Heaps In the Heart of Texas LeMons Day 1: 300ZX Leads, Harley-Engined Prius Still Running

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Heaps In the Heart of Texas LeMons Day 1: 300ZX Leads, Harley-Engined Prius Still Running

After Friday's car inspections at the Heaps In the Heart of Texas 24 Hours of LeMons, the smart money said that the Hell's Treehuggers Toyo-Davidson would blow up within seconds of going "potato-potato-potato" onto the race track. You know what? The smart money also says that Nissan Z Cars fall apart on race tracks, and the end of the first day of racing shows the Back To The Past 300ZX leading the field… and the Harley-Davidson Sportster-powered Prius still in working order.

The Back To The Past Nissan has been around for a while, as has the Pulp Friction El Camino-ized BMW 325 that now trails it by a single lap. The Pulp Friction team, after many attempts, took the win on laps the last time the 24 Hours of LeMons raced at this track, so Sunday's race session should be a real battle. In third place, we have another team that has contended often at Texas and Louisiana LeMons events: the Limoncello Racing Honda Civic Wagovan. We've seen Civic hatchbacks and a couple of CRXs take overall wins in LeMons, but never a Wagovan. Could this be Limoncello Racing's weekend?

The Speedycop and the Gang of Outlaws Lancia Scorpion (built on a Toyota MR2 chassis) was dominating Class B and holding P2 overall when Dave "Caddywrecker" Mills (who earned his nickname when he hooned a '63 Cadillac Fleetwood into a tire wall at The Lamest Day at Nelson Ledges) T-boned the Property Devaluation Racing Ford Fairmont wagon and mandated a lengthy Sawzall-and-come-along repair session. We may need to change Dave's name to Lanciawrecker!

Meanwhile, the Hell's Treehuggers Toyo-Davidson used every one of its 1100 cubic centimeters of engine displacement to do battle for the Class C prize. As Chief Perp Jay Lamm texted your LeMons correspondent from his vantage point at Race Control: "You're missing an epic battle for last between the Prius Harley and the K-Car. They're dicing at 2/10ths all over the track."

Soon after that, however, the Hell's Treehuggers suffered a blown clutch— maybe something having to do with the weight difference between a Harley Sportster and a Toyota Prius— and spent some time with motorcycle mastermind Anton Lovett spinning wrenches. After a quick transmission rebuild to improve clutch engagement and some modifications to fix the shift linkage, the Toyo-Davidson roared back onto the race track and started catching up to…

…the NSF Racing Dodge Aries K wagon, which is a very tired, bone-stock example of Malaise Era technology. In the words of the Chief Perp: "The Toyohog leads the Aries by a mile. Once Anton got in, it was no contest— he was lapping the Aries about every five minutes. Which is to say that the Toyohog became slightly less drunken-gnu-like, while the Aries continued to be IBS-plagued-tapir-with-Tourette's-like."