Bad sportsmanship or poor form? RE: LeMons

poopshovel wrote:

OK, this upsets me. I like a party as much as the next guy, but if you are actually drinking and racing then you better GTFO. If I saw someone pound one back and hop in the driver's seat he'd have a broken damn leg. There is nothing even remotely funny or cool about driving under the influence, period.

I couldn't afford to contribute to the entry fee, cage, etc., so I busted my ass, helped my friends put a car together, and crewed for them instead, 2 years in a row now. I'll withdraw the polite invitation to come have fun with us, and instead politely invite you to kiss my ass...or have fun trying to break someone in our crew's leg. Lemme know how that works out for you.

Oh go cry me a river. You've been posting the whole time like you were a driver and didn't do anything to discourage that thought. Read your posts in this thread and tell me otherwise.

You want to drink and spectate? Cool, I'll even buy the beer. Drink and crew, no problem for you (though I wouldn't let you wrench on my stuff). You want to risk putting your eye out or messing up the car, cool by me.

But even inferring that you drink and drive (let alone race) makes you a Grade A asshat and I'm not afraid to say it. WAY too many innocent people have been murdered by self-righteous jerks who thought it was OK to drive under the influence. Next time don't infer that you did, and I won't threaten to break your leg.

fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight! fight!

Keith wrote: Agreed. I'd much rather see that than senseless vehicular destruction.

oh, there is nothing "senseless" about it. it is very well-planned and democratic destruction.

poopshovel wrote: I'll withdraw the polite invitation to come have fun with us, and instead politely invite you to kiss my ass...or have fun trying to break someone in our crew's leg. Lemme know how that works out for you.

I'll accept the invitation (to have fun, no way in hell am I going to try and break any legs. E36 M3, at the Challenge Wayne was going to kick me in the nuts just for having my arms crossed ).

I'm all for some gratuitous crushing of junk cars. I was actually kind of sad that Les sold my PGT to someone instead of using it for a Lemons car.

Jay can't hand a team a claimed car to race, there would be too much liability involved.

From http://forums.24hoursoflemons.com/viewtopic.php?pid=3047#p3047

Nick_LeMonsHQ wrote: There's a lot of chatter out there, so I've condensed my thoughts into what I think are the two most important facts. I'm going to try to stay out of the discussion otherwise, so here you go: 1. There was no advance promise from Jay that the Black Widow Miata would not be crushed. In fact, that doesn't even make any sense--without anything to offer us, how would a team negotiate such a deal? 2. 33 ballots were submitted for the Curse. 24 votes were for the Miata, 7 were for the CaJun JiHad, and the remaining two were for random single teams.

RobL wrote: Jay can't hand a team a claimed car to race, there would be too much liability involved.

i thought i was the team lawyer.

could be right, although it would be tough for that team to cry foul if they accepted it and chose to race it...maybe give the hard-luck team the right to claim it or allow it to be crushed? they're free to race it if they want.

If the members of the team that won the People's Curse also cast votes for (against?) other teams, then I think they were poor sports to leave without fulfilling the terms of the agreement. However, if they didn't vote for other teams, then maybe, after already losing two cars, they were justified in leaving.

Buzz Killington wrote:

RobL wrote: Jay can't hand a team a claimed car to race, there would be too much liability involved.

i thought i was the team lawyer. could be right, although it would be tough for that team to cry foul if they accepted it and chose to race it...maybe give the hard-luck team the right to claim it or allow it to be crushed? they're free to race it if they want.

The only thing I can think of that might allow this: the rules say 'any registered driver can drive any registered car at any time during the race'. This rule had us considering a ringer driver.

blaze86vic wrote: I'm not going to do a Lemons now. I was really looking forward to building a $500 V8 swapped compact car. $150 for an engine and trans from the junk yard. I can rebuild an engine without replacing anything but gaskets and it would cost less than $50. I can weld, cut, grind, and design to make anything I want for cost of scrap metal. So it was fairly easy to accomplish in the $500 budget. But after reading a lot of these posts, I realize now that if I did accomplish this that I'd be pretty much guaranteed to be crushed. Basically there are a few people that are just not invited; Groups that can use their talents to make an awesome car from nothing with nothing. Groups that are capable of drivings the pants off of anything. Groups that are shy. Groups that are in any way not poor.

I've been meaning to reply to this but never got around to it.

Doing a lot with a little is what LeMons is about. The Metro-Gnome had a motorcycle engine swapped into a Geo Metro and won the race. You are not guarenteed to get the curse based on your mechanical ability. But show up with an LS1 in a Starlet, you will gather attention.

The "groups" that you think are not invited are silly. Shy groups? Nope. Unsocial groups maybe. But if after some great close racing on track with your car, people will come over and shake your hand and have a beer after the day is over. If they get blown off, you just gave them an excuse.

Capable drivers are invited - with the only caveot that this is not a sprint race with seasoned licensed drivers and 10 cars in a mile of track. If you drive like every pass matters and you track out into other peoples line (perfectly acceptable in sprints) to get ahead, you will get a target on your head. It not a matter of being a good driver - it's a matter of not spoiling other peoples fun. Besides, if you are good, you will find other drivers who will be more than willing to mix it up with you.

Groups that are not poor. This is a hard one. They are always more than welcome to come out and race. There are always 18wheel rigs that show up with multiple car haulers. But those cars will get a little more scrutiny from the teams around them. And those people typically run afoul of rule #4. http://jalopnik.com/400309/what-would-smokey-do-24-hours-of-lemons-cheating-tips-from-judge-murilee And that is what has doomed many a team to penalties and dates with the crusher.

friedgreencorrado wrote:

Jensenman wrote: I know that even with Tirewarmer and his damn blackflags, the Taiwanese National Anthem, wrenching on the car, etc I still had a great time and I'll do it again.

Jensenman, ya gotta share. The Taiwanese National Anthem?

It's a term thrown around at Jalopnik for 6-tone car alarms. This is the post that popularized the term.

http://jalopnik.com/5178121/potential-lemons-south-miscreants-beware-the-taiwanese-national-anthem-penalty

Enter the Taiwanese National Anthem. Some of you might be more familiar with its official name: the Six Tone Car Alarm Siren: [....] Where does the name come from? Well, let's get all hypothetical here: Let's say your Taiwanese-American buddy is all upset because some neighbor kids egged his parents' house while shouting out anti-Asian epithets. Further, let's say that research has revealed to a certain future automotive writer that a junkyard-obtained Six Tone Car Alarm Siren will operate for many, many hours- at full volume- via the power of a single 9-volt battery. And, just for the sake of argument, imagine rigging up several Six Tone Car Alarm Sirens with packs of double parallel 9-volt batteries and numerous treble fishhooks on sturdy twine… and there's a tall maple tree right in front of the offending racist egg-throwers' house. Of course, we don't recommend hurling said hook-enabled, battery-powered Six Tone Car Alarm Sirens high into said tree at 3:00 AM on a quiet suburban-Orange-County Monday night, and we especially don't recommend that you and your scurviest hairball cronies stand in the street brandishing tire irons and screaming "SALUTE THE TAIWANESE NATIONAL ANTHEM, MOTHERberkeleyERS!" Yes, a bit of Taiwanese pride, from the sons of Chiang Kai-Shek who gave the world the never-ending gift of the Six Tone Car Alarm Siren

JoeyM wrote: Where does the name come from? Well, let's get all hypothetical here: Let's say your Taiwanese-American buddy is all upset because some neighbor kids egged his parents' house while shouting out anti-Asian epithets. Further, let's say that research has revealed to a certain future automotive writer that a junkyard-obtained Six Tone Car Alarm Siren will operate for many, many hours- at full volume- via the power of a single 9-volt battery. And, just for the sake of argument, imagine rigging up several Six Tone Car Alarm Sirens with packs of double parallel 9-volt batteries and numerous treble fishhooks on sturdy twine… and there's a tall maple tree right in front of the offending racist egg-throwers' house. Of course, we don't recommend hurling said hook-enabled, battery-powered Six Tone Car Alarm Sirens high into said tree at 3:00 AM on a quiet suburban-Orange-County Monday night, and we especially don't recommend that you and your scurviest hairball cronies stand in the street brandishing tire irons and screaming "SALUTE THE TAIWANESE NATIONAL ANTHEM, MOTHERberkeleyERS!" Yes, a bit of Taiwanese pride, from the sons of Chiang Kai-Shek who gave the world the never-ending gift of the Six Tone Car Alarm Siren

Never heard the story but it's funny as hell.

Brings a bit of humor back to a thread that has gotten WAY too serious......

You guys get pretty excited about this. Nearly everyone here who's actually been to a Lemons event loves it. Note that, it's unlike anything you've ever done. Murilee takes awesome pictures, and we are all drooling idiots when it comes to race cars, so they all look "good". Trust me. There are very few machines out there that could even come close to a DD, or any acceptable race car. Most teams have rust spots with bondo, holes, huge creases or dents. Point is, they are not crushing restorable gold out there. Go fight Cash for Clunkers if you think that's what's going on.

For you "SCCA drivers get crushed" types, there is no way, from what I have seen, that driving ability affects the curse voting. Our team votes on these principles: Do we know them to be cool guys? Did they drive like total idiots, or Jeff Gordon on the last lap of whichever race that was for the winston million? Did they piss us off?

Frankly, the standing (number of laps) has never influenced us, although we did look at it before voting.

We vote primarily for jackassery. We won the index once, which rocked, and the heroic fix once, which rocked slightly less, because we went out there and had a great time. We shared food, we shared beer, we showed movies, we helped fix cars, we lent tools. Heck, I even got a no whining penalty which got me taped to three other people, including another team driver (the flaming BMW from the last SC race). We all had smiles on our faces as we walked the paddock in the heat (me with no shoes). My wife doesn't get it. She doesn't come. Please feel free to follow suit.

We also brought a 1966 Volvo Amazon. This helps. No offense, but bringing a perfect race car starting point (rx7, Miata, E30) nudges you closer to the curse. The event isn't about scouring the classifieds to find that C4 corvette that just barely passes under the limit if you sell this and that and weld in whatever. It's about "hey, I have this old Citation..."

It's about "road racing sounds fun, but it's so much money!"

It's about "This road racing stuff is fun, but I hate spending 8,765,777 hours on my Miata to get that extra .003 seconds at blah blah track"

It's fun. Plain and simple. It's about going out there and being ridiculous, and having a ridiculous amount of fun.

Truly, as someone said, there are literally hundreds of entries at each event. At the end of the day, nobody cares that you object. There are plenty of us, no need to ruin the party crying over a wrecked miata. Golly, they only made 7 bazillion of the things, in that color, that year, and that this one had been previously wrapped around a tree and used as a snowplow.

The crux here avoids all of the opinion though, and transcends the arguments, poop, jensan and buzz and a few others here have echoed it. They signed up. They saw the no whining rule like fifty times. Jay beats it into your head a few dozen more at the drivers meetings. They knew about the curse (obviously). Had they been that concerned, they should have changed something. I don't know what it was, I wasn't there. It may be the car was a crazy cheater, it may be the drivers were driving people into the grass, it may be that they stayed in the RV for the whole weekend. I don't care. If that many teams voted, it wasn't for something stupid. I am sure that they all didn't drive THAT much better than EVERY OTHER TEAM. Come on, get real.

Those guys are sore losers. They should never be allowed back at any Lemons event.

-Brian Tunachucker Volvo

tuna55 wrote: You guys get pretty excited about this. Nearly everyone here who's actually been to a Lemons event loves it. Note that, it's unlike anything you've ever done. Murilee takes awesome pictures, and we are all drooling idiots when it comes to race cars, so they all look "good". Trust me. There are very few machines out there that could even come close to a DD, or any acceptable race car. Most teams have rust spots with bondo, holes, huge creases or dents. Point is, they are not crushing restorable gold out there. Go fight Cash for Clunkers if you think that's what's going on. For you "SCCA drivers get crushed" types, there is no way, from what I have seen, that driving ability affects the curse voting. Our team votes on these principles: Do we know them to be cool guys? Did they drive like total idiots, or Jeff Gordon on the last lap of whichever race that was for the winston million? Did they piss us off? Frankly, the standing (number of laps) has never influenced us, although we did look at it before voting. We vote primarily for jackassery. We won the index once, which rocked, and the heroic fix once, which rocked slightly less, because we went out there and had a great time. We shared food, we shared beer, we showed movies, we helped fix cars, we lent tools. Heck, I even got a no whining penalty which got me taped to three other people, including another team driver (the flaming BMW from the last SC race). We all had smiles on our faces as we walked the paddock in the heat (me with no shoes). My wife doesn't get it. She doesn't come. Please feel free to follow suit. We also brought a 1966 Volvo Amazon. This helps. No offense, but bringing a perfect race car starting point (rx7, Miata, E30) nudges you closer to the curse. The event isn't about scouring the classifieds to find that C4 corvette that just barely passes under the limit if you sell this and that and weld in whatever. It's about "hey, I have this old Citation..." It's about "road racing sounds fun, but it's so much money!" It's about "This road racing stuff is fun, but I hate spending 8,765,777 hours on my Miata to get that extra .003 seconds at blah blah track" It's fun. Plain and simple. It's about going out there and being ridiculous, and having a ridiculous amount of fun. Truly, as someone said, there are literally hundreds of entries at each event. At the end of the day, nobody cares that you object. There are plenty of us, no need to ruin the party crying over a wrecked miata. Golly, they only made 7 bazillion of the things, in that color, that year, and that this one had been previously wrapped around a tree and used as a snowplow. The crux here avoids all of the opinion though, and transcends the arguments, poop, jensan and buzz and a few others here have echoed it. They signed up. They saw the no whining rule like fifty times. Jay beats it into your head a few dozen more at the drivers meetings. They knew about the curse (obviously). Had they been that concerned, they should have changed something. I don't know what it was, I wasn't there. It may be the car was a crazy cheater, it may be the drivers were driving people into the grass, it may be that they stayed in the RV for the whole weekend. I don't care. If that many teams voted, it wasn't for something stupid. I am sure that they all didn't drive THAT much better than EVERY OTHER TEAM. Come on, get real. Those guys are sore losers. They should never be allowed back at any Lemons event. -Brian Tunachucker Volvo

• a bunch. He gets it.

tuna55 wrote: You guys get pretty excited about this. Nearly everyone here who's actually been to a Lemons event loves it. Note that, it's unlike anything you've ever done. Murilee takes awesome pictures, and we are all drooling idiots when it comes to race cars, so they all look "good". Trust me. There are very few machines out there that could even come close to a DD, or any acceptable race car. Most teams have rust spots with bondo, holes, huge creases or dents. Point is, they are not crushing restorable gold out there. Go fight Cash for Clunkers if you think that's what's going on. For you "SCCA drivers get crushed" types, there is no way, from what I have seen, that driving ability affects the curse voting. Our team votes on these principles: Do we know them to be cool guys? Did they drive like total idiots, or Jeff Gordon on the last lap of whichever race that was for the winston million? Did they piss us off? Frankly, the standing (number of laps) has never influenced us, although we did look at it before voting. We vote primarily for jackassery. We won the index once, which rocked, and the heroic fix once, which rocked slightly less, because we went out there and had a great time. We shared food, we shared beer, we showed movies, we helped fix cars, we lent tools. Heck, I even got a no whining penalty which got me taped to three other people, including another team driver (the flaming BMW from the last SC race). We all had smiles on our faces as we walked the paddock in the heat (me with no shoes). My wife doesn't get it. She doesn't come. Please feel free to follow suit. We also brought a 1966 Volvo Amazon. This helps. No offense, but bringing a perfect race car starting point (rx7, Miata, E30) nudges you closer to the curse. The event isn't about scouring the classifieds to find that C4 corvette that just barely passes under the limit if you sell this and that and weld in whatever. It's about "hey, I have this old Citation..." It's about "road racing sounds fun, but it's so much money!" It's about "This road racing stuff is fun, but I hate spending 8,765,777 hours on my Miata to get that extra .003 seconds at blah blah track" It's fun. Plain and simple. It's about going out there and being ridiculous, and having a ridiculous amount of fun. Truly, as someone said, there are literally hundreds of entries at each event. At the end of the day, nobody cares that you object. There are plenty of us, no need to ruin the party crying over a wrecked miata. Golly, they only made 7 bazillion of the things, in that color, that year, and that this one had been previously wrapped around a tree and used as a snowplow. The crux here avoids all of the opinion though, and transcends the arguments, poop, jensan and buzz and a few others here have echoed it. They signed up. They saw the no whining rule like fifty times. Jay beats it into your head a few dozen more at the drivers meetings. They knew about the curse (obviously). Had they been that concerned, they should have changed something. I don't know what it was, I wasn't there. It may be the car was a crazy cheater, it may be the drivers were driving people into the grass, it may be that they stayed in the RV for the whole weekend. I don't care. If that many teams voted, it wasn't for something stupid. I am sure that they all didn't drive THAT much better than EVERY OTHER TEAM. Come on, get real. Those guys are sore losers. They should never be allowed back at any Lemons event. -Brian Tunachucker Volvo

/thread

and this is why the tunachuckers will never ever get a Curse vote from me.

(and why do people keep bringing up Citations? you wanna see one...show up at Stafford. Schumacher Taxi has got one, and it's a piece of crap.)

Jensenman wrote:

friedgreencorrado wrote:

Jensenman wrote: I know that even with Tirewarmer and his damn blackflags, the Taiwanese National Anthem, wrenching on the car, etc I still had a great time and I'll do it again.

Jensenman, ya gotta share. The Taiwanese National Anthem?

The LeMons judges are nothing if not inventive. The TNA consisted of a HUGE Taiwanese national flag on a PVC pipe pole which had to be attached to the car. Let me tell you, over ~50 MPH that was a distractin' SOB with all the popping and flapping. Now, if that wasn't enough we also had to attach a car alarm siren to the car and it had to be going as long as the car was moving. I bet we were nearly as aggravating as the Curse Mustang. Pic available here: http://jalopnik.com/5199210/ Yes, that's my driver doing his best to punt the CMP Mafia into the woods. IIRC, there's a couple of YouTubes floating around where you can hear that damn siren in the background.

I'd heard of the judges' ..uh..inventiveness, but I just thought giving guys laps was all there was to it. That's insane. And I mean that in a good way. Y'all just remind me not to bring something I'd hate so see crushed. Da Rulez is Da Rulez, I guess!

tuna, thank you for summing it up way better than I ever could. Our first effort started with Toyman saying: 'I got an '86 Thunderbird sitting in a field on Edisto Island...' and went downhill from there.

Thread I started about the Curse:

http://forums.24hoursoflemons.com/viewtopic.php?id=434&p=1

Some interesting observations.

poopshovel wrote: seeing that car on the straights...then seeing the headers as it was crushed...then seeing the video where they pretty much bragged about bringing a nuclear weapon to a knife fight, I didn't feel too bad about them getting the curse. That being said, we didn't vote for them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj_xfyOwK40&feature=channel_page

1:35...

I dont agree with the cheating and poor sportmanship at all, but I would still never participate becasue onf the crushing rule. If you bring a really crappy car and dont put much work into it, then that part of it is ok (although putting more work into building a better performing car and putting more effort into decorating it would imo be more fun), but the main problem is its not only $500 you have to be willing to lose, but more like $1000-$1500 when you include the price of the cage as well (which was destroyed in any of the videos from the events I have seen). I know some people can afford to blow that much money on having fun for a weekend, but I think it would keep alot of people from doing it.

Well, if there's 70 entries then you have a 1 in 70 chance of getting Cursed. Most gamblers will lay $ on 50/50 odds so that ain't bad.

I'd be a lot more concerned about the car getting clobbered on course; ours was hit from behind at a pretty good speed differential.

Jensenman wrote: I'd be a lot more concerned about the car getting clobbered on course; ours was hit from behind at a pretty good speed differential.

I saw a video of the hit but can't find it now. Have you seen it and can you post it?

Travis_K wrote: I dont agree with the cheating and poor sportmanship at all, but I would still never participate becasue onf the crushing rule. If you bring a really crappy car and dont put much work into it, then that part of it is ok (although putting more work into building a better performing car and putting more effort into decorating it would imo be more fun), but the main problem is its not only $500 you have to be willing to lose, but more like $1000-$1500 when you include the price of the cage as well (which was destroyed in any of the videos from the events I have seen). I know some people can afford to blow that much money on having fun for a weekend, but I think it would keep alot of people from doing it.

In any wheel-to-wheel racing, if you take a hard hit in your car (enough to tweak your cage), it's going to cost a that much money just to get it functional again. Relatively speaking, it's a lot cheaper to have your LeMons car totally destroyed than it is to take one hard hit in your Spec Miata. With that said, I think if you're out there to have fun, the odds of getting your car crushed are really, really low. The only teams that have had their cars truly destroyed deserved it...some teams that deserved crushing AND got the people's curse still didn't get their cars rendered useless. Reference: 5 speed P71 that was literally the fastest car on the track at Thunderhill '08. Won People's Curse and was back on the track setting fastest lap of the event within an hour of its visit with an excavator. Jay didn't think they deserved crushing (even though the "people" did) so he told the crusher to take it easy on them. Many suspect politics were involved, after hearing the stories it's hard to believe otherwise. This kind of chapped my ass, actually, as I wanted to see the car crushed. The people's curse is the only way I can see keeping cheater$ in check, and without that part of the system it's easy for budget$ to get carried away. It was totally obvious at Thunderhill '08 that way too many people were spending outside of the $500, which takes the fun out of it for me.

At Flat Rock, the People's curse went to another cop car. This cop car was also not crushed, it was back on the track in short order. I have no idea why this car got the curse, there were other teams driving way, way worse. This cop car was also out to earn money for a charity, they earned something like 3 grand for their charity, so everybody was totally fine seeing them back out on the track.

Fearing LeMons because you think your car will get crushed is silly. Fearing it because it's actually no longer a race of $500 beaters is much more realistic.

Bryce

I'm planning on entering my first Lemons soon. I've read the rules and understand "Crushing rule".. I don't like it and would suggest that if your car is "Chosen" you be paid $1,000 for the car. I would hate to see my car destroyed since my $500 has none of my BWT in the price.

Not the point of the curse... You get nothing. You raced and got your moneys worth. There will be other teams whose race is finished before the cursed car is crushed. What happened is a team was a bunch of a$$e$ and got thier communal buts kicked off the island. Don't bring it unless you can live with losing it.

My team has had 7 entries and except for the first time, we are not afraid of getting the curse. Remember that now there is also a "None of the above" option to the crushing so a Curse is not guarenteed to happen.

clownkiller wrote:

poopshovel wrote: seeing that car on the straights...then seeing the headers as it was crushed...then seeing the video where they pretty much bragged about bringing a nuclear weapon to a knife fight, I didn't feel too bad about them getting the curse. That being said, we didn't vote for them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj_xfyOwK40&feature=channel_page 1:35...

It's hard to feel sorry for the guy after he admits to having $5k in the car.

rlrobian wrote: I'm planning on entering my first Lemons soon. I've read the rules and understand "Crushing rule".. I don't like it and would suggest that if your car is "Chosen" you be paid $1,000 for the car. I would hate to see my car destroyed since my $500 has none of my BWT in the price.

This would be the response you'd receive on the LeMons board:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmXri8ZCKjc&feature=PlayList&p=00FDD0C4E5DC6254&index=0

Don't spend a gazillion dollars on your car. Don't drive like dicks. No one will berkeley with you. Easy enough? Also keep in mind that you're putting the car on the track with 50 or 60 people, most of which have never gone wheel to wheel. Your car is not going to come through unscathed. Get used to the idea.