What did they do? I'm curious...

 

Our car was 100% legal. Of course that's because we had to find a theft recovery shell, and a motor that was sitting in a shed for 4 years.. but it was legal.. I thought the BS judges would be a lot more particular than they were honestly.. there are definately some "cheating" that I think I'll be doing next year (like a new f'ing clutch ahead of time!).

 

Bah humbug!

 

Bah. If they really didn't want anyone to know they did it, you wouldn't have seen them do it, James.

They swapped out their ratty old stock carb for a nice new performance carb. Neat trick, eh? Ultimately, it probably put them on par with all of the fuel-injected cars out there, giving them decent power and reliability. It was "cheating", but I don't really fault them for it.

I absolutely loved how that car looked when they rolled it off the trailer. Looked like it was fresh out from under a tree in someone's back yard where it had been for 3-5 years. The guys new how to play the game.

 

Yeah there seems to be a science to LeMons cheating.. if you can swap it post-inspection, that's one way, or paint new parts with bbq paint then coat with gear oil and dirt, etc. you could probably sneak almost anything past if you really wanted to.

 

Yeah they knew exactly what they were doing. They applied a new number to the side of their car right after tech (looked like a big sticker). washed and polished her up to look like a million bucks. The carb swap was pure genius. The kicker is, you can't just put a new carb on a car, it has to be tuned! They had the sweat racing beat intake and carb setup just waiting to be installed, replacing the crappy stock intake/carbs that 1st gens have. I love it! She was rebuilt recently too. I have never heard a 1st gen sound so sweet that wasn't fully restored.

 

We didn't cheat at all. We worked really had and were very creative in keeping our Z under $500.00. In my opinion, we were one of maybe 3-6 teams that did. By doing that, though, it made us very uncompetitive.

We thought the spirit of the race was to truly have a $500.00 car. Now we realize the spirit of the race is to not get caught with a car costing more than $500.00 and to be creative while doing it.

Even though it has only been a week since CMP, we have already come up with a few creative ways to cheat (and also bribe the judges) for next year. Can hardly wait.


TAJ, sorry I have not sent my paypal money to you yet, I'll do it later tonight. Am I the last to pay up from the Z team?

 

actually the later 4100 and 4500 are stout.. it's the early 4100 Aluminimum block and iron head that are a menace

but I grew up in a GM household...

 

I thought all of them were alumn iron head, which is sorta retarded. I just have a bad expierence with a 4.1 at my shop, like really bad, horribly bad. I dont have any faith in them and I hate working on them.

they made the motors as big as 4.9

 

i`ll back up rob on this, we spent under $500, just not sure how much under. we kept a rough tally though. wish we would have spent $50 on a clutch disk though, since that`s what dropped us out of the race sunday, when we were in 33rd place.

we were talking about cheating on the way home. one of the things we were talking about is how are they gonna know it you bolt some stuff on after tech? as simple as strut bars to going all out and throwing some coil overs on. not that we would do that, but seriously, not like they were monitering the pits for that kind of stuff.

oh (and just to brag a little here) I scored 4 piston calipers for the 280z yesterday at the junkyard! best $45 brake up-grade ever.