LeMons 24: Preparing For Another Season Of Dumbfuckery

As if we hadn’t learned our lesson last year.  For the members of the Brooklyn Bomb Squad, 2014 was, shall we say, character building.  We blew the head gasket, we suffered timing issues, and generally spent most of our time towing the ’89 Audi 100 with the best paint job in history all over the East Coast and almost no time actually racing it.

But because we are special – meaning measurably, demonstrably stupid – we are preparing our comeback to the 24 Hours Of LeMons for 2015.  And this time, instead of the Audi, which has proven itself to have the usefulness of a warm fart on a first date,  we’re bringing… oh, who am I kidding.  We’re bringing the Audi.

This is where the car lives.  Downtown Brooklyn.  Nice, eh?  By the final LeMons race last October, we’d had the Audi’s five cylinder head rebuilt, and the car was actually showing a bit of speed.  But it kept falling on its face.  We only ran for 20 minutes at a time before some ignition issue would force the car back into the pits.  So we are determined to get to the bottom of the ignition issue before we go anywhere near a racetrack.  So team captain Jay and I hooked up the trailer to bring the car up to Connecticut, where teammate Ethan can help take a look at it and hopefully figure out for once and for all why the motor has such an attitude problem.

Jay welded together some new ramps in his basement for the trailer.  They weigh 750 lbs each.  At least we know the car will go up and down off the trailer without something breaking.  Maybe.

OK we have a rickety trailer with questionable axles, and the lights are “supposed to be working”.  Storm clouds are gathering.  We’re in downtown Brooklyn.  What could go wrong?

The weather went wrong, for most of the 90 minute drive up to Ethan’s place near New Haven.  Luckily the trailer stayed attached to the van.  Although I would have had somewhat mixed feelings had I seen it in the mirror careening away and over the side of the Whitestone bridge.

Jay pulled off a truly epic feat of trailer reversing across a county highway to get the Bomb Squad Audi into Ethan’s driveway.  Already, this looks like some kind of freaking automotive heaven compared to the rat infested alley the car slept in all winter.  Spirits are high.

After getting the Audi off the trailer it was determined that a couple of the injectors are shot.  So we are on the hook for 5 new Bosch injectors, which works out well since there are 5 of us on the team.  Joy.  We hope that will solve our problems, or at least give us a cleaner slate to diagnose things.

Ethan’s place is a virtual warehouse of old projects and car parts.  This old Triumph TR-6 needs a new home.  It would make a smoking LeMons car.  Don’t think we didn’t talk about it.

So I promised Jay I would try to not take any pictures of him wearing his Bluetooth ear thing that he only wears inside the van but that was before we were creeping along in traffic on our way home, about to cross the Whitestone again.  Jay was late for getting back to his kids and I had to take an epic leak, when we heard a thud.  Did someone just hit the trailer?  Yes, someone just hit the trailer.

These guys.  They swiped our trailer because they couldn’t “see it”, which caused no damage to our trailer, but knocked a single piece of $50 plastic off the bumper of their gigantic Ford F450 work truck.  The dude absolutely insisted we wait for the cops, even though it was his fault.  Problem was, on the other side of the Whitestone bridge there was an actually serious accident.  Like where people got hurt and everything, so the MTA cops were a little busy.  An hour later, my bladder forced me to walk down the bridge and find a toilet inside the big Whitestone bridge building.  I then returned with two cop cars, lights on, who promptly told these guys they were jackasses for wasting everyone’s time, and we got to go home.

It just wouldn’t be a Brooklyn Bomb Squad story without something stupid happening, would it?  It’s official.  A new year of dumbfuckery is underway.