Hey guys chris fix here and today, i'm going to show you what happened to our lemons, bmw at our very first endurance race. So we just got to the track and i'm backing out our fully race, prepped 240 thousand mile 18 year old, 500 lemons, bmw and little did. We know this weekend was not going to go the way we expected and instead end in disaster. So today, we're in south new jersey at new jersey, motorsports park and we're racing on the thunderbolt raceway, which is a two and a quarter mile long track with 12 challenging turns and a half a mile straight that we're gon na hit over a hundred miles an Hour on so this isn't an easy track to race.

On now, the race starts in just a couple of hours and garrett's getting some of the sponsor decals on the race car like this peak decal, and that's looking really good, and we can't forget about the very important soapy water decals on the front, because our team Name is officially the soapy water, racers, soapy water and don't worry next race. We will have a full livery there. Just wasn't enough time for this race, but you guys sent me some awesome, livery ideas, so we do have to pick one, but for our first ever race. We went from this to this and now we're ready to head over to get our car safety inspected.

All right, so we made it to tech inspection, and this is very important. This is where all that hard work the preparatory work gets put into play. This is where we make sure everything is safe for being on the track, because this is pretty dangerous. If it's not safe and i'd like to introduce you to the founder of the 24 hours of lemons jay, take it away.

Jay i'm jay lamb, i'm the chief perpetrator at 24 hours lemons. We are going to tech, this car sweet i'll go get in and uh. Let's start her up, so tech inspection is a very thorough process and it takes about 15 minutes to look over the entire car. For example, the roll cage is inspected to make sure it meets code and has all the proper bends and is welded together safely.

The windshield is inspected for any cracks that could decrease the windshield strength or obscure the driver's view. The wiring in the cabin is inspected to make sure it's organized and secured the racing seat and harness will be inspected for the expiration date and to make sure it's installed properly and there's just a whole list of things that you need to get inspected and i'll Put a link to this list in the description that way you can download it and properly prepare your car before you get to the track. So what you're about to see is not the complete inspection but a summary i could make an entire video showing you the full inspection, but i don't want to bore you guys. So here's some of the highlights all right foot on the brake start.

It up bet on the brake, good rev it up. Couple thousand rpm hold it good, all right, just water, no coolant, just water. Okay, you drained it. You flushed it flushed it four times no holes in the firewall, no holes all sealed up factory; okay, all right stock tank fuel cell uh stock tank.

You check the feed lines, yep, no rust, all solid, good condition: okay, where's the battery in the trunk good secured in the case, security in the case won't move back and forth and uh we have terminal covers on both positive and negative. Okay excellent. I, like the cage i like the landing pads. That's good cool suit is strapped down.

Okay, good um, zip ties very important, got ta. Have those got ta? Have those all right? That's good! So there's no leeway in tech inspections, even if one thing is not right. They're gon na fail you and you can't race until it's corrected and re-inspected. This is taken very seriously.

All right, you passed, the safety tech, uh car looks actually pretty good, looks perhaps a little expensive now on to bs alright, so we passed tech. We are looking really good. That's for safety. Now we need to make sure the playing field is level you're not supposed to have a car that's more than 500.

That way, everybody could go out and have some affordable racing, because the more money you put into a car, the faster it'll go, that's just how it works, and the idea is to do this on a budget. So they have something called lemons, bs inspection, and this is our inspector right here. That's right, i am judge eric and i'm here to do. Bs inspection on this delightfully clapped out.

Bmw, e46. So, let's kind of dig into what you got here make sure you spent the 500 bucks and then we'll get you out of here and ready to race all right. So this car did not cost 500. Unfortunately, it cost 1100, but we did sell a bunch of parts.

We sold dash parts. The speaker system, the radio stuff like that to bring the price down and we do have documentation which i'd like to show you ari, show them the documentation real photo proof. I promise here's the transfer of money for the uh, the different items that we sold we're trying to keep it legit we're trying to play fair. You know, and those are the parts that the guy bought from us - those interior pieces.

Yes, all right, so we have everything recorded, so try to be fair, try to play fair right and we've, of course seen the videos we've been tracking your progress, so we're we're up on it. So, let's make sure what you're supposed to have brought is what you actually brought: okay start under the hood with the engine fair enough, so i will warn you. This is a very stock engine and not very clean 10 minutes of trying to convince the inspector. This is a 500 dollar car later all right well with the documentation with knowing that it's a crusty field found unsellable as a street car totally believable.

As a 500 car, i'm gon na put you in class a which is the fast class and zero laps as a 500 car. So i will get you your tech sticker and you are free to race. Chris fix awesome. Thank you very much.

So after passing tech inspection and getting no penalty laps on the bs inspection, the last thing to do is to get the transponder that goes in the car and counts how many laps we do so with all that done. We are good to go and this took longer than expected and we're cutting it close at this point, there's only an hour until the race starts, and we still have some things to do so, let's head back to the trailer and finish getting ready for the race Back at the trailer, it was awesome having an entire team because, as i got ready to get in the car, aaron and ari were able to do some last minute inspections. They were able to check the oil which we changed only two days ago, oil's good. Then the last thing we needed to check was the tire pressure we're running these tires at 27, psi cold, which seems low, but once we get on the track, we're gon na get a lot of heat into these tires, causing them to bump up to around 35.

To 40 psi and as aaron's doing this ari's writing down all the pressure readings that way we could keep track throughout the race once we know what our hot tire pressure is, we'll be able to track the pressure over time and it can help us identify a Problem before it becomes catastrophic, so after hundreds of hours of prepping this car, it comes down to this, it's finally time for me to get in and start the race. At this moment, i can't tell you if i was nervous or excited all the emotion got blocked out and i was just focused and that wasn't just me the entire team was focused and looking back, it's really neat having my good friends come together as a race Team to make this happen, and although this is the first time for all of us, look at us we're a real race team. Hans is good on this side. Your wheels turn to the right when you want to clock it on right, yep, we're good watch.

Golf cart to your right and you're good. Thank you, everybody, unfortunately, as you could hear and see in the background, we just missed the start of the race, but it's not the end of the world. We're not trying to rush, because when you rush you make mistakes and in racing you can't afford to make a mistake. Also, this is an endurance race, not a sprint, so the two minutes we lost by not being at the starting line is nothing compared to the 16 hours of racing.

We're about to do and right now we're coming up to the last guy who checks everything to make sure you're safe to go onto the track. Yes, sir, okay good to go. Thank you very much. Oh here it goes now.

At this point, i can tell you the nerves started to kick in. This became very real, very fast. I was about to enter onto a racetrack with all these cars flying by and one thing you quickly learn being strapped into a containment seat all suited up in safety gear. Your field of view is horrible, so luckily merging went smoothly and i didn't cut anybody off and if you take a look at the bottom left of the screen, you can see there's the track with our gps location and then the 92 degrees fahrenheit is the temperature Inside the car, that's what i feel and that becomes very important in a few minutes - you'll see why and unfortunately, our forward-facing camera had a memory card error, so we lost all that footage.

So this is the only angle we have inside the car, but for our first lap you could hear and see all the cars are flying by me. They're passing me and that's okay, because my goal wasn't to push the car to the limit right away. I wanted to be smart about it. I wanted to learn the car.

I wanted to learn the track and i wanted to stay out of everyone's way. There's no hiding it. I've never raced wheel to wheel before and, as you can see, there's a lot of cars out here, there's over 125 cars on this track and it gets congested since everyone has a different skill level. Some cars are fast, some are slow, so i just wanted to stay on the track, not cut people off and learn the track, and surprisingly, after the first lap, you quickly learn where the turns are where you could stay on the gas where you need a break And i was getting more comfortable with this car, but one thing we definitely need to fix for our next race is our mirrors.

We really need to install a full length panel mirror because this single rear view mirror is not enough. It's just not good not being able to see behind you, but with that said, i started looking less into my rear view, mirror and started, pushing the car harder and harder, and i was finally starting to get comfortable with the car and i started making some moves To pass people, and while i was getting better and the car was running great, not everything was going well. If you take a look at the temperature, it started getting very hot in the car. This was just the third lap and the temperature inside the car was 115 degrees and it was climbing.

Unfortunately, i was not hooked up to the cool suit because we didn't have enough time and we figured we could get away with it for our first driver. Well, we didn't know any better, because that was a big mistake and you can see the lens on my helmet is starting to get foggy and then, when i pop it up, just take a look at my eyes. I just do not look well, and i could tell you i did not feel good either. I started getting tired.

I felt weak and sick to my stomach. It was not a good feeling and by the end of the fifth lap i radioed in that i had to make a pit stop and either get in that cool suit or change drivers, and luckily i didn't push it because once i got back to our pit, I felt like i was gon na pass out all right, so only five laps in and i had to come back to the pits and man. Oh man was that a crazy first few minutes on the track. The car felt absolutely amazing out there.

But me me not so much. It is very, very hot in that car and since we were rushing to get on the track as quickly as we could, we didn't get the cool suit connected, but we're connecting it now because whoever's driving next definitely needs it. And i can't wait to get back out there, but i think we should get everybody in the car and get a feel for it and see what it's like, because man that was sensory overload. Besides being overheated, that was a lot of fun.

The adrenaline and the speed and just being able to really push the car on the track is so amazing. So now it looks like it's aaron's turn to get some laps in so now, aaron's getting in the car and he's getting all hooked up and we're making sure he's connected to the cool suit. That way, he has nice and cold water flowing around his core and he won't overheat like i did good luck and with that aaron was off, but little did we know everything was about to change for the worst so out on the track. Aaron was killing it.

He moved up nine positions in just seven laps, even though this was his first time on this track and his first time wheel-to-wheel racing, just like the rest of us he's very familiar with this e46 chassis. So he was able to push the car more than i was, and he was just looking really good out there. But then disaster struck come back with that oil pressure lights on. Okay, are you coming to the pits he's gon na have to wait for a tow from the track? No, no, if anything, uh chris mentioned something with the filter near the oil, the oil filter housing, just it could just be a leak from the tow truck driver.

That's a copy, we're prepared to tighten anything up. We have to and uh we'll see you in the pit. At this point we had no clue what to expect. We just knew that there was smoke and oil.

We were hoping that it was just an oil leak somewhere and we could repair it and get back on the track. Ah shoot. Do you know what happened. I have no clue.

Unfortunately, no one hit record when aaron got in the car, but luckily the schumacher taxi service team had some good video that they sent us where you could see what happened so coming down. The street aaron is just ahead out of view and at the end of the street, you can see that huge cloud of smoke aaron said that he saw the smoke. It wasn't that bad inside the car and he thought it was just tire smoke from locking up the brakes or just break smoke from braking so hard. At the end of that turn i mean we did hit 100 miles an hour, so he really didn't think much of it then aaron radioed into us, saying that the car was vibrating and that he was going to come in for a pit stop so that we Could try to figure out why, since someone skated off the track, there was a caution flag out and everyone slowed down.

So aaron was off the gas pedal for the caution because he was off the gas. He didn't realize what happened to the engine, then after the caution aaron was trying to accelerate and he noticed that the car was not only vibrating but down on power. He then looked at the dash and saw there was an oil pressure light on so he shut off the engine immediately and pulled off the track. So with the car back, we need to figure out what went wrong.

We were all hoping it was something simple. Like an oil filter, housing seal which is known to go bad on these and you can see there is oil around the oil filter, housing, and that was a good sign. Then the next thing we did was check the oil to see if our race was over. There's a little on the end right, no metal either right, it was running, it wasn't running great, but it was running was the vibration from the car engine.

I thought it was tire at first and then it kept going when the speed changed not really we're using really good oil, so it was down on power and i the temperature - i literally, would turn around for two seconds to see. If you don't have a broken sponge, the temps were completely fine. Well, let's see what that metal is first yeah on the tray. So now we needed to see what that metal was.

Was it the oil filter, housing that failed and somehow broke apart, or was it the block? So we jacked the car up and, as you can see, the whole team is scurrying around trying to figure out what the problem is. Gary. Do you see any holes? Look at that. That is a rod.

Well, it was. It was at some point that, oh, that's, so not good! Okay, um, all right who's got an engine. Yeah there's got to be three or four in the paddock. You think so.

Yeah yeah yeah totally and a lot of the guys who are running bmws are going to have spares just start working. The problem i mean get on a bike. Get on a car. Everybody's got to bmw, go bug them yeah, okay, so our engine is toast and the goal now is to get an engine and swap it in and get back on the track.

After a few calls, a local junkyard says they have an engine. So aaron and pierce went out to get that and right after they left a fellow race team named garage heroes in training stopped by and saw our dilemma. So they told us that we could use their garage spot and their portable lift to put the new motor in which was really nice of them. Without this garage spot and without the lift, we wouldn't be able to do this swap so we pushed the car into our new garage, and this was our home until we could get the car back on the track.

Now, as some of the team was getting the car in the garage, the other part of the team was at the junkyard and just bought our very important engine not going anywhere. This is the same exact m54 engine as ours, so we should be able to just swap it in at least that's what we thought after a short trip back to the track with precious cargo, it was make or break time right now, it's 12 noon and we Need to get this swap done by 3 pm tomorrow, and this is the first time any of us have swapped an engine from an all-wheel drive, bmw. So what could go wrong? So first we got the front clip off and things were moving along nicely. Then we removed the radiator, which gave us plenty of room to remove the motor.

Next we were taking bets with how much oil was left in the engine. I think there's gon na be a bunch of oil. Let's see, there's a lot of smoke. Other people told us about the smoke.

Other racers came by and said: are you guys on fire? We should get a sample of this for blacks. Yes, there's a lot of oil. There is a lot of oil i'll give you that. So we have an oil sample, we'll send out we'll see uh the results honestly, a lot there's a lot of there'll be like five quarts in there.

Probably it's just starting to slip. They all just stayed on the bottom yeah, because the oil pump wasn't pumping it. Yeah, so with all that oil left inside the engine, our assumption at this point was that the oil pump failed and that's a very common problem on these m54 bmw engines at high rpms. The oil pump nut loosens up and backs off, causing the oil pump to just stop pumping.

Next, we had to remove the exhaust that way we could drop the transmission. The exhaust system on this car is pretty heavy at 75 pounds, but we're pretty creative and removing it wasn't difficult. Now, one major complaint aaron and i both had was the exhaust on this car was way too quiet. You could hear everybody else's car, but we couldn't hear our own car and that made it hard to race.

Also the muffler weighs about 30 pounds. So, even though there are probably more important things to do, we found the time to cut off the muffler. So it's been about three hours and we are really on our game at this point we removed basically everything we needed to in order to get the engine out, so we thought. Luckily, there was another race team that let us borrow their engine lift and we connected it to the engine, and things were looking really good and at this rate we thought we might be able to get the swap done by the end of the day.

And then we tried pulling the engine out, but since this is an all-wheel drive, bmw, we quickly learned that the engine and transmission won't come out unless we remove the entire subframe. So a couple of bolts later we removed the subframe completely and then tried removing the engine again, not really not a minute they're disconnecting something one minute grab that chain or the top. Now you could ask basically anyone who's ever removed an engine if it comes out on the first try without disconnecting more stuff, if they say it came out on the first try they're, probably lying. In our case, we had the clutch line still connected to the transmission.

So we disconnected that and gave it another go that's enough and with the engine finally out, you could see the extent of the damage, it's crazy to think aaron raced a half a mile on this engine after it sent the rod to the moon. I don't know whether to be upset or impressed with bmw at this point, but the engine actually still runs so with the old damage engine out. It was time to get the junkyard engine in now it was getting really late and we're all pretty exhausted, but we still pushed on we spent the night. Getting the new engine ready to install and a priority for us was to get the red thread locker on the oil pump, nut that way it wouldn't back off, and then we just blow the engine again, but fatigue was definitely kicking in for all of us.

I didn't remember: somebody needs to go to sleep. All of us need to go to sleep yeah by somebody i mean everybody everybody now at this point it was 4 a.m and if you can't tell we really needed some sleep, so we decided to torque down that oil pump nut and call it a night. That's it i'm gon na click. It again.

Please, okay, you guys heard it there you go so last night was a mess, the hotel messed up the rooms and by the time we got that straightened out is pretty much time to head back to the track. None of us got any sleep and, to make things worse, there were only a couple hours left in the race now to be completely honest with you, we are all feeling pretty defeated at this point. We were exhausted, the team morale was low, but at the same time we are still chugging away and we're still trying to get this motor installed. But it wasn't looking good all right, we're running into problem after problem with this new engine, new junkyard engine uh.

So the biggest problem right now that we're having is the wiring harness this is for this came from a bmw x3, which is the suv version. It's all-wheel drive same exact engine, three liter uh, but the problem is the harness is well. It doesn't match up to the pins and everything on our car, uh so and our ecu doesn't fit and all all the good stuff you know so we are taking the wiring harness off of this kind of dangling there. Just because i need to remember where everything goes and we're gon na transplant, our old motor with the hole in it we're gon na transplant, this harness onto our new motor, at least that's what we hope to do so see if it'll work all right.

So here's where we ended up, we couldn't get the new motor in, doesn't fit right. We have to spend some time swapping harnesses and stuff, so we have the subframe in it's a roller. I mean this is a learning experience. Is it real life? It is what it is type of thing and we did our best and you get to see for real how how it goes doesn't always.

You know it's not always perfect, so it doesn't always go as planned. Now, although our team was defeated by our very first lemons race, we still put up a good fight and with the race just ending. We headed over to the finish line to cheer on the cars that made it the whole weekend. It was really cool, seeing the final parade with all the cars that finished the race, and it was at this moment.

All of us knew that our goal for next year was this right. Here we wanted to be in this final parade. This race taught us a lot. It's not about speed, it's about endurance being so new to this race.

Don't focus on finishing first. Instead, just focus on finishing this 18 hour race so next year. That's exactly what we're gon na do and to end the race weekend. We attended the race ceremony first place in class.

A was team unfit for racing first place in class b. Was the c team and first place for class c? Was team brf racing? It's been a long time. It's been a long road. It feels good to be getting back with you thanks for being here now after the award ceremony, we headed back to the car and we're already talking about strategy for the next race and how we're gon na come back and do even better.

So we finished the race weekend in a way. No one wanted to pushing our race car with his drive shaft of shame just flopping around under the car back into the trailer. Now this isn't the end. We're gon na take what we learned and we're gon na be back better than ever and in the next video we tore apart the entire engine.

That way, we could see what went wrong. This is very important because we don't want this to happen again. We'll also show you the new engine that went in as well as what's next for this car, including what livery design we're gon na go with. So hopefully you guys enjoyed this video if you did remember to give it a thumbs up if you're, not a subscriber.

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