Catalyst Burns Rubber For Charity

Remember we mentioned the 24 Hour Race Of LeMons a few weeks back? Not the French one with very cool million dollar cars. You know, the one where mad people with big hearts and heavily modified $500 rust-buckets rocket around a race track in order to raise money for charity?

Well, it’s a wrap and we’re happy to report that the brave souls behind the Catalyst Exhibits machine managed to place a very respectable 15th out of 60 starters. That’s us in the red 308 with the unfeasibly large spoiler with the traffic cones on top. It was a blast!

Follow the link to find out what else transpired and see some more action shots.

The brave drivers, we are happy to report, also returned with all of their limbs intact, which is more than can be said for our mean machine. More importantly, they raised $2,200 for the excellent Alexander Leigh Center for Autism, located in Lake in the Hills.

After 358 laps (over 700 miles) and 16-hours of frantic, pedal-to-the-metal driving, you can expect some hiccups. Here are some highlights:

- Sin binned for overtaking on a yellow flag. Punishment: Write “I will not pass under yellow” 50 times with a Sharpie on the roof of our car.

- 7 hours in, blew the clutch hydraulic line, filled the car with fragrant smoke and got towed in.

Below is a firsthand report of the day from one of those brave souls, Andy Besic, and below you will find some more shots from the race.

“The start of the race was clear blue skies with a stiff 25 mph ENE wind and a chilly 42 degrees. All of the cars are sent out onto the track in random order to circulate single file around the track. The race organizers pick the car or team that MOST annoyed them with excuses and complaining at technical safety inspection and give the green flag to the car directly Behind that team! When the green flag came out we estimated our starting position as 42 of 60 cars. We started well, immediately began passing cars like pylons in a parking lot. The twin turbo, mid- engine full size Snoopy van looks as big as a school bus in front of you when you are on a race track! We managed our way all the way up to 2nd place when we were black flagged and sent to the sin bin. We got off light, with simply having to write “I will not pass under yellow” 50 times with a Sharpie on the roof of our car. Much better than the team who had to put on dresses, wigs, and high heeled shoes and foot race up a hill. This is called the “DRAG RACE”.

Around the 7th hour of racing our rusty clutch hydraulic line burst and blew fluid on the hot exhaust to fill the car with stinky smoke and earn us the privilege of being towed in. Quick run to the South Haven Auto Zone for some parts. We had to “MacGyver” the cheesy American car parts into our fine Italian sports car and were back on track in just over an hour.

We finished the race still driving hard on 3 tires worn down to the cords and a Lavender and Periwinkle pair of painted cons zip-tied to our rear wing. This was another punishment we had to suffer in the sin-bin! We managed 15th out of 60 cars, completing 358 laps (over 700 miles) in about
16 hours of driving. It looks like Alexander Leigh Center for Autism will benefit from over $2200 in pledges from our heroic drivers, willing to stare into the face of danger and belt themselves into $500 rusty piece of junk and put the pedal to the metal.”

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 3:48 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.