Fire Arrow, Twin-Stick Colt, and Devo: BS Inspections at the Skankaway Anti-Toe-Fungal 24 Hours of LeMons

by Murilee Martin

October 22nd, 2011 1:45 AM

fire arrow twin stick colt and devo bs inspections at the skankaway

The full name of this weekend’s race at Sears Point aka Infineon Raceway is “THE SKANKAWAY ANTI-TOE-FUNGAL 500, SPONSORED BY CRUSKIN-SKANKAWAY INC., THE OFFICIAL FUNGICIDAL TOE CREME OF LEMONS,” because Cruskin-Skankaway, Inc., won the bidding war for race sponsorship. Appropriately enough, this race featured more Chrysler, Mitsubishi, and Chrysler-Mitsubishi products than any race in LeMons history.

Life is good when you have an early-80s Dodge Colt in your race.

Better still is when that Colt boasts a Twin-Stick transmission.

However, serious Chryslerbishi racers skip the front-drivers and go right for the Astron-powered machinery.

For example, one of the greatest Malaise Era MitsuChryslers of all time: the Plymouth Fire Arrow!

The LeMons Supreme Court rolls deep, with this Mercedes-Benz SLS gullwing and the equally cool Sawzall-roadster Plymouth Belvedere serving as co- judgemobile s. I rode from Los Angeles to Northern California with Judge Jonny in the SLS yesterday, and it’s quite a car. The loan of the Mr. Belvedere roadster really rounded out our judicial motor pool for the weekend.

Of course, Sawzalled four-doors have a few safety issues for passengers. Look out for the edges of the sliced pillars!

Speaking of Chrysler products, this 360-powered Duster adds some no-Mitsubishi-nowhere Moparness to the proceedings.

As usual, incomprehensible LeMons rituals abounded.

We’re not quite sure what the connection between scantily-clad naughty nurses and a “shooting brake” Porsche 928 might be, but the other racers enjoyed the spectacle.

On the subject of The Most Depreciated Porsche In History, this race features two 928s. Here’s the Chief Perp expressing his approval of the world’s first 928-versus-Corvair road-race matchup. My money is on the Corvair.

After all the big “Podium For Sale” hooraw after the last Infineon LeMons race, the car in question showed up with an appropriate theme. Here’s Judge Jonny selling 85th place to Dave Swig.

Around the same time, a certain GTI team bribed yours truly with one of the greatest judicial gifts in LeMons history: a diorama modeled after my introductory illustration for the 1965 Impala Hell Project series.

I made this illustration on a very early version of Photoshop in 1993, and I’d have freaked out if I’d known that someday I’d get an incredibly detailed diorama version.

This thing is going front and center on my office desk when I get back to Denver!

LeMons Legend Spank showed up with a pitchforks-and-torches mob escorting his Mini Moke. His Austin America and Turbo Mini weren’t quite ready yet, but we’re sure to see them on the track tomorrow.

No discussion of LeMons Legends is complete without mention of Speedycop, and he’s flown all the way out from Maryland to drive the car that I once raced. He arrived at 4:00 AM and immediately got to work on an excellent re-theme job for the V8 Volvo: Michael Jackson’s Haunted House, complete with huge dead tree poking through a hole in the roof.

Thriller!

Climbing his way into the ranks of the Spank- and Speedycop-grade [s]crazed[/s] devoted LeMons Legends is Brandon from Houston. He’s building a W126 Benz LeMons car to go with his 6.9-powered ’67 200 sedan, but the car he chose to drag 2,500 miles from Texas was the engine-eating “Jettarossa.” Will it throw a rod or swallow some valves this time?

With 170 entries in this race, it would take me all night to do justice to even a large fraction of the amazing sights I saw Friday, so come back tomorrow for more Skankaway Anti-Toe-Fungal action.

#24HoursOfLeMons #24HoursOfLeMonsInfineon #BSInspection #InfineonRaceway #Racing #SearsPoint #SkankawayAnti-Toe-Fungal500

Comments

Join the conversation

2 of 6 comments

Threeer on Oct 23, 2011

Was the Fire Arrow a "true" 2.6L Fire Arrow, or a 1980 wannabee Fire Arrow with only the 2.0 and the spiffy decal package? The 2.6 with "slightly" wider track, 2.6 and all-wheel disc brakes was actually a very entertaining car to drive back then. My best friend had one, while I had the older 1978 (round headlight) variant GT with said 2.6 in burnt orange. Oh, how we loved our Arrows...:)

Like Reply
Threeer on Oct 23, 2011

Was the Fire Arrow a "true" 2.6L Fire Arrow, or a 1980 wannabee Fire Arrow with only the 2.0 and the spiffy decal package? The 2.6 with "slightly" wider track, 2.6 and all-wheel disc brakes was actually a very entertaining car to drive back then. My best friend had one, while I had the older 1978 (round headlight) variant GT with said 2.0 in burnt orange. Oh, how we loved our Arrows...:)

Like Reply

Recent Comments

Dukeisduke Yikes - reading the recall info from NHTSA, this sounds like the Hyundai/Kia 2.4l Theta II "engine fire" recall, since it involves an engine block or oil pan "breach", so basically, throwing a rod:"Description of the Safety Risk : Engine oil and/or fuel vapor that accumulates near a sufficiently hot surface, below the combustion initiation flame speed, may ignite resulting in an under hood fire, and increasing the risk of injury. Description of the Cause :Isolated engine manufacturing issues have resulted in 2.5L HEV/PHEV engine failures involving engine block or oil pan breach. In the event of an engine block or oil pan breach, the HEV/PHEV system continues to propel the vehicle allowing the customer to continue to drive the vehicle. As the customer continues to drive after a block breach, oil and/or fuel vapor continues to be expelled and accumulates near ignition sources, primarily expected to be the exhaust system. Identification of Any Warning that can Occur :Engine failure is expected to produce loud noises (example: metal-to-metal clank) audible to the vehicle’s occupants. An engine failure will also result in a reduction in engine torque. In Owner Letters mailed to customers, Ford will advise customers to safely park and shut off the engine as promptly as possible upon hearing unexpected engine noises, after experiencing an unexpected torque reduction, or if smoke is observed emanating from the engine compartment."
Dukeisduke In an ideal world, cars would be inspected in the way the MoT in the UK does it, or the TÜV in Germany. But realistically, a lot of people can't afford to keep their cars to such a high standard since they need them for work, and widespread public transit isn't a thing here.I would like the inspections to stick around (I've lived in Texas all my life, and annual inspections have always been a thing), but there's so much cheating going on (and more and more people don't bother to get their cars inspected or registration renewed), so without rigorous enforcement (which is basically a cop noticing your windshield sticker is out of date, or pulling you over for an equipment violation), there's no real point anymore.
Zipper69 Arriving in Florida from Europe and finding ZERO inspection procedures I envisioned roads crawling with wrecks held together with baling wire, duct tape and prayer.Such proved NOT to be the case, plenty of 20-30 year old cars and trucks around but clearly "unsafe at any speed" vehicles are few and far between.Could this be because the median age here is 95, so a lot of low mileage vehicles keep entering the market as the owners expire?
Zipper69 At the heart of GM’s resistance to improving the safety of its fuel systems was a cost benefit analysis done by Edward Ivey which concluded that it was not cost effective for GM to spend more than $2.20 per vehicle to prevent a fire death. When deposed about his cost benefit analysis, Mr. Ivey was asked whether he could identify a more hazardous location for the fuel tank on a GM pickup than outside the frame. Mr. Ivey responded, “Well yes…You could put in on the front bumper.”
28-Cars-Later I'll offer this, offer a registration for limited use and exempt it from all inspection. The Commonwealth of GFY for the most part is Dante's Inferno for the auto enthusiast however they oddly will allow an antique registration with limited use and complete exemption from their administrative stupidity but it must be 25 years old (which ironically are the cars which probably should be inspected). Given the dystopia being built around us, it should be fairly simply to set a mileage limitation and enforce a mileage check then bin the rest of it if one agrees to the terms of the registration. For the most part odometer data started being stored in the ECU after OBDII, so it should be plug and play to do such a thing - this is literally what they are doing now for their emissions chicanery.