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When Life Gives You Lemons, Make a Racecar

Last Updated November 24, 2008 by Matt 6 Comments

The blog has been dormant for about a week due to a special project I’ve been working on.  This October my younger brother Drew was a driver in the Houston race of the 24 Hours of Lemons, an amateur endurance race for cars that have been bought and race-prepped (excluding “safety” items) for $500 or less.  After Drew participated in the race with some random guys nice enough to let him jump on their team and finished 26th out of 77 cars he, my dad, and I decided we would like to give it a go ourselves.

So we decided that if the race came back to Houston in 2009 we would try and put a team and car together.  On November 15th the 2009 schedule was released and Houston had a race scheduled for February 28, which is a very short period of time to find a decent $500 car, get it race-ready, and find a team of drivers (each team must have 4-6 drivers).  So when November 15th hit and we realized the race would be happening in just three months we went into car-finding mode.  We scoured Craigslist, eBay, Autotrader, and any other website we could think of for any usable car in Texas, Olahoma, and Arkansas.  We eventually decided we wanted to pursue a 1986 BMW 325e that was in the Dallas area.  Since dad is in Houston and Drew is in Arkansas I was the one who had to handle looking at and buying the car.

Our Lemon - A 1986 BMW 325eAs you can see, the car is a piece of work (click on the picture to be taken to a Flickr photo set). The body is in pretty rough shape, the windshield has a pretty big spider crack in it, the power steering pump has been ripped off, the interior is an absolute mess, and the transmission linkage is broken and the car is stuck in second gear.  But it runs!  I drove it around the block after it got towed home.  Hopefully the transmission will be a pretty easy fix and then for the most part it will be drivable.

For the next month and a half we (and by “we” I mean my dad and brother) will work on getting the car race-ready, mostly over Thanksgiving and Christmas break while Drew is home from college.  Dad and Drew will be two of our four drivers; the other two will be guys they know who have some good driving experience.  I will be the crew chief and work on race and pit strategy.

So, now that we’ve got a car in-hand I can return to some more regular blogging and podcast activities (next podcast is tomorrow morning).  I may provide some more random updates about the car as things happen, but will definitely post after March 1st when the race is over.

Wish us luck.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: 24 hours of lemons, bmw

About Matt

Matt Cleaver has written since 2004 on youth ministry, theology, and the church. His blog was ranked by Youth Specialties as a Top 20 Youth Ministry Blog. Click here for Matt's list of the Best Youth Ministry Books.

Comments

  1. Jake Belder says

    November 24, 2008 at 7:16 am

    That is great! What I fun, cheap way to have some fun. Maybe this is something I need to think about for the future. Only I don’t know a whole lot of car guys down here…

    Best of luck!

    Reply
  2. Matt says

    November 24, 2008 at 8:06 am

    We hope it will be lots of fun! Of course, finishing in the top 5 would make it really fun.

    Reply
  3. SadieLovesOldCars says

    November 24, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    I just got a brilliant idea. You fix it and race it, and then I will buy it from you when it you are done.
    However, I will probably have to pay you in cheetos and baby diapers. Hope that’s ok with you. 🙂

    Reply
  4. Matt says

    November 24, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Dearest SadieLovesOldCars,

    Unfortunately, the car won’t be in street-legal status when we’re done with it. If it were, and, even if you put the passenger and rear seats back in, putting Norah in her car seat whilst playing gymnast around the roll cage wouldn’t be fun. Sorry.

    However, Craigslist is a pretty good place for finding deals if you know you’re ready to buy. If you all are in the market, I recommend it.

    Reply
  5. SadieLovesOldCars says

    November 24, 2008 at 4:26 pm

    Oh fine.
    My sister had an old BMW, it was green and it was awesome.
    I’m not in the market to buy, unless I can, like I said, pay in cheetos and baby diapers. Oo! Or in baby smiles! That would be perfect!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. MattCleaver.com » 24 Hours of Lemons Houston Gator-O-Rama Race Racap says:
    March 3, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    […] that ugly BMW that I wrote about in November? Well, last weekend was the race, the 24 Hours of Lemons Houston […]

    Reply

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