VCH. read the last post in my cube at lunch today..... this rascal is all that is GRM .....patina....mismatched body panels(544 volvo sweet!!!!!).....worn tires.......tranny juice gone bazukee....buddy's on the dirt doing whatever to make it get on OUT there....the mocha chocolata in the Rad is not good ..... looks like the block is on it's way out. Any spares hiding out there near the 66-67 belvedere station wagon???
In reply to 759NRNG :
Thanks for the compliments! You think the cappucino in the cooling system is the block dissolving? BTW- the wagon is a '66 Town and Country.
On to Sunday!
I haven't been following this thread but I will go back through and read it. I watched the Lemons wrapup tonight from CMP and all of a sudden this thread title made sense.
Adam
Sunday, November 4th. Final day of the race.
Daylight savings time gave us an extra hour between sunset Saturday and sunrise Sunday; however at 5AM Sunday my brain said ‘wake up!’. Which, as it turns out, was what happened to my 2 kids as well, as shortly after I woke up the texts from Mrs. VCH started, notifying me of the youngsters' inability to cope with an arbitrary alteration of the clock. The OPRV was freezing once again, so I climbed down and cranked up the engine to produce some heat. After about a half-hour it was cosy. I checked the hot water heater and it seemed to be functional, I grabbed my things and hopped in the OPRV’s bathroom for a half an hour of meditation during a Navy-style shower. By the time I’d finished, the sun, and the rest of the Tunachuckers, were begrudgingly getting up. Green flag was scheduled for 9AM.
The Plymford sat under its carport, crouched and ready to roll. One of my teammates peeled off the plastic he’d wisely applied to the Lexan windscreen (to keep off the dew) and we checked the various fluids and poked at various bits. Since our second driver Saturday had had the shortest stint (interrupted by the transmission fluid debacle) we rewarded his sharp thinking in saving the transmission by bequeathing him the whole 2 hours between green flag and quiet hour. He did come in for a quick fuel top-off after an hour or so, to make sure he didn’t come in at the end of a strap due to the 460’s prodigious thirst.
At 11PM the cars all scooted into the pits and shut down for the track’s mandatory Sunday quiet hour. Race engines had to remain off, but we could, and did, fuel the car in the pits. The transmission was topped off, too. Since we’d started off the race on previously-used tires, they were starting to get really worn out by now. The right rear, in fact, was bald. We had one new tire mounted on a wheel, and one of the guys had left at 10:30 to get the last new tire mounted in place of the chunked tire we’d removed on Saturday. He arrived back right at noon, perfect timing since that wheel also needed a new brake pad (one of the ones we’d installed before the race was misaligned and had worn down).
After putting two new tires on the back, the best two used tires on the front, setting tire pressures (40 psi all around), fixing the right rear brake, topping off the ATF, and giving the car a quick once over, the next guy set out at noon.
Since the car seemed to be running OK, we decided to make the last 4 hours of the race count, and did only 2 more stops- both of them hot pits- for the rest of the day. We made the next driver swap at approximately 1:30PM. The car needed to come in for an ATF top-off at some point partway through his stint, though otherwise he stayed out and made good, clean laps.
At 10 minutes to 3, I took the tiller to bring the Plymford home. At this point, attrition was taking its toll on the field and the track was getting empty. I tried to strike a balance between making fun, fast laps and not killing the car before the checkered flag. The oil pressure seemed to be dropping off worse than it had the day before, on right hand turns. Limiting cornering speeds and g’s seemed to keep the pressure up, and the motor happy. Otherwise it was business as usual until around 20 minutes past 3, when yellows started sprouting out of every corner station. Halfway round the track the cause became apparent- Knoxvegas Lowballers' Mercedes 560SL had somehow collected the Nissan 580 (a 300Z with a 5.8 liter V8) and tangentially involved a teal Lexus LS400. The first two cars were totaled and had to be towed off; the Lexus eventually drove off under it’s own power.
As the yellow wore on lap after lap, the cars stacked up tightly; 2 cars in front of me a driver with an overabundance of caution was driving EXCEEDINGLY slowly. Behind him, an el-camino-ized E30 agonized, and I watched a horde of very impatient racers in my rearview itching for the yellow. At one point the lead car even refused to pass a tow truck, so we all paraded the track at around 10 miles per hour until the wrecker made it off the track.
After an interminable 20 minutes or so, the yellow finally disappeared. And all heck broke loose. For my part, I mashed the go pedal and tried to tuck in behind the fastest cars I could, to avoid getting run over. Eventually traffic smoothed out and we started the last dash to the finish. As I rounded the back part of the track just post-kink, the digital clock zip-tied to the Plymford’s roll cage clicked over to 4:01PM. Coming down the front straight, I saw the checkered and roared underneath at around 4000 RPM.
The race was over.
While I had been out clicking off laps, my team, being the awesome, experienced, thoughtful, and smart fellers that they all are, had been packing up. After the cars all paraded around and off the track, I cruised back to our paddock spot to find nearly everything stowed and ready to go. The ramps were even out on my trailer, so I cruised Plymford on up and strapped her down.
Champagne was broken out (I always bring a bottle, no matter how poorly we do, we toast Sunday's checkered flag), followed by beers, and we tidied up the last of our pit space for the weekend while waiting for the awards ceremony.
Now, I'm a somewhat superstitious person. I guess that comes from being a racer. This race, I made a pointed effort to NOT see how we were doing in the standings. I decided I simply wasn't going to care. If the Plymford ran, and everyone got to drive, and we had a good time- that was all I could ask for. But, of course, others were curious, and as the race ended I knew that while we'd done pretty well, we had not won our class (Plymford was, of course, honored with being placed in Class 'C', the most important class according to those in the LeMons cognoscenti). A couple of the guys thought we might be in the running for the Index of Effluency, or 'IoE', but the LTD had won that already a few years back, so I had written that possibility off in my mind. Really, I just wanted to witness the spectacle of the Awards, and head on out for a nice cheap dinner somewhere.
The awards ceremony at a LeMons race is really a thing you have to be there for. It's funny, it's zany, it's crazy, and yet it's really heartfelt. The race organizers know that we all put a real effort into everything that we do, and they appreciate it. Why do we do it? Why does it matter? it just does, and you either get it, or you don't. Even if you don't win a thing, it's still something to feel the joy and achievement of those who do.
After passing out the Class awards, auctioning off some bacon for charity, and recognizing some other achievements, Jay Lamm said (and probably not verbatim, I apologize, but close enough):
"And now, for the Organizer's Choice Award...let me make this real simple. When you put a 1951 Plymouth Body, on top of a 1975 Ford LTD Chassis....you win the Organizer's Choice Award!"
And we did.
The team was floored. We'd raced a clean race, and to a man agreed that the car was the best it's ever been, and that was a reward all it's own. But then to win the "Org Choice", something we'd never done before...well, big smiles were had all around.
We're engineers. That's how we smile.
After the Awards were over, and we'd congratulated all the other winners (especially Duff Beer's Triumph Stag, which took home the illustrious IoE), we decided on a place for a celebratory dinner and headed into Kershaw.
Best Dang Race Weekend in a loooooong time. 
I'm most grateful for your effort in writing all of this up for us. Congratulations!
Congratulations! Well done.
What's next for Plymford?
Indy-Guy said:Congratulations! Well done.
What's next for Plymford?
Well....you'll just have to watch this space and find out.... 
A couple of race videos I forgot to link to earlier. This first one is taken from the cab of Knoxvegas Lowballer's "Hooptiecorn", one of the fastest cars on the track. At the time of the link, he's just overtaking the Plymford.
Much Faster Car Passing the Plymford
One of our team's groupies (The guy who gave us the LTD in the first place, several years ago) came to the race with a 360 degree camera that he mounted on the trunklid. Here's his video of one of the stints. You can click around in the youtube screen and view 360 degrees around the car. Pretty cool.
Bravo.
Awesome work. I also agree and thank you for putting so much time and effort into this write up. Always very hard for me to do after the fact.
Great work, on the race and the story.
From start to finish - ridiculously awesome!
That 360 degree camera is super trick. Would it be possible to mount it on the roof in future endeavors? It would make a little better use of the camera's capability.
Noob question what does tunachucker mean? Is the Grm member of the same name a part of your crew?
What a great accomplishment!........I've got tears.....enough of that, let's talk about the T&C being the tow vehicle for next season sporting a Cummin's .....another trophy for most 'Eclectic combo' perhaps??
Congrats y'all well done.!!!!.....and hey didn't you show a shot of the back of the 460 while doing the trans change or am I cornfused???
In reply to Everyone :
Writing this up was...therapeutic. We had an awesome time that weekend, and building the Plymford was a lot of work, but really gratifying. As I went back through the pictures, and conjured up this tale from memories, it was like doing it all over again, minus the burns and the bleeding. Twinges of happiness, excitement, or incredulity came occasionally, recalling various events. Pretty neat.
I was concerned this project would fall into the pits of some of my other projects *cough* Jaguar *cough* Town & Country wagon *cough* that I'd started build threads for here and have sort of...languished. Admittedly, part of the reason I didn't put anything down until it was all past history was that I wasn't quite sure how, or even if, it was all going to work out. I'm glad it did.
In reply to Pattyo:
The 360 camera belongs to a team member...I know virtually nothing about it, but I agree that roof mounting would be the way to go for the future. We were kindof rushed and he figured mounting it on the trunklid would be easy enough and give predictable results.
We've been doing LeMons since 2008....this race, in fact, marked our 10 year anniversary of racing. Back in 2008, our car was a 1966 Volvo Amazon:
The driver's door, replete with the Charlie the Tuna mural, came from a parts car I'd bought previously. We thought it would be a fun gag to put it on the race car. One night, while brainstorming team names before submitting our entry for the first race, we came up with (don't ask me how) the idea of building a trebuchet and using it to hurl tuna. The trebuchet never materialized (yet...) but he name has stuck - Tunachuckers.
And yes, Tuna55 is part of the team. He used to race with us, but has since procreated numerous times and has had to take a hiatus. He's still in the loop, though, comes to races when he can, and provides his (sometimes) valuable and (usually) snarky input on the car.
In reply to 759NRNG:
One of the pictures of the transmission change did show the back of the 460 engine. That was when we discovered the block crack.
Yesterday I was outside working around where the Plymford is huddled up in the silver run in. On a whim, I figured I'd try to start it and let it run for a bit to keep things lubricated and loose. After checking the fluids, I flipped on the main switch, clicked over the ignition toggle, and cranked it a few seconds to put gas in the bowls. Then I blipped the throttle a few times, hit the button, and... VROOOOOM!
I let it warm up to temperature, idling at about 1500 RPM, and cut it off. I want to drive it now and then; if we have a semi-warm day sometime I do plan to take it out for a cruise. Several co-workers have been bugging me to drive to work, too.
Did you put antifreeze in it yet?
In reply to GhiaMonster :
Put antifreeze in it when it was still on the trailer, before I got home. 
Great story and the end result is very cool.
I was looking for a Mercedes 6.9 engine for a swap project and came across this article about your LTD battling it out with a 6.9 in Lemons.
In reply to Cotton :
I think our LTD had it's factory-stock 400 engine in it at that point. Man that engine was slow as dog crap sliding off a car windshield in August. IIRC it made around 153 HP. We should be somewhere around double that now with our juiced-up 460.
A little Friday morning fun. Here's the LTD, as we raced it in the spring of 2017, at CMP:
And now....
Very cool - has a Icon Derelict vibe going. Almost too cool to race - but only almost.
That's muh better yard art. I can see waking up, looking out the window with a cup of coffee and saying "berk yes".
As part of my customary New Year's ritual, some yard cleanup occurred over the past few days. An old Volvo that had overstayed its welcome got parted out and scrapped, and while I was filling my truck and trailer with pig iron, I took care of the remnants of the LTD body panels as well.
The attendant at the scrapyard saw me offloading all this neat-looking sheetmetal and struck up a conversation. He was in the process of slipping an LS into a box-body S-10, and had a '57 Chevy 210 2-door he was restoring. I showed him pictures of the Plymford, describing the whole body-swap process (and mentioning the 24 Hours of LeMons) and he assured me that this was, in fact, "cool as E36 M3". :-) I was encouraged by the fact that the fellow was noticeably younger than I was. So, perhaps there's some hope for perpetuating the gearhead gene?
Today I cleaned off the rolling chassis of what was left of the '51 Plymouth.
I still want to save the engine (it runs, because, well, its a Chrysler flathead 6) and I'd like to swap the dash into the Plymford at some point, too. The LTD dash leaves much to be desired from an aesthetic stand-point. And there's a few other bits and baubles I might want to grab off it as well. So, for now, it got rolled into the spot in the run- in recently vacated by the departing Volvo.
This story ain't over, but the future hasn't been written yet, so we'll just have to wait and see how this plays out...
I heard the Plymford got a mention in GRM recently? I have a subscription to Classic Motorsports, but not GRM. Anyone get a copy?
EDIT: I just reaized I can sign in for the digital version with my Classic Motorsports account number. Cool.
Page 30, at the bottom. Sweet! Thank you for the write-up!
BTW, I find it hilarious that in the table of contents section where they list the cars in this issue, they actually put "Plymford: 30"
Looking for an update. Is Plymford racing this season?
In reply to Indy-Guy :
No plans to race in 2019. One of the guys is having kid #2 any day now, another has a bunch of travel planned, I'm traveling a lot for work and trying to get some deferred house projects cleaned up...
The Plymford spat out a bunch of freeze plugs this winter, despite having been filled with antifreeze, so that needs to be addressed prior to even driving it again. But since it does bear a license plate now, and my co-workers have been egging me to drive it into work some time, I have a bit of motivation to get that fixed this year.
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