---
title: 'What Happened to the Lemons BMW?'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=IbPhor1mnCA'
video_id: 'IbPhor1mnCA'
date: 2026-08-05
duration_sec: 809
---

# What Happened to the Lemons BMW?

> Source: [What Happened to the Lemons BMW?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=IbPhor1mnCA)

## Summary

This video documents the preparation of a budget BMW 330xi for the 24 Hours of Lemons endurance race, covering repairs, weight reduction, safety installations, and final race preparations.

### Key Points

- **Challenge Introduction** [00:02] — eBay Motors challenged the creator to build an endurance race car for the 24 Hours of Lemons, a wheel-to-wheel race with a $500 car budget.
- **Budget and Penalty Laps** [00:15] — The car cost $1,100, which is $600 over the $500 budget, resulting in 60 penalty laps. Selling parts can bring the cost down to avoid penalties.
- **Fixing the Rough Idle** [01:08] — The car had a rough idle due to a faulty airflow sensor. Replacing it fixed the starting and idling issues.
- **Sunroof Repair** [01:37] — The sunroof wouldn't close, leaving a hole in the roof. A Torx screw was turned counterclockwise to manually close it.
- **Power Steering Fix** [02:04] — The power steering was not working; a piece of metal jammed the pump, shearing the impeller. Replaced the pump and lines, and filled with fresh fluid.
- **Interior Gutting and Weight Reduction** [02:43] — Removed interior components to prepare for a roll cage. Before removal, did 0-60 runs (6.8s) and 60-0 braking tests.
- **Detailed Weight Reduction** [03:08] — Weighed the car at 3,370 lbs. Removed seats (180 lbs), trunk contents (75 lbs), speakers (50 lbs), carpet (45 lbs), sound deadening (using dry hammer), headliner and sunroof (40 lbs). Total removed: 430 lbs, bringing weight below 3,000 lbs.
- **Performance Improvement** [04:18] — After weight reduction, 0-60 improved to 5.97 seconds (almost a second quicker) and braking distance improved from 170 ft to 140 ft.
- **Roll Cage Installation** [04:49] — Shipped the car to a welder for a full six-point roll cage with NASCAR bars and anti-intrusion bars. The cage was welded to the frame with large steel plates to distribute load.
- **Subframe Reinforcement** [06:07] — Reinforced the subframe to prevent tearing, a common issue on E46 BMWs. Tied into the body and strut towers for extra rigidity.
- **Cage Cost and Parts Selling** [07:04] — The roll cage cost $3,800. Sold parts (B/C pillars, center console, sunroof cassette) for $720, bringing the car's cost to $380, under the $500 budget.
- **Cool Suit Installation** [08:15] — Installed a cool suit system with a cooler and pump in the trunk to circulate ice-cold water through a shirt to keep the driver cool in high temperatures.
- **Comms System** [09:10] — Installed a communication system with an antenna on the roof for driver-team communication during driver changes and gas stops.
- **Tow Straps and Exhaust Fix** [09:51] — Installed tow straps at stock locations. Fixed an exhaust leak by replacing the gasket.
- **Fire Suppression and Safety** [10:36] — Installed a fire suppression system and battery cut-off. Also installed a quick-release steering wheel.
- **Brake Upgrades** [11:20] — Replaced rusty calipers and rotors with OEM parts, installed endurance race pads from NRS, and flushed brake fluid with high-boiling-point fluid (620°F).
- **Tires and Alignment** [11:59] — Installed Yokohama Advan A052 tires (200 treadwear, race legal) on wider wheels, reducing unsprung weight by 30 lbs. Got a race alignment for camber and toe.
- **Final Prep and Team Readiness** [12:39] — Worked 6am to midnight for five days. The car was ready, but the team had no wheel-to-wheel racing experience.

### Conclusion

The video sets up the team's first endurance race, highlighting the extensive preparation and modifications done to the budget BMW to make it race-ready.

## Transcript

going to show you what happened to our lemon BMW endurance race car just in case you guys are new or don't remember last year I was challenged by eBay Motors to get an endurance race car and race into 24 hours of lemons which is a
wheel to wheel endurance race where you can't spend more than 500 on your car to do with your bank account or how much money you put into the car everyone here has a piece of junk so it really levels the playing field and if your car is
over budget you get penalty laps so for our 500 car we found a 240 000 mile our 500 car we found a 240 000 mile all-wheel drive BMW 330xi now we got this car so cheap because it had scuffs all over it cracks in the bumper the car
was keyed on both sides all the way down the car and there's dents and scratches about how it looks because this is a budget race car and that works to our advantage because we only paid eleven hundred dollars which is a really good
price for a BMW E46 but this means we're six hundred dollars over the 500 dollar budget and that gives us 60 penalty laps which makes us not competitive at all but there is a way we could bring that price down so we have no penalty laps
that in a second we also got it cheap because it had a few major problems that we had to fix so first I showed you guys how to fix the rough idle we had which the car would barely start it would barely run and when we scanned the car's
airflow sensor was not working so out with the old and in with the new then we just had to make sure it was snapped in place like that and connect that wiring started her up and now the car actually runs it started
and idled perfectly next we had to fix the giant hole in the roof due to the sunroof not being able to close luckily there's an easy fix for there's a Torx screw that you spin counterclockwise to manually close the
sunroof that way we didn't soak the interior the next major problem we had was the power steering it was not working at all and the weight of this because it was all-wheel drive made this really difficult to steer so I showed
you guys how to remove the old power steering pump and install a brand new one as well as remove the old rusty power steering lines and install brand that we did was take apart the old power steering pump and see how it failed a
piece of metal got into the pump jammed it up and that caused the impeller to Shear off so while the pulley did spin the impeller didn't pump and there was all the new parts we filled the pump up with some brand new fresh power steering
fluid then we started the car up and tried it out and we had nice and light steering finally there's no way we could use that stiff steering in an endurance or race so with all those problems sorted next we had to get the car ready
for a full roll cage so I completely gutted the interior of the car to make things interesting before I removed everything we did some 0-60 runs and the nice thing about all-wheel drive is how consistent this car is we went
from 0 to 60 in 6.8 seconds and then we also did a 60-0 braking test
bad so back home I purchased these special scales that went underneath each tire of the car and we weighed the car which weighed 3 370 pounds then I broke it down into sections first we removed the front and rear seats which
weighed a total of 180 pounds and don't worry we're going to be installing a pounds then I removed everything in the trunk which weighed 75 pounds then I speakers in the car which weighed 50 pounds then all the carpeting came out
which weighed 45 pounds then the sound deadening had to be removed using dry hammer to shatter the sound bending and separate it from the sheet metal this roll cage can't be welded to the sound deadening can only be welded to the bare
sound bending isn't good it emits poisonous fumes so we had to do this for a lot of weight out of the car and finally I removed another 40 pounds from headliner and glass sunroof this also lowers is the center of gravity which is
good but it leaves a huge hole so I installed a composite fill panel that weighed two pounds and closed off that giant hole in our roof so with pretty much everything except the dash removed from the interior we removed 430 pounds
which brought the weight of the car below 3 000 pounds which is really good and to see how good we went back to the track and did our 0-60 test the car felt quicker and the numbers showed we were almost a second quicker at 5.97 seconds
and then even better are braking from 60 miles an hour went from 170 feet to 140 feet a 30 foot Improvement and we didn't even replace the pads or rotors yet so stripped we were three weeks away from our first endurance race so we shipped
the car out to the welder so we could get that roll cage in and that's the last that you guys have heard of this car the welder and check out this awesome roll cage now time is of the essence
the race so I just want to cover this real quick but we went with NASCAR bars for the side this is a full six point roll cage so the front right here you can see we have our anti-intrusion bars what this bar does is it prevents the
wheel and the suspension from pushing in in the case of a front impact now you can see anywhere our roll cage is mounted to the frame of the car which is a unibody they use these large pieces of sheet steel this is relatively thick and
the whole point of this is to distribute the load over a large area sheet metal on the unibody is relatively thin and if we roll over or get into an accident we don't want our cage punching through the frame so this distributes the load and
this is at every point in the car where our roll cage meets the unibody frame this is very important to do and you can see all of these are done very nicely and have a nice large surface area to distribute any forces from an impact or
rollover and the entire cage came out awesome he did a great job look at these dimes this is all Mig welded and has good penetration and we know we're going we're gonna have to paint this cage after the race you guys could actually
good as a roll cage color here's a couple different options we have just comment below and tell me what you're thinking I really like this blue and I think it goes with the soapy water theme so not only did we get this amazing rule
of real stalled but we also had our subframe reinforced because the subframes on these E46 BMWs are known to tear and rip under hard driving and incredibly hard for long periods of time and here's an example of that with my
you can see the frame is cracked and starting to rust and that's just a street driven car on the track these are known to actually tear well with this setup we don't have to worry about that the subframe is tied in to our body very
nicely and also we have it tied into our strut Towers here on both sides and this car is going to be extra rigid extra safe and that's exactly what we want so in total this cage cost us thirty eight hundred dollars and we did go a little
cage requirements were because my team's safety is very important now unfortunately we only have five days until the race and we have to do all of gonna be able to film every single thing I'm going to try to quickly cover it for
you guys so you get an idea of what we had to do first we had to sell at least offset the eleven hundred dollars we bought it for that way we could get rid have so that was teammate Pierce's first job and he filmed a bunch of it so that
we had proof for the judges at the race just sold a B and C pillar and also the thing that comes up from the four bottom for 100 bucks right there just sold the center console for a hundred bucks just sold the sunroof cassette went ahead and
installed the sunroof got the uh parts right there got the uh parts right there for 160 dollars I'm Rhys Jones and I 160 dollars so we actually end Ed up selling 720
worth of Parts bringing our costs down below 500 to 380 bucks and hopefully we won't have any penalty laps now for the race car the first thing we did is basically a cooler with a pump in it
that gets strapped down in the trunk of the car and circulates ice cold water to all right I realize we don't have a lot of time but this is a very important thing I do want to explain it we just got our cool system installed and the
going to be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit inside of this car while we're driving we have a full race suit on Race shoes gloves we're covered for fire safety so comfortable we fill this out with water and Frozen water bottles and this pump
circulates all that cold water out of our hose right here into our cool shirt and our cool shirt has a connector right here so we just simply connect our just like that and now this is gonna pump all cool water right through this
shirt which is touching our skin so it keeps the race car driver nice and cool next we installed the com system which allows the driver to communicate with hole in the roof of the car so we could fit the comms antenna and this antenna
is going to give us enough range so anywhere on the track the driver and the team could communicate with each other for things like driver changes gas stops the race and then for the comms we have a really nice setup so this is for the
this and we have a really nice headset so we could communicate easily and hear going on and then for each of our helmets we're gonna have a really nice setup where we have a microphone that is wired into our helmet and a speaker
speak to the team as we're driving and we figured this would be a good spot for need the transmit you need to talk to the team you just press this and hold it and it's on the shifter so that we don't have to let go of the shifter if we're
racing next we installed high-end USA made toe straps which screw right into the stock toe locations on the rear bumper and on the front bumper so if we do happen to need a tow the track workers could quickly and easily hook up
car towed off the track then we had to fix a major exhaust leak so we took the exhaust off and installed a new gasket but anytime the exhaust is off you guys know it's a rule you have to start the car and give it a few reps
give it a rib [Music] it would [Music]
'll horrible 24 hours do it one more time with the exhaust leak fixed next we had to install a very very important fire video on how to install this because we learned a ton while rigging this up and
we also did a test fire to show what it's like
now in our car to set off the suppression system you pull this right our battery cut off next each of us on the team got into the right distance from the wheel and pedals then we installed the quick release
also going to have a full video on this so stay tuned for that and then next up our brakes were really rusty so we got new OEM calipers and rotors and we got special endurance race pads from NRS so out with the old and in with the new and
brake lines because the old brake lines were pretty worn out and sketchy and finally we flushed all the old dark brake fluid out of the system which was probably safe to around 330 degrees Fahrenheit before it boils and then we
which cost forty dollars a liter but it won't boil until 620 degrees which is what we need for heavy braking during racing and then finally we got our new tires and I listened to you guys and
Yokohama Advent a052s and we went as wide as possible with the stock wheel and stock offset so we can maximize grip also the tread wear on these is 200 which is above the 190 tread wear minimum so we are race legal
now these new wheels and tires weighed 30 pounds less total than the stock setup which is all unsprung rotational Mass so that is a huge difference and finally a day before the race we got our car aligned and for this alignment we
used race specs for the camber and Tow that way we can maximize grip but also keep our tire wear to a minimum so they would last as long as possible so this was only some of the stuff we did to the car and we worked from 6am to midnight
every day for five days straight and finally the car was ready to race we packed her up in the trailer and while the car was ready us as a team well we time in the car and none of us had wheel-to-wheel Racing Experience so
hopefully this catches everyone up on what happened to our lemons BMW race car and in the next video I'm going to show you guys our first ever endurance race experience including the tech inspection the BS inspection what it's like to
the BS inspection what it's like to actually race wheel to wheel did remember to give it a thumbs up if you're not subscribed consider
subscribing and finally the next video about our race and the catastrophic failure we had will be posted very soon so keep an eye out for that