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This summer, a few of us decided to build a car to enter into one of the "24 hours of LeMons" races. We started this project in March. Spotless (Wes) and I came up with idea of doing this race after watching an episode of Top Gear. We looked into the Lemons schedule and noticed they had a race at Road America in August. We decided we must do this, we go to Road America every year for the ALMS race (and AMA last year). Turns out the LeMons race is the Monday/Tuesday after the ALMS race this year. The Road America race isnt a true 24 hour race, its a 2-day even with around 7 hours each day of racing.
So we enlisted a few others on the team, including Rustylx (Ron), Allstock93gt (Scott), and S40Monster (Derrick). Wes and I originally bought a sweet 95 Escort LX 5-speed, that we planed to make into our racer. When Rustylx joined the team, he had his old drag car shell sitting around, it was decided that this car was perfect for our race.
Over the summer we slowly rebuilt this car from basically the ground up, turning it into a full fledged LeMons racer. Now, the thing about LeMons racing, if you dont know, is the car's are suppose to be $500 cars. You're not suppose to spend much money on it and make it a balls out racer. It has to be cheap. So we scavenged and scrounged up as many stock, or near stock parts. Built this car as "cheaply" as we could (some items dont count against that $500 budget).
So as we went along I was taking "progress" pics with my cell phone to keep track of what was going on. Some of you have seen these photos on facebook, but we figured we'd share it on here now. The car was basically finished last night, and tested for the first time. All 5 drivers got alittle seat time at our test track. We finished with little time to spare, with the actual race only a week away. Like most projects we ran into road blocks and obstacles to over come through out. But last night was a pretty big night to see the car drive after all the work the team put in.
The Build begins....the car is already a Frankenstein...
The old drag cage, which didnt meet the requirements for LeMons, so it had to be removed.
The car was pretty striped already, but day 1 was spent stripping it down even more.
Derrick doing exactly what Derrick does best, remove unneeded weight. Thanks to derricks persistence, the car weights 2640lb's without a driver.
Old cage cut out
Door skins and crash bars removed. You might be surprised how heavy those crash bars are!
First time the car was put on the ground in a long time
Pre-fabbed cage from S+W Racecar.
This was the first time this car was out of the garage in a loooong time. The car has a cowl hood quick arent allowed, so we had to find one of those as well.
The motor, nothing special, stock 302 that was sitting around.
Derrick back at it...again.
We upgraded the brakes, PBR front brakes off a GT. Hawk pads. SN95 master/booster. Custom brake ducts. Really nothing special, but still alot better then fox brakes.
Running a stock T-5 (with a spare just incase). We got a freebie seat from our "consultant" Steve...although we later found out that seat would not meet all the LeMons requirements so we had to go aonther route.
engnerdan (Dan) from D+W Metalworks welded the cage together, did a great job!
The cage was only 95% completed that day since we needed to mount the seat before we could complete it, and we left the passenger door bar off for now to make it easier to get in and out of the car for the build.
So we enlisted a few others on the team, including Rustylx (Ron), Allstock93gt (Scott), and S40Monster (Derrick). Wes and I originally bought a sweet 95 Escort LX 5-speed, that we planed to make into our racer. When Rustylx joined the team, he had his old drag car shell sitting around, it was decided that this car was perfect for our race.
Over the summer we slowly rebuilt this car from basically the ground up, turning it into a full fledged LeMons racer. Now, the thing about LeMons racing, if you dont know, is the car's are suppose to be $500 cars. You're not suppose to spend much money on it and make it a balls out racer. It has to be cheap. So we scavenged and scrounged up as many stock, or near stock parts. Built this car as "cheaply" as we could (some items dont count against that $500 budget).
So as we went along I was taking "progress" pics with my cell phone to keep track of what was going on. Some of you have seen these photos on facebook, but we figured we'd share it on here now. The car was basically finished last night, and tested for the first time. All 5 drivers got alittle seat time at our test track. We finished with little time to spare, with the actual race only a week away. Like most projects we ran into road blocks and obstacles to over come through out. But last night was a pretty big night to see the car drive after all the work the team put in.
The Build begins....the car is already a Frankenstein...
The old drag cage, which didnt meet the requirements for LeMons, so it had to be removed.
The car was pretty striped already, but day 1 was spent stripping it down even more.
Derrick doing exactly what Derrick does best, remove unneeded weight. Thanks to derricks persistence, the car weights 2640lb's without a driver.
Old cage cut out
Door skins and crash bars removed. You might be surprised how heavy those crash bars are!
First time the car was put on the ground in a long time
Pre-fabbed cage from S+W Racecar.
This was the first time this car was out of the garage in a loooong time. The car has a cowl hood quick arent allowed, so we had to find one of those as well.
The motor, nothing special, stock 302 that was sitting around.
Derrick back at it...again.
We upgraded the brakes, PBR front brakes off a GT. Hawk pads. SN95 master/booster. Custom brake ducts. Really nothing special, but still alot better then fox brakes.
Running a stock T-5 (with a spare just incase). We got a freebie seat from our "consultant" Steve...although we later found out that seat would not meet all the LeMons requirements so we had to go aonther route.
engnerdan (Dan) from D+W Metalworks welded the cage together, did a great job!
The cage was only 95% completed that day since we needed to mount the seat before we could complete it, and we left the passenger door bar off for now to make it easier to get in and out of the car for the build.
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