Iron Side Up: 24 Hours of LeMons – An Iron Side Up Perspective

Post 1 – The Race Concept and Our Car

In the interest of full disclosure, this post is not about a motorcycle ride or riding but is about my experience in The 24 Hours of LeMons, “Arse Sweat Apalooza“ car race from my Iron Side Up point of view. Iron Side Up is the older and complementary version of “Keep the Rubber Side Down”. I always feel it is a good idea to do that on roads of any kind and during this weekend’s race felt it was especially true with a startling reminder with less than one hour to go in the race when a car rolled after being hit by another and ended up with the rubber side up and iron side down. Thankfully, the driver climbed out of the car on his own power and walked away; a testament to the safety measures required for each car.

The race is just as advertised; a 24 hour endurance race of cars best described as lemons with a purchase price of $500 to get the car and get it running with no cap on spending to have it safe with a full roll cage, safety seat and racing harness, brakes and tires. Drivers have to wear full double lined driving suits (or singles with Nomex underwear), fire rated driving shoes w/ Nomex socks, fire rated driving gloves, and a fire rated helmet w/ visor, a HANS neck restraint device, and a Nomex balaclava if you have facial hair. Any of you who have seen me without facial hair for the first time in over 28 years now know why I did it; so I could breathe in the 90 degree plus track heated car for two hour driving sessions.

The BS Judge grilling Jim

Of course there is cheating on the $500 limit and each team had to determine how much gray area would be stretched to cover their car. There was no room for cheating on the safety of the car and every car had to pass a tech inspection and meet every criterion, bar none. Our bug had one minor infraction on the battery tie down and would not be allowed to run until it was fixed. From the tech station the car and team goes to BS tech where we are grilled (pun intended) about how much the car cost to get into running condition. If you lie too much or don’t have a great story to tell about it you get docked a number of laps or moved up a class (A, B, or C); we stayed in C class with an 8 lap assessment, our 914 type 4 motor with nice looking carbs was too clean looking and therefore suspect. Maybe spreading some dirt and grime on the outside, nothing to impinge on performance, would have been helpful or maybe our driver’s group should have put on more of a show to distract this particular BS judge. Or maybe we could have done all of the above and gotten the judge to laugh and give us the penalty anyway, his looks were deceiving and he was very perceptive.

For a quick look at most of the cars, a time lapse video of the BS judging: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foKhqi1PxWc

Note the sophisticated BMW group with the goofy VW group. It was a nice pairing.

Each team comes up with a theme for their car and drivers with crazy decorations for both. It is great fun with some real crazy cars; sharks with fins on the roof and tails up the side of the car to the wing, painting to match; a stretch limo as the Titanic complete with four smoke stacks with trash bags as smoke and a mannequin on the hood; a “Team Apathy” with black on one side, white on the other side, former governor Romney and President Obama campaign slogans on opposite sides; a birthday cake reminiscent of the “Animal House” closing scene, just to mention a few since there were 130 or so cars in the race. Yes, that meant mayhem on the track, more on that in later posts. Our car joined with an existing team under the name “Cerveza Racing”, Dos Equis, and great graphics spoofing the advertising theme “The Most Interesting Man in the World”; the BMW car is “The Most Interesting Car in the World” and our bug is “The Most Interesting People’s Car”. On race eve we pushed our cars around the paddock and served beer from kegs mounted in the cars to the other race teams who were all in various modes of race preparation. Yes, we were popular.