MurileeMartin.com

Parting Out a 1992 Lexus SC400

admin — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:57:48 +0000

I wrote a four-part series for Popular Mechanics about parting out a Lexus suspension donor for my ‘41 Plymouth project, and it’s a little difficult to navigate the PM site to read all four parts in sequence. Here are the links:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

All the 24 Hours of LeMons Wrapup Videos (so far) In One Place

Murilee Martin — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:00:22 +0000

Chief Perp Lamm and Assistant Perp Pon at LeMons HQ have been producing race-wrapup videos for every race in the 2012 season, but it’s sort of a pain to search for each one on YouTube. Here they are, all together.

Yeehaw It’s Texas, Texas World Speedway, February 2012

Southern Discomfort, Carolina Motorsports Park, March 2012

Sears Pointless, Infineon Raceway, March 2012

Real Hoopties of New Jersey, New Jersey Motorsports Park, April 2012

Campaign To Prevent Gingervitis, Gingerman Raceway, April 2012

Loudon Annoying, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, May 2012

North Dallas Hooptie, Eagles Canyon Raceway, May 2012

B.F.E. GP, High Plains Raceway, June 2012

Showroom-Schlock Shootout, Autobahn Country Club, June 2012

Capitol Offense, Summit Point Raceway, June 2012

Arse Sweat-a-Palooza, Buttonwillow Raceway, July 2012

Pacific Northworst, The Ridge Motorsports Park, July 2012

Chubba Cheddar Enduro, Road America, August 2012

Vodden the Hell Are We Doing, Thunderhill Raceway Park, September 2012

South Fall, Carolina Motorsports Park, September 2012

Gator-O-Rama, MSR Houston, September 2012

American Irony, Autobahn Country Club, October 2012

Halloween Hooptiefest, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, October 2012

Arse Freeze-a-Palooza, Chuckwalla Valley Raceway, December 2012

Heaps In the Heart of Texas Season-Ender, Eagles Canyon Raceway, December 2012.

Southern Discomfort, Carolina Motorsports Park, March 2013

Sears Pointless, Sonoma Raceway, March 2013

All the LeMons BS Inspection Posts, Together At Last

Murilee Martin — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 17:26:32 +0000

I’ve been covering the 24 Hours of LeMons as a journalist since 2007, and I started doing a BS Inspection roundup post for each race in early 2009. The BS Inspection, which takes place on Friday (unless it’s a 24-straight-hours race, in which case it takes place on Saturday), is where you see all the team costumes, admire all the cars with ill-advised engine swaps before they blow up, and watch the panic of the teams whose cars are nowhere near ready to go. A lot of good stuff gets coverage in the BS Inspection posts, stuff that often gets overlooked afterwards due to the excitement of the race, and so I’ve put links to all those posts in one place. Enjoy.

“Well, I’m Not a Crook!”

admin — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 16:19:48 +0000

For the American Irony 24 Hours of LeMons last weekend, Team Resignation finally paid heed to my requests that they convert the Richard Nixon likeness on the roof of their Ford Escort into an animatronic Nixon Robot (as depicted in my novel). The mechanism was a bit crude, but it gave their Nixon a certain clanking appeal that Disney would be wise to emulate for the robots in their “It’s a Small World” ride.

Look at those wholesome Nixon Youth activists, standing proud by their leader!

“I have never profited from public service. I have earned every cent.”

Sadly, Team Resignation didn’t do a good enough job attaching Nixon’s face to his skull (an air filter), and it blew off on the track.

A Treasury of Puzzling Murilee Martin Videos

admin — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:27:58 +0000

I’ve been going through the videos on the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™ YouTube account and thought it might be nice to share some of my favorites in one convenient location. So, here ya go!

The Phone Police

Reno Parking Lot In 1976 Chevrolet Nova, With Grateful Dead, 1991

Innocent LeMons Drivers Falsely Accused of Crimes

1965 Impala Transmission Replacement

Talking Skull Brake Lights In 1992 Civic

Driving, Alameda CA To Denver CO and Back

Talking Skulls on Black Metal V8olvo

Jim and Adrian Talk Alameda History

Little Tree Air Fresheners Twisting In Junkyard Breeze

The Legend of Hoot’s Panhead

1980 Isuzu I-Mark Diesel Judgemobile at Gingerman Raceway, 2012

Denver “SNOMG” Snowstorm Timelapse, Feb 2012

The Project Car Hell Song

Prelude Engine Swap Timelapse, New Orleans LeMons 2011

How To Build a Roll Cage Overnight In a LeMons Paddock

The Glenn Beck Conspiracy Penalty

Regional LeMons Bribed Stencils of 2012, So Far

admin — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 19:18:18 +0000

The LeMons Supreme Court has been through many versions of the BRIBED stencil (applied to the cars of teams that grease the wheels of justice with a gift for the LCS) during the last five LeMons seasons. Lately, we’ve been trying to make each stencil more of a commemorative-edition souvenir for each event. Collect them all! Above, we see the “Live Free or Bribe” stencil that adorned vehicles at the Loudon Annoying race in May.

For the 2011 Yeehaw It’s Texas race, I made this stencil showing the track’s location on a map of Texas.

That seemed like such a good idea that this stencil showing the location of the Campaign To Prevent Gingervitis on the map of Michigan was broken out at the April Gingerman race (yes, I know the UP is missing, but you try cutting that shape out of a 12-pack box with a razor blade). Since I didn’t get around to making this stencil until Saturday night, only a few cars got sprayed with it. One of the rarest BRIBED stencils in LeMons history!

The location of the Capitol Offense race was on a part of the West Virginia map that made a star showing the location very hard to cut with a box-cutter knife. We used an arrow instead.

Since we race at several Texas tracks, I thought that a Texas flag stencil would be useful at more than one race. So far, however, this BRIBED stencil has been used only at the Yeehaw It’s Texas 2012 event, held at Texas World Speedway in February.

For the Showroom-Schlock Shootout near Chicago, the face of Al Capone seemed appropriate for the BRIBED stencil.

I wanted to go with the face of Merle Haggard for the Arse Sweat-a-Palooza race, but Merle’s face isn’t as distinctive as Al Capone’s. Instead, I went with the sign for nearby Interstate 5.

The aptly named B.F.E. GP race requires hours of driving from anything approaching civilization, so I used the “treasure map” design from the event patch for the BRIBED stencil.

Sometimes racers bribe us with BRIBED stencils, in sort of a meta-bribe. This “Rocky Mountain BRIIIIIIBED” stencil came courtesy of the IOE-winning Pacer team.

It Only Looks Like I’ve Forgotten This Website!

admin — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 05:51:56 +0000

What with all my LeMons coverage for Car and Driver, plus my globe-trotting antics, I haven’t had much chance to keep up with the Home of the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™ lately. So, today I went through and added a bunch of new links to MMLB™ writing.
There’s new LeMons stuff and some additions to the Greatest Hits. Soon, real soon, I’ll get back to regular blog posts here.

Now, Even More Silly LeMons Coverage!

Murilee Martin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:31:15 +0000

I’ve been writing about the 24 Hours of LeMons for more than four years now, for more publications than I can recall right now. The latest victim: Car and Driver, which is now inexplicably sponsoring the 24 Hours of LeMons. So, when you’re done reading my tirades on TTAC, Motor Authority, Autoweek and elsewhere, head over to C/D’s site and read my live race coverage, LeMons features, cheating tips, and all the rest!

Final Episode In 1965 Impala Hell Project Now Live

admin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:30:36 +0000

It took me six weeks to get around to writing, but Part 20 of the Impala Hell Project saga is done. If you haven’t read Parts 1 through 19, go here.

Tech-Industry Workplace, Murilee Martin Style

admin — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:46:21 +0000

I’ve been going through my novel to make a “de-pornified,” semi-safe-for-work version for use in the long-postponed Part 20 of the Impala Hell Project series (yes, there’s a connection between the Impala Hell Project and Torment, Incorporated), and I ran across this paragraph that sums up the way I feel about the American office-cubicle workplace.

I was getting into it as well; designing the most unpleasant, soul-crushing work environment would require the hand of a master. I told Charlene to give me a week and I’d have her team slaving in the ideal setting. First order of business was the Annex. I sketched out some plans and rang up some contractors, paying triple-time for fast building. We set the place up in the basement, for that gloomy, oppressive ambience. Since the existing basement was a bit too cheery for our needs, some major remodeling was in order; I obtained several boilers from a shuttered Detroit asbestos factory and had them rigged up to leak steam and heat the place to a miserable, humid 100 degrees. The fluorescent lighting was ripped out and replaced with several 500-watt mercury-vapor floodlights, chosen for their unearthly pinkish-orange light and dismal hum. We rigged up a couple of telephones in a locked office next to the work area and had them set up to ring for hours on end. Scratchy Chinese pop music played on lo-fi PA speakers, punctuated by blaring commands in incomprehensible tongues like Urdu, Basque, and Miwok. The “work stations” really gave me the satisfied feeling of a job well done: I modeled them on the primate-behavior-testing cubicles used by the army to train chimpanzees to find land mines, down to the banana-pellet dispensers and shock-electrode ankle clamps. Each cubicle had a Soviet-era terminal, complete with 9” monochrome monitor and Cyrillic keyboard; the whole mess served by an ENIAC 500 mechanical-relay computer of late-50s vintage. Each programmer would be hooked up to a catheter for urination; each 18-hour shift would have one “defecation minute,” during which the employee would be permitted to shit into a hole in the concrete floor, finishing up with a traditional corncob wipe. They’d sleep in tattered Cub Scout folding bunks and awaken to a bugle call for morning calisthenics, as the rats scurried around their feet, snouting hungrily for banana-pellet crumbs.