24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda

Posted By: tallzag

24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/29/12 04:49 AM

Rocket Restorations has been campaigning a 1967 Plymouth Fury in the 24 Hours of Lemons for 5 years but the car got wrecked last year and we decided to build a new car with a little less weight (well if you call dropping almost 1,000 pounds a little). The car started out as a 225 Slant 6 with a factory 4 speed, we ended up dropping in a 170 slant 6 for multiple reasons.

For those who don't know what the 24 Hours of Lemons is you have to buy, build and enter a car for only $500. This does not include safety which encompasses cage, seat, wheels, tires, brakes, ball joints, fuel cell, etc. Will go through areas where we spent money and did not spend money.

We have a ton of time into this thing with a bunch of fabrication. We will be showing what we did with the build over the next week with pictures. We are not aware of anybody else trying what we did, still can't believe we pulled it off. If anybody is going to Vegas, Spring Fling or the Spring Fling track day the car will be at both. Stay tuned for more.

Posted By: amxautox

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/29/12 04:55 AM

And be sure to read the thread in the General Forum.

https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/show...e=0#Post7139693

Posted By: Mattax

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/29/12 12:23 PM

There's been at least a few rear wheel drive Chrysler pieces entered in Lemons and Chump races. The first I was aware of was presumably yours. Five years is a pretty darn good run considering the premise.

Then the next one that I know of actually making making it to a start was probably Frieberger's junkie Fury. This year has a slant six powered E30 that ran at Carolina and the LeMonster this past weekend in California.

Posted By: HotRodDave

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/29/12 04:16 PM

No way they are gonna let that fly as a $500 car, they will crush it at 1/2 time

When I was there in a ford escort they made us find some in comparable condition around $500 that was pretty hard even with a salvage title... gonna be impossible to do that with a barracuda that nice, I would pay tripple that for one like it right now.

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/30/12 02:13 AM

First off let me address the $500 issue, everybody who looks at the car says "it can't be worth $500" and "it will be crushed." Well Lemons doesn't crush cars anymore, it's still in the rules but they haven't done it in two years so that is a moot point. We won Index of Effluency (the highest award in Lemons and is for doing the best with the least worthy race car imaginable) in our first race and that should tell you what the organizers thought about the car. As for the $500 value we'll get into that in a minute. Here is our Facebook fan page if anyone wants to read way more than you probably will ever want to about the car:

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Team-Oly-Express/207144609354407

So on to purchase price. We got the Barracuda given to us (I know, I know, you don't believe us). Let us explain, it was given to us as long as we did some work for the owner on his Valiant Wagon and gave him a bunch of the parts back off the thing including the rear bumper, hood, grill, front bucket seats, and the rocker moldings. We ended up having about three hours into working on this car (changing out hood, rear bumper, grill and changing the wiper pivot seals at $60 an hour) so we have $180 plus $10 for the wiper pivot seal kit into our initial purchase price of the car. The car was listed on CL locally for 6 months by the owner at $1k and nobody bought it. Will go into why on the next post.

The owner thought by turning it into a race car it would be going to a better fate than parting it out.

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/30/12 02:30 AM

Now onto why this was a $500 car that was given to us. In a word it was BEAT. It spent a lot of time in the Midwest (it had Kansas plates come with it) and everywhere we looked we found either rust or bondo. Here are some pictures showing the damage:

Here is what we found when we took out the front suspension, the front frame rail was completely rusted out.

We had to cut the 1/4's and flare them for wheel clearance and this was what was under the decent looking paint, galvanized panels brazes on covered in a 1/2 inch of bondo.

Here is the back of the front frame rail.

1/4 panel extension that has galvanized tin pop riveted in place with lots of undercoating over it to hide the work.

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/30/12 02:35 AM

It's hard to see in this photo but the car had a hard rear end hit at some point and both frame rails are kinked pretty bad at the top in the wheel house.

When we got it here it barely ran, the carb leaked like crazy and the oil idiot light came on at idle. This one looked good from 30 feet but the beauty was only skin deep.

Next chapter will be what do you do with rusty frame rails on a Barracuda race car?

Posted By: Supercuda

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/30/12 03:20 AM

Quote:

Next chapter will be what do you do with rusty frame rails on a Barracuda race car?

Pop rivet galvanized tin and undercoat it?

Posted By: dart4forte

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/30/12 04:54 AM

Quote:

Rocket Restorations has been campaigning a 1967 Plymouth Fury in the 24 Hours of Lemons for 5 years but the car got wrecked last year and we decided to build a new car with a little less weight (well if you call dropping almost 1,000 pounds a little). The car started out as a 225 Slant 6 with a factory 4 speed, we ended up dropping in a 170 slant 6 for multiple reasons.

For those who don't know what the 24 Hours of Lemons is you have to buy, build and enter a car for only $500. This does not include safety which encompasses cage, seat, wheels, tires, brakes, ball joints, fuel cell, etc. Will go through areas where we spent money and did not spend money.

We have a ton of time into this thing with a bunch of fabrication. We will be showing what we did with the build over the next week with pictures. We are not aware of anybody else trying what we did, still can't believe we pulled it off. If anybody is going to Vegas, Spring Fling or the Spring Fling track day the car will be at both. Stay tuned for more.

So who did the cage? Looks like an S&W

Posted By: dangina

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/30/12 06:15 AM

I'd race it!

Posted By: Kern Dog

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/30/12 06:21 AM

The reshaped rear wheel arch looks great. It gives the car a much better look compared to the stodgy original design.

Posted By: Mr.Yuck

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/30/12 01:24 PM

Like I said on the other post great car. I bet the /6 runs forever.
Anybody in the Md/Va/Pa area want to do one? I'll buy the car.

Posted By: Mr.Yuck

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/30/12 01:25 PM

O.T. How about this?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1966-Plym...=item231b784b66

Attached picture 7142412-$(KGrHqJ,!jgE8)UY7vUeBPbU8SHLhg~~60_12.jpg

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/30/12 06:26 PM

It's getting very hard to get into a Lemons race, they had over 400 people apply for the Sears Point race and 170 cars made it. I guarantee if you have a Valiant you will get in.

Russ at Fabtech in Portland did our cage, the guy is a master. It's all fabricated and adds a ton of stiffness to the car. PM me if you want his contact info.

Posted By: Winchester 73

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 03/31/12 09:57 AM

id love to do this but im not sure i would spend the ten grand on the cage work and about five grang on safety gear for a so called 500$car. even if i could afford it.

Posted By: Mr.Yuck

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/02/12 02:45 PM

Quote:

id love to do this but im not sure i would spend the ten grand on the cage work and about five grang on safety gear for a so called 500$car. even if i could afford it.

not sure where you get 10k for a cage and 5k for safety. Seem slike a lot of thos guys use stock parts for the most part. Now the car pictured has had a lot of upgrades but I don't think you need to go that far. If I do it I'm not. Basic man disc brakes, front end rebuild, good shocks, 15x7's and 245/60's....Along w/ some engine upgrades. I'd think you could have a fun racer for $2500. I might even make it legal for the "street stock" class we have here. That way I'd get to use the car more.

Posted By: TC@HP2

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/02/12 07:46 PM

Agreed. Even if you had it all done, that is only a couple grand worth of cage work. Do it yourself and its only a couple hundred. Safety gear, well, I'd prefer to stack the odds in my favor regardless of cost. The organizers tend to agree which is why it is not included in the cost of the car. Even then, I'd venture a guess to say no more than a couple of grand to include the helmet and possibly a firesuit.

When you talk about $500 cars, you have to spend some time looking at the details in accounting of it all - what you buy and sell off the car itself, what is average market value of used pieces you have on it, etc. Sure, if you went out and bought all brand new pieces of all the parts on any of those cars, you could easily rack up $5000, but that's not how its done.

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/03/12 02:05 AM

For the build of the car we have about $3k into it and the race was also about $3k, so $6k total for the first race, the next ones will be cheaper since we do not have to build the car again. It's cheap racing but cheap racing is still expensive.

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/03/12 02:38 AM

As tempting as it was to pop rivet galvanized tin and undercoat the frame rails we opted for a better route, an entire B-Body front end!

Attached picture 7148801-DSC05198s.jpg

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/03/12 02:43 AM

Since we were going to recycle pretty much everything from the old 67 Fury Lemons car we brain stormed what was the best way to get the taller C-Body spindle in the car so we could use the 12 inch by 1 1/4 inch rotor with the Viper 4 piston brembo calipers. The entire front end of the car is B-Body, the frame rails, K-Member, all the suspension, shock towers, everything but the spindle. This was not an easy swap, A LOT of stuff had to be modified welded to make this work. The frame rails go all the way back to the torsion bar crossmember and we z'd the front of the rails where the bumper brackets mount so we could keep the stock front bumper and front end. Here is a shot with everything cut out and we are about to put in the B-Body rails.

Attached picture 7148809-DSC05192s.jpg

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/03/12 02:45 AM

Having front bars on the cage really helped to stiffen things up.

Attached picture 7148820-DSC05196s.jpg

Posted By: cudazappa

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/03/12 03:06 AM

Terrific job on this Early A!!!

Makes me want to buy my 64 'cuda back to do this to it! (except enter it in a Lemons Race)

Posted By: Winchester 73

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/04/12 06:36 AM

Quote:

Quote:

id love to do this but im not sure i would spend the ten grand on the cage work and about five grang on safety gear for a so called 500$car. even if i could afford it.

not sure where you get 10k for a cage and 5k for safety. Seem slike a lot of thos guys use stock parts for the most part. Now the car pictured has had a lot of upgrades but I don't think you need to go that far. If I do it I'm not. Basic man disc brakes, front end rebuild, good shocks, 15x7's and 245/60's....Along w/ some engine upgrades. I'd think you could have a fun racer for $2500. I might even make it legal for the "street stock" class we have here. That way I'd get to use the car more.

think they would sell that car for 25hun?

it just seems to me that the point is lost.i feel bad for anyone who shows up at that race with a 5 hun dollor car.so i guess if you had a built track car that was origionaly a 500 dollor shell and you sell the expensive race engine and put in a bullit proof lo po stocker youd qualify?evrything else IS safety equipment on a race car.

Posted By: Winchester 73

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/04/12 06:55 AM

Quote:

Agreed. Even if you had it all done, that is only a couple grand worth of cage work. Do it yourself and its only a couple hundred. Safety gear, well, I'd prefer to stack the odds in my favor regardless of cost. The organizers tend to agree which is why it is not included in the cost of the car. Even then, I'd venture a guess to say no more than a couple of grand to include the helmet and possibly a firesuit.

When you talk about $500 cars, you have to spend some time looking at the details in accounting of it all - what you buy and sell off the car itself, what is average market value of used pieces you have on it, etc. Sure, if you went out and bought all brand new pieces of all the parts on any of those cars, you could easily rack up $5000, but that's not how its done.

i dont care what you guys say i think lemons is headed down the road of the fastest streetcar shootouts of the 90s.think about it if a guy builds a tube chasis car and throws a junk car door on it would it qualify?what wouldent qualify?

Posted By: Mr.Yuck

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/04/12 01:52 PM

Quote:

Quote:

Quote:

id love to do this but im not sure i would spend the ten grand on the cage work and about five grang on safety gear for a so called 500$car. even if i could afford it.

not sure where you get 10k for a cage and 5k for safety. Seem slike a lot of thos guys use stock parts for the most part. Now the car pictured has had a lot of upgrades but I don't think you need to go that far. If I do it I'm not. Basic man disc brakes, front end rebuild, good shocks, 15x7's and 245/60's....Along w/ some engine upgrades. I'd think you could have a fun racer for $2500. I might even make it legal for the "street stock" class we have here. That way I'd get to use the car more.

think they would sell that car for 25hun?

it just seems to me that the point is lost.i feel bad for anyone who shows up at that race with a 5 hun dollor car.so i guess if you had a built track car that was origionaly a 500 dollor shell and you sell the expensive race engine and put in a bullit proof lo po stocker youd qualify?evrything else IS safety equipment on a race car.

no I'm saying I would build one for $2500... The 64 is way more than I'd do. They are actually trying to win, I'd just want to go out and have fun. All you need is the cage, you don't have to upgrade the brakes, tires, rims and so on. I'd show up w/ the best 2 sets of used tires I could find and go. Did you see some of the other cars in the race????

Posted By: TC@HP2

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/04/12 03:35 PM

Quote:

i dont care what you guys say i think lemons is headed down the road of the fastest streetcar shootouts of the 90s.

I disagree. Fastest street car was always about getting and being the fastest. It became an ever escalating means of going faster. Lemons, or any other crap can racing event, is more about attrition than speed. As a point of reference, IMCA has run very strict, budget limited oval track racing programs for decades and they have not only survived, but thrived and are now a huge grassroots sanctioning body that has member tracks all over the coutnry and many thousands of registered participants. The Lemons, GR20XX, and other low budget race series are setting themselves up in very similar manners and they will likely continue to grow.

Quote:

think about it if a guy builds a tube chasis car and throws a junk car door on it would it qualify?what wouldent qualify?

In Lemons, no, that wouldn't qualify because there are specifics around the types of build ups allowed. Close reading of the rules would clarify that for you and if you blatently violate the intent of the rules, then you hold yourself up to disqualification or loss. They have refused entry for cars they were deemed to not follow the intent of these rules.

Will it eventually evolve to tube chassis stuff, I doubt it. There are still too many rust bucket, cheap ass cars out there that they are targeting for this type of racing. As participants we may have to alter our thinking about RWD V8s as race cars if we want to continue to participate in these types of events.

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/04/12 06:44 PM

The beauty about what we did to this car is it didn't cost us anything. I will freely admit it is an advantage to own a resto shop and take on a project like this. The front frame rails we put into the car were from a left over project that was done 5 years ago. We had a customer buy a 68 Belvedere just for the trunk, 1/4's and wheel tubs but did not need the front frame rails. The entire front frame rails and firewall have just been sitting in the corner of the shop all these years but since the customer paid for them it was free to us. We have a lot of fabrication into this build but almost no money, which is the point of Lemons.

The series will never turn into a tube chassis race, the organizers won't allow it. If you are into it to win you are missing the point. The top prize in Lemons is the Index of Effluency which goes to the car that did the best while starting out with the worst car, we have won this twice. The IOE comes with the biggest prize because that is what the organizers want to see raced. We knew we didn't have a prayer of winning at Sears Point but we sure had fun mixing it up with a Toyota Paseo with a 1.5 liter motor, a Datsun B210 Honey Bee, 3 VW Bugs, a 67 Belvedere, a 72 Scamp w/ a slant 6 and an MG convertible.

Posted By: 340duster340

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/05/12 02:41 AM

sweet ride. would love to see more pics of the front end splice.

Posted By: Jjs72D

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/05/12 09:40 AM

I'm curious of what the advantages are of the frame rail swap.
Jeff

Posted By: pro451bee

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/05/12 04:27 PM

Bigger and stronger B body parts and wider track to boot seems like a very clever plan .Then weld ,gusset and beef every thing into a ridged structure .Thank you for sharing, More pics please .

Posted By: pro451bee

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/05/12 04:28 PM

How did you mate the C body brakes ?

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/05/12 06:08 PM

Quote:

Bigger and stronger B body parts and wider track to boot seems like a very clever plan .Then weld ,gusset and beef every thing into a ridged structure .

Exactly, will post more pictures later today. Since the frame rails were toast anyways why not upgrade the whole set-up? It also made it easier to use the C-Body spindles.

Posted By: bobby66

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/06/12 02:09 AM

That thing was rough. Nice job!

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/06/12 06:40 AM

Here are a couple more pictures. This was not an easy swap, it took almost two weeks of working every night to get this done. A lot of things had to move/be modified to work.

Attached picture 7153447-DSC05228s.jpg

Posted By: tallzag

Re: 24 Hours of Lemons 1964 Barracuda - 04/06/12 06:47 AM

Apparently we were sponsored by Dr. Pepper or something.

Attached picture 7153451-DSC05229s.jpg