24 Hours of Lemons
 

So, a couple months ago, I was invited by an acquaintance to join his Lemons team for a race this fall. A basically arrive and drive (I provided some logistical / towing assistance*) invite to a car that would be reasonably decent? Why not!

Net-net, Lemons is the absolute most fun that I have really ever had driving. If you’re really serious about competitive motorsport, it’s probably the wrong venue. But if you’re looking to have fun in a motorsports environment? Awesome. And that was driving a Volvo 850. :lol:

I highly recommend it. Probably not for JV, though.

*We. I invited trentmw along and we took turns driving the tow vehicle.

I'm not sure if my feelings should be hurt or not :lol:

Glad you had fun.

Enough so that there is facebook evidence of Nick wearing a ball cap

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...9f&oe=5E1C4B8C

The car. :lol:

LeMons is super fun for sure!

Husband has a LeMons car. It has been years since he's done anything with it - because life - but we have a 1st Gen RX7 with an engine swap and a fuel cell taking up a garage space. Someday he'll get it going again. And get a team going again. His first team had a 1st Gen CRX and placed 8th at Altamont one year.

Those guys (and girls) are a special kind of crazy. We have friends who drove a Saab for a LeMons race and also drove to the track separately in another Saab of the same model. By the end of the race they had stripped so many parts off of the second car it had to be towed off. :eeps:

I think I need to friend request Nick, I need to see this picture :D

:lol: That's an awesome story!

I love the stickers on that Volvo, but you might not want to enter it in the Lemons at Road Atlanta (12/14-15)

Might be like that Top Gear episode when they toured the south

I’ve done two races on a VW cabrio. It was crazy fun. I wanted and still do want to have a car to race there. Justa few more years and my boys can join in.

One certainly feels conspicuous towing it.

The sticker package on the car looks fine to me. Though driving a Volvo 850 for 24 hours sounds challenging. With what looks like no camber up front, how many pairs of front tires did you go through?

The idea behind Lemons and Chump (Champ) racing is really appealing to me. I've seriously considered trying to find a team to buy a seat onto, but I've never pulled the trigger. Champ more so than Lemons purely because the whole "look how serious we aren't" mask Lemons likes to wear. But I also get that I'm not the target market.

Glad you had fun!

Front grip was great with a 255/225 reverse stagger. The car owner’s comment on the camber was that the marginally better cornering grip wasn’t worth the acceleration and braking compromise. The dominant handling characteristic was off throttle oversteer.

Edit: It also helps that the car owner is a volvo fabricator. So it has all kinds of cheatery parts that he made himself from scrap or shop supplies.

I wasn't asking about grip. I was asking about wear.

Wear wasn’t an issue. It uses front tires about twice as fast as the rears, but you can still get multiple races out of the fronts.

Edit: Tire age is a bigger issue than wear. These were older tires. This was the third race for the fronts, and the seventh for the rears. The fronts are pretty done. The rears are still at half tread. :lol:

Wow, I'm surprised you can get three 24 hour sessions out of the tires.

Sounds like great fun!

I would also love to take part in Chump or Lemons and for the same reason as JV, slight edge to the less ironic series, but either way, fun. Unfortunately, my wrenching is super limited and I don't have a racing license just a few track days scattered over the years (mostly in the distant past).

If you have $75, you too can have a Lemons race license. :lol:

Well, 14.5 hours. Heat cycling is a bigger issue than wear.

So how did you place with the Volvo??

I'm guessing that if you guys had won, we would have already known.

I'm seriously thinking about checking out the event at Road Atlanta in December. It's only about an hour away, and could be interesting just to watch

Top half. We were off track for a few hours on Saturday after we (I) broke an engine mount brace and lost the serpentine belt. We'd have done pretty well if we hadn't broken. (The story of many a race.) After we got back on track, we battled our way up from around 90th to 52nd.