Lemons??

Wow, Shelton is way bigger than I thought and a great looking course. Time to charge the battery in the CRX and lets have an Anarchy lapping day!


I'll show this thread to my customer/neighbor/friend. Lots of good info to be gleaned for him.

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fiasco
It's racing for shitboxes. Fast cars aren't supposed to be there, take your BS laps with a smile, or bring the judges more tequila. What did you have, a Spec Miata?

It wasn't us, but a 944 that was running something like 122nd out of 124 cars was chosen for the People's Curse because it was a Porsche, so therefore it was fast, and they didn't want it to win. Never mind that it was a $500 944, meaning it was unlikely to actually finish all 24 hours, and it was running so far back in the field that it probably couldn't win if everyone else stopped racing and cracked beers instead, by gum they needed to have an example made of them!

Yes, that is a competitor problem, not an organizer problem.

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The whole point of LeMons is to be goofy and see if you can grind out more laps between spectacular mechanical failures than the other guys.

Sounds like the shitbox-rallycrosser mentality. I don't really like that very much, either. If you're entering a RACE, don't you want to at least make an effort at WINNING? 24 hours / 6 drivers = 4 hours on track, if it's not "racing" then it's just a track day, and I can get 4 hours of track time a hell of a lot more cheaply.

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That said, spray foam insulation in my tool box would likely result in me getting free room, board, and healthcare for several years in the state pen. Not cool at all.

They apologised immediately. I'm with you, though. F with the car, okay, that was expected. You don't screw with a man's tools, especially unannounced.

All the same, it's very hard to get a bad taste out of your mouth, you know?

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

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Rallymech
Lemons is a real turn off for me. It would be funny to watch on TV but I don't want to participate.

I'll tell you what. The real action is in the pits, watching people get inventive.

My favorite was the SAAB something-or-other Turbo that got punted into a wall (different year). 5 or so hours later, it was back on course with no bodywork ahead of the front wheels, intercooler replaced by a piece of exhaust pipe, radiator flapping in the breeze held in with zip ties and bungee cords, about 4 degrees of positive camber on the right front on a counterclockwise course... And they finished. Ate a lot of tires in the process though

Some of the more experienced teams really had things down to a science - 15 minute axle/bearing/knuckle swaps on a Grand Am every four hours for maintenance, things like that. Other teams... not so much.

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

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Pete

Some of the more experienced teams really had things down to a science - 15 minute axle/bearing/knuckle swaps on a Grand Am every four hours for maintenance, things like that. Other teams... not so much.

I did chumpcar Calgary last year. We did a motor and tranny swap from the junkyard after blowing the motor. We also swapped the head off the blown motor because it was special (this adds an exorbitant amount of time to the work being done when you've been up for 20 hours).

I mean, pulling two motors (ours and the junkyard one) plus pulling the tranny out of a completely separate junkyard car is no small feat with the tools we had available. And the car had waayyyyyy more power the next day (it'd make me laugh if we hadn't of had to find out the hard way about it).

Anyways, chumpcar is (imo) where people get to actually compete as they should. There is enough goofiness simply because of the type of racing you are doing, it doesn't have to go full retard.

Pacific Raceways in Kent, WA (formerly SIR) is supposed to be putting on a crapcan race (RollX-16) in early March. I have not yet seen anything official from them but other racers I know have gotten emails from the track. It's their own race, not Lemons/Chump but I think the rules are similar to Chumpcar rules.

I did one Chumpcar race at PIR back in 2010. It was a disaster for the team I was on as the car was a POS MGB (what was I thinking?!) that ran like crap from the very beginning and made it through half of the first day before being parked. I got 6 1/2 laps in it, lol. Lessons learned: only join a team with people you know and trust & check out the car beforehand (which implies a local car).. Better yet, join a local team and help prep it.

Regarding the ideal car, I think a small bore car like a Miata, Civic, CRX, Neon, E30, etc. is the way to go since they're inherently reliable, handle well out of the box, and you can get many parts from Autozone or PepBoys on a Saturday night. Alfa Romeo, Yugo, or anything British are probably not the best choice.

Having said that, I'd love to do more of these races. Between Chump, Lemons, ORP's Rat Race, and the RollX-16 race at Pacific Raceways, there should be at least 5 crapcan races in the PNW in 2012.

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MikeColangelo
Pacific Raceways in Kent, WA (formerly SIR) is supposed to be putting on a crapcan race (RollX-16) in early March. I have not yet seen anything official from them but other racers I know have gotten emails from the track. It's their own race, not Lemons/Chump but I think the rules are similar to Chumpcar rules.

I did one Chumpcar race at PIR back in 2010. It was a disaster for the team I was on as the car was a POS MGB (what was I thinking?!) that ran like crap from the very beginning and made it through half of the first day before being parked. I got 6 1/2 laps in it, lol. Lessons learned: only join a team with people you know and trust & check out the car beforehand (which implies a local car).. Better yet, join a local team and help prep it.

Regarding the ideal car, I think a small bore car like a Miata, Civic, CRX, Neon, E30, etc. is the way to go since they're inherently reliable, handle well out of the box, and you can get many parts from Autozone or PepBoys on a Saturday night. Alfa Romeo, Yugo, or anything British are probably not the best choice.

Having said that, I'd love to do more of these races. Between Chump, Lemons, ORP's Rat Race, and the RollX-16 race at Pacific Raceways, there should be at least 5 crapcan races in the PNW in 2012.

We have a carbed CRX shell that has a recent crate engine swap. Automatic tho...

MGB.
What were you thinking?

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Lemons racing requires suspension of thinking. And I don't mean the boinger kind.

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HiTempguy
it doesn't have to go full retard.

You NEVER go full retard!!!

---

I Seppanen, Car #240

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sidewaez
I'm dissapointed to hear about the direction lemons has gone, but good to know.

Please tell me this 'direction' you speak of. I have driven two Lemons events, the second event at Altamont in 2007, and the last event in CA, at Buttonwillow a month ago and I can tell you that the vibe, penalties, craziness, etc was exactly the same at both races.

It's a race for people who don't take themselves or racing too seriously. You want to be 'that guy' and try to eke out every second to win the race, or do you want to have fun, laugh at other's horrible misfortunes, and try to strategize on how to get around a limousine race car in a decreasing radius right 2? For me, I'll take the latter.

Most of the guys who complain about it are the kinds of people Lemons teams are trying to avoid (anal, bitchy, protesting, smart ass, know-it-alls). There are some that still infiltrate the event, and they are usually dealt with accordingly.

If anything the events are run MORE professionally than before, with real penalties for bad driving and off-track excursions (I should know, we had to write 'the beauty of all wheel drive will not save me' 200 times over both of our Rare-bit GTIs with sharpies, then when a few guys on our team got black flagged for the nth time we were forced to do a 9-man Human Centipede through the pits....in our underwear. Then we were DQed after another black flag. That's the breaks. Made more memories in one weekend than most rallies I've been to over the last decade put together. Oh, and the Hyabusa powered Geo Metro, punk rock bands at night, and 160 cars on track at once didn't hurt either.

Eli

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Washed-Up-Rally-Drivers/219873994736992

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gilbrock

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sidewaez
I'm dissapointed to hear about the direction lemons has gone, but good to know.

Please tell me this 'direction' you speak of. I have driven two Lemons events, the second event at Altamont in 2007, and the last event in CA, at Buttonwillow a month ago and I can tell you that the vibe, penalties, craziness, etc was exactly the same at both races.

It's a race for people who don't take themselves or racing too seriously. You want to be 'that guy' and try to eke out every second to win the race, or do you want to have fun, laugh at other's horrible misfortunes, and try to strategize on how to get around a limousine race car in a decreasing radius right 2? For me, I'll take the latter.

Most of the guys who complain about it are the kinds of people Lemons teams are trying to avoid (anal, bitchy, protesting, smart ass, know-it-alls). There are some that still infiltrate the event, and they are usually dealt with accordingly.

If anything the events are run MORE professionally than before, with real penalties for bad driving and off-track excursions (I should know, we had to write 'the beauty of all wheel drive will not save me' 200 times over both of our Rare-bit GTIs with sharpies, then when a few guys on our team got black flagged for the nth time we were forced to do a 9-man Human Centipede through the pits....in our underwear. Then we were DQed after another black flag. That's the breaks. Made more memories in one weekend than most rallies I've been to over the last decade put together. Oh, and the Hyabusa powered Geo Metro, punk rock bands at night, and 160 cars on track at once didn't hurt either.

Eli

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Washed-Up-Rally-Drivers/219873994736992

Seriously?? WTF is with people who can't present a view without name calling? Because you lack self esteem, are childish, have no no goals, enjoy hugging your team mates in their BVDs doesn't mean people who disagree are anal, bitchy, protesting...blah, blah, blah...see it just doesn't sit well.

People have the ability to enjoy or dislike many diffrent things. If you like Lemons and it works for you then that is totally a great thing. If someone else has problems with it then great for them. People should have a right to enjoy themselves ( PeeWee included) and they should have the right to know what they are getting into ahead of time. Shitbox racing is a great idea but when you have very expensive safety and prep rules and a bunch of idiocy then people need to weigh the cost and see if it works for them. Simple.

Jesus Gene, take a pill.

I wasn't calling any of you guys those names, I was talking about the kinds of people in racing circles that would abhor being at a Lemons race. Having been around plenty of these jokers in quite a few years of autocrossing, rallying, rallycrossing, and a few track events, it's really quite easy to find the people who would find Lemons objectionable.

I only sought to inject some personal experience into the thread, as one of seemingly very few people who have posted in here that have *actually* competed in a Lemons event.

And for the record, I didn't enjoy running around in the pits in my undies attached to the heads and asses of 8 other guys (I was in the front, a benefit of owning the race cars), but it did allow us to get out of the penalty box 3 hours early...

Eli,
I'd bet all of us dislike the stereotype fussy road racer or autoXr. I remember reading in the back of SportsCar about protests over a missing sunvisor or the nubbins on a headlight. Not anything I would be proud of doing that's for sure.

Unfortunately I read your post as a rather wide painting of anyone who didn't care for the Lemons shenanigans and several of the RA crowd has expressed experienced opinions to that end. So it came across as name calling to some of the folks here. Sorry.

Your experience works also and your input in valuable, unfortunately in this case it will only reinforce my friends decision to not participate. His age and temperment wouldn't go well with the lingerie show....or other horsing around. I'm guessing there is a bit of a generation gap for one thing.

Eli, I think I can sum up most of our complaints thusly:

They act like they don't take things seriously, but actually take themselves too seriously.

Black flags for hitting a cone, half-spins, a wheel off, just seems outright insanity for someone coming from the rally world. Black flags for passes started before a yellow and completed give back when safe to do so. They issued, no exaggeration, hundreds of black fag penalties over a course of a single weekend. Sure there were probably a couple of legitimate flags, but most were totally unnecessary (but entertaining to the organizers).

And then the condescending nature of the organizers? I've never seen such arrogance and ego at the race track (and that may be saying a lot).

I find people who claim they are trying to have "fun" like this typically are the people who push the "fun" waaaaaaaaay too far. As someone pointed out, you never go "full retard", which is what Lemons strikes me as.

Like I said, Chumpcar is the sane version of Lemons and I love it.