LuK Motorsports

Habitat for Humanity

LuK Motorsports is a group of engineers from LuK USA LLC.  We formed the team in September 2004 when we began building a Quad4 powered Honda CRX for the Grassroots Motorsports $2005 Challenge as way to raise money for Habitat for Humanity.  We were extremely happy to raise $2200 for them.  We are now in the process of building a Olds 455 powered Firebird for the Grassroots Motorsports $2006 Challenge and will once again be raising money for Habitat for Humanity.   We would like to thank our company for their generosity in sponsoring us for this endeavor.  We would also like to thank our wives and girlfriends for their understanding and patience with the amount of time involved in building this car.  Also we need to thank Sara for letting us invade your garage and home!

The Team:

Bill Brees Ben Roberts Philip Severyn Srivatsan Kannan Greg Heeke Jeremy Vanni Chris Shamie Nate Hudson

The Event:

The Grassroots Motorsports $2006Challenge will be held in Gainesville, Florida from October 26th to 28th.  It is an automotive event in which teams build a vehicle for $2006 or less to compete in an autocross, a drag race and a concourse.  The scores are combined between the events to give a final total.  Please visit Grassroots Motorsports website for more information.

The Car:

The 1982 Firebird was found in Chris' neighborhood.  It came with the freshly rebuilt Oldsmobile 455 C.I. (7.5 L) big block already installed.  It was riddled with rust, dents and needed a lot of suspension work so of course that is where most of our time and money have been spent.

Here's how the car looked when we bought it.

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The first step of the process was to strip off anything that wasn't welded onto the car (and some things that were).

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Gotta Love the Sawzall!  We cut off the roof and all the rust.  Then we took our the welder and patched all of the holes in the floor (using metal from some industrial shelving and a washing machine housing) and seam welded the unibody and front subframe.

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Roll Cage

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Here are some pictures of the bodywork in progress

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Here are pictures showing the car being painted and the finished paint job.  This year we used Rustoleum Industrial Paint which costs about $20 a gallon.

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These are pictures of the final assembly of the car.   Although we planned on having the car finished well before the competition, most of this work was done in the last week and we finished the car one day before we left.

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It would be greatly appreciated if you would make a donation to the Habitat for Humanity in support of our team.  If you would like to do so, please follow this link to their donation page.   It is not necessary, but we would also appreciate if you could make a note that you were directed to them by the LuK Motorsports team.  You could also send us a check made out to the Habitat for Humanity and we will deliver it with the others already collected.  The checks can be mailed to any of the team members at    3401 Old Airport Road, Wooster, OH 44691.