Preview of some great Lemons cars we'll see in 2010 (Page 1 of 2)

Loved the Jalopnik article.. especially some of the comments, vis:

"I'm all for it as long as the cars truly stay within the price limit with a lot of home brewed ingenuity.
Having said that, I have previously expressed a similar sentiment to yours in the past about some of the cars with one-off specially created parts and full machine shops at the team's disposal. But I'm fine with having them in the series as long as true $500 crap can beaters are still allowed, and they still make up a large portion of the race field. "

Some people don't understand how much can be done with just a torch and a welder.  Oh, and beer, and determination bordering on obsession.

I happy to see the V12 Edsel is winning so far as "worst idea".

Gosh, I feel pretty pathetic being happy to just have the stock Citroen powerplant running and the suspension working at the start of the race.

So far the engine runs, and the suspension did work... until I started getting showered in high-pressure hydraulic fluid at the rate of about 3 qts a minute while the engine was running... Maybe I should rig a catch pan beneath the whole car that recaptures the fluid and has a transfer pump to put it back into the reservoir.

What could possibly go wrong?

I love the comment that the LeCar wasn't even a real car to start.  True, so true.  But we will be there with it, just trying to turn laps.

My comment on Jalopnik was similar:

If all it takes to win IOE in the future is a vintage car body and a cheaty powertrain/suspension, those of us doing the REAL $500 Lemons shade-tree IOE thing are screwed. As our illustrious leader Jay does tend to view lap count as a major Effluency criteria, it's up to Johnny and Phil to ensure the playing field is leveled as much as humanly possible. Gentlemen, you have your challenge...

But what if you bring, say, a Fiero with a Prefect body?

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the budget should be ignored.. certainly not.   My point was simply that one person's perception of a "custom, one-off part" may be very different from another's, due to differences in ability and creativity.
For example, let's say that I want to run adjustable a-arms on my car.  If I buy them pre-made from a race parts supplier, that should count against the budget.  If I have my buddy carve them out of a block of billet titanium I "just had laying around" using his 5-axis CNC, that would be blatantly cheating.  But if I hack up the stock arm and graft in some used rod ends and a couple turnbuckles made on my WWII-vintage South Bend, I'd say that counts as just about zero cost (labor counts as free).
Only point being that there is an awful lot one can do for zero cost if they're creative.  I think we're all in agreement here, and if someone was offended I apologize.
--Bob

ok this is perfect for my question...We are building the nash for 2010 season.  We realized this weekend that there is no real safe way to add the jeep transplant to this car because of the shape all the mounting  being fubar.  We were going to add the 4.0 with 2wd tranny and the jeep rear dana 35, but the factory rear is mounted by a torque tube link? I guess is what its called and the floor is pretty much gone with the body where we were going to mount the new cross members for the links. So with that said, we are exploring the options of adding a frame to the car(since it is uni body factory) using a s10 frame and suspension. I know its not a racecar chassis by any means but is this going to hurt our ioe shot? We can get a s10 for $400 and it still has the 4.3 v6 and auto trans that we basically already have sold to a guy for the price of the truck and scrap the body. We still plan on using the Jeep 4.0 and trans and rear end (cause we already have it).   Any thoughts?

SWEET!! Spirits back up...

We're up against the same issues with the Marlin... luckily, our floors are good.  My take:  Since you're caging the car anyway, lay down a couple "dummy" frame rails under the car (2X3 tube should be plenty), tied in as best as possible to the unibody "frame" rails.. weld the crap out of everything underneath, then punch through the floor and tie the cage to the new rails, using outriggers if necessary.  This should strengthen both the cage and the new "frame" if done properly.  Out back, use the new rails as a mounting point for a ladder bar or 4-link and panhard bar or watts link.  Or, a triangulated 4-link might be a good option if the new rails are fairly close together.
This was our plan 'till we scored a dirt-cheap Jag rear, which is basically a modular suspension and therefore meets our laziness quota.  I don't think anyone would have a problem with this from an IOE perspective, and it's cheap.  Good luck!
--Bob