2009 24 Hours Of LeMons Event - Goin' For Broken

Up first was Stroud, with the starters giving a final look-over, mostly checking for any leaky fluids. A few cars ended up heading back to the pits for minor fixes, but we had the green light. After 40 minutes on the track we had our first electrical gremlins pop up and had to get pushed back into the pits. Between the rough idle and immediately dying after starting it, we were assuming the Opti-Spark was on its last leg.

After a short cool-down period, the LT1 fired up with no hesitation and Little jumped into the seat for the second round. Thirty minutes into it, the power steering let go, causing him to veer off the track and limp the third-gen back into the pits.

With the power steering fixed, King got his chance at flogging the Rockett Camaro. This is where the third problem reared its ugly head: rod knock. At this point we had to call it day.

The following morning we added a host of fluids to the engine in hopes of getting a few final laps in, but it just wasn't meant to be. The rod knock was worse than ever, and we even had water spewing out in between the block and driver's side cylinder head. In the end, we placed 95th out of 101 cars and learned that the rod knock video shot by our crew guy Linquist was shown the following Monday on Good Morning America.

Another casualty was Team Unsafe at Any Speed with their Corvair. They ended up placing 98th, but we certainly have to applaud their efforts. Even with the motor in pieces, they did everything they could to get back onto the track!

In case of fire, the one-layer SFI 3.2A/1 suit is rated to 3 seconds before you can expect second-degree burns, whereas the multilayer SFI 3.2A/5 suit is rated to 10 seconds. My personal choices were RaceQuip's multilayer suit and SA-2005-rated Ridgeline helmet, along with the gloves, shoes, and support collar from sister company Safe-Quip.