, and we all got extremely tired of Snoop Doggy Dogg as the decade wore on... but that doesn't mean it isn't a great album for engine rebuilds. I once put together a Chevy 400 small-block with nothing but a cassette of The Chronic to keep me company, and I came to appreciate Dre's storytelling expertise more than ever after hearing it so many times (it's also good for inspiring some musing on the Nature Of The Album and what will happen once that form is completely outdated). Just don't get too heavy into the real chronic while this album plays, or you'll forget whether you torqued those head bolts or not.

#6
Various Artists: Repo Man Soundtrack

From the Iggy Pop intro to the Plugz' "Reel Ten," the 11 songs on this 1984 soundtrack album will have you in the mood to make a quick junkyard run to see if, truly, you find one in every car.

#5
Butthole Surfers: Hairway To Steven

Now, the Buttholes are my favorite band, period (something I have in common with Amy Carter), and I'm perfectly happy to listen to nothing but their stuff for any occasion. However, for the groove you need to get into for a transmission swap, this acoustic-guitar-dominated 1988 masterpiece keeps you focused much better than, say, Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac.

#4
Butthole Surfers: Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac

Focus? Who the hell cares? Yeah, you'll be forgetting where you set that goddamn 9/16" deep socket by the time "Concubine" is finished, and you'll be on your way to the liquor store for another 12-pack after "Cowboy Bob" finishes its work inside your dome, but that's fine. Great wrenching album.

#3
Hank Williams: The Original Singles Collection

OK, this isn't really an album, in the sense that the artist put the songs together in the order in which you'll hear them, but Hank Senior died before the album-as-we-know-it existed. There's nothing like some real country music (not that other kind- you know what I'm talking about) for working on your car; you'll feel like you're hauling the engine out of Junior Johnson's moonshine-running '54 Ford using a rope over a tree limb as a hoist, even when performing just a simple oil change. Now I'm regretting not having made this a Top 20 list- where's the Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and all the others? Damn!

#2
The Atomic Bitchwax: Spit Blood

Here's the one band that carries over to the Ten Best Driving Albums list, though I prefer Spit Blood to their first album. You know the lead mechanic from the oil-refinery compound in The Road Warrior? You will become that man, complete with the ability to fix a bullet-riddled diesel truck with the Lord Humungus' army circling outside the walls, if you listen to this album while working on your car. This one's another big favorite for the Black Metal V8olvo crew.

#1
Psychic TV: Temporary Temple

No, really. I got past my Young Urban Nihilist phase while Reagan was still in office, so Psychic TV gets scant play in my everyday life these days... but I make an exception when I'm heading out for some serious Hell Project action. Temporary Temple is an EP-only release of a 1984 live performance, and its clangs, shrieks, groans, and general Nihilismo Garage air are ideally suited for whatever project I happen to have before me. This one is pretty tough to find (no way was it going to be on YouTube), but worth the search.

Well, there's my list. Where's yours? It's Friday- you gonna let The Man tell you how to spend your morning?

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.

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?

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!

I'll get to the car: hold your horses. This pertains.

I bought my motorcycle new in 2003: a Honda 919, aka Hornet in other markets. Most of a CBR900RR performance and mechanical foundation, but with EFI and as is common with "naked bikes" a fatter midrange and slightly emasculated top end. 105 hp at the rear wheel, 65-ish ft. lbs of torque.

Within 3 months of purchase I had my most expensive speeding ticket ever ($455) and was leaving every stop light on one wheel. Often riding in jeans, a tank top, and shades. Stupid at any age, stupider at 39. It wasn't my first bike, but it was the most liberating to my inner hooligan of any bikes I've owned.

My dad died that autumn and left me a little inheritance. Although I had never seen photos and he never owned a bike after he "settled down" I just know that he passed on his love of bikes to me. He had owned a 1928 and a 1935 Harley when he was in his twenties. They would have been WELL used ratbikes by the time he got them. I think he paid $5 for the '28.

I decided that I was going to go drag racing, partly in homage to my dad. After all, I could never have afforded to do it properly without his parting gift to me. I first commissioned an extended swingarm: if I'm going drag racing, I'm NOT going to be "the guy who looped the bike off the line that time." Because Honda never sold a large number of 919's in America and the 919 is not a design that lends itself to modifications, increasing the engine output in any significant way is difficult. VERY restrictive porting, very limited availability of big bore kits, high lift cams, NO turbo kits whatsoever on the market...I was running out of options for achieving my goal of a nine second quarter mile on this bike. If I knew I was going racing when I bought a bike, I certainly wouldn't have started with this one. A CBR1000 STARTS with 50 more h.p. , and has many options for pursuing greater performance.
After engineering and installing what I believe is the world's only wet nitrous system in this application, as well as a few other little mods, I was ready to take it to the track and see what The Tinman could do. I'd rarely ever finished off a can of whipped cream, never mind tuned a nitrous system in my life. And after getting caught in the rain and nearly ruining the most expensive suit I'd ever own (Alpinestars) I HAD to come up with an alternative way of getting to the track.

In my driveway sat an unused 1999 Honda Civic HX; the VERY tall-geared, 43 mpg rated, lesser-engined version of their coupe that I had bought new. It had served me well, ferrying me across Alaska for my inspection business to the tune of 147,000 miles in the first two years of ownership. I got mine back from the insurance company virtually for free after totaling it in 2002, and band-aided it back together with a plywood front bumper and some judicious tugs on the "frame" from a come-along anchored to a concrete parking garage support. I drove it for a few years before I found a clean old BMW 320i and parked the Civic. Because it had 210,000 miles nobody would be too interested in salvage parts, and because it had been totaled and was still not titled, it was unsellable as a car.

I began thinking of cutting the car up and making it into a trailer before I got the brilliant (ahem) idea of making it into a self-propelled trailer, or "truck" as they are sometimes called. I took a few measurements, checked my stock of Sawzall blades (if only I'd had my air compressor and die grinder/cutter then!), bopped down to the liquor store for a rack of Alaskan Amber, and got to drinking...I mean, re-manufacturing.

I started by removing the trunk lid and gutting the interior of carpeting and basically everything but the driver's seat. I removed the back glass, cut out the package shelf, and sawed out the center of the rear bumper and everything between the taillights. The floor was poorly shaped for truck duty, and a hump for the fuel tank was going to cause my bike "deck" to sit much higher than I wanted. I hacked out the floor above the center of the gas tank, and quite proudly only sawed through one vapor return hose/valve assembly in the process! I got skills! Somehow, the fuel tank still held fuel and I was still not engulfed in flames at this point. But I was pretty s-faced now, so really, I was amazed that I hadn't wound up in the E.R. yet nor spilled any...okay, MUCH blood. There is a high-strength steel crossmember in the area under the former back seat, so this served as the main anchor of the ramp/deck for the bike and provides a surprising amount (ANY is surprising, right?) of structural integrity.

Because The Tinman is stretched and slammed he cannot negotiate much of a ramp without high-centering, so the deck is mounted nose-high and El Civico is MUCH more accommodating than would be a pickup truck or trailer. This car, albeit somewhat odd, is the best way I could hope to transport the bike without spending an arm and a leg. Or really, more than $50, as is the case.

As you can imagine I get some looks on the highway on the way to the track. I'm simply amazed that with the dozens of cameras that I've seen hanging out of passenger windows, I've never come across a picture of my rig on the internet.

After a passing rain shower last year, track management allowed spectators to take their cars down the track to assist drying. Slapped on my helmet, fired up El Civico (sans Tinman in back) and high-tailed it to the staging lanes. With 216,000 miles on the original clutch (and everything else but the front brakes and timing belt) I bounced it off the rev limiter in the burnout box for 15 seconds, released the ebrake, and sidled up to the tree. My reaction time wasn't great; this WAS the first time I'd ever drag raced a car, but I left the line around 6,000 rpms with a taste of equal parts clutch slip and tire spin: exactly what this tall-geared car wanted. Second gear is good for 72 mph, a quick slam into 3rd and we crossed the finish line with a 16.84: one hundredth quicker than I'd just seen for a new Mini !

El Civico has no problem keeping up with highway traffic, or any other kind really. I had it up to 95 on the Old Glenn Highway, a lovely meandering old two-lane, following a WRX on the way home from the track and all hopped up on adrenaline and Diet Rockstar. Thankfully the peace officers up here don't seem too concerned about the car and technically, they don't need to be. It has all its safety equipment besides a license plate light, but thanks to the late sunsets of summer here that's not really an issue.

Okay, so El Civico ain't too fond of washboard bumps: the torsional rigidity obviously does leave something to be desired. But I seriously doubt it's less safe than just riding the motorcycle. Granted, once I get into an accident in this car I'll be in for a world of hurt. Do I have any other mods planned? Probably an ejection seat for just such an occasion. I'll want to get some distance between me and the bike should the 's' hit the fan.

But until the doors stop working due to body flex, or the front half says 'Adios' to the back half, El Civico will remain the workhorse that keeps me in the racing game. In fact, working as a team last year, The Tinman, El Civico, and I took home the top trophy of Alaska drag bike racing.

My apologies to DeWalt, but their heavy duty reciprocating saw turned out to be less heavy duty than a drunk with an old Civic. May it rest in peace.

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!

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.

TECHART GTstreet convertible - 
uncompromisingly sporty.

Uncompromisingly sporty, unreservedly suitable for everyday use. TECHART is continuing this traditional philosophy with its GTstreet convertible. Since 2001, when the Porsche 911 Turbo model from the 996 series was used, vehicles bearing the TECHART GTstreet logo have been among the fastest and highest performing road-worthy sports vehicles in the world.

The new TECHART GTstreet is continuing this impressive trend, based on the current Porsche 911 Turbo generation. At the world premiere on 4th March 2008, this convertible model will stand alongside the GTstreet Coupé, which was officially launched in Geneva in spring 2007 and caused a real sensation.

Unmistakable characteristic appearance and breath-taking performance. The TECHART GTstreet convertible now develops 463 kW (630 hp) and can reach a maximum speed of 345 km/h.

Especially when the junkyard is chock full of pocket-sized Toyota injectors, available for free at a reasonable price? Exactly. But how do you know if your junkyard injectors are any good? Sure, you can tell if one is completely nonfunctional once you start the car, but it's hard to detect one that's just screwing up enough to hose the emissions. Well, the Toyota shop manual refers to some kind of high-tech flow-testing device that basically lets you look at an injector's spray pattern and measure the flow to see that it's within specs. I figured, hey, I'll just build my own! Now, y'all can just hold off on the comments telling me I'm a fucking idiot with a death wish, because I swear I look back with horror at all the different ways this thing could have killed me; my only excuse is that I got locked into the challenge of building it, while not really looking at the big picture. In any case, I figure what I ended up building might be of some entertainment value to our beloved Jalopnik readership. So here ya go!


But first, as a technical writer I'm required to scare the daylights out of anyone who might attempt to build this incredibly dangerous device, by providing a disclaimer packed with menacing statements in boldface (and, of course, Walker Canada's warning symbol). So: Warning! If you attempt to build any sort of device that involves gasoline under high pressure, particularly one that resembles in even the slightest detail the device described below, you will definitely be killed. In fact, you will be burned so severely that you will pray for a quick death to release you from your agony, as your arms and legs curl up and fall off like sausages left too long on the barbecue. However, before the gasoline ignites, you will experience the sensation of pressurized gasoline being injected into your eyeballs, exploding them. After the paramedics show up (shaking their heads at the fool contraption that transformed you into a cruel parody of human form) and haul you to the hospital, your relatives and friends will arrive at your bedside and read you long lists of your faults and wrongdoings, each whispering "I always loathed you" in your ear (which will resemble one of those black potato chips from the bottom of the bag).


Right, so now that we've ensured that you're not going to, you know, try this at home, we can get on with the description of the device itself. First I started with a late-70s Datsun 280Z fuel pump. This is an amazing fuel-injection pump; not only does it deliver a nice reliable flow, but it's by far the easiest such pump to remove from any car at the junkyard, being located in a very accessible spot just inside the right rear wheelwell (unlike most FI pumps, which tend to be located in difficult-to-reach locations like inside the gas tank or behind knuckle-slicing panels). I bolted the pump to a crude plywood frame and rigged up an intake hose long enough to reach a can of gas.


Then I grabbed a fuel rail from a junkyard Tercel (the same one that provided my first four injectors) and plumbed the fuel pump outlet to it. That way I had the same pressure regulator as the one on my Tercel; since the Z pump puts out similar pressure numbers to the Tercel's, I could count on getting similar behavior out of the injectors being tested.


I only wanted to test one injector at a time, so I packed the three extra injector holes in the rail with JB Weld, screwed some bolts into them, then packed more JB Weld over the whole mess. I'm pretty sure this arrangement doesn't meet internationally recognized safety standards, but I got lucky and it didn't leak.


Once the fuel rail was ready, I bolted it to the plywood top of the frame. I figured clamp pressure against the JB Weld would help seal the holes, so I wedged a precision spacer (a dime) underneath the short one. Yeah, I know, what could I have been thinking?


A fuel injector does its thing when it gets 12 volts on its electrical contacts, so I rigged up a Toyota injector connector to the wiring harness.


I didn't have any injectors handy when I shot these photos, so you'll just have to imagine an injector being held in place in the fuel rail by this aircraft-grade aluminum bracket.


I used drywall screws, choice of hoonic backyard mechanics the world over, to tighten the clamp down on the injector and hold it tight enough to get a good seal in the rail. A graduated cylinder goes underneath the injector, but I couldn't dig up one of those for the photo shoot. Just imagine the setup and you'll get the idea- I mean, if you can imagine it not on fire.


Of course, a fuel-injection system needs a return line to go back to the gas can- I mean, fuel tank. I must have scavenged the banjo bolt for some other project, so I'm just laying the line in place for the photo.


Then a couple of light switches, both hooked up to a car battery. One activates the fuel pump, while the other activates the injector. Turn on the fuel pump, turn on the injector, time how much fuel it squirts in a given time period, repeat. Try not to spray gas all over the place. Avoid smoking.


Here's the finished product. It did solve my problem, in that I was able to identify the two bad injectors and replace them with good ones, but I won't be using it again.

When you write for mechanics, you need scary warning symbols to let them know when a screwup will result in serious injury or death, and I felt the standard symbols I had at my disposal were insufficiently terrifying. So, I talked my boss into paying mechanic, road racer, Southern gentleman, and incredibly talented artist, Mr. Walker Player Canada, for some custom warning-symbol artwork made to my exact specifications. Walker is the artist who made the Junkyard Treasure artwork for us, not to mention a bunch of the illustrations on Year One's website, and you're sure to see more of his work here in the future. I figured any image that's really going to grab the attention of a bored bus mechanic thumbing through a thousand-page shop manual would need to involve both skull-and-crossbone imagery and traumatic injury, so I figured the ol' Driveshaft Through The Skull deal would work well. Sadly, my boss made Walker remove the driveshaft from the image, figuring the skull image alone was enough. But today I share this image with the world, and any fellow tech writer who wants the original vector artwork for their own publications should email me (murilee at jalopnik dot com) and I will email you the file.

History of the Rotary [Mazda.com]

Related:
Ask Jalopnik Readers: Should I Take the Cash, or the Rotary [internal]

I've always liked hot-rodded inline-sixes, ever since I rode in my uncle's triple-sidedraft-292/Muncie-equipped '49 GMC pickup and experienced that "oh shiiiiiiiiiit!" feeling that only way too much torque coupled with zero traction and a wild-eyed Minnesota biker at the wheel can offer. So what could make the 292 even better? Why, welding up a custom head out of two aluminum Pro Topline small-block Chevy heads, attaching a monstrous turbocharger, and dropping the whole mess into a '54 Studebaker, that's what! – Murilee Martin

THE 1000+HP CHEVY 292ci ENGINE BUILD-UP! [Custom Design Performance]

Related:
Leaning Tower Of Power Gets Blown For $400 [internal]

Bobby Green likes traditional things. He's in love with the old world, and such things as modern electric fans stick in his craw. Unfortunately, the larger mill he installed in his rod forced him to use exactly that. But, Bobby, ingenious type that he is, came up with a neat little workaround that maintains his machine's old-time aesthetic while utilizing modern technology. Rad. – Davey G. Johnson

Electric fans are ugly [H.A.M.B.]

Related:
More Coop From El Mirage [Internal]

The Mopar Slant Six is one of the undisputed marvels of the engineering world; when the Sun goes supernova and the entire planet has been reduced to ionized hydrogen, a '67 Valiant will still be chugging along in the debris field (I once saw a Slant Six that had been completely filled with water- due to the owner's confusion about which cap to remove in order to add coolant- and had driven that way for weeks; the unpleasant noises and brown foam spewing out the tailpipe were apparently not regarded as meaningful). So it goes without saying that you can turbocharge the living hell out of one with no ill effects. Here's a nice article by a guy who put together a blown Dart for $400 with all-junkyard parts and a fair helping of ingenuity; sure, he's only running low 16s now, but that's probably about four seconds better than stock. – Murilee Martin

$400 Slant Six Turbo Setup [Slantsix.org]

Related:
If Slant 6 Were 9: A Mopar-Powered Bug Rod [internal]