24 Hours of LeMons, December 2015
Bio:
GoWesty's Team Westafari had a blast at the Arse-Freeze-Apalooza 24 Hours of LeMons event at Sonoma Raceway, Sonoma, CA, on December 5th and 6th, 2015.
The Class C race results look a lot like what you'd expect at the real Le Mans race... well, except for our Vanagon!
1st Place: Sheepshaggers—1974 Porsche 914
2nd Place: Missfits—2004 Jaguar X-Type
3rd Place: GoWesty Westafari—1987 VW Westfalia
The first place car was a 1974 Porsche 914 fitted with a Saturn 2004 double overhead cam engine. How did this car get into Class C? Apparently, no such engine had ever finished a LeMons race—so the judges figured it would not finish. No such luck! Not only did it finish, but it had zero problems, ended up 17 laps ahead of the 2nd place car, and 25th place overall! NO FAIR!
The second place car in Class C was a 2000(ish) Jaguar V6 all-wheel drive sedan—also placed in Class C because they had blown up two engines in two previous LeMons competitions. Again, not figured to finish—so the judges threw them a bone…. OK, a little more fair, but still no fair! They ended up 49th overall with 294 laps completed in 14:16:23.590 hours of racing.
The third place car was our Team Westafari VW camper. Believe it or not, they wanted to put us in Class B! This was due to the fact that it ran a 24-valve VR6 in the first LeMons race it ran a back in 2013—which put it in Class B in that event—and there was no arguing with the judges! This is quite strange because the VR6 is another engine notoriously famous for having never finished a LeMons race (Team Westafari went through two engines to finish the one race in 2013). This time around, our VW camper was placed in Class C because it is now running the original-type waterboxer, flat-four engine—albeit, a GoWesty 2.7 liter version and the GoWesty EFI—with which it not only finished the race trouble-free, but also got within ½ lap of the Jag, completing 293 laps in 14:17:20.433. Had it not been for an erroneous accusation that one of our drivers disregarded a yellow flag with 5 laps to go—sidelining the van and allowing the Jag to advance 3 laps—we would have beat the Jag easily… NO FAIR!!!
Oh well, that’s racing!
Vehicle:
The Team Westafari race van is a 1986 7-Passenger Volkswagen Vanagon running the GoWesty 2700cc waterboxer engine and GoWesty's Engine Managemenent (EFI) system. This tricked out 2WD van would later be converted to a 4WD syncro to run the NORRA Mexican 1000 in 2017 and again in 2018.
