You may have already seen the videos where we built a car and raced in the 24 Hours of LeMons. Now there’s a new organization called the ChumpCar Racing World Series, where our 1991 Honda Accord is also legal. Plus, the best part is ChumpCar races at some really cool tracks. We recently raced–and won!–ChumpCar’s first race at The Rock, or Rockingham (NC) Speedway as it’s also known, and had a blast. The track included most of the speedway’s one-mile oval and the infield road course section.

Here’s a short clip from our in-car camera for you to check out. This was my first time using GoPro’s new high defintion Hero cam, and it worked great. You can expect to see a lot more video using this great gadget on the site. I didn’t add any music because I thought you might enjoy the V-tec revving to six-grand and beyond.

I recently got the opportunity to work with the USAR Pro Cup racing series on a promotional video and thought I would share it here, too. If you aren’t aware of the Pro Cup series, it’s great short-track racing, and I’ve never left the track disappointed. If you ever get the chance to check out a Pro Cup race yourself, I highly recommend it.

USAR Pro Cup website

The 24 Hours of LeMons (pronounced lemons) is a great event that’s all about maximizing racing fun for minimum expense. The basic premise is to find the cheapest clunker you can get your hands on and spend no more than $500 to purchase and upgrade it for racing. Then outifit it with a rollcage, five-point harness and any other safety equipment you choose and go racing for a dozen hours or more over a weekend. The purse for winning is $1,500 worth of nickels just to reinforce the fact that you shouldn’t take this event too seriously. We raced the LeMons South event at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, SC, and had the time of our lives.

Part One

Pinstriping:  After finishing the build on our 1991 Honda Accord we called on pinstriper extraordinaire Tom E to give the car a little style. Our theme was a wanna-be NASCAR Cup team, which gave us a good excuse to plaster the logos of everyone who helped us out on the build. Tom also did the fantastic pinstriping on the hood freehand.

Part Two

The Race:  The judges busted us for a Vtec engine complete with headers and cold-air intake, so we started 75 laps down and 90th out of 94 cars. But after two days and more than 550 miles of racing we wound up 41st. Not too bad considering we struggled with our Honda’s brakes all day on Saturday.

Part Three

The People’s Curse:  One unique tradition of the 24 Hours of LeMons is after the first day of racing, all the participants are given the chance to vote on the the car that deserves to die. It can be because the car is a cheater or the drivers are particularly bad behind the wheel. It doesn’t matter; the winner–or loser depending on your point of view–gets treated like a wet bag of garbage in front of anybody who cares to watch. For our event the victim was team Superkak Racing, which somehow snuck a Mustang GT through judging. Hide your eyes if you’re squeemish.

Photos of all 94 Cars (courtesy Jalopnik)

The 24 Hours of LeMons website

This video is mostly just for fun. This is a 283 out of a ‘57 Chevy, and I think it would make a great little motor for a roadster. We’ll build it with an old-school vibe, and maybe even keep the rams-horn exhaust manifolds. But first I needed to tear it down. The car had been sitting in a field for nearly 20 years, so I knew it would be in rough shape, but the squirrel’s nest in the lifter valley was a bit of a surprise–don’t blink or you’ll miss it. If you are interested in 283s in general, make sure to check out the “Take A Closer Look” link below the video for some interesting notes about this engine.

Take a Closer Look