Dog Ciao Racing, Index of Effluency Winner at the 24 Hours of LeMons South Fall 2010
When a 24 Hours of LeMons race gets about two hours from the checkered flag, Chief Perp Jay Lamm begins the process referred to as “Doing the thing with the shit.” That means he starts going down the list of awards that must be determined subjectively (e.g., Index of Effluency, Organizer’s Choice, I Got Screwed) and starts asking the rest of the LeMons HQ staff— all of whom are usually in a frenzy of hosing puke out the Tilt-A-Whirl and packing up the shooting gallery at this point— which teams deserve what award. The IOE was a tougher call than usual this time; the Tunachuckers Volvo Amazon team spent the weekend making a strong bid to be the first team to win LeMons racing’s top award twice, at one point getting as high as the low 20s in the standings, but then a total brake failure ended with the Volvo T-boning the Duff Beer Civic at high speed in Turn 1. We really wanted to give the IOE to the Big Ghetto Skank Tank Caprice, the first-ever LeMons donk, but you need something more terrible than a GM B Body to get IOE’d with a 79th-place (out of 101) finish. The Cold Source Super Beetle blew its engine several hours into the race, and so on. Who deserved the IOE? Suddenly, it occurred to us that the long-suffering Dog Ciao Racing Alfa Spider, veteran of all five previous LeMons South events, was sitting in 15th place. Huh? How is that possible? This time, Dog Ciao suffered from none of the usual cascades of mechanical problems and none of the Penalty Box recidivism that had plagued the team in the past, and they’d just been invisible out there. Congratulations, Dog Ciao Racing!
September 28th, 2010 - 4:21 am
A well earned win. Also, poor Tunachuckers…
September 28th, 2010 - 6:32 am
I’m looking forward to seeing this ridiculous donk you speak of.
My armchair wrenching input is that if the Amazon still has a single-circuit setup, it might be time to upgrade… though I imagine they’re telling themselves that already. Poor guys. Is the car in okay shape, at least?
September 28th, 2010 - 6:36 am
First!
Oh, wait…
A donk at LeMons. I love it.
That Alfa doesn’t even look like a car. It looks like it was drawn on a restaurant placemat by a bay.
September 28th, 2010 - 6:37 am
By a baby! By a baby!
Dang it.
September 28th, 2010 - 8:17 am
Congratulations Dog Ciao!! We can hardly believe our eyes!
September 28th, 2010 - 8:23 am
These guys certainly deserved/earned the IoE. Awesome weekend, great race, can’t wait for the next one. Also, glad to see LeMons coverage up here. I was getting concerned with the departure from Jalopnik.
September 28th, 2010 - 11:14 am
I was rooting for the Amazon to get it, bad luck for them.
Congratz to Dog Ciao though.
September 28th, 2010 - 3:36 pm
The chucker is NOT OK. Unfortunately for all of us, the subframe is bent quite badly. We’re trying to figure out how to save it. They (I sat out this race) were running the single circuit master, but as the leak is suspected to have been at the front caliper, the dual circuit master would not have really helped that much, as the back brakes wouldn’t have prevented the crash. The driver (Rob) is okay, though, and that does matter more.
September 28th, 2010 - 4:06 pm
The Tunachucker Amazon was built in 1966. In 1967, the Federal Government required that all new cars be equipped with the dual circuit hydraulic system. So, if our car had been one year newer, we might have still had half the braking circuit.
Unfortunately, what happened on the LeMons car was the banjo fitting on the front left caliper developed a leak. Once the brake fluid was all gone, we had no brakes. Had we had a dual circuit system, Front-rear as is common, all we would have had to haul to car down from 60+ mph to make turn 1 would have been two very puny rear drum brakes. Something tells me this would not have done much to prevent the ensuing crash.
The Amazon is crushed in on the front driver’s side, and the unibody is badly bent. The steering gear is pretty mangled, too. Luckily, the straight shaft steering column (again, pre-collapsible, which was another 1967 regulation) buckled rather than protrude into the driver’s compartment. The driver, Rob, was unhurt, though very much sad to have been the driver during this incident as well as the tragic oil-loss incident in the February race.
September 30th, 2010 - 11:18 pm
Actually the technical term for it is “In the f#*%ing thing doin’ the shit!”