24 Hours of LeMons

Chris (By Shona B)

First, you need to understand that this is a post about racing. Racing cars. I’m a bit of a motorhead and I like things like this so if you don’t care about cars or you think they are dumb then you’re going to want to stop reading now. Go do something else, like polishing your bicycle.*

You’re still here? Good. OK, second thing you need to know is that this is probably different than any race you’ve heard of. This isn’t the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a prestigious endurance auto race held in Europe. This is The 24 Hours of Lemons in which losers, like the author, get together and build a car for less than $500 and then attempt to race it over two long days.

But like most things that are fun in life, there’s more to this race than just the cost of the car. Teams don’t just have to get an old and barely-running crapcan around the track a couple hundred times. They have to do it in style. So when you show up you’re expected to have a theme. And when I say theme, I don’t mean just a nice paint job. You’re supposed to show up in character.

BMW E30s Lined Up (by Ryan Doherty)

The Kill Phil Team (by shonab)

So in reality this is about having as much fun as you can and spending as little cash as you can.

You’d be surprised at home many people show up. There were about 120 teams that showed up for this race – Arse-Sweat-Apalooza 2010 – from all over the west coast, some as far away as Seattle.  Many were returning teams, even running with the same theme as previous races.  But many teams change their themes over time even if they don’t change the car too much.  (The judges encourage this through various means.)

Our team, made up of a few Mozilla people and running with a borrowed car was no exception.  This car had run a previous race, and we had done extensive work on the car ahead of the race.  (Anyone who knows me knows that I spent basically every weekend for the two months before the race in Oakland working on the car.)  It went to the race with new tires, new wheels, a motor that ran much better than in the previous race and a bunch of other improvements.  It also had a new theme.

The theme was good, but it wasn’t good enough to avoid some penalty laps.  Our motor looked too clean and we ended up with about 30 penalty laps – enough to cost us about 10 positions in the race.

All in all we did pretty well.  We finished in the middle of the pack, 63rd out of 121 teams.  We had one real breakdown.  About an hour before the end of racing on the first day our Master Brake Cylinder went out.  Lucky for us, we were driving a very common car and were able to get a spare from another team on the track.  We were back out on Sunday morning with fresh brakes.

Other teams were not as lucky.  Stories of replaced and blown engines abounded, including replacements on-track.  But this is what it means when you show up with a car that cost a maximum of $500.

And on that note, it is a race.  And you’re expected to go.  I was lucky enough to score the fastest lap time on our team, even though our little car didn’t hold a candle to some of the machines out on the track.

It was a great time. Not only because it’s nice to go around a track really fast. But also because we put so much work into the car and we got to see it pay off. You get to drive the car you spent time on. It’s a pretty amazing experience.

So it’s unlikely that this will be the last race. Some friends and I are trolling around, looking for another E30 to convert to race specs. And I’m sure I’ll be posting about it again.

And here are some picture galleries for your enjoyment.

* Actually, I like bicycles a lot. And the people who ride them. But this isn’t about that.