24 Hours of LeMons: Yugo!

After lots of track days, I decided that it would be fun to try racing in one of the upcoming 24 Hours of LeMons races coming up in my area. For those not familiar, these are races with $500 or less cars, the more shitty the better. Sounded like a lot of fun.

The one that looked promising was the 2016 "Vodden The Hell Are We Doing" event in May at Thunderhill Raceway near Willows, CA. I had driven at THill several times in HPDEs in my '97 Miata so I figured this would be a good fit.

I posted a "driver looking for team" message to the LeMons message boards and one of the first responses I got was from a man named Mike Spangler (later I would learn that this man, known as "Spank", was near legendary in LeMons circles). After a few back and forth emails, he offered me a ride on his team, driving (most likely) an '86 Hyundai Excel. A few months and a few more waffling emails later I agreed. I managed to drag my track-day friend Charlie into the mix as well.

Shortly after signing up, Spank sent us an email saying he had an '86 Yugo that he'd just acquired and "it gets up to an indicated 80mph and cruises quite well and it seems like it'll go even faster". A Yugo? a YUGO. Ok now I'm really in.

The Event

Charlie and I arrived at THill on Friday just before Spank and his friend Dave. When they arrived I got a good first look at what we'd be driving.

It actually looked better than I thought it would. After unloading, we got to work. There was a long list of "small details" we'd need to finish before we could get it to pass tech, which closed at 5pm. "No problem, that's like 4 hours away" I thought. I asked Spank what to start on. "Rear brakes." OK, no problem, I can do this. "New pads, drums, hydraulic lines, and we'll need to install long studs." Hmmm. Isn't that pretty much everything?

About this time our 4th driver, Bill, showed up and got right to work. Bill is a clever man. After he and Spank talked about how to lower the rear end, and the parts we'd need, Bill managed to get a bunch of broken motorcycle footpegs from the track workers, and proceeded to drill them out to make spacers. They worked like a charm. Meanwhile Charlie was busy getting the cage padding all installed.

The brakes, not so much. After about an hour we had them, well, started. Then came the downpour.
The forecast had called for a possibility of rain showers. This is what we got.

Half an hour later we all came out of our hiding places and tried to dry things off. A lot of stuff was pretty soaked, but we soldiered on under Spank's guidance. We didn't make it to tech in time, and after several more hours of working on the car (wiring harnesses, new battery holder, numbers, and hey, I got the right rear brake light to work!) Charlie and I called it a night. 

While we went off to our hotel, Spank stayed. I can only imagine how long he was up and just how many things he fixed overnight.

 

Race Day #1: Saturday

Saturday morning we started on more items that needed attention. Spank was smelling gas fumes inside the car, and after some digging he found this.

Luckily, he had a decent replacement hose ready. Actually, I don't think luck was involved. Spank came prepared. Besides many boxes of spare parts from who knows where, he also brought along a junked but mostly complete Fiat X1/9, since many of the parts were the same (the Yugo used a Fiat-designed engine). This man had clearly done his homework.

The next 4 or so hours were a blur. So many little things went awry that I literally can't remember them all, and of course I didn't bother taking pictures as we went along. I do remember a few things clearly:

•  A hose clamp for the oil cooler was rubbing on the distributor cap. We managed (after some "clever" engineering) to get it loose and move it around.
• After moving that, we noticed that the wires connected to the distributor were not very well connected. About half an hour later I had wired in a "new" (i.e. from some other old heap somewhere) connector. I even soldered the connections and taped it up real good.
• Changed the oil in the manual transmission. Only about a quart came out. We put three new quarts in.
• Within minutes about a quart leaked out of the CV joint seal.
• Tore apart the CV joint and replaced the seal with another that we had "lovingly removed" from a similar part Spank conjured from one of his many magic boxes, and put the whole thing back together.
• Spank suited up, got all belted in, started it up, and at sputtered and coughed, even at full throttle. Something had gone wrong in the timing.
• Much "civilized discourse" as to the reasons for above.
• Discovered that the "new" connector (see above) actually had a short circuit in it (nice 35+ year-old Yugoslavian wire sheathing that it was).
• Wired in yet another "new" connector (this time skipping the soldering).
• More gnashing of teeth as it still didn't run right.
• Various attempts: checking timing, pulling the timing belt cover, checking spark plug wiring, inspecting distributor parts...
• Replaced the ignition control module with another "new" part from the magic boxes.

Presto! Off to the races!

Spank took the car out for 15 minutes or so to feel it out. When he came back it was my turn. First time ever doing real wheel-to-wheel racing (well, if you can call "getting passed by 180 cars" "racing"), and in an '86 Yugo...

photo by Head-On Photos

The Yugo actually felt pretty good. It wallowed all over the track, the steering was, um, "loose", the gear shifter would *sometimes* actually let you select a gear, and the brakes felt like mush. But it actually had pretty good power, and once you adjusted to the front-wheel drive the cornering was really fun. The all-weather tires were extremely chatty in everything but full-on straights, and the harder I turned and the harder I hit the gas the more chatty it was and the better it turned. Amazing!

Unfortunately my time got cut short, as there was a lightning storm approaching and all cars had to exit. But I did get about 30 minutes (much of it under full-course yellow - there were a lot of, um "incidents").

Next up was Charlie. His first time as well in wheel-to-wheel racing.

He came back with a big smile. I got to take the Yugo out again for the last session. I almost made it. About 10 minutes before the end, as I was attempting to downshift from 4th to 3rd, the gear shift lever broke off underneath. I could feel it dragging on the ground unless I held it up, and for some reason the engine didn't want to idle (it would just sputter and die). I managed to get the car back into the paddock, stuck in 4th gear, revving the engine, and probably significantly shortening the clutch life. But I got it back in without a tow!

Saturday evening was lots of celebrations, beers, and general good times (we got the Yugo on the track! Yesss!). I was really warmed by the friendly fun atmosphere of the LeMons community.

Race Day #2: Sunday

Sunday morning before the track went hot I spent some time fashioning an iphone mount from a long grade 8 bolt and a bunch of nuts and washers. It worked pretty good. The guys at racecast.me set us up with a live feed of the iphone video (thanks for all the help Julian!). I mounted the camera facing backwards, and we were off to the races.

Sunday morning was Bill's first time in the Yugo. He did nearly 2 hours straight and came back all smiles. "It's like drifting a rally car on dirt!"

photo by Head-On Photos

Charlie and I took turns doing about an hour each. We had a great time.

Note the left turn signal. Somehow it was wired to the right brake light circuit. Photo by Head-On Photos

On my turn, I was just about to pull in ("2 more laps should do it" I thought) when the Yugo started sputtering and cutting out. I did *not* want to get a tow. I managed to pull off on the access road between 6 and 7 that leads back to the pits (car dying and me restarting it several times), and after waiting for the OK from the flagger, managed to get across and back to our area in the paddock. Turns out we were out of gas.

Charlie went next, and was supposed to do about an hour. 80 minutes later he pulled in. Turns out the clock we had taped to the dash had stopped running (Bill fixed it by smacking it with his hand). The sputtering and odd rough idling (as in, it didn't idle at all) were back, so Spank decided to pull the vacuum line from the brake master cylinder to fix it. A short discussion later (me saying "I'll make it work") and I was off. There was about half an hour left in the day.

That last half hour, the Yugo ran better than it had all weekend, as long as you kept it in 3rd or 4th and stayed on the gas hard (which I happily obliged).

photo by Head-On Photos

I had so much fun that I was actually sad to see the checkered flag (well, elated as well - we did it!).

photo by Head-On Photos

The cool-down parade lap was actually emotional for me and I choked up waving at all the track workers and paddock crowds as they gave the Yugo crazy thumbs up and applause. Pulling off the track I couldn't get the car into 1st or 2nd (and it didn't want to idle) so I ended up poking slowly along, revving the engine and slipping the cluth in 3rd all the way in. The Yugo made it!!

Awards Ceremony

At the end of the day there was a big awards ceremony. Some pretty cool awards went out. The biggest surprise of the day for me came when they got to the last (and apparently most coveted) award - the Index Of Effluency (look it up, it's a word). Our team, "Spank Squat", won it! Wow! Many folks try for years to get his award, and on our rookie try Charlie and I got it in Spank's team. Overwhelming!

I could not have dreamed for a better introduction to LeMons racing.  What an experience! I'd like to thank Spank for taking me and Charlie on and for his utter tenacity and dedication to getting the Yugo on the track. I have a ton of respect for that man. Damn.

The video wrap-up of the event:

 And the official writeup on Roadkill: http://www.roadkill.com/lemons-northern-california-winners/

Already looking forward to a currently-super-secret Spank special planned for a LeMons race later this year.... count me in Spank!