Highway Hooligans
The Team:
Cody Acorne (34) - Brother of Marcus Acorne. Enjoys street racing, even though his brother tried to keep him out of the racing scene. He found out about the Deathtrap Tour from his best friend, Jake Storm, and intends to win by any means necessary. Which is precisely why he’s put his brother in the hot-seat.
Marcus Acorne (46) - Notorious Chicago street-racer. Has seen some things in his time, and helped acquire their new car. He favors Dynamite cars because they’re usually fairly cheap and have some performance potential.
Jake Storm (30) - Son of Amy Storm. Found out about the Deathtrap Tour because his mother pointed it out and mentioned it might be fun. Struggles to drive stick, but of the four, he’s the only one who understands DOHC at all. A self-taught computer genius, he’s responsible for reprogramming the car’s ECU.
Trevor Wright (45) - The Junk Man. Helped Marcus, Jake, and Cody find an engine for the car. He’s great at finding things that will work, or making things work that really shouldn’t function. He’s also the only decent cook of the four of them, and can hold his own with the other three and their pranks. As the team’s “Mad Scientist,” he’s the one responsible for coming up with ways to ruin everyone else’s day.
The Car:
Hailing all the way from the year 2000, this is a Dynamite E5 Family-Hatch.
This faithful little family car used to have a 3 liter V6 under the hood, powering the rear wheels through a 5 speed automatic. The previous owner removed the automatic, installed a 6 speed manual and the mother of all turbocharger kits to make a race-car out of it. In a street race against Marcus, the engine was damaged beyond repair. A few months later, Marcus offered to buy the car for $200, and the guy agreed, as it was better value than he’d get from the junkyard.
Marcus knew it wasn’t a total loss. Sure, he’d have to get Trevor to help him rip apart the block and try to make something useful out of the car, but otherwise, it had promise. He got a phone call from his brother, Cody, who mentioned a $500 ‘clunker race,’ and realized this was the destiny for this little 5 door midsize.
Cody rounded up a team, and they looked over the car. Midsize, sliding rear doors, a hatchback/liftback style trunk, five seats, and a CD player. Plus, the car only had somewhere around 114k miles on the clock, so it was a decent bargain. Sure, the engine doesn’t work, but… They had a plan.
A few days later, and Trevor brought in the perfect engine donor, a 2005 Dynamite T-1600 Double Crew pickup truck, junked because of a roll-over accident. What they wanted was the naturally-aspirated DOHC I4 out of it, all 5.4 liters of it. As the truck only had 74,254.3 miles on it, and construction company stickers on the doors, they figured the engine was good enough.
Jake got involved in ‘improving the performance threshold’ with a FleaBay Turbo and Intercooler package, and Trevor knocked together an exhaust manifold and turbo downpipe.
When questions got asked about whether a truck motor and passenger sedan were a good combination, Jake casually mentioned, “Mom said some team did that last time, some old cop car with the heart of a truck. We’ve got the same strategy going.”
A quick re-spray with lime green at Marcus’ request, and fitting of the neon underglow lights, bright green fog-lamps, xenon headlights, and a light-control-module finished up the lighting and visual effects package, and a mid-80’s turbo badge was glued onto the hatch to finalize the car’s distinctive design.
Total costs? $200 worth of blown-up, clapped-out family sedan turned street racer, plus $250 on a trashed truck for an engine. $450 all up.
Five seats, Four people. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, the list of current problems is a bit lengthy, but not entirely unexpected from a car resurrected from the junkyard.
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Driveshaft has excessive play in it.
Marcus’ note: The previous owner was a fuckin’ idiot, didn’t understand that the E5’s automatic and stick use different driveshafts. Not a huge difference, it will work, but it’s risky. And we can’t find an E5 in stick to swipe the driveshaft.
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Gas struts in the hatch are blown.
Cody’s note: We’ll just have to use a prop-stick when we need something out of the back. Or fold the seats and grab it from there.
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Power sliding rear doors don’t power slide anymore.
Jake’s note: There’s some sort of code in the Body Control Module about “Door Motor Overcurrent Safety” that comes up when the motors try to open the doors. For now, we’ll just unplug the door motors and open them the hard way. Probably needs some grease in the rails to lube things up.
Marcus’ note: Yeah, some grease fixed it. Scratch this one off the list.
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Air Conditioning Barely Works.
Trevor’s note: It’s Russian, you morons. Of course the A/C doesn’t work that well. The heater works flawlessly, though. But, yeah, there could be something wrong with the A/C compressor.
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Power Locking doesn’t function.
Cody’s note: Not surprising. Thankfully, there’s a keyhole for every door, and everyone has a key. That’s how you solve a problem!
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What the Hell is that Smell!?
Marcus’ note: Smells like something died in here. Either that, or… God damn you, Trevor! Don’t test the Stinkers in the car!
Trevor’s note: Yeah, my bad. At least we know that when we gift these ‘air fresheners’ to some of the other teams, they’ll “freshen” the air with the smell of “Hot Summer Porta-Potty.” We’ll just have to live with it for a few miles.
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Hard to reach the Coil Packs
Jake’s note: Yeah, that 5.4 liter engine’s big. And the coil packs are on the back of the block. Which means they’re up against the firewall, which makes them really difficult to work on. On the plus side, though, that big I4 sounds almost like a V8 when idling. Don’t want to know what Dynamite was thinking when they created it, though. Why does an engine need to be that big?
Marcus’ note: Yeah, it’s a common thing with their cars. They seem to have no sense of direction. It’s why they put a 4.1 liter paint-shaker inline 3 in the XR-3 I used to race. Big engine, lots of torque for an I3, but a bloody gutless wonder without a turbo. And if you turbo the I3, it blows up.
Trevor’s note: Yeah, well, they based this 5.4 on a diesel of some sort, just kept the block, gave it a new head, pistons, crank, conrods… It’s a tough little engine.
Cody’s note: There’s nothing little about it! It’s bigger than some modern V8’s!
Could just drop a V-8 into it too, that’s pretty common.
