Black Flag Racing turned an abandoned 2007 Honda Accord into a 24 Hours of Lemons race car in just five weeks, then hauled it to New Orleans for a weekend of chaos. After a catastrophic K24 engine failure, a rain-soaked paddock engine pull, and a heroic push across the finish line, the team still brought home 17th in Class C.

Good weather finally showed up, so Black Flag Racing called in the cavalry—friends and family with gloves, grit, and a worrying tolerance for chaos. In one productive Saturday, we installed the battery cut-off, ran the trunk power cable, finished primary roll cage welds, wrestled the oil pan (yes, the engine got lifted), swapped in a new oil filter and belt, wired the radiator fans, and cut hood holes for a “novel” cooling idea involving the resurrected heater. Next up: fire suppression, final welding, seat mount, and transmission fluid.

Rain tried to cancel Black Flag Racing’s plans, so we upgraded the 2007 Honda Accord anyway—soaked driveway, wet tools, zero excuses. The factory air box and resonator got evicted, a cold air intake went in, and the ignition system got a refresh with NGK spark plugs from Advanced Auto Parts and Mishimoto ignition coils from Summit Racing. Did this add a mountain of horsepower? Probably not. Did it add confidence, reliability, and just enough intake noise to convince us we’re faster? Absolutely. If race prep required sunshine, we’d all be driving stock.

Three weeks out, the doubters are getting loud—but so is the metal work. Last night we cut, fit, and tacked the roll cage piping with the cage in place, thanks to a SolidWorks-backed plan from our race engineer that turned “driveway chaos” into something dangerously close to precision. HVAC is gone, the battery’s relocated, the race seat is dry-fitted, the steering column came out and went back in, and the Accord is officially past the point of no return. We’re not hoping to be ready—we’re building a machine that will perform.

Black Flag Racing logged a productive winter weekend on the 2007 Honda Accord build despite high winds, snow, and sub-20°F temperatures. The team dry-fitted the roll cage and confirmed the kit will require substantial fabrication, then pivoted to other priorities to stay on schedule for NOLA.

We spent a frozen weekend continuing to turn our 2007 Accord into a race car: new calipers, hubs, and coil-overs—plus a stubborn strut bolt that required an absurd amount of drilling and mild emotional bargaining. We fixed the headlights, bent the fender back, then got a Kirkey Racing seat and a “prefab” Summit roll-cage.

With snow and ice making outdoor work miserable, race prep took an unexpected turn indoors—straight into the kitchen. What followed was a low-budget automotive cooking experiment involving brake calipers, an oven, and a lot of misplaced confidence. The goal was simple: warm the metal, make the paint behave, and avoid freezing fingers. The result was bright yellow calipers, a house that briefly smelled like hot steel, and renewed faith in our progress on the Honda Accord. Questionable decisions were made, progress was achieved, and the oven lived to see another day.

The car is free…soon it will be time to get back to work

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