The Kamikaze Kop Car
A month or so ago, I got a call from a friend about driving in a car race called Goin’ for Broken. “WOW” I thought, “I’m in!”. Who doesn’t want the opportunity to drive a car as fast as you can and not worry about school zones, children playing, pedestrian or getting a ticket? Then came the two kickers, the car has to cost under $500 dollars not including some safety equipment and it is an endurance race of possibly 24 hours. That doesn’t seem too bad until you start thinking of the other 117 cars on the track that should be in a junk yard somewhere. Then as the race got closer the realization that it was on Mother’s day weekend hit me, I will be paying for that for a long time (it was worth it).
Our team The Kamikazee Kops, consisted of four Centralia Police Officers and myself (honorary kop for the weekend). The inspiration for the name came from our car (a Madza RX 7, $400 on Craigs List) and the fact that the team was going to be all Police Officers (I was a last minute substitution, hooray for me). The car was then painted by our Captain Dave to match the colors of a Japanese Police Car and Rising Sun was added to provide some flair. Captain Dave also stripped the cars interior and engine compartment of all non-essential junk. Walt from Walt’s Auto Repair sponsored part of the car with some engine enhancements and a roll cage. Also Evil Genius Racing gave us a hand by welding in a diagonal bar fro the roll cage, at the track, so we could race.
Finally the day of the race came. Our team started clawing through the pack up to 56th place. Then disaster struck, a fan belt slipped off and the car started to overheat. Thinking back on it now, we should have had a working temperature gauge, oil pressure gauge, speedometer or any of those helpful lights to warn us. But with no functioning gauges, we kept racing and the boiling oil finally destroyed the engine leaving our car dead on the side of the track. We were then rescued by the Fire & Rescue Truck, only to find out our racing weekend was over. We had only made it six hours and covered 270 miles but had tons of fun along the way. After all was said and down we placed 92nd out of 118. Next year, our team is determine to finish the race and found a replacement engine ($100 on Craig’s List) to take us the distance (maybe we should of paid more…nah).
To find out more about the race at http://www.24hoursoflemons.com
- Donnie
