LeMons South 2009

[VroomGrrl]

I had the pleasure of being invited to crew with a bunch of my NASA-SE friends who entered the Pink Panther II (1 1989 Honda Prelude with 230K miles on it) in this year's Lemons race at CMP. The whole weekend was a blast! Our car only lasted TWO HOURS into the race, so that was a downer, especially for the half of the six-man driver team who never saw a minute of track time!

Our very own Pink Stig - who got about 20 minutes of track time!


But the weather was gorgeous, the teams were so much fun, the setting was perfect, and the racing was really good! Amazing what a bunch of lunatics with $500 cars can accomplish. The team paddocked across from us hefted their engine out by hand and did a total replacement overnight. I heard another team did a 90-minute replacement during the race (Tunachuckers). One of our techs was in big demand for the rest of the weekend, being called from team to team for his extraordinary McGuyver-ing skills. I saw him take a set of "wrong" pads for a Crown Vic and "modify" them (with snips and a grinder) to fit well enough to get the #60 back on track.

During our downtime on Sunday, we turned the hauler into a garage, and put some of our cars up on the lift. I assisted with an oil change on a Scion (yes, I have now been baptized with motor oil!), and then we put my Camry up there and located the source of a power steering fluid leak (need a new steering rack) and a small oil leak as well. I had the best time hanging out under the cars with guys who were in NO HURRY to get anywhere, do anything. It's not like I can go to any old garage and stand around under the lifts asking questions, so I enjoyed this more than I should probably admit!

The Penalty Box was really the best place to be - all kinds of madness going on there!

Pink Panther II Penalty


Pink Panther II Death Rattle


Pink Panther II Horn


"WE'RE BAD DRIVERS" Penalty Parade - hilarious!


Click on the PINK STIG photo above if you want to see more photos.

[Heel n Toe]

I had loosely-formed plans to go to just the Saturday part with my bud Richard, but sadly, the slow, steady encroachment of April 15th kept me away... I had to bow out and get all my schtuff together to give to the guy who does our taxes.

Was the weather beautiful, or what???

I've checked the 24 Hours of Lemons site and the CMP site a couple times, but haven't seen any photo coverage yet.

Just did a Google News search and got a few hits...

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=24%20hours%20of%20lemons&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn

[Heel n Toe]

Check this link out:

http://jalopnik.com/5198750/24-hours-of-lemons-south-day-one-saab-leads-fiero-in-top-ten

[VroomGrrl]

Anybody else having trouble getting the embedded videos to play? I need to tweak my activeX settings to get the flickr.com video clips to play on this machine.

I have just uploaded a video of the crushing of the People's Curse car here:

[Heel n Toe]

Please post links to your vids. I'd especially love to see a shot or two of that Opel GT.

Did your team keep the car, or take advantage of CMP's "Dead Cars: Complete, rolling corpses can be left behind Sunday" rule?

http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/events/cmpsouthspring/

[Mericet]

LeMons is great fun. Looking forward to our effort this year.

[Dixie]

We probably met in passing. My lovely bride, Dixie, worked registration on Friday, and CMP tee short sales Saturday and Sunday. I helped out with tech Friday afternoon. Then I got stuck being a fuel warden on Saturday.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to take any photos. I'll have to check with Dixie to see if she took any.

[VroomGrrl]

Originally Posted by Heel n Toe

Please post links to your vids. I'd especially love to see a shot or two of that Opel GT.

Did your team keep the car, or take advantage of CMP's "Dead Cars: Complete, rolling corpses can be left behind Sunday" rule?

http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/events/cmpsouthspring/

The team did keep the car. The owner is the director for NASA-SE, and he is going to fix it up to run in the NASA-SE Enduro series.

So sorry I didn't get any shots of that Opel GT - I first thought it was an old Datsun! I never did get to see it up close, but it looked great and ran like the wind!

Links to video clips:

Pink Panther II in the Penalty Box:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathycha/3419534710/

Another funny penalty - which I called a Parade of Shame:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathycha/3411920717/

Pink Panther II Death Rattle:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathycha/3413738777/

Pink Panther II Horn
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathycha/3414466482/

[dtw]

I was there with our team DOS Boot racing, we had an A2 GTI that did decently. By the end of the race though, we had a ruptured fuel line (misplaced jack during a penalty, put us out of the running), no brakes, oil pressure light flashing, a passenger door that won't close due to hinge post being punched in, and a bunch of other maladies. The team was led by fellow Pelican Britt Bolen and also featured Tim Walsh.

Another Pelican, dweymer, ran the Dorkiphus team's 944 under the Craptastic banner. They spent most of the weekend in the paddock with mechanical issues.

Tim and I were the official hospitality crew for our team. With 3 grills, we turned out burgers, dogs, bratwurst, chili, bacon explosions, and ribs. Tim also brought loads of homebrew. We bribed the judges all weekend with our awesome cooking & suds.

We plan to be back in the fall!

[avendlerdp]

Lemons is the greatest! We have the Metro-Gnome (motorcycle powered Geo Metro) all prepped and ready for Reno. Any other Pelicans doing the Reno event? Should be fun.