Hey guys ChrisFix here and today I'm going
to show you how we got our Lemons BMW, ready for this year's endurance race that way the engine won't
blow up 15 laps into the race, and we don't end up on a flatbed like this... So clearly last year's race didn't go very well, but we learned a lot so this year we're going to
be prepared, and let me show you what we've done. All right, so first we started off
installing our 140 000 mile junkyard engine from a BMW X5 to replace the original
240 000 mile engine that came with the car. And now with the new junkyard engine
installed in the car listen to this... (engine starts) So she starts up on the first
try nice and quick she idles nice and smooth and she drives
great so we are ready to race! Now we did learn a bunch from our
first endurance race and the first thing we learned is we need seat time in
this car before our next endurance race. Everybody needs to go and do a bunch of laps and
be on it that way we know the engine's gonna last and that way if anything fails it'll
fail before the race not during the race. We also learned that this car is way too quiet
with the stock exhaust so listen to this... (loud engine revs) So that sounds really good and how we
did this was we got stainless steel full length headers and you're probably
like Chris but there's a $500 budget, well guess what these cost $100! I found them on eBay, full
length stainless steel headers. They're actually really nice. So we have headers, we have
the rest of the stock exhaust, and then if you remember we cut
off the muffler at the racetrack, which not only saved us 20-30 pounds,
but it also makes this car sound awesome! Besides sound, I wanted it to look good, so I asked you guys to vote on your
favorite exhaust tip style in a poll... That way you could be a part of the build. So after we got the poll results in, I got to work running the pipes to fill
the area where the muffler used to be, and I welded them up to create
one solid leak-free exhaust. I also welded an exhaust hanger and don't worry
I ended up cutting off that bottom extra bit, but I was just too excited and I wanted to
show you guys how awesome this came out! So as you can see the winner
by a long shot was letter D, and you guys picked out an awesome
style exhaust tip, it looks so good! All right so next up we went to Raceway
Park to do a test day where we beat on this car over and over and over to
try to break it for 4 hours straight. This is when I learned the exhaust
actually doesn't sound that great it's just loud but that's what we need we
need it to be loud so we could hear it.. (obnoxiously loud car exhaust sounds) (fly by exhaust sounds) Ari: The car feels great, it really does...
ChrisFix: Excited for the race? Ari: Oh yeah it's gonna be a lot of fun! So each of us got in the
car to get some experience, learn the car, and do what we could to break it... (tires screeching) And then finally we had our first problem, something nobody wants to hear...
what's that ticking sound? (engine ticking) Luckily the diagnosis was collapsed
lifters from the oil thinning out which we'll fix by using a thicker grade oil... Right now the oil is 5w40 which is
really just made for street use. Aaron: I was pushing the car super
hard just like, at redline every shift, this car is great, it's totally fine
ChrisFix: (excited "whooo" noise) Okay, so after our track day we realized
how difficult it was to get in and out of the car because there's limited space between
the stock steering wheel and the roll cage. So I made a video on how to install
a quick release steering wheel, and here's a quick overview. First you need to pop out the airbag
and remove the electrical connectors from the airbag, so that you
can get it all the way out. Next you need to break the bolt loose
which holds the steering wheel in, and then unscrew it all the way. Then with the tug, the wheel comes right off... With the wheel off, the hub
adapter could be installed and it's important you add medium
strength thread locker to the bolt so the bolt doesn't back out with vibrations
and then your steering wheel comes off. Then you want to torque down that bolt to spec. (torque wrench click) Then we could add the quick
release adapter to the hub and tighten it down in a crisscross
pattern to evenly seat that onto the hub. Next the quick release could be attached
and that just snaps in... like that. And finally the steering wheel could be bolted on,
again tightening the bolts in a crisscross pattern to seat the wheel evenly to the hub. And check it out now we could
quickly remove the steering wheel to get out of the car a lot safer and easier just
in case there's a fire or something when we race. Next I made a full in-depth video
to show you guys how to install a battery cutoff switch and here's a quick overview. First I showed you what wires that we need
to cut and how to properly crimp together those thick gauge wires so that they make a good
electrical connection just like from the factory. Then I showed you how to run them to a switch
on the driver's side that's easily accessible from the driver strapped into the seat and
from a track worker who's outside of the car. Then I showed you how to properly wire
in that switch and secure those wires so that you don't have any problems with reliability. And after that we needed to
mount everything onto a bracket so I showed you guys the process of
making a bracket from a template, and finally I showed you mounting
the cutoff switch and the fire suppression switches and here's the end result... Okay clutch in let's try starting her up.. (engine starting noises) Okay she's alive, that's a good thing. All right so I let the engine idle
for a few minutes and she's running perfectly also when you rev
it up she has plenty of power. (loud revving noises) Now at the race in order to
pass tech-inspection and get on the track we need to be able to rev our
engine over 3000 RPMs and hold it there, and then the tech inspector is going to flick the switch off and make sure the engine
dies quickly so let's give it a try. Let's get our RPMs above 3000
RPMs and hold it steady.. (engine shutting off noises) All right now that's what I'm talking about! We had the engine above 3000 RPMs, we flipped the switch, and it killed everything
instantly, and we have no power at all, so now we know we properly
installed our kill switch! So after installing the kill switch we needed
to address a very weak livery from last year. Yes, we did get the sponsors on the
car for the race but let's be real this wasn't up to par with ChrisFix quality. You guys know how I like to go above and beyond, even on a budget Lemons car, so
this livery had to be addressed.. So out with the old... And in with the new! Just check out this livery! That is more like it! So now we had a professionally designed
livery that went with the theme of our team: The Soapy Wooder Racers And just look at this car! Not only
does the Soapy Wooder theme look great but we have all the team sponsors including the
main sponsors, eBay Motors and Peak Performance, properly displayed on the car
in a way that looks amazing. And my favorite part is the roof with the
Soapy Wooder decal for my spray bottles. So with the amazing livery done, we
only had a few days until the race and there are some really important
things we wanted to get done. Last year we figured out the engine blew up due
to a spun bearing from a lack of oil pressure, So this year we installed gauges to give us oil
pressure, oil temperature, and coolant pressure. To get the oil temperature and oil pressure we
tapped into the stock oil pressure sensor location which is right behind the filter housing. So all we had to do is remove the OEM sensor. And to fit all the new sensors on it, we have this oil sensor manifold which
accepts up to three sensors total. So all we had to do is tighten down the
banjo bolt into the stock sensor location, and then we could add our new
pressure sensor and hand tighten it, and then we could add the smaller
temperature sensor and hand tighten it, and then we could tighten down that manifold into place so that those copper crush
washers crush and prevent leaks. And finally we could add the OEM sensor back in and then snug up all the sensors
with the wrench so they won't leak. And finally all you have to
do is connect those wiring harnesses from the gauges right to the sensors, and with the engine running we have
oil temperature on the left at 191°F and the pressure is in the middle at
53 PSI and we're at about 3000 RPMs. And unfortunately our coolant pressure
gauge won't be connected for this race because we couldn't get the correct adapters in time so that we could install
that sensor into the radiator, but the oil pressure and temperature
are the most important ones and we got that working perfectly. Next up, I wanted to add wheel studs
to the hubs because BMW's hub design is not good for changing wheels quickly or easily. Let me show you what I mean. So let's remove all the lug bolts and
yes I said lug bolts not lug nuts, And now the wheel will come off but watch how difficult it is to put
back on because there's no studs. You have to try to lift up
the wheel and line up the holes and then get it into the center of the hub. You can't rotate the wheel
otherwise you might turn the hub, and it's just not quick and it's not easy to do. So instead of using lug bolts like this, we're going to install studs into
these holes just like on a normal hub and then the wheel could go on that and then you
could put lug nuts on and then tighten it down. Now I would consider these wheel studs a
performance product and not a safety product because they're designed to
help us get the wheels on and off quicker which will hopefully mean
that we'll be able to get more laps in. So because of that, this does
count towards our $500 budget. If it's a safety item like a roll cage or brakes or something that has to do
with keeping the driver safe, that doesn't count towards that
$500 budget but performance items do and every $10 over that $500
budget is one penalty lap. So it was important that we found
a good price on these wheel studs and to do that I went on eBay Motors
and I found wheel studs that fit the BMW and they're grade 10.9
so we know they're strong and they're only $50 so we stay under budget. And one last good thing I want to
mention a lot of people don't even know is if you get your parts
and they're not as described eBay Motors has a money back
guarantee so you don't have to worry about getting stuck with bad parts So remember that just just in case and with that said that's exactly why eBay
Motors is our team's sponsor. It's a perfect fit, especially for this
Lemon build where we're trying to save as much money as possible and not go over budget. So let me show you how to safely
install these studs into the hub. Now when we're installing these
studs, right here is what screws into the hub and it's very important
to use high strength thread locker. This is the red stuff, this is the stuff that you need to remove with heat that way
these don't back out by accident. So first let's lay a bead of thread Locker along
the threads and you don't need to use a lot here. Now we could just hand tighten the stud
into the hub and then we're good to go. So with the thread Locker on all the studs, just hand tighten each one
into the hub all the way, and then we can torque each one of these
down to spec which for these is 25lb-ft. Next we can get the wheel on. And look at how much quicker and easier it is to get this wheel on because now we
have studs that we could line up. And then finally we could torque
down the lug nuts to spec. Make sure you do a crisscross pattern, and then we want our thread locker to
cure before we go for a test drive. Next up I had a safety concern that I wanted
to address which was this plastic piece that barely covered the huge hole in the firewall.
So I removed this less than adequate plastic piece which wouldn't protect us
in the case of an engine fire and you can see how large
that gap is in the firewall so I used this plastic piece as a
template to cut out a piece of steel, that way we could close off the firewall. But first we removed the air conditioning
for weight reduction and this left a hole in the firewall right here which I
welded up so that it's closed off. And with that hole welded shut
and painted to prevent rust then we installed that steel
firewall block off plate I cut out and you can see this does a much better job
at closing up that huge hole in our firewall. Another thing we have to do is down
here at the driver's side floor. You can see right here we have this big drop because there used to be a piece of
foam here and then carpeting on top and the clutch is right here so
where you would put your foot. Even where the brake is you only have this little section here until your
foot drops off into this abyss so we need to fix that. So to solve this problem I found a heel plate on eBay Motors for a $100 and I made
them a $75 offer and he accepted. So again staying under budget. Now while this is made for an E46 BMW, if you look at the bottom right of
the plate, it definitely doesn't fit. That's because our transmission
tunnel on the all-wheel drive E46 is different than a rear wheel drive E46. There's a little hump to make room for a
transfer case, but this is a simple fix. I just cut that area out so that it'll fit. Then with the heel plate removed, I
drilled two holes in the floorboard vacuumed up all the debris from drilling covered the holes in some paint
to prevent it from rusting hammered in a riv-nut into each one of those holes and then used a riv-nut tool to install
the riv-nuts into the floor of the car. And riv-nuts are a great way to install
threaded inserts without having to weld. Finally the heel plate went back
in and I tightened down each of the bolts that hold this in place so it's secured. And the last thing to do is install the throttle
pedal, and I want you guys to remember this... I made sure that it snapped in
place and isn't going anywhere... Remember that! You'll see why in the next video... So with the heel plate installed,
this is important because now we have somewhere to put our feet so we
could comfortably control the pedals. Now I know you guys enjoyed the
weight reduction aspect of this series so let me show you some more
stuff we removed because it's kind of like getting free horsepower in a sense. So we took out all the glass from the
windows on the doors and that's about 40lbs. We took out all the motors and window
regulators that's another 15lbs. We got rid of all the AC system components because we're not going to need this so that's
another 40lbs, this thing weighs a ton. We got rid of some more sound deadening
so there's only a little bit left, and this is about 20lbs of sound deadening. And you already saw we put the stainless steel headers in which weigh
10lbs but these weighed 30lbs plus we removed our 30lb
muffler so we saved 50lbs. And then finally we went from the
stock wheels which weigh 23lbs each to the Konig countergram
wheels which weigh 18lbs each so that's saving of 5lbs
each wheel, giving us 20lbs so in total we saved 185lbs which is almost exactly what our roll cage and
fire suppression system weigh. So we broke even and we didn't
gain any weight which is awesome. Now since we installed headers
which is a performance upgrade that counts against our $500 budget, it was only $100 bucks but still every little
bit counts, we don't want any penalty laps, but that does mean we are allowed to sell our exhaust manifolds so I put
them up on eBay for $500 which probably wasn't enough
because these sold in a day so now we have an extra $500 to play with which will hopefully prevent us
from getting any penalty laps. And now I'm gonna go ship
these out to the new owner... Alright so the next thing we need
to do before we get to the racetrack is something that one of you guys
actually brought up in the comments. Actually there are a couple of you who
said "hey running with your windows open is going to slow you down a lot,
it's going to create a lot of drag air is going to come in here and get trapped"
and you're actually 100% right check this out... A YouTube channel called AirShaper reached
out to me and ran two aero-models for the Lemons BMW this model you're looking at
right here has both side windows open. And that red you see is the drag coming
from the different parts of the car and you can see how much
drag the side windows create. Next he ran a model with just
the front window open and the rear window closed and you can see with
this model there is a lot less drag. When we compare the two,
when both windows are open the airflow towards the rear
of the car is disrupted. That's going to reduce the effect of the
spoiler and it's also going to create drag. So in summary, if the rear window
is closed there's less lift and overall our downforce is increased which is good. Also the car is more efficient with a
smaller drag coefficient and although they're not huge changes every little
bit counts in a 16 hour endurance race. And I want to thank AirShaper for running
these models this was very helpful I'll leave a link to his channel in the description
if you guys like aero I think you'll like it. So as you saw we're having not
only a bunch of drag right here but we're getting lift on our
rear end which is not good. So what can we do about it? We can't run glass, you're not allowed
to run glass on the side windows because it is tempered glass and if it shatters it breaks
into little pieces it's dangerous for the driver it's dangerous for the track. You have to run your front laminated windshield, but you can't run side glass, you can't run anything here on the
driver's side because if there's a fire or the driver's trapped in here for
some reason they need to get out there can't be anything blocking this
so this has to stay open no matter what but the rear windows, since we have
a sedan, these could be closed off. So what we could do is install
a clear piece of Lexan. This is polycarbonate, it's a piece of
plastic that doesn't shard, it doesn't break into small pieces in an accident, it stays
together and is allowed to be run on this car. And it's not clear right now because
there's a protective coating on it but once we get this installed
we could take that coating off and it'll be crystal clear just like glass. So we could install this to
give us some better aerodynamics So to keep within budget again I
found these on eBay Motors for $125 and I offered the guy $100 and he took it
and that keeps us under the $500 budget. So to install these just get it into the window
channel where the glass window would normally sit. Then you want to tuck it up under
the weather stripping to make a seal and then now we can tighten down the
two screws on the support pillar here and then the two screws on the bottom
window channel and that's bolted in. And finally my favorite part the reward of
pulling off that protective shipping coating and check it out so now we have our side Lexan
for both rain protection and also so we have better aero giving us a little bit more down
force and just more efficiency in general. Now the last thing we need to do is
probably one of the most important things and that is drain out all the 5w40
oil which is the stock spec for this car. Good for the street, not so much for the track. And as that's draining let me
show you why this is so important So our engine failure last year was from
our engine oil getting hot, thinning out, and add that to our very worn out 240,000
mile engine we probably had low oil pressure and that caused the bearing to grab and spin and that happens so quickly that our number two piston just shot out of the
engine and that ended our race. So to make sure this doesn't happen again with
our junkyard engine we drained out all the oil and we also removed the old oil filter and installed a brand new oil filter and added a fully synthetic
10w60 oil that's pretty thick. That way if the oil does thin out
after 16 hours of beating on this thing we'll still have enough protection
to prevent catastrophic failure. And with our oil change this is perfect
timing the delivery truck just pulled up and wait till you see this... And look what arrived just in time. Fra-geel-lay... Must be Italian. Okay this is definitely, our
BMW motor from Elite Motorworks. I cannot wait to see what's inside this so let's
unscrew the box and let's get in and check it out. Okay let's see what we get we have a
brand new engine it's like Christmas although I've never gotten
an engine for Christmas... Here goes the reveal... holy smokes check that out that is so cool! So this is our backup engine that Jamie from Elite Motorworks built for us just
in case we need to swap it in. It was torn down to the bare block and put
back together with all factory upgraded parts. Not to make more power but instead to be
the most reliable BMW engine out there. I'd love to swap this thing into the
car now but unfortunately that would put us way over that $500 limit and it
doesn't fit the whole purpose of Lemons. So instead it's our backup engine just in case. So with that our car is ready we took all the
mistakes and shortcomings from last year learn from them and fix them to give us the most
bulletproof $500 Lemons BMW we could build. So everything's all packed up and we're
ready to head to the track and in the next video we're gonna find out if we can make it
through the entire 16 hour endurance race. Hopefully you enjoyed the video if you
did remember to give it a "thumbs up" and if you're not subscribed consider
hitting that subscribe button, that way you can see if we make the ultimate
comeback or if we end up failing again!
