Team Grocery Getter - or the staff at Modern Performance.
From left to right: Jerry, John, Kyle, David, Charles, Cory (Not Shown Matt)

About the 24 Hours of LeMons:
The 4 hours of LeMons race is unique in that the core rule of LeMons is that each car cost no more than $500.
You read that right.. $500. To give us a fighting chance, safety equipment such as tires, brakes, safety harness's, seats, and roll cage are excluded from the $500.

When:
The race was on Oct 18-19. Racing lasted for 7 hours each day.

Each of MP's 7 employees had a chance to race for 1 hour each day in this endurance race.

Unfortunatly we found out about the LeMons race just about 8 weeks before the race began, so we had very little time to prepare and buildup our car for the race.

The Car:
The first step of course, is deciding on and finding a car.
Because Modern Performance was founded back in 1997 to improve parts sales, and development for the 95-99 Neon we decided on the 95-99 Neon.

It also helps because EVERY employee at MP has owned a 95-99 Neon at some point.

After looking at quite a few cars, we came across a 98 Neon that was originally Ryan Cerar's Neon. Another Houston Neon enthusiast named Matt Smoorenburg owned it at the time as a shell, and because he was trying to reduce his inventory of Neon parts, he gave us the rolling shell.

Now, another reason why we were given Ryan Cerar's shell is because it was involved in a front end accident and it had some nasty repair work done to it. The frame was twisted, a lot of sheet metal in the engine bay had stress cracks, and the sheet metal where the strut mount met the engine bay metal had huge gaping cracks. It was a car that was worthy of our 14 hour endurance race, but not exactly a car that most people would feel safe driving daily. The car looks pretty good in pictures, however it had what looked to be a $200 paint job with TONS of orange peel, lots of drips and overspray.

We found our race car!

After the 98 Neon was delivered to our office, we inspected the car to find out what parts we would need for the race. The car had factory springs, and factory struts, one of which was so dead that you had to pull the strut rod up, and once released it would immediately sink and never rebound. Also, the car had no engine, no transmission, no axles and was missing many other small pieces.

On a sunday, Charles our shipping manager, Kyle our shipping employee and myself went to a pick a part junkyard and we pulled a 2.4 engine out of a 95 Dodge Stratus, and we pulled a 3.94 sport transmission out of a 95 Dodge Neon Dohc Coupe along with some other needed parts. We were able to get everything we needed for $300!

Our Engine Doner:

Transmission and "Other" parts Doner:

Next we ordered a roll cage from Kirk Racing. We ordered a 6 point roll cage and had it installed by our metal fabrication shop. Our metal fabrication shop also modified our seat bracket for our Corbeau race seat so that it would sit much lower.

In preparing the motor, we had the head cleaned, decked and we put a new head gasket on it. When installing the motor into the engine bay, we used our 2.4 swap motor mount bracket, as well as swapping the spark plug wires (because the 2.4 fires in a different order than the 2.0 computer we're using). Next we swapped the wiring for the injectors so that it would fire the injectors at the correct sequence as the spark plugs. We also installed a used 58 psi fuel regulator to work with the factory 19 psi Stratus fuel injectors.

Because we will only have one driver and no passengers at any given time, we could remove all of the interior and dash components, side glass that were not neccesary. Removing all of the interior was fairly straightforward but dissasembling the dash and removing the ac components was a LOT of work.

Suspension wise, we replaced the blown rear strut with a new KYB unit, and we installed an extra set of Eibach Sportline springs that Charles had. We also replaced the control arm bushings with a new set of Prothane control arm bushings since the factory ones were dry rotted and cracked.

One of the regulations in this race is that you have to weld in panels to seal off the firewall to protect the drivers, and so we welded in steel panels to seal off the larger holes. For the smaller holes, we used bolts and tack welded them in place.

After installing the shift cables from the junkyard, the shift feel was very sloppy due to worn out shift bushings. So we put in a set of Jeff Ball's BOOGER Bushings which helped improve the shift feel IMMENSLY ! (Thanks for such a great Neon product Jeff!)

The BUILD UP!

Loading the car up for RACE DAY!

Our Tow Rig - Complete with Bumper Mounted BBQ!

Unfortunately the judges at the entrance of the race didnt believe our story about how we got the car shell for free, and they didnt like the fact that we all worked for a performance shop that specialized in Neons and they penalized our car with spraypaint that said Honda, Vtec, Type R, All Hail Soichiro and other Honda like phrases. This didnt bother us, as no Honda could keep up with us in the straights, and in fact, a bystander in the pits asked us what we did to our "Little honda to make it so damn fast". Hehe!

Charles ready to race

Jerry ready to race

Kyle ready to race

Uh oh! Collision damage !

At the end of the race, we had completed 336 laps, and placed 24th out of 78th place, or, with our -50 laps from the generous Judges, we were at 34th place out of 78. Our car didnt have a single hiccup, and lasted for the total 14 hours of hardcore flogging!

Not bad, considering how most of our employees had never autocrossed or road raced (most of our employees have spent time street racing, or drag racing!)

We anxiously look forward to next years Lemons race, and if your reading this, we invite you to look into racing in the 24 Hours of LeMons events ! Its a great low budget way to get involved into racing, and if you need a great platform to race with, we suggest the 95-99 Neon !!