Deanz Rodz & Race Carz

The 24 hours of LeMons race is something that is raw crudeness in all forms . The concept is to spend less than $500 on a pile of crap and race it till the wheels fall off . Is there a better way to have fun than to go fast in a pile of junk .. Hell no ...

This 1972 Opel GT was someones imagination gone wild . Found on ebay in Indiana was the perfect pile of crap to become a LeMons racer . Already (poorly) fitted with a 1989 Mazda Turbo rotary . It screams abuse me . The LeMons rules state safety comes first but $500 is all you can spend on the car to buy it and get it running . Safety on the other hand is without a restriction on cost . The first thing that I had to fix was the engines mounting angle . The engine had been sat in the Opel and where they could put it was where it went. The difference between the engine and the pinion angle was so great it would of hammered u-joints to death in record time . Not surprising the engine mounts had been welded to the Opel's frame and on the passenger side the frame had been cut away to clear the turbo . To fix this I had to get cheap and nasty . Firing up the plazma cutter I erased the snot that pretended to be holding the Opel together .. After taking the whole front end out and using left over 10 gauge drop off from the back half I built for John Wargo's 2010 Camaro . I rebuilt the Opel's front end . It aint pretty but its cheap as in $0 dollars and counting . With the front end rebuilt the Opel is by far stronger than it ever was from the factory and instead of it being a bolt in the front cross member is now welded in . Later when the engine is reinstalled there is another piece added to tie it all together . 

Further evidence to prove that the Opel was indeed true to the requirements of the race and had to be a pile of junk . The pictures of the Opel had Keith laughing and he called the Opel a craptastic pile of junk and the name stuck . Hence forth known , This Opel is now the pride and joy focal point of the soon to legendary " Scuderia Craptastic " and it's birth had more birthing pains than the Octomom did .

Thankfully the Overseer's at LeMon's have the smarts to allow an unlimited budget on safety . The idea is to have fun but to go home in the same number of pieces you arrived in . Because of that I was instantly removed from any driving responsibilities and as the team T Shirts labeled them , The idiots assigned driving duties were Keith , James , Ed and Micheal. These 4 crashtest dummies were wrapped in a 1-5/8 DOM 12 point cage , A SFI race seat , 6 point harness and HANS device . An attempt was made to stop the lightweight Opel by adding some additional braking assistance in the form of and 1-3/16th inch master cylinder and a power booster mounted with bell cranks insdie the cockpit . Placing the booster under the hood was impossible due to the the rotary engine and the monsterous amount of rust in the orginal postion . Later on I will explain why this didnt deliver the goods . Once again we exploited the safety rules and added drilled and slotted rotors along with Titanium Kevlar from Brakeworld.com along with new calipers from Opelsource.com . Now about now half the people reading this just blew coffee out the noses and said " The make this shit for Opels"? ... Yeah they do and amazingly pretty damn decently priced too .. But this is where the huge master cylinder and booster met it match . Even though the end I put together is designed for hauling 5-6000 lb Chevies to a stop it isn't worth a damn when at the recieving end is brake pads the size if 2 postage stamps . Unfortunately there isn't any other options out there . Armed with some Jegs gauges and a quick release steering wheel some nightmare wiring issues , Yes that is the RX7 ECU mounted on the roll cage .. Yeah this dumb-ass ran the computer .. And if anyone out there tries the same thing .. I will be nice and save you the trouble .. Its the air bag system ... I have given you the starting point you figure out the rest , I'm not that nice ..The fuel system was the next area to royaly kick my ass .. Days after the race we found out that the rotaries oil injection system sends the engine into limp mode . We never did find out if that was the cause of the injectors not working . At 8pm the night before test day at the track I made the decision to swap from fuel injection to carburated . A late night call to my buddy John Wargo at the Custom Shop netted us the only side draft carb we could find , Off a Harley Davidson .. Now if you know anything about Harley carbs , Which I didn't . You will notice its mounted backwards . Surprising as hell it ran with it on backwards , But it ran like crap !!! The remainder of this story is we went to the race with this set up and we couldn't keep her running for more than 20 seconds , So we do what everyone with a Harley Davidson fueled Mazda rotary inside an Opel Gt does .. We called the Chicago area Harley dealers and said we need help tuning this bitch ... No Harley dealer wanted to attempt this but they did all point us to the right people .. KALBO'S PERFORMANCE CYCLE in Joilet Illinois ... I can't say enough about Kevin Ruth and his guys because they simply said "Hell yeah we'll make her run " and they did . Check out their website at www.kalbosperformancecycle.com and tell them we sent you they will tell you a hell of a story..The second part of the fuel story tells like this . The guy 3rd from the left holding the trophy , is the biggest hero of the event . His name has slipped my mind but he is a Canadian software writer for automotive fuel injection systems. This man got our  Harley carb to be an absolute screaming asphalt burning ( literally) death machine at 10pm Friday night . The only issue was Harleys are gravity feed and we were running a pump, 1/2 a psi wasn't enough and she straved and 1 psi was too much and she poured fuel over the exhaust .. So for the 3rd time we changed fuel systems .. The United Nations was in full swing . An Australian , A Candian and 4 Americans were going to make this race happen one way or another . So an hour before closing time we were scrounging through a Chicago area junk yard for a 2 barrel carb . All I remember is it was off a Ford truck . God knows what time I headed back to my shop with the intake from the engine and the 2 barrel and the rest is history . It was adapted and a couple hours drive back and at around 3 am we had a running race car ..And run like a raped ape she did ... Above Keith and Micheal are cutting a hole in the hood to clear the 2 barrel .. The now comic look of the Opel set the stage for what was now to happen .. This story is just now begining ...As you can see the new 2 barrel poking through the hood makes the Opel ugly and funner than should be allowed by law .. Finally heading onto the track , Keith Goggin's grin is plainly seen even with a helmet blocking half his face . Roughly 180 HP in a 1300-1400 pound car that has the handling characteristics of a donkey on roller skates , As James put it " Oh god we are gonna die but this is so cool "....Unfortunately But it wasn't cool enough ... Sadly the front chamber of the rotaries two chambers lost its seal between the cooling passage and the combustion chamber allowing combustion air to boil the radiator continuously . Our solution to this was to run the Opel for as long as she would last and then return to the pits , And armed with a stack of towels we would dump all the pressure in the radiator and refill it and return to the race . We were far from being a competive force to be argued with . In fact we were just barely out of last place but we kept abusing the poor old Opel treating it like we stole it the night before ..

We all had a blast but what we didnt expect was what we did do .We finished 89th out of 100 , We had the time of our lives for a weekend , but what the surprise to beat all came not during the race but after the race . The LeMons race is about having fun and its exactly what we did and we entertained a lot of other people , So much in fact we came home with a trophy that pretty much summed the whole weekend up . We recieved the award for the "most heroic effort " When the Opel limped past the finish line crowd we still hadn't killed her running on half an engine she smoked and choked her way back into the pit . The Opel's never say die and ours too got the attention of all the other racers and for that a misfit gaggle of gearheads came home with and un-offical second or third place finish , For us thats a win . In 2012 we have plans to tackle a few more LeMons races . I am hoping for better than 89th place but I will take last place if it is half as much fun...