Our 24 Hours of LeMons racing weekend

I'm back from my team's first 24 Hours of LeMons race (an endurance race for $500 cars) at Buttonwillow Raceway. (And yes, I've finally updated the photo gallery. Race photos start on this page.) How did it go? It went very, very well. It also went very, very wrong.

A quick bit of background: We arrived at the race on Friday morning with our car not quite finished. We had until 4:00 to pass tech and BS inspection (the latter in which they determine if you've cheated and spent more than $500, unless you bribe the judges with adult beverages, which we did). We finished the car and made it to tech with 40 minutes to spare. We would have made it sooner had we not drilled through a fuel line while mounting our safety harness...

Okay, so first, the went-very-well part: I never thought I'd say this, but I was really glad to be driving a BMW. Despite the fact that it was in pretty terrible shape, our 633 CSi turned out to be a really good-natured car, with surprisingly accurate steering, neutral handling, and -- aside from a mean pull to the right under hard braking, which might have something to do with our end-of-race discovery that a couple of big bolts were missing from the front suspension -- no bad habits. The automatic transmission, which I expected to be our weak link, actually held up really well, and most of us -- well, 3 out of the 5 -- really liked racing with an automatic. My driving was pretty lousy the first time out -- a rear view mirror that wouldn't stay in place made for lots of surprises -- but improved to merely crummy on my second turn at the wheel.

The very wrong part: Our car broke a lot. We lost our exhaust early on, and spent almost two hours re-attaching it; it broke again after just one lap. (We then tried a five-minute fix: We ripped it off the car. And man, did it sound great.) A couple of hours later, one of our drivers -- who was momentarily distracted by the fact that our broken gauge cluster suddenly came back to life -- spun out and was black-flagged (directed to exit the track). As he came into the penalty box, we spotted a massive fuel leak dripping right on the hot differential, so his momentary lapse of concentration might well have saved him from something much more serious. An hour later, the car was back on the track; soon after it was back in the pits. The guibo -- a rubber doughnut that connects two parts of the drive shaft and is famous for failing explosively -- had failed explosively, and our spares were at home. Parts stores generally don't stock guibos, but within twenty minutes we had two brand-new ones -- such is the spirit amongst Lemons racers. We eventually mdae it back out on the track, only to return for a missing hood pin (which we solved by removing the hood) and again to secure the fusebox (which was flopping around in the wind because we removed the hood). And that was just Saturday! Sunday went well for about two hours, until a car spun out in our man's path and we hit him. Zero driver damage, minimal body damage, but we bent up our front-left suspension bad enough to call it a day.

So we didn't get to finish the race, which was a little sad -- but we had an absolutely fantastic time. Racing at Lemons has changed my perspective on motoring. Think about it: We plucked a clapped-out, non-running BMW from the jaws of the crusher, and a few weeks later we ran it foot-to-the-floor for the better part of two days -- and it not only raced, but it raced pretty darn well.

Most importantly, my teammates and I had a fantastic time. If you've ever had the urge to race in the 24 Hours of LeMons, I'm telling you now: Do it. It's an experience unlike any other. And yes, we plan to be back for Thunderhill! -- Aaron Gold