Oh LeMons Gurus.....

I throw myself upon your mercy.

My buddy and I want to run the BABE this year, and cap it off with the LeMons race in New Orleans...there is only one problem. I was reading through to rules last night and discovered there is no "it should be worth less than $500" allowed. does this mean no FMV?

I got a 1992 mustang convertible for christmas last year from my dad. 1. 2.3 liter 4 cyl

1. REALLY slippy slush box trans

2. pretty rusty

3. ratty interior

4. leaky top

5. front passenger side rotor ground down to about 1/8 inch because it was driven without brake pads. (metal on metal)

I drove it as is for most of the summer, limping it along with tranny stop slip goo. now it will barely move under it's own power.

We really want to run this car because we are a little low on funds, and it already runs, and we already have it. (we will be rebuilding the trans ourselves) Is there any way to get a FMV? I know the event is a little lax, and there is a rule that says if you want to run a car that has already run LeMons you can send in a pic of it and they will assign a value to its current condition. Do you think they would do that with a non-raced car? Also, I was planning to scrap the car before I heard about LeMons...can I use scrap value?

$200. With guys running stroked 383's, I don't think you have anything to worry about. If someone gives you a hard time, offer to sell it to them for $500. You're fine, dude. No worries.

sweet thanks.

on a related note, does shipping cost incurred affect the price of the item attatched to the car. ( I know this is the case with The Challenge, but I am unsure about it with LeMons)

We had our ThunderTerd given to us. We got what documentation we could, the judges never even asked me for it. I think that was because of all the acorn shells in the car everywhere you looked. poop's right you really don't have anything to worry about. If you are still concerned, Email Jay Lamm jlamm@driversdoor.com some pictures of the car and ask him to assign a FMV.

Take pictures of the car in its really snotty state (preferably covered with weeds etc) and do NOT put any effort into making it pretty. The uglier the better. For gawd's sake, do NOT have a 'build diary'. Man, that looks bad to the judges.

BTW, brakes are free: pads, rotors, hydraulics do not count toward the $500. As far as the rest of it: what can't be seen... well, that's strictly up to you.

If you want to rebuild the tranny yourself, Rock Auto has Ford C3 and similar master kits (frictions, steels, seals, gaskets but no hard parts) for ~ $30-$40.

JB, get ahold of me.

Yeah, you're thinking "Challenge," which is exactly what we were thinking, and therefore brought a sub $500 car. Here's some motivation to get you in the right frame of mind:

http://jalopnik.com/399307/want-to-ensure-absolute-impartiality-from-the-lemons-judges

They're going to berkeley with you. They're going to break your balls. Responding with a big smile and laughs (and perhaps mixed drinks...and surf and turf...and hot chicks) will get you a lot further than "YEAH, BUT WE HAVE RECEIPTS, AND THIS GUY SOLD US THIS, AND WE FABRICATED THAT...." Just go have fun.

Only put as much in as you can walk away from. There were Spec Miatas at CMP (200 lap penalty as I recall) - but keep it ugly. Safety items are free - I plan on a fuel cell, fresh lines, fresh brakes and suspension components (balljoints, etc).

Transmissions and brakes were the two main failures at CMP. We lost both in the Team Saab Story.

Only put as much in as you can walk away from. There were Spec Miatas at CMP

Yup. I'm wondering if the OPM crew knows how close that thing was to getting crushed. Pretty sure the only thing that saved them was 1/2 the folks there (including us) showing them a little mercy in light of the 200 lap penalty.

And yeah, don't skimp on brakes, and make sure to throroughly bleed the brakes, and check for leaks. We went through ~8 bottles of brake fluid, 3 sets of front pads, and 2 calipers:

You guys are braking way too much. Can't you just use the guy in front of you as a brake assist?

Not anymore.

Yeah, that sux. We had the car all fixed up to do just that but the powers that be said 'no metal to metal' and intentional bumping would get you thrown out. Of course, that didn't stop me from getting blackflagged for metal to metal when it didn't happen, but I've already told that story.

Your totally fine value wise. We ran a 2.3 hatch at Houston. With the auto you'll be SLOW. Maybe slowest on the track. Make sure to spend your money to make the car turn so you can keep corner speed up, 'cause you'll get out run down the straights. If you want more info on running a 2.3 Mustang you can email me.

The good thing about the Fox body 'Stang: junkyard hopup stuff is dirt cheap and easy to find. Since tires do not count, we went with the 15x7 ten hole rims and Falken Azenis RT615's, usually around $65 apiece. We had six tires, they lasted the whole time with minimal wear (they are going back this year!) at at least at CMP, they worked very well even on the pig of a car we were running.

Ya know, if you can come up with a cheap boneyard 5 speed swap (should be easy to do), that would be a big improvement over the slushbox.

JEG's has 10 point cage kits which are LeMons legal for cheap, like around $450.00

I'm a little late to the party on this thread, but I have a question. My brother and I are trying to put together a ride for the LeMons race in Houston at the end of next February. We're starting now because we don't know what we're doing, so we're trying to give ourselves the benefit of time.

On the brakes, were you guys using stock street pads or race pads? Or even the super-expensive endurance racing pads? I don't want to go through calipers on our car if we can help it at all. Thanks in advance.

I would suggest a premium pad and have a set in the trailer JIC, it all depends on the chassis. A 4 cyl Mustang does not have a ton of choices for lining versus the V8 car. Your car may have more.

Buy the best pads you can afford. We were using Porterfields. Again, go through the brakes thoroughly PRIOR to the event. At the very least, swap pads, do a good bleed, and shake it down really good to expose leaks. And yeah, definitely bring an extra set of pads. A lot of the more experienced guys were swapping them at the end of day 1, as to not have to do them in the pits...losing laps.

We ran into the same problem with brake pads on the TT, Hawk etc do not make pads for that caliper layout and I think the 4 banger Muskrat uses the same caliper. I found some pads through Parts America (Advance), don't remember the brand but they are some kind of 'hot street' pad, comes in a black box for ~$40. I got two sets just in case, the damn first set went the whole way and are lookin' good. We plan to reuse those and keep the extra set with us JIC. Since we are striving for a few more horsepuppies, we are going to definitely replace the front rotors and add brake cooling ducts.

A while back, one of my teammates completely lunched the brakes on his MINI trying to catch a Corvette on CMP's long course so we KNOW he's hard on brakes. But he wasn't able to kill the brake pads.

EDIT: They were Performance Friction Carbon Metallics. The 'Z rated' pads are not available even though they are listed on the Web site.

Holy frijoles! You went through 3 sets of Porterfield front pads? Please tell me that you were driving a hulk of a car and that you weren't using the Porterfield endurance pads. Those mothers are expensive!

We're hoping to get this MR2 running, and we'll definitely bring an extra set of pads (or 2), but I'm guessing since it will weigh somewhere between 2400-2500 lbs with driver, it probably wouldn't be quite as hard on the brakes as some of the other hulks that I've seen racing LeMons.

And thanks for the feedback, guys. We're total newbies to this and the help is very, very much appreciated.

If you are worried about the cost, weigh it against the the cost of your life ;)

Well John, if that were the governing criteria, I don't know if we could race in LeMons at all :)

But I agree with you in principle. I'm just trying to work my budget here; am I talking about buying 3 full sets of Porterfield R4-E endurance pads (at ~$400/set for 4 wheels) or can I go with something like a EBC Yellowstuff kevlar race pad (~$160/set)? Or, is a set of street/track pads good enough if we're planning to do an overnight pad swap?

poopy and Co. were running a CRX and runnin' it HARD. IIRC those things have itsy bitsy brake pads which would contribute to short pad life.

In our case (probably because we just couldn't go fast enough ) the TT required very little braking compared to some of the other cars out there and that probably helped our brakes last.

But yeah, the biggest failures were brakes and automatic gearboxes. The Corporate Machine car was a big ol' Cadillac, they completely incinerated the front brakes on day 1. The tranny was going nuts so they rigged up a sprayer on day 2 from the washer nozzles and sprayed water on the tranny cooler. It helped but by then the damage was done.

Another LeMons question: tires. Or as we pronounce them, tars.

We're planning on a fresh set for the race. The question that our team seems fixated on is how many fresh spares do we need to have on hand? We won't wear out a set, but my main concern is road damage: parts that fall off other cars (or ours) that could cause punctures or, or course, damage to the tires caused by unintentional off-roading of our car.

My position is that we should bring a fresh set on the car plus a full extra set, but some of my teammates think that just 2 extras would be sufficient, especially since this isn't a spare-no-expense operation. Thoughts?

Again drawing on our experience, we ran Falken Azenis RT615's which have a 200 treadwear rating. We had a full set on the car and two spares, at the end of day 1 we swapped the two spares on the left side (the CMP short course is almost all right turns) even though the originals looked pretty darn good. We still have lots o' life on all 6 tires, in fact we plan to run them again this year. Just for the heck of it (and since we hope to have quite a few more horsepuppies this year!), we will mount 2 more new ones for spares. So I guess I'm sayin' two full sets.

If/when our team actually gets around to doing a LeMons event...I proposed that we show up on good-but-not-new rolling rubber to go out and get started on. Since none of us are experienced, I figured we could go learn a little bit on cheap tires. If we loose a used tire to crash damage, debris, flat spots, etc...it won't hurt nearly so bad as going out and running over a muffler on lap 4 and doing in a brand new tire or two...

Clem

oh, this throws another wrench in the works, apparently my...cohort and I are bent on destruction.

We have decided to run the June LeMons in Louisiana...which means we will be able to run in the BABE, sleep overnight, run LeMons, sleep overnight, and then try to drive it home....

hows that sound for an exciting week?