By Kevin Redden

By now, you’ve probably heard of the 24 Hours of LeMons race (yes, that’s LeMons)—stories about it have appeared in many magazines over the last year or so.  It started out as a single race once a year in California.  Here’s the description from the LeMons web site:

The 24 Hours of LeMons is a weekend-long race for cars purchased, fixed up, and track-prepped for total of $500 or less.  Each team may also face qualifying rounds such as the Marxist Parking Valet, the Widdling Rottweiler Slalom, and/or the Stoney Bike-Messenger Shooting Gallery.  Generally, track racing consists of two endurance sessions, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, with a late-night intermission for sleeping, eating, and Band-Aid application in between.  Count on plenty of noise, prizes, water fights, and questionably civilized fun before, during, and after the track sessions.  Finally, assuming you're still standing, there's the gala awards ceremony which presents trophies, plaques, and winner's purses paid out in nickels.

This year, they have increased the number of events to seven—well, actually only six now since, once the staff at the upper-crusty Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Pahrump, Nevada, figured out who they had signed up, they told the LeMons people to get lost and canceled the event!  One of the six events is happening in our neighborhood—it will be at the Stafford Springs Speedway in Connecticut on Aug 23-24!
 

How It All Began

A few of us car geeks where I work (myself, fellow AONE member Brian Shorey, and guys named Lon, Tom, and Greg) had started discussing the possibility of taking part in a 24 Hours of LeMons race when we found out that they were going to have one on the East Coast.  I had been thinking that something like this would have been fun, but didn’t realize that they were going to have one on our coast until Tom sent around the main link to the LeMons web site.  I happened to look at the events tab on the site and saw that they were going to run one in Connecticut in August of this year.

Once we realized that, we decided in short order to form a team and go for it.  We started trolling through the local MA and NH Craigslists looking for something interesting for $500 or less.  The race rules require that the cost of the car and any prep (except for roll-cage, tires, belts, and brakes) not exceed $500, with some allowances for any parts you manage to sell.  Our main requirement was that the car had to have a stick shift; other than that, we were open to just about anything.

I’m constantly trolling Craigslist and the AlfaBB for local, cheap Milanos.  It must have been a sign that we were destined for this race since, literally two days after we decided to enter the race, a Verde came up for sale locally for (you guessed it) $500!  Even more coincidental is that the car was located only sixteen miles due west of the track where the event is being run!

Here is one of the pics I got from the seller prior to heading out to see the car:

The seller said that the car had been sitting for a couple of years but had run well when parked (I was a little skeptical, having heard that before).  It was a 1988 Verde with about 150K miles on it.  He also said that it had some rear wheel arch rust issues as well as a rust hole in the spare tire tub.  The front Recaros had been in bad shape and were replaced with some aftermarket seats, and the rear seats just had some similar cloth draped over them.  He also said that the sunroof was duct taped shut on the top, as it was missing the sealing gasket.  He said that he was the second owner.  The car was only about two hours away from my home in NH and, at worst, sounded like it would be a good solid parts car.  But it had the potential to be quite a bit better than that, so I decided to run over to have a look.

I went to see it on Saturday, January 19th.  The rust in the rear arches on the passenger side wasn’t that bad; on the driver side, though, you could see a fist-sized hole when you opened the rear door.  The aftermarket seats were mounted quite high and caused me to have to bend my neck so my head would almost touch my shoulder when sitting in the seats—not a great driving position!  I have a big enough problem in my other Verde when wearing a helmet, having to recline the seat more than I would like so the top of the helmet isn’t wedged against the roof, but I digress. 

The engine bay was rather dirty, but it had been sitting for quite a while, so no biggie.  I noticed a couple of interesting things about the engine:  All of the cars I’ve seen with that kind of mileage on them have had the original-style hydraulic tensioners replaced with the newer-style mechanical ones; this car still had the hydraulic type.  The other even more interesting thing is that this car still had the ignition retard sensor connected!  More info on this sensor can be found at http://www.hiperformancestore.com/Ljetronic.htm (step 3).  An interesting quote from that site:

“I should point out that not all Alfa V6s have the coolant temp to ignition sensor.  No GTV6 prior to 1984 has it.  All ‘84-‘86 GTV6s do have it, and if you own a Milano you just have to look and see if it’s there.  Officially, they stopped putting them on Milanos in 1987; however, I have heard of some 1988s having it.  To add even more confusion, the factory admits “inadvertently” installing them on some Milanos in 1989!”

It appears that this is one of those few ‘88s.  One front and one rear tire were flat, and the pump that the seller had couldn’t reach them with the way his other cars were situated in his driveway (it was one of those types you have to plug into a cigarette lighter in a car), so I wasn’t able to see if the car would roll.  I wanted to check this, since the last cheap (actually free) Verde we picked up had the rear breaks frozen after sitting for ten years, so it was a really tough job to get it into the trailer!  I decided to chance it anyway, as things didn’t look bad from underneath.  I wanted to try to start the car, but the battery was dead and it was very cold and dark, so I didn’t have the energy to get him to move all of the cars and get my jumper cables out.  I figured it didn’t really matter, since the car was easily worth the money even if it didn’t run.  At this point, I wasn’t sure if this was our LeMons car, but I definitely wanted it at least as an excellent source for spares, if not as a second Verde driver.

I completed the deal with the seller and went home with only the title and a thinner wallet.  I’d be back in the next week or two to drag it away.
 

Picking up the Verde

After hearing my report of the car’s condition after my visit, we decided that it would be a good candidate for our LeMons car.  Brian and I took his trailer out to CT on Monday, the 21st.  The seller lived on a rather busy four-lane street, so it was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to back the trailer into his driveway.  It wasn’t even clear whether the whole rig would fit without sticking out into the street anyway.

We got there around 6 pm and decided that we’d first try to start the car and see if we could drive it to the trailer.  So we dropped the trailer off at a Best Buy lot a half mile from the house and then drove over to see if we could start it using jumpers from the truck.  The seller had managed to fill the tires and they were still holding air, so that was going to make our job a lot easier!  We hooked up the jumpers and I tried starting the Verde; it was turning over but not catching.  The fuel gauge was showing empty, but the seller had a small can of gas in his shed and he put in less than a half gallon.  As soon as he did that, the engine started to sputter, and it caught and ran for a few seconds.  It did that a few more times but I couldn’t get it to stay running.

It was quite dark and frigid, so we decided that we were too cold to continue trying to get it to run and we’d just tow it to the trailer.  We were in a much-too-built-up area to chance towing a dead Milano a half mile down a major street, so we decided to pick up the trailer and park it someplace closer.  There was a side street only a short distance down from the seller’s driveway where we had enough room to park the truck and trailer.  The only problem was that it was a left out of his driveway instead of a right.

Here is a picture of us just about to hook up the tow rope:

The Verde was nose-in, so we were going to have to drag it out backwards.  The truck was parked with its nose at the tail of the Verde so that the jumper cables would reach.  We were too lazy to turn the truck around, so we hooked the tow rope between the front of it and the Dedion tube on the Verde.  I sat in the Verde to get ready to steer it and quickly realized that I wouldn’t be able to see anything—the inside of all the glass was covered with that really fine ice that is almost impossible to scrape off, and since we had no defroster I couldn’t melt it that way.  I managed to scrape just enough off the inside of the windshield to have a little porthole to see through, but as soon as I exhaled the condensation from my breath filled it in.  I gave up, and we decided to wing it and go slow.  The other problem was that there wasn’t enough power to get any of the windows down, so I wasn’t going to be able to hear anyone yelling either (the truck is a diesel and quite loud when only fifteen feet behind
me).

We decided to make sure that the car would roll and that nothing was frozen, so Brian started reversing in the truck and gave the Verde a tug—it rolled easily!  I took that opportunity to test the brakes as well so I wouldn’t end up backing into him if he stopped (not that I would know he was stopping, since his headlights were facing me and not his brake lights!).  They worked well too; this was looking like it was going to be a lot easier than the last one.

The plan was for Brian to back out of the driveway and back the wrong way down the four-lane road when there was a break in the traffic, pulling me backwards into the side street; after that we’d push the car into the trailer.  Seemed simple enough, except that I wouldn’t be able to see anything or know when Brian was turning or stopping.  The seller also cautioned us that the police were in the area quite often.  Piece of cake!

Brian pulled us to the point where the truck was at the entrance of the driveway, where we stopped.  (I did this part with the door open, so I at least had some idea of where we were.)  We had the seller and his son stationed at the side of the road, ready to tell us when there was a break in the traffic.  There was a light at the corner we were trying to get to, so we thought it would be best when that light was red and no one was waiting for it.  That ended up coming pretty quickly, so Brian started pulling us out and I started turning; I felt the rear wheels transition from the ramp part of the driveway into the road.  I didn’t realize that Brian wanted to pull us a little farther out into the outer lane, so I cranked the wheel a little too sharply and ended up beside him!  Right at this time, a whole herd of cars was pulling up to that light, so we had to keep moving.  Luckily, the tow rope didn’t fall off there, so he slowly moved back and got behind me again, and we started off down the road backwards and against traffic.  Then the light turned green—we had a couple of cars pass by us in the outer lane, while the ones in our lane had no choice but to wait.  Luckily, the guy in the front of the line must have figured out what we were doing and sat at the light and didn’t pull up—that could have made things a lot more complicated! 

Brian picked up the pace a bit and started turning into the side street, and I started turning when I saw his lights changing direction.  This time we weren’t so lucky.  I must have started catching up to him, which created some slack in the tow rope, because it fell off.  Since I couldn’t see where I was at all, I hit the brakes and stopped.  Turned out that most of the car was still sticking out into the traffic lane!  The seller and his son ran over and pushed me backwards the rest of the way into the side street.  After that little adventure, the rest went quite smoothly—we hooked the truck back up to the trailer and pushed the car through a three-point turn to get it turned around, and then pushed it easily into the trailer and brought it back to Brian’s barn.

We were pretty sure that the car just didn’t have enough gas in it, given how it started to catch just as soon as a little was poured in.  So, a few days later, Brian put the battery on a charger and poured in a couple of gallons of gas.  The next day, he tried to start it but it still wouldn’t start.  He poked around under the hood a little bit and found that the battery cables weren’t tight enough on the battery posts, so the battery wasn’t actually being charged.  He tightened them down and put the jumper cables back on (instead of waiting for the battery to charge) and turned the key—the engine roared to life!  It was stumbling at idle (probably due to that stupid ignition retard sensor), but once it warmed up it was running smoothly.  Excellent news!  We now had a running car as our baseline.
 

Preparing the Car

We held several team sessions where we all showed up at Brian’s barn to strip most of the stuff out of the car that won’t be needed for the race, and most of the special “Verde” bits that we don’t want broken (we still have some of the body stuff to go).

The first challenge was to get the car up on the lift.  Turned out that both of the front side jack points were rusted completely away, but at least the rears were okay.  We were able to make do by placing double-stacked 2×6 planks across the car in the location of the missing jack points.  Don’t try this with only one board!  We did that first and, after hearing the gunshot sound of the board breaking under the strain, we decided to double-stack them!

We decided to remove the ABS stuff and convert the car to a non-ABS brake setup.  Two weeks before, I took on the task of removing the booster/master cylinder while the rest of the team worked on other parts of the car.  I had never done this task before so “wanted” to learn how to do it, having heard how nasty it was to get the nuts off the studs under the dash.  Our setup was a little easier than most, in that all of the seats had been removed, so I could lie on my back to get at them.  I had forgotten to bring my ratcheting wrenches, so was stuck using regular wrenches—not recommended!  It took me a little over two hours to get two of the five nuts off, with lots of scraped knuckles and cursing.

While I was doing that, Lon was working on trying to get the rear glass out in one piece, scraping away at the gasket and adhesive—also a painful and slow process!  By the end, there were four of us working at it with screwdrivers, wire, and a heat gun.  We finally got it out in one piece after about two hours!

In another session, I was tasked with getting the non-ABS booster/master cylinder bolted in.  This time, I remembered to bring my ratcheting wrenches.  We thought that the non-ABS one would just plug in with the studs being in the same location—well, that isn’t the case.  It turns out that the two top studs are offset about an inch from the ABS version and are about a half inch lower.  So Tom and Lon made a template and Lon drilled the new holes.  I had prepped the studs and nuts by using a tap and die on them as well as lubing the studs with some penetrating oil, with the hope of being able to spin the nuts on easily most of the way once I was actually able to get them onto the studs.  Well, it worked for a couple of the easy-to-reach ones, but a couple of the studs had their threads munged up a bit by a couple of the team “gently” trying to persuade the unit in.  Of course, the two hardest-to-reach studs were the ones with the munged threads, so it still took me about an hour to get it all bolted down.

Here are a few shots of the car after we had stripped most of the stuff off:

More progress and structural plastic?

Our goal one week was to get the hole in the driver floor pan fixed, the brakes plumbed, the seats back in, and the car going again for a few test runs on a local private road.  Well, things didn’t go exactly as planned, but we did make some progress.

Brian was in charge of finishing the brake plumbing, so he bought some short brake lines that we could tie into the lines that had been used for the ABS setup as well as a bending tool.  He made quick progress and got the lines all in and looking nice in short order.

Since I was the only one who had ever touched a MIG welder and just happened to have one (but don’t have much practice!), I was in charge of fixing the holes in the driver and passenger floor pans.  Before doing the welding, I needed to chip away some of the sound-deadening material.  As I started to do so, the rot turned out to be a little more extensive than we initially thought.  We decided to use the door skins from a couple of old Alfetta doors that Brian didn’t want anymore for the patch material.  Tom worked at getting the glass and other door hardware off the doors, and then Lon helped to grind off the door skins.  Due to the nature of the rot, we decided that the best course of action was to start the patch at the top of the door sill/rocker area, then down the side of the sill, and finally across about 15″ of the floor pan (ending up being an exaggerated Z shape).  These bends were going to be a little too difficult to do freehand, so Lon brought them home to do on his father’s sheet metal brake, and we wouldn’t be able to get those tacked in until one of the next sessions.

While I was chipping off the sound-deadening material on the floor pans and grinding off the primer, Lon was removing the lower Verde side skirts.  We found another surprise—it turned out that the plastic drivers side skirt was apparently a structural piece on this car!  Most of the rocker metal was rusted out and fell in a heap on the floor when Lon removed the skirt.  Looked like more welding would be in order…

Tom & Lon grinding off the door skins:

Drivers side floor rot:

Me cutting the door skin to size, Greg taking it easy (as usual):

It appears that the plastic side skirt was holding things together:

Where We Stand Now

We have submitted our application to the LeMons crew and are eagerly awaiting word whether we got in or not (it’s not a sure thing!).  We have been holding off sinking any real money into the car (such as for a roll cage and harnesses) until we hear back.  Until then, we’ll keep plugging away at the car—hopefully, we’ll have something we can run at our Autocross on May 31!  It would be a great shakedown event for the car.

There is at least one other team consisting of at least one other AONE member considering running a Milano.  Theirs is currently a non-runner so a little more risky—no word yet on whether they are going for it!

Our friends in the Jag club are also planning on running a car in the event—they managed to dig up a free XJ-40!

You can follow our progress in the Blog I’m keeping at http://alfamilano.com/wordpress/.  The LeMons website is http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/.  And we’ll keep you posted in future issues of Velocissima!

To second installment ->

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