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The Fritos Banditos do the 24 Hours of LeMons.
This is our story about the first running of the 24 Hours of LeMons. If you don't like it, go read somebody else's account or knit some sox or something.
Team Fritos Banditos arrives at the Altamont Raceway near lovely Tracy California. We drove the Lincoln (both our cars were registered) and trailered the Alfa Milano, thinking the Lincoln had the best chance at surviving. While the Lincoln did go home under it's own power and the Alfa did not, all was not as it seemed at the start.
We left our cars virtually stock except for safety equipment; just gutting them, replacing brake pads, checking engine timing, testing for vacuum leaks, and doing minor suspension tweaks that cost nothing but a bit of time. The entire exhaust system with cats and all were left in place in both cars. In the spirit of the race, we painted our cars using $1.99 cans of spray paint from Osh (the good stuff!) although we did consider using a roller.
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Quite a number of Golfs showed up. Some did better than others. Some looked better than others.
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Numerous BMWs were competing.
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This Buick wagon eventually soldiered on to 13th place, despite many pits stops for a huge variety of problems. A testimony to the perseverance and ingenuity of her team.
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Pure ugliness combined with a truly bilious colour, this Datsun 210 ran very conservatively until near the end of the race, perhaps hoping to win the least dented award (not a real award) when they stepped things up a notch. Not that it helped much, as the car was too far down in the standings.
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The jaunty looking Pirate Ninjas.
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Some cars came pre-bent. How convenient that race officials couldn't distinguish new damage from old.
The hood pins were a nice touch.
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More pre-dented and pre-bent cars.
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Calming their race fears, this team was putting some last minute touches on the race cars before entering the pits on Saturday morning. The racing equivalent of yoga?
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While waiting to register and sign away our lives, we got to check out the various cars that were racing, as well as support vehicles. Yours truly lusts after this car like few others. Pure Lancia rally hawtness!
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Looking very spiffy and formal, this Golf TDI (and team) obviously was shooting to intimidate people with it's connection to recent Audi factory diesel race car wins.
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