My favorite thing about working for the 24 Hours of LeMons is experiencing the completely stupid engine swaps done by so many teams. From a ghettocharged 351W in an XR4Ti to a V65 Magna-powered Honda Z600, they're all winners!
At the Gator-O-Rama LeMons in Houston a few months back, we encountered the incredibly terrible and black-flag-prone— yet fast— Lincoln Mark VIII of Los Bastardos De LeMons. After coming in 72nd out of 108, the team decided they needed an upgrade for the North Dallas Hooptie LeMons, coming up next weekend at Eagle Canyon Raceway in Texas.
As you can see, theseyer Texans are made of stern stuff; in fact, we're pretty sure that this dude is actually Gibby Haynes from the Butthole Surfers. He didn't deny it, and his teammates sure seemed suspiciously knowledgeable about Butthole Surfers trivia. That might explain what happened next...
You see, real 24 Hours of LeMons cars are made in Russia, Italy, or France. Los Bastardos, no doubt after consulting with the spirit of the Shah— who, as we all know, sleeps in Lee Harvey's grave— decided to go for the rear-engined French route, selecting this total basket case of a challenging project Renault Dauphine.
The Dauphine came with an engine developing between 19 and 32 horsepower, which might be insufficient for a road-race course packed with Mustangs and RX-7s. The solution? A wrecked Sable with 208-horse quad-cam Duratec V6, naturally!
So we're looking at an upgrade from 32 horses to 200 here, which should result in a totally uncontrollable beast a spirited performer on the race track. Some heavy-duty cutting-and-pasting is called for when undertaking such a project. You can check out head Bastardo madman TheHeckler's account on the LeMons forums to get some sense of the hundreds of hours of work involved here; it's a good thing that team sweat doesn't apply to the $500 budgetary limit. Good work, Los Bastardos, and we'll see you next weekend!