Keeping the Scirocco legacy alive...

The legacy of not finishing, that is!  I was part of the #88 Doing Community Service team driving a 1984 Scirocco.  The engine spun a rod bearing in the 2nd or 3rd hour of the race.

We whizzed through tech without so much as a second glance from the mustachio'd Judges.  One of which commenting "Oh, it's a Scirocco, we don't even need to look at this!"  A commentary on the history Sciroccos have at Lemons of always breaking down.

We thought we were smart and would install one of VW's more reliable (and mostly unloved) engines; the 2.0L 8V (engine code ABA) from the 3rd generation Golf/Jettas.  There's a LOT of them in existence and few get bought at junkyards (because they rarely blow up and so few people are looking to get them for performance reasons...)

We thought in a 1900 lb car it would be decently quick.  And it wasn't bad... for a while.

It was kind of our fault.  We got the engine for cheap, but found out during the swap process that the oil pump was worn and not putting out appropriate pressure.  We installed a new one, finished up the install and wiring and called it good.  The whole project was a bit rushed and we had no time to sort things out properly.  Plus we're doing it on the cheap not only in the spirit of Lemons but also because we're just cheap bastards

We got the car on track for Friday night practice (which was god awful slow, wasn't it?).  I noticed during my short stint that under certain lighter load conditions I could hear a sort of dieseling/light knocking noise which did sound to me like a rod bearing.  I told this to the team, and the next driver, Brian, heard it too.

Oh well!  Run what ya brung!  We lasted a couple hours into the race.  She handled beautifully and was generally a lot of fun.  Then came my turn to drive.  Due to the somewhat leaky exhaust, it wasn't the easiest to hear oddities in the engine, but I could hear a little knocking more prolific than the night before and under many more conditions than just the one specific load.  Uh oh.

I drove maybe 20 minutes and it was getting worse.  Felt lower on power than the night before, as well, but still was doing OK.  Then one lap exitting the carousel, I feel a weird hesitation followed very shortly by the no oil pressure light/buzzer.  I shut it off and coasted all down the back straight and into the paddock.

Dropped the oil pan and it became very obvious what had gone wrong.  Bearing for the #3 rod was just completely gone (strange that on VW 4 cyl. it's always #3 that goes first...)  In pieces in the bottom of the oil pan.  #2 had a fair bit of wear too, crank was scored pretty badly.

At first, we toyed with the idea of borrowing some rod bearings from our friendly Canadian neighbors who were running a Mk2 Golf (1.8L, 2.0L... doesn't matter, bearings are all the same).  They were very willing to help, but in the end after further inspection, we decided we would have just chewed up their bearings too and left it alone.  Time for a new engine!

The Junk Player's Special guys were awesome.  They had another OBD1 ABA engine in the black barn at the track and were happy to lend it to us.  But would require it back should their motor bite it or just after the race.  Fair enough!

It took us about 3.5 hours to do the swap.  Our team is pretty knowledgeable on how to do engine swaps on VWs.  Things went quick and little time was wasted (we did have to stop to admire the Wartburg driving past our camp, though!).

We had it up and running, all seemed well.  We re-aimed our lights and sent it onto the track.  About 4 laps into it (half of which were under yellow...) she just shuts off.  After a lot of time diagnosing (a big thanks to one of the Junk Player's guys who was over there helping with this), swapping parts of harness and the like, we figured the ECU had gone kaput.  Wasn't getting signal to the injectors to fire, no power to the crank position sensor and other weird stuff.

So a few of us walked around to other teams running VWs (turns out 4 other teams were running ABAs, all of which finished.  3 of whom were running early OBD1 cars, which would make them compatible with our car's electricals).  No luck on spare ECUs, though.  DedBull and the Canadian team running the black Mk3 Golf both reported potential clutch issues.  They said if they weren't able to run anymore, they'd be willing to lend us their respective ECUs to allow us some track time.  But both cars held on.

Called junkyards the next morning, no one in the area seemed open on a Sunday!  We were done.  114th out of 122.  Only 3 out of our 6 drivers got a chance in the car during the race.

It was quite the experience!  Can't say enough about the willingness of fellow competitors to lend a hand/parts.  Great group of people.  Fantastic race format too.  I loved the few minutes I spent on track.  We will be back and next time expect a Scirocco to finish for once!  I feel we've got the right choice in engine, we just got a bad example.  Now that we've got more time and resources to properly sort the sucker out, we won't have any excuses not to finish!

Thanks everyone for making it a memorable experience.  This is the 3rd Lemons race I've been to, but the first as a participant.  I love it And we must also recognize Nelson Ledges for allowing us bring crap cans and beat the snot out of them for 24 hours.  Nice track for Lemons!