The team from left to right: Ken, Matt, Brian, Price, Dan, Drew. Oh yeah, and Fred hanging onto the car.

The Cleaver Motorsports family set out to Motorsport Ranch Houston early Friday morning (2/27/09) to begin shaking down the revitalized BMW 325E LeMons car. From the very beginning things were looking great. The junkyard candidate of a bimmer actually moved around the track at a solid pace. As a true testament to German engineering, we began to turn some very pleasing lap times despite the questionable engineering that brought the #17 BMW back to life.

Our driver lineup consisted of Price (Dad), Drew, Dan, and Ken. Dan is a life-long racer, proud owner of a SCCA Solo II National Championship (back in the ’80s if I recall), and Ken is a well-rounded Time Trial racer and driving instructor for NASA and other various organizations. Ken brought some valuable knowledge from the Spec E30 world and helped us in making the most of our junker. Throughout the practice day, we began to encounter some occasional stuttering in left-hand turns. Regardless, practice went on and we tried to fix it by the end of Friday before racing began the following morning.

Needless to say, all of our assumptions were wrong. Drew started the race and immediately encountered the same problems, but much more severely and was forced to pit at the very beginning of the race. Luckily, our ace mechanic Brian was able to crew for us over the weekend. Within just a few minutes, Brian found that the main electrical relay was less than ideally snug, and so we resorted to zip ties and electrical tape. Drew went back out on track 9 laps down, and the car ran flawlessly for the rest of the weekend.

After the first hour we were charted at 67th position. Throughout Saturday we all stayed out of the penalty box and moved all the way up to 12th position by the end of the first day of racing. Everyone drove really solid laptimes and most importantly stayed out of trouble.

Sunday the pace picked up dramatically. The crappiest of the crappy had self-destructed by this time and the pits were about as busy as the track. Also, people that had no clue what they were doing on Saturday were a little more competent by Sunday. Price began on Sunday and did a fabulous job. Ken soon followed. We encountered our first minor penalty on Sunday when Ken barely clipped a cone that was out of place. Since we were good all day Saturday, the judges cut him slack for such a minor offense and we were on our way, but it cost us about 3 more laps. Ken ran a great stint and then we pitted to put Drew in the car.

Drew came out of the pits with an axe to grind since we still had a lot of work to climb into the top 10. Drew was flying through traffic and making excellent time, paying attention to corner workers, avoiding accidents, and all the proper stuff to avoid penalties. There were many full-course yellow laps in Drew’s stint and when the track finally went green again, Drew had a clear path ahead to make up some serious time. Drew was busy ripping around the racetrack and was setting the fastest laptimes that we saw all weekend. Unfortunately, after another full-course yellow, Drew once again had a clear track ahead when we went back to green flag racing. Drew was driving faster than ever. So much so that it was too fast for the track conditions. Drew went 2-wheels off just after exiting the post-launch esses. That caused our 2nd black flag of the day. Relatively speaking, we were still nuns compared to the morons that ended up in the penalty box 8+times, so the judges let us go with a driver change. This downtime put us another 9 laps down, but we managed to stay in the 8th position. Drew admitted that the off-track excursion was of no fault other than his own, but warned Dan-the-closer that the track was getting warm and greasy, especially on the backside.

Dan set off to another great blistering pace and was working through traffic, all the way up until the final two corners of the race, attempting to pass people running at the back of the pack. Dan’s aggression was rewarding and amazingly stayed penalty-free all weekend. His performance put on a good show, earning us laps and raising the hair on the back of our necks as we spotted the course for him.

Overall, we managed to squeeze out a 6th place finish out of 96 cars that entered the race. Of some 450+ drivers, one of Drew’s pre-offroading laptimes scored our team the “Fastest German Car Award” by turning a laptime of 1:16.8, the sixth fastest lap of the race.  Although we were “sixth” fastest, we like to think that at least a couple cars that turned in faster times were cheater cars that were rightfully penalized. That said, the other 5 cars that turned faster laps than us finished no better than 34th position. This race isn’t at all a testament of speed. We just got lucky. Our speed made up for a few minor mistakes and gave us something fun to fight for all weekend.

The 24-hours-of-lemons is a fantastic motorsports expo. It deserves television coverage with so much excitement going on over the course of two days of racing crapcan clunkers. I highly encourage anyone thinking about entering to get a solid team together and build a car. You will learn an infinite amount about racing while going through this process. You learn more in an hour of going wheel-wheel every single lap than you would in a lifetime at Driver’s Education events.

Stay tuned for future updates about our motorsports endeavors! Up next is refreshing the bimmer for the LAISSEZ LES CRAPHEAPS ROULEZ NEW ORLEANS in June. Along with that, Dad’s Panoz needs some attention so we can get back on the track in a real compilation of race-engineered machinery.

Feel free to contact us for any info about the race!

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After deciding we were going to enter our own team in next year’s 24 Hours of Lemons, we expected to have another 12 months to get a team and car together before the rolling circus returned to Houston.

But on November 15, 2008 the 2009 schedule was announced, and the first race of the season was February 28 in Houston, a mere 15 weeks away. We didn’t have a car or a team. We’d never built a racecar from scratch. We’d never managed an endurance race team. We barely had room in the garage to work on a car. Could we do this?

Probably not, but we took the plunge and registered for the race anyways. Instantly our search was on for a car. At the time, Drew was going to school in Arkansas, Matt lived in the Dallas Area, and Price was in Houston. We were on Craigslist constantly for about a week looking for the perfect car anywhere in Texas, Oklahoma, or Arkansas. We aren’t too mechanically inclined, but we are super competitive, so we were looking for a car that could compete for an overall win that we could get put together over Christmas break.

We decided we really wanted an e30 BMW for a few reasons:

• They are a popular racing car, so there are plenty of safety parts available for them. Roll cages and brake parts were easy to find. Although racing a 1968 Lancia might have won us the Index of Effluency, we had no idea how to make a roll cage from scratch or if we would have the know-how to fix it up.
• They are a popular racing car, so there is plenty of free information floating around the internet about how to prep and fix them.
• They are old enough to be easy to work on, but they’re still a BMW and have racing in their blood.

Matt found what looked to be the perfect car on Craigslist in the Dallas area. It was a 1986 BMW 325e for sale for $750 “or best offer.” According to the ad the car ran and had a manual transmission that was broken. Perfect!

The “e” model is much less desirable than the “i” model because it had a much more economical engine. Compare:

• 325e: 121 hp and 172 lb·ft. Redline: 4,800 RPM.
• 325i: 168 hp and 164 lb·ft. Redline: 6,500 RPM.

However, the 325e motors were known for their low-end torque, fuel milage, and reliability. Could this be the perfect Lemons car? Only one way to find out.

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The car that introduced us to the 24 Hours of Lemons

In order to figure out how we found ourselves running our own car in the 24 Hours of LeMons Houston Gator-O-Rama, you have to go back to the weekend of October 17-19, 2008. Drew got hooked up with a team who was running the race for the first time at the first LeMons race in the Houston area at Motorsport Ranch Houston. They were a really great group of people who worked together and needed an extra driver for their team and Drew was lucky enough to be able to fill the spot.

Drew and I go down on Friday for practice and lay our eyes on his “racecar,” a 1986(?) Nissan 200sx with a pretty sweet American/Texan/Chuck Norris (aren’t the three inseperable?) theme. It looks like Drew is going to be the hotshoe driver of the bunch and he gets in the car and starts turning some practice laps.

Trying to get the car to go around a corner

The best way to describe the handling is “floaty.” Drew says you have to think ahead when driving the car because the suspension was so soft it took it a second before the tires start to bite after you turn the wheel on corner entry. As I watched, I could see the car handling just like he described. It’s hard to explain, but you could see the body start to roll as the wheel was turned before the car really started turning and the tires bit around the corner. Oh, the joys of a $300 racecar.

The best way to describe the engine is not to. I believe the engine that year was rated at 97 horsepower. No, that is not an exaggeration–it had less than 100 horsepower. Passing people was going to happen under braking, not on the straights.

Saturday rolls around and they decide that since Drew was the fastest driver during Friday’s practice he will start the race with all 70ish other amateurs. Before the green flag drops the car stalls and won’t restart and we spend twenty minutes in the pits soldering the wire connections to the safety-mandated kill switch. Drew gets sent back out and he starts making up as many places as he can, passing most the cars under braking since almost any car has enough power to at least stay even down the straights.

To make a long story short, Drew drives two penalty-free days. That’s more than we can say about the rest of the team. We’re not sure how many penalties there were, but I’m pretty sure everyone got their fair share. Additionally, pit stops and driver changes weren’t too awfully coordinated, either. One time Drew was signaled to come into the pits, he pitted, and no one was ready to change drivers or refuel so he went back out.

You might be thinking that with a bunch of novice drivers, spending twenty minutes in the pits at the beginning of the race, lots of penalties, and less-than-optimal pit coordination that the team finished way down in the standings. And you would be wrong. Team Chuck Norris still finished 26th out of 68 cars. Although they weren’t the most competitive team on the track, we had a good time and were grateful they let Drew on their team.

After realizing how much time could be made up with the right preparation and coordination, Drew and I get the crazy idea to try and put a team together ourselves. Could a win really be within reach? Stay tuned for the next step in our saga.

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