Double trouble

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Recently, I made a purchase. I spent $410 on a racecar fire suppression canister. However, to sweeten the deal, a 1996 Audi A6 Race car was thrown in! This thing, painted like a pig and dubbed the “Snouty Audi”, has been off the road since 2008 and has been racing the 24 Hours of Lemons for a good part of that time. Here’s the story thus far:

The previous owner bought this car with a roll cage and LeMons prep at some point before 2015. 2 owners ago, it was being run as the “Saudi Audi”, painted gold with a huge oil drum on the roof. However, the first people to race it did not make the largest contribution to the car; the spectacularly engineered twin-engine setup! Yeah, that’s not a typo. Up front is a completely stock Audi 2.8l v6 (Just a twelve valve, it’s not the fancy one) hooked up to a non-stock manual (but still Quattro) transmission. However, the real magic is where the rear passenger seats would be. The previous owner installed the 2 stroke triple out of an early-2000s Yamaha SXViper snowmobile. The way it works is all quite complicated, and essentially should not work, yet in a seeming act of defiance towards the universe, it does. The snowmobile engine adds north of 120 horsepower at a critical junction. It is hooked up to the stock snowmobile cvt transmission, with the output attached to a sprocket. This sprocket drives another sprocket, which is sandwiched between the differential and driveshaft. In a baffling display of “If it works, it’s not stupid”-ness, the snowmobile’s handlebars are welded to the roll cage in the back, with a bicycle cable running between them and the Audi’s gas pedal to control the throttle. One crazy thing is the sound. It can only be described as being passed by a chainsaw on steroids.

I have been pit-crewing this car for a few years. Unfortunately, it has never managed to make a snowmobile engine last a whole weekend. They always blow up in truly spectacular fashion. However, in 2020 it ran long enough to take us the Judge’s choice award. We have yet to replicate that success, unfortunately. I picked up the Audi about a month ago. The previous owner no longer wanted it, as he is building what I could only expect to end up as an even wilder Lemons car. He was going to give it to me for free, but he wanted to keep the fire suppression system. We told him we’d pay him for the system to save us the trouble, and the $410 price was struck. We trailered home the Audi, along with a truck bed worth of spare parts. 

While that was fairly abridged, you are now more or less up to date on the backstory of this utter marvel of engineering. Now, my plans for it. Currently it is missing the snowmobile engine. My first order of business is finding a Lemons-budget Yamaha SXviper. Installing it is not an issue, as it can be easily slid in through where the rear window would be on a street car. After that, we need cooling improvements. Currently, there is the stock snowmobile radiator in the trunk, and some copper baseboard pipe on the roof. I will be adding better airflow over the engine, likely adding more baseboard and potentially Another Yamaha radiator. Also, we may look into some form of ice cooling, and/or added heat sinks on the notoriously hot-running middle cylinders, which are invariably the failure point. However, the craziest, most far-fetched idea of them all? Shutting the engine off when it’s overheating. I know, it’s a bit out there and all. But it could work! Seeing as the car still turns (noticeably slower) laps without it, we could run the sled engine for a few laps until it reaches high temperatures, and then give it a couple laps to cool down.

And, last but certainly not least, we will likely re-theme the car. While the pig sure looks cool going around the track, it’s always been an afterthought, and I’d like to lean into a theme this year. Our ideas are all over the place right now. One was a New Hampshire-themed General Lee parody, called the “General Stark” after the famous New Hampshire revolutionary war general, John Stark. Another was Painting the front half of the car like the iconic Audi Quattro S1 Monte Carlo rally car, and the rear half life a Yamaha supercross bike. That’s a good one because it accentuates the twin-enginedness which sets the car apart from the field. Think any of those are good ideas? Have any better ones? Please let me know in the comments!

As a little bonus, here is a video compilation of how the car sounds! 57 seconds of Twin-engine madness!