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Some of you may be familiar with the 24 Hours of LeMons. Some of you may have even run in it. For everyone else, here's the challenge: buy and build a racecar for $500 or less (not counting the safety gear). Make it survive on a circuit with 100 other crapcans for 24 hours.
For Sandals and I, since the banks still own more than half of our respective S2000s, this will be our first jump into wheel-to-wheel racing; and arguably one of the most stupid, dangerous, and legendary things we've ever done. Here we share the experience - the build, the race, and hopefully several races after that - with our S2Ki brethren.
Sunday the madness began, and we finally bought our lemon: a 1998 Volkswagen Golf GL.
And before you ask, yes, we got a discount on the car for taking the most ridiculous hood on the lot - and no, I'm not kidding.
This door is custom, instead of traditional locks to stay closed it uses state-of-the-art rope to stay closed. The other doors have yet to be updated to use this technology.
Custom low-offset wheels
After the 80 mile journey to bring the car home in the dark and pouring rain, we realized two things: First, one of the front tires is starting to cord on the inside; and second, that Sandals and I should both be dead by now.
And the obligatory JDM angle:
Our first event is the Capitol Offense at Summit Point, WV, on June 19th-20th. Stay tuned guys, if nothing else this should be fun to watch!
January 23rd, 2010: Gutting Day 1
Today was the first we got to really work on the car. First took a few more pictures of its starting condition. The interior is in pretty good shape but it has some nasty rust outside.
We got the car into the newly-heated garage and started gutting the interior.
It was going pretty smoothly, then in my careless ripping off of panels I found this:
APPARENTLY our Lemon has side air bags and I was a second away from blowing my damn fool head off. We took that as a sign to stop messing around near them until we can figure out how to disable them safely and keep them sale-able
We got the back half pretty well cleaned up and gutted, and also got the headliner, sunroof, and center console out.
We ended the day with a pretty big pile of stuff to sell.
Before closing up the garage we got into the grease pit to get a better look under the car. As you can see the rocker panels are f@#$ed. They're like this all the way around. Hooray Volkswagen!
And we found the source of the crappy steering. Check out the tie rods.
That's enough for one day!
March 27th, 2010: Out of Our Hands
Long time no update! In the past few weeks we finished gutting the car and replaced the tie rods. It drives a whole lot better! With a little elbow-grease Dave fixed the rear passenger door so it closes on its own, and Brian pounded out the front passenger door so the window can move. The car now resides at our cage builder's shop, hopefully we'll have it back next week.
We started ordering the rest of our gear, the fun part of the build will start soon. But for now, more pictures:
Our Golf, now featuring no @#$% interior at all!
Ready for the journey to the shop:
And a couple pics from the shop. Check out our custom seat:
I'll try to keep this a little more up-to-date
April 14th, 2010: Guess we're committed now
Just got the Golf back from the cage shop. Apple Hill 4x4 in Muncy, PA did an awesome job with it and gave us a little break to do some advertising for them. The quality of the cage speaks for itself. Stay tuned folks, the fun part starts now.
The guys at the shop got tired of everyone asking what it was. So they marked it.
This should be awesome. good luck with your adventure. I've read a few articles on the race, and it looks to be one of the coolest things to do, ever. Judges walking around with bribe jars, and all sorts of craziness. I'd love to do it someday.
After we picked up the car the check engine light came on and I felt much safer. We gassed up and got on the way. I'm fairly positive a tie rod is disconnected which made the drive home scary as hell.
Does anyone have compression/editing software (video is upside down since it was the only way to mount the camera)
01-20-2010, 01:08 PM
The Building and Inevitable Death of a Lemon
We took that as a sign to stop messing around near them until we can figure out how to disable them safely and keep them sale-able 
