Gut that pig

Our first day of work on the beast. Chris drug her home on a rollback earlier in the week. We were warned about the vermin that have setup shop in the interior, so he set off an insect bomb in the cab last night. Believe it or not it also got washed before we started.


So I get over to the Rat's Nest (what we are affectionately calling project headquarters) around noon and join Chris in dismantling anything that is not absolutely required to make this thing go. Seats? Gone. Carpet, headliner, trim? Toast. Dash, glass, A/C? Deep sixed. Engine? No, we'll keep that puny piece of crap for now. Three hours fly by and it's a far cry from it's showroom self. Now you can pick the rear end up by yourself and the whole car is raised up because it doesn't have enough weight to compress the springs. We're gettin' there but she needs a little bit more of that Weight Watcher's magic. What do you think all of this weighed?

Now there's plenty of room for us to weld the cage in and install the racing seat. We'll mount a few key gauges as well as the control panel switches to the firewall where the dash used to be. We need to drop the car down quite a bit to get the CG closer to the track so those springs have a date with the torch. Passenger door is getting welded closed. Believe it or not that parking brake actually works!

Wait a minute, does it even run??? Good question. Maybe we should have checked that before we gutted her. Did we mention that she hasn't run for over 5 years? Well let's find out. Turns over? Check. Oil pressure? Check. Spark? Check. FIRE IN THE HOLE!!! Flip the key and she fired right up! I kid you not. To be honest, she won't run on her own, you got to feed her gas from the top (fuel pump is shot), but that's still impressive. We're probably going to get rid of the stock fuel tank anyway in favor of a five gallon fuel cell and we may even replace the carb with a Holley unit too (Jeff's got one laying around his garage somewhere...). This dog's got a whole lotta fight in her. Checkered flag here we come!

It looks like we're going to drag her over to Russ's place this week (he's got a bigger garage for us to destroy). We'll complete the final weight reductions and then get started on the roll cage. We also have to see what we can do about getting the engine to run on it's own (small detail for a racecar).

Perhaps our biggest challenge though is to figure out the theme/paint scheme. Maybe we can get d-con to sponsor the car.....

The Beginning

Alright, so here's the deal: this blog is about our team's attempt to race the 24 hours of LeMons. Want info? See link. Lab Rats Motorsports (from here on called LRM) is comprised of a bunch of us broke Jacobsen employees (except the boss, he's loaded). Mike, Chris, Jeff, Jared and Russ, last names omitted to protect the not so innocent.

At this point our hopes of racing are on a waiting list. The application deadline for the April 4-5 race was January 24th. The 24th came and went only to have us not make the cut. Why you ask? Because the dipstick team captain (Mike) chose a an SUV for a racecar. Well it was free. You know how hard it is to convince the wife to let you drop $500 on a car that you're going to destroy? Free fit the budget perfect, just not the judges so well.

So we dropped the Cherokee and managed to find a clean, one owner '88 Dodge Colt. Actually not really, it's a POS (as if you were fooled by the photo). But we figure after we drag it out of the woods it will make a great starting point for our racecar! Strip that bad boy down to it's underpinnings, weld a full cage in her and put a nice big hood scoop to feed the beastly 68hp 4 banger engine. Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a contender!

Our biggest problem is our concept. How do make this crapbox stand out in a crowd? We're thinking maybe some interactive panels to display to the spectators just how fast their favorite car is going at that time. Of course there's always the paintjob. I think the ideas will start to ooze as the torches and welder's burn through the night. Or at least after a few beers....

We plan on building this car whether we make the April race or not. We're keeping our fingers crossed that enough people bail and we can slip into the race as a late entry. We're going to be ready. But hey, if all else fails there's always September.