24 Hour Lemons project

I hope I'm not offending any forum patrons because I don't know if this is the best forum for this question.

I have a team assembled and we are going to attempt to run the 24 hours of Lemons in June. My buddy is donating his 96 Oldsmobile Cutlass 3.1L to our cause. My friends and I are experienced go kart racers and one has seat time in a midget but we are completely new to working on daily drivers. Long story short we are in our early 20's and good with a wrench but go karts and dirt bikes are much simpler.

Our 96 Cutlass has 200K miles on it and its running a little sluggish. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas to restore or give it extra power. Its geared to run 120 but i want to raise the gear ratio to get more acceleration. We have a 500 spending limit for the engine. We are welding on straight pipes so let me know if this is a good idea or is there going to be problems such as back pressure -Thanks

Straight Pipes are a bad idea, no scavenging of the exhaust and you may fail the db test. Worry more about making it through the 24 hours than speed. Driving nice consistent laps is more important than outright speed, especially for new racers. Focus on reliability, the car will be plenty fast enough so long as it is near stock performance. If you want better lap times work on the suspension

TxCoyote wrote: Straight Pipes are a bad idea, no scavenging of the exhaust and you may fail the db test. Worry more about making it through the 24 hours than speed. Driving nice consistent laps is more important than outright speed, especially for new racers. Focus on reliability, the car will be plenty fast enough so long as it is near stock performance. If you want better lap times work on the suspension

Spot on. Go psycho maniac on weight removal. Throw some big beefy junkyard van springs on that sucker. Maybe some rancho shocks. Simply staying out on track, out of trouble will get you in the top ten. Try to get your pit stops insanely fast. Practice them. Don't pass under caution.

My advise to guys who are starting out with some freebie / undesirable car is start with something else. The off budget costs of building a LeMons car are so high you should start out with something that could be competitive or is wacky enough to be fun. You'll want to race again, but you won't want to race a 3.1 Cutlass again, so you'll have to re-spend on all of the safety. Remember a cage is a minimum of $1000 if you have to hire the work out.

We ran a 79 Fairmont wagon for three years (RIP), but it had better than 300hp and LOTS of suspension work. It was wacky and fast.

Do intake gaskets if they have not been done, make sure you have fresh coolant and the system is bled, do a trans fluid change, maybe plumb in a larger aftermarket trans cooler, oil change, air filter change, new quality plugs and wires, and run it. I can't see an exhaust making much power on those motors, and straight pipes will make it unbearably loud to run for 24 hours.

I would consider bringing a spare coil pack and power transistor for it and maybe remote mount it up on the passenger side fenderwell, the only problem I ever had on 3100s was with that part and its a huge pain to change in the stock location on some of them.

Suspension is fine after we install the newer shocks and struts. Its the engine that needs to be worked on. It goes 0-60 like 2 years ago. We think that restoring power, not buying aftermarket parts is the best way to keep the engine healthy and maintain acceptable speed. Not Superchargers or cold air intakes but maybe new pistons, clean the cylinder heads and clean out the throttle body. My co worker is going to weld the roll cage and we are going to pay him a few bucks under the table. We are all race enthusiasts and we want to see what we can do for as little as possible this year. It will be a good learning experience to see what other have and have done.

Maxinmondays wrote: Suspension is fine after we install the newer shocks and struts. Superchargers or cold air intakes My co worker is going to weld the roll cage and we are going to pay him a few bucks under the table. It will be a good learning experience to see what other have and have done.

Stock suspension will make you wish you went lower and stiffer. You cant use aftermarket parts but you can do alot with stock springs and sways from bigger cars

Add on things like SC and CAI are penalty items. Don't do it

No $ limits on safety equipment. Get the best you can, you may need it

Yup, you will become an addict. Chump and Lemons can be addictive.

Maxinmondays wrote: My buddy is donating his 96 Oldsmobile Cutlass 3.1L to our cause. We have a 500 spending limit for the engine. Suspension is fine after we install the newer shocks and struts.

We need to talk about your Lemons math.

Donated from a friend does not equal free car and it will be sweated by the judges.

If you have $500 for the engine that leaves $0 for anything else yet you are installing newer shocks and struts?

More power is not what you need, Lemons is not a sprint. Make the car reliable, nice big oil cooler and transmission cooler. You will need all the help you can get to keep that 3.1 from blowing up, adding anything to it isn't going to help you at all.

Make sure you go to lemons and look for the sticky post in the tech forum on how not to fail tech. There is a very good illustrated guide on building the cage. Make sure your friend reads it and understands it. Even with someone to weld it up for free you will have a considerable investment in tubing, make sure the guy knows what he's doing or you will end up with an expensive pile of scrap.

Then go out there and have fun. Dont take it too seriously.

93gsxturbo wrote: Do intake gaskets if they have not been done, make sure you have fresh coolant and the system is bled, do a trans fluid change, maybe plumb in a larger aftermarket trans cooler, oil change, air filter change, new quality plugs and wires, and run it. I can't see an exhaust making much power on those motors, and straight pipes will make it unbearably loud to run for 24 hours. I would consider bringing a spare coil pack and power transistor for it and maybe remote mount it up on the passenger side fenderwell, the only problem I ever had on 3100s was with that part and its a huge pain to change in the stock location on some of them.

THIS. Seriously, you are not going to eek a lot of extra power out of the 3100. However, I cannot stress how important the above information really is. The intake gaskets need to be done. It was a problem when these cars were new, and chances are likely it will be now as well. The transmission (4T60-e?) is not known for its ability to handle much more power, so if things have changed since I owned a `95 Cutlass back in 2000 and you can make cheap power (doubt it,) the transmission will not be game. A trans cooler is a must.

Having said that, I seriously hope you run this car.

Last year was my first year running Lemons, so I'm far from an expert. I joined an established team, and had a blast. From what I know of it....as others said, forget trying to do anything with the engine power. Make it run, and run and run. Cooling, ignition, fuel pump, etc... Both of our cars are slow on acceleration, but reliable.

Transmission. Most cars there are manuals. Autos don't tend to fare well in endurance races from what I've seen and heard. So if you're running that auto trans, get the biggest cooler you can find for it.

That's an A-body, right? Talk to these guys: https://www.facebook.com/Racing4Nickels

I know the team; the guy who leads it is named Bob. He's a real A-body nut. His team won Index of Effluency in their first event with a Murph & The Magic Tones-themed Cutlass Ciera (they have a different theme now). The only problem they had was that, with a trans cooler on a cold and humid late-October weekend, the transmission was actually staying too cold and causing weird shift behavior. They paneled off the trans cooler and it got better. Ran problem-free for the duration.

Afterward they installed FE3 springs and replaced the fuel injectors with clean ones, and won Class C in the following years' race. It's actually a pretty good platform for LeMons, and GM cars are great candidates for IOE (the big-money trophy).

Here's their blog. Might be some good tech info in there: http://racing4nickels.blogspot.com/

If possible, cut the stock springs. This will increase the spring "stiffness" at the new lower ride height.

YOu will want to lower the car once you take out all teh weight you can. The car will be a 4 x 4.

Give the car a tune up and change the intake gaskets. Change the oil. Add tranny cooler.

My team ran a automatic (turbo 350) behind a chevy 350 for about 8 races. never had a problem with the trans AT ALL! I have not heard of an auto having problems at Lemons (at least, not any more than the manuals).

Make it reliable, not fast.

We won 3 races and placed 2nd and 5th with a car that has maybe 100 hp (at the eccentric shaft). Horsepower is NOT your friend in Lemons or Chump.

Get rid of ALL the weight you can! This is what makes the car fast.

Most of all, have fun!