Update for Oct 23, 2010: Figured I'd post this up, as some of you might be interested in building or running a LeMons car.
Costas and his band of merry men (and women) have been campaigning this 3rd gen Camaro in the 24 Hours of LeMons and Chump car for the past few years. There have been a lot of hands in this build, including a cage by TurboTodd, and tons of other prep work by Costas and many others. The car itself is some early 1980s 3rd gen with a factory 305" V8, complete with craptastic stock 2 barrel carburetor and manual trans. Its pretty nasty looking now, and well... it probably always will be.
Here's some writeups of the build:
They've placed as high as 2nd, back in their very first LeMons race in it in Oct 2008. Initially they had some flak for the car potentially being an overdog, but not anymore. The thing only had 180 hp stock, and it shows. Stock radiator. Stock exhaust manifolds. Its pretty weak. But its consistent, and they do well in events do to good preparation, good radio/crew work, and FAST pit stops. The car is getting some small tweaks here and there, mostly for safety and reliability. It ain't pretty.... if you saw this car in person you wouldn't doubt the $500 claim.
One thing that they knew they needed to do faster was driver extractions/changes. Part of this involved adding a quick release onto the steering column & wheel. Costas had scrounged and bought a cheap, weld-on, circle track style quick release coupler. We rummaged around in my shop and found the perfect adapter to thread to the stock column (one of our long reach strut top nuts we make for our camber plates), he whittled it down on the band saw and it fit perfectly. We threaded it down around the end of the column then welded the thing to the end of the shaft so it cannot ever come off. Then we welded the supplied (and modified) coupler around that and made it nice and strong and perfectly centered. It sounds pretty hokey but it came out pretty damn slick. Its only bolted on with one bolt in that picture but it will be drilled/bolted with the required 3 bolts before race day.
Costas also wanted a better/safer seat & a Sparco adjustable slider. They had an aluminum race seat in there before that had no cover or padding, bolted to a hacked-up stock slider, and it was pretty damned uncomfortable for 1-2 hour stints and too high for the tall co-drivers. So Costas rounded up a used Sparco bottom mount seat and slider and we built an all new bracket for it one Saturday.
I made this one like I have done many times in the past... started with 1.25" square tubing, drilled and added tabs to make it fit the very much not aligned factory stock seat bolt holes. Then mocked up the seat and slider a dozen times in the car with various height drivers. Once we got the heights right at both fore-aft extremes (it moves more than 18" with these sliders), we tacked everything up in the car, then pulled it out and finish welded everything, then shot it with gray paint. All of this fitting, testing, and welding took 3-4 hours, like it always seems to.
We were trying to keep it light but it still crept past 5 pounds. Oh well, its very strong, has tubing at the rear if they want to bolt the submarine straps to it, and the entire seat & slider assembly should bolt into any 3rd gen - which will be nice if this LeMons car ever expires, so it can donate the seats and some other bits they can unbolt.
Last but not least... there was some nasty flapper valve in this exhaust manifold adapter bracket thingie that was leaking exhaust and had to be choking off some flow. Since it was a $0 fix, Costas yanked out that butterfly valve and then cleaned it up a bit. Then I welded the hole solid (inside and out) and ground the weld smooth. Should flow a tiny bit better now... every fraction of a horsepower helps.
So that's the extant of the work we did at Vorshlag that Saturday. Its a drop in the bucket, and I am not posting this claiming to have done any real, substantial work on the car - it just passed through the shop and was "interesting". Sometimes the pictures help us remember how we did stuff - to replicate later. Getting old and all.... this is more of a "bad memory/prep notes" kind of post. There's a ton of LeMons cars being built in the Dallas area, but this was the first one I've worked on.
They are running the car next at the LAISSEZ LES CRAPHEAPS ROULEZ, at No Problems Raceway in New Orleans, LA, later this month (November 20-21). Assuming its all back together in time. This will be their first "True 24 hours" race in the Camaro... that's right, no "break" for the night, this will be a round the clock, through the night 24 hours race!
Stay tuned...
Costas and his band of merry men (and women) have been campaigning this 3rd gen Camaro in the 24 Hours of LeMons and Chump car for the past few years. There have been a lot of hands in this build, including a cage by TurboTodd, and tons of other prep work by Costas and many others. The car itself is some early 1980s 3rd gen with a factory 305" V8, complete with craptastic stock 2 barrel carburetor and manual trans. Its pretty nasty looking now, and well... it probably always will be.
Here's some writeups of the build:
- http://www.witchdoctormotorsports.com/ch97.htm
- http://www.witchdoctormotorsports.com/ch109.htm
- http://www.witchdoctormotorsports.com/ch113.htm
- http://www.witchdoctormotorsports.com/ch120.htm
- http://www.witchdoctormotorsports.com/ch124.htm
- http://www.witchdoctormotorsports.com/ch126.htm
They've placed as high as 2nd, back in their very first LeMons race in it in Oct 2008. Initially they had some flak for the car potentially being an overdog, but not anymore. The thing only had 180 hp stock, and it shows. Stock radiator. Stock exhaust manifolds. Its pretty weak. But its consistent, and they do well in events do to good preparation, good radio/crew work, and FAST pit stops. The car is getting some small tweaks here and there, mostly for safety and reliability. It ain't pretty.... if you saw this car in person you wouldn't doubt the $500 claim.
One thing that they knew they needed to do faster was driver extractions/changes. Part of this involved adding a quick release onto the steering column & wheel. Costas had scrounged and bought a cheap, weld-on, circle track style quick release coupler. We rummaged around in my shop and found the perfect adapter to thread to the stock column (one of our long reach strut top nuts we make for our camber plates), he whittled it down on the band saw and it fit perfectly. We threaded it down around the end of the column then welded the thing to the end of the shaft so it cannot ever come off. Then we welded the supplied (and modified) coupler around that and made it nice and strong and perfectly centered. It sounds pretty hokey but it came out pretty damn slick. Its only bolted on with one bolt in that picture but it will be drilled/bolted with the required 3 bolts before race day.
Costas also wanted a better/safer seat & a Sparco adjustable slider. They had an aluminum race seat in there before that had no cover or padding, bolted to a hacked-up stock slider, and it was pretty damned uncomfortable for 1-2 hour stints and too high for the tall co-drivers. So Costas rounded up a used Sparco bottom mount seat and slider and we built an all new bracket for it one Saturday.
I made this one like I have done many times in the past... started with 1.25" square tubing, drilled and added tabs to make it fit the very much not aligned factory stock seat bolt holes. Then mocked up the seat and slider a dozen times in the car with various height drivers. Once we got the heights right at both fore-aft extremes (it moves more than 18" with these sliders), we tacked everything up in the car, then pulled it out and finish welded everything, then shot it with gray paint. All of this fitting, testing, and welding took 3-4 hours, like it always seems to.
We were trying to keep it light but it still crept past 5 pounds. Oh well, its very strong, has tubing at the rear if they want to bolt the submarine straps to it, and the entire seat & slider assembly should bolt into any 3rd gen - which will be nice if this LeMons car ever expires, so it can donate the seats and some other bits they can unbolt.
Last but not least... there was some nasty flapper valve in this exhaust manifold adapter bracket thingie that was leaking exhaust and had to be choking off some flow. Since it was a $0 fix, Costas yanked out that butterfly valve and then cleaned it up a bit. Then I welded the hole solid (inside and out) and ground the weld smooth. Should flow a tiny bit better now... every fraction of a horsepower helps.
So that's the extant of the work we did at Vorshlag that Saturday. Its a drop in the bucket, and I am not posting this claiming to have done any real, substantial work on the car - it just passed through the shop and was "interesting". Sometimes the pictures help us remember how we did stuff - to replicate later. Getting old and all.... this is more of a "bad memory/prep notes" kind of post. There's a ton of LeMons cars being built in the Dallas area, but this was the first one I've worked on.
They are running the car next at the LAISSEZ LES CRAPHEAPS ROULEZ, at No Problems Raceway in New Orleans, LA, later this month (November 20-21). Assuming its all back together in time. This will be their first "True 24 hours" race in the Camaro... that's right, no "break" for the night, this will be a round the clock, through the night 24 hours race!
Stay tuned...
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