Engineer Porn

World's most powerful diesel engine. Just under 110,000 horsepower. It powers container ships through the oceans. My favorite photo:

It takes a second to realize those are people walking around next to the crankshaft.

More great engine engineering here: Best Engineered Cars of 24 Hours of Lemons.

The car that cannot be killed

Yesterday's Exxon-Valdez spill needed a serious overhaul. It's a 1981 Mercedes Turbo-Diesel. These engines are legendary for reliability and refusal to die. Their last legs will give out over and over, only for them to sprout new last legs. In another race, a Benz refused to die, even after having its oil replaced by New England clam chowder. Someday, all that will be left are roaches eating twinkies while driving around in diesel Mercedes.

Ain't Done Yet. Got Oil?

Yesterday's oil slick seriously damaged the car. The team worked all night, but halfway into the second day, they got it roaring again.

The crowd cheered when it roared to life (and then went into spastic coughing fits from the acrid black smoke).

People's Curse

One of the features of 24 Hours of Lemons is "The People Curse." In order to ensure the spirit of the race is followed, one car is crushed into a pulp. It's generally a cheater or an asshole that pisses off the rest of the racers. The car with the most votes gets sent to the crusher. The "winner" is usually a Miata or BMW racing team that takes the race a little too seriously. This year's winner was the #2 Miata:

Black Widow Miata leading a pack of cars around the track

This team has all sorts of racing-spec Miatas. They showed up in a big caravan of air conditioned trailers, campers, duelley pickups and generally pissed everyone off. They got a big penalty for spending too much on their car, but it wasn't big enough and they made up the laps and were in the top 5 when the ballots came back. 9 out of every 10 votes were for their #2 Miata. THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN!

This team has actually gotten the People's Curse 2 other times. Each time they drove a spec Miata in a way that rubbed the competition the wrong way. Each time, their car was crushed. Third time was apparently too much for them, so they actually absconded before the punishment was complete! Cowards!

Fortunately, one of the BABE rally cars stepped up into the fray. A sample of the carnage below:

Repair time at Lemons

When your drive $500 shitboxes, there are going to be a few breakdowns. When you push them to their absolute limit in 90 degree, 1000% percent humidity, you're going to get every breakdown known to man. Every mistake the mechanical engineers made designing the car will be exposed for all the world to see.


This Z did a couple of laps early and then went into the pits never to return.


The Cajun Jihadi's put up good times in their Mitsubishi Mirage, but they had to pit regularly and to cool their engine. They had every fan they could lay their paws on blasting into the engine compartment.


This Golf had its brakes seize up on it. When they first tore the wheel off, the brake rotor was glowing from the heat.


An old, turbo-diesel Benz was out on the track. It's engine started out making the most god-awful sound and it only got worse as the day wore on. The team had to push it back to the pits after it went KA-CHUNK and lost all its oil.

The oil slick it left was rather impressive. At least 5 quarts decorated the pit for the rest of the afternoon.


A Pontiac Fiero also put up nice lap times, when it wasn't smoking from a leaking head gasket. The team was planning on rebuilding the engine tonight. We'll find out how that one went.


Cars that died on the track had to suffer the indignity of being towed away. Supposedly, the tow truck operator was sadistic and tried to rip everyone's bumper off.

The biggest mechanical breakdowns of the day involved the fighting Tauri. The Ford Taurus (Robocop's car) is infamous for grenading transmissions. Three showed up to the track. By the end of the day, only one was still running (thanks to some parts from the other two).

I drove a '92 Taurus to high school, so I'm rooting for them. One Taurus' transmission blew up on the track and left so many pieces, they had to sweep the track.

One of the Taurus teams was in the middle of open-heart surgery all day on the track. They had 2 engines and I think 3 transmissions laying out in their pit area. None were in their vehicle.

The Penalties of Lemons

For driver's that misbehave, there are a multitude of punishments devised by sadistic judges. Here's a sample.

The Penalty Board. Spin out, spin the wheel.


Penalty Pig. Welded to the car by the Arc Angel. Note the Chief Perpetrator (Jay, the organizer) in the photo, too.

Another penalty involved everyone on your team getting decked out in beads and parading around the entire pit area (~1/4 mile long loop) chanting "we are horrible drivers."


The Bart Simpson Penalty. You get the picture. And yes, they did write it 100 times on their hood. There's also the related rambling email punishment where drivers must write out several paragraphs explaining why their penalty is unjust.


The Bobby Bosch Penalty involves a pile of relays and you have to figure out which one is dead. As long as you have a multimeter, shouldn't be too hard.


The Burning Man Penalty. The offending team must pitch a tent, everyone has to get inside, and then the most awful techno music in the world (DJ Mix - Hidro-Ponik - Hadron Particles) is blasted into the tent. There is one track on the CD that is over one hour long! The link to download the song is 2 MP3's that are each over 100 megs.

I noted this one on the list:
The Bobby Jindal: "Judge Johnny wanted an excuse to do an exorcism. Maybe he'll just resort to simple voodoo, but if he gives you this one, he'll probably be making it up as he goes."

We'll see if it gets implemented.

The final penalty, I'll leave to Candice to cover later. The judges picked up a calender full of shirtless male models. The offending driver has to strip and replicate the poses until the female attendees are satisfied he's matched the pose on the calender...

DEATH TO THE INFIDEL (FEMA)!!!

Team Cajun Jihadis at 24 Hours of Lemons New Orleans.

Keep up with Jalopnik for more.

UPDATE- Back from the race. Hogging all the bandwidth in the city to upload photos and video. Here's some more of the coolest themed car out there today:

Driving through the pits:


They left the music playing on loop throughout the course to "intimidate" their opponents:

Note the serious doppler effect on the sound as the car runs the hairpin turn.

24 Hours of LeMons Coming to New Orleans!

Not 24 hour of LeMans, but 24 Hours of LeMons.

It's an endurance race (actually about 16 hours or so spread over 2 days) where the goal is survival. The trick? You car must cost less than $500 (minus safety equipment). Dangerous? Yes. Imagine the sort of beaters that show up to the track.

Here is the winner from the last race:

It's a Geo-Metro ("Metrognome") with a motorcycle engine that spends the whole time trying not to be crushed by malaise-era Detroit iron.

Here are all the entrants:

Pause it at 1:19 to see the "ghetto-charged" Miata. That's a turbo with intercooler setup with plumbing parts.

Video of a previous year with narration by one of the drivers.

I'm definitely showing up as a spectator. If they come back to New Orleans later, I'll probably run a car, too. Not quite ready to do one yet. You need at least $2,000 or so to get all the safety equipment and do the car right...

That being said, if there is anyone else out there that's interested in doing it that needs another hand or two, I'm pretty handy with a wrench and welder. Seriously.

Here's an idea of what you can get for $500: Mazda 626 needing an engine rebuild and a barely functional Chystler (with working A/C, though!).

24 Hours Of LeMons coming to New Orleans (actually Belle Rose) June 6-7. Registration deadline is in March. Here's the track's site.

Jalopnik has much, much more.

UPDATE- A few more minutes of racing deathtrap shitboxes for your amusement:


No music, lots of crashes: