Oh, he just went and got a second Viper engine. No big deal.
WTF.
Story and Photography by the Staff of the 24 Hours of Lemons
Rub your eyes a few times if you’d like, but you’re seeing this correctly. That is a Dodge Viper V10 (actually one from a Dodge Ram SRT-10, but same difference) dropped into a 1970s Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow (actually, it’s a long-wheelbase Silver Spur.) It raced in the 24 Hours of Lemons, the racing series for $500 cars. How could this budgetary travesty be allowed?
Well, it’s pretty easy: Nobody was worried about a three-ton car running away with an endurance race without using OPEC-altering levels of gasoline, tires and brakes. Simply put, if it took a bit more than $500 to assemble, it still fell within Lemons’ general “race a befuddling vehicle” concept.
A man named Darko crafted the Rolls-Royce himself in the damp Detroit warehouse where he parts out exotic cars. Yep, he works in that niche of salvage, which explains how he had a couple of Viper engines and a Roller sitting around. Starting with the Rolls-Royce shell, he swapped on a GM F-body front suspension and a Ford 9-inch rear end from a 1950s pickup. The probably-not-quite-$500 Watts-link rear suspension seemed pretty capable.
All of the fabrication work looked simply stunning, which is even more amazing because Darko said he’d never built anything remotely like this. He simply emulated what he dismantled from high-end cars.
So how did it do? Naturally, the SRT-10 engine hucked a connecting rod out of the engine block on the car’s fourth lap at GingerMan Raceway. After fetching and swapping a second Viper engine from his Detroit shop, however, Darko and his Pacific Motors team clocked some respectable lap times.
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Oh, he just went and got a second Viper engine. No big deal.
WTF.
Mr_Asa said:Oh, he just went and got a second Viper engine. No big deal.
WTF.
Things like "viper engine" and "rolls royce" sound cool when it comes to crapcan racing until rods end up in the troposphere and finding parts is both timely and expensive. Even with that being said....it is still pretty f'ing rad and probably sounded amazing too.
No pictures of said amazing fabrication? I am disappoint.
$500 hunnert doolar, my ass. As Jay would say. That car will never win the race, so why worry?
Appleseed said:$500 hunnert doolar, my ass. As Jay would say. That car will never win the race, so why worry?
Exactly this. The Lemons organizers want to see cool weird cars, and in cases like this, they aren't worried about it being fast or reliable, so they're happy to give some slack on the budget.
They just did a video about an Aston Martin that a guy got as a rolling shell, fabricated all the suspension mounting points etc. himself, and put a small block Ford in it. He even showed up and said "I know this is not a $500 car, please give me all the penalty laps you want, I just want to race an Aston Martin in Lemons"
So they did, and the car was terribly slow and didn't steer right, and it was awesome anyway because it's an Aston Martin in Lemons.
Yeah, and the creator Darko has spent FAR more than just a couple thousand on this monster.
Also, those V10 truck motors only share the bottom end. I think even the water pump is different from the truck to the Viper.
morello159 said:No pictures of said amazing fabrication? I am disappoint.
https://forums.24hoursoflemons.com/viewtopic.php?id=36831
This thing is amazing in the flesh. It was at RadWood Detroit last year. Here are some pics, sorry about the quality, the camera was dying on me, new phone since then. The only think I don't like is those stupid spike lug nuts. No one should be allowed to put them on anything, unless they are willing to have someone drive past them with them fitted at 5mph and take out their shins. This comes from a childhood incident where a friend ended up in hospital after some Douche bag shredded his legs with similar spike on their bike wheel.
I see a dealer plate, presumably that means it was driven on the street. If so, that’s awesome.
This is what Lemons is all about! We've raced against Darko at th Empire Hill Climb and Lemons. Anyone can buy a car but to fab something like this together on a shoestring budget and then actually race it is awesome, my hats off to him!
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