the science of slow

2010 annual blog post

2010-06-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

It's time for my annual blog post.

Things have definitely slowed down motorsports wise since the baby. Baby? Oh yeah ... the baby just turned 1 and is not really a "baby" anymore.

Things have definitely slowed down, but in the last year, motorsports wise, I've:

raced in 24Hrs of LeMons twice. winning the race once, and definitely not winning the other time
drove in a handful of spec e30 races, learned that I'm slow and getting rusty from lack of practice
backed my spec e30 into a tire wall at Laguna Seca test day (my own dumb fault)
bought a new spec e30 race car, and in the same weekend ...
backed the new race car into a tire wall at ThunderHill (probably my fault, but I had help)

I've got 3 E30 race cars sitting outside of my house right now, all requiring various repairs.

In the future, I plan to sell the red spec e30 once I get it cleaned up. I'll definitely get the new car repaired in time for the spec e30 race in August. It's also likely that my cohorts will convince me to do the December 24Hrs of LeMons race.

Tune in to next year's blog post to see how this all turns out ;)

cheapskate racing tip: buy the wrong wheels

2009-08-11T22:46:00.001-07:00

Long time no post.

In the gap between posts I've raced in the 24Hrs of LeMons and acquired a son, among other things. For some reason I'm back, so here's my latest racing infatuation: cheap wheels.

I'm always on the look out for cheap wheels for my race car. I've got a pile of craigslist searches and keep an eye out on the local E30 forum for good deals. Well, I finally found a "good deal" and picked up a set of Team Dynamics Pro Race 2 wheels meant for Acura fitment, with Toyo RA1's on them, for $250. This is less than the $450 it would cost me for a set of new wheels, and as a bonus they came with some tires that I could race on if I could get them to fit.

They're not quite designed to work on an E30. The offset is odd, but I can work around that with spacers that I already have. The center bore is 56.1mm, exactly 1mm smaller than will fit on the E30.

Enter the milling machine:

I slapped them on the mill at work. A lathe is a better idea for cutting circles, but I don't have access to a lathe big enough to fit an entire wheel, let alone a wheel with the tire still mounted. So I bolted the wheels to the mill's table one at a time, found the center of the hole, then told the CNC computer to cut a circle 1mm bigger.

They turned out ok:

After wiping off the cob webs, I gave the car its semi-annual washing and got it fired up after 3 months of sitting. It fired right up, and I drove on the new wheels at ThunderHill on Friday. While I wasn't setting lap records, I got the entire day's worth of driving out of the tires, and they're not corded yet.

While this kind of wheel modding isn't for everyone, I'm pretty smug that it worked out.

Truth in 24

2009-03-25T10:34:00.000-07:00

Just watched Truth in 24 and it was excellent. So excellent that I felt compelled to type stuff into the blog, instead of just sharing it via Google Reader.

The story was captivating, and the documentary was very well done. As with any good documentary, there's a great human story behind the whole thing. I'd say more, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. I'll probably watch it again in a few days to pick up some of the finer points now that I know the story.

It's available for free on iTunes, just follow this link, or see Jalopnik, Autoblog, and probably a jillion more sources.

Watching the movie made me want to do more endurance racing. Maybe I'll try to sneak the Spec E30 into one of the enduros later in the year? If I don't do any serious endurance racing, I can always take comfort in the fact that the not-so-serious 24Hrs of LeMons Reno is rapidly approaching.

Valentine's Day in the rain at Infineon

2009-02-16T22:37:00.000-08:00

(my apologies for the long post. it was a busy weekend)

The season opener this year was at Infineon on Feb 14th. That's right, Valentine's Day. My wife was extremely understanding, so I was allowed to go play at Infineon while she spent the day with the wife sitters.

I had 2 months worth of off season to prep the car, but in classic procrastinator style, I didn't do much til the week before the race when I slapped the spec exhaust on the car after some stupid fitment issues. The night before the race, I ended up swapping brakes and other misc things while it poured rain. I had the car on the trailer by 11pm, at which point I noticed that it had a flat tire. I filled it with air and went to sleep.

Saturday's Drive to the Track

I woke up at an unpleasant 5am to make it up to Infineon in time for the practice session. The trailer tire held pressure just fine overnight, so I put it out of my mind and groggily drove to the track.

All was well until the ambulance's overdrive light started blinking at me. Blinking lights are generally a bad thing, but the ambulance didn't shift any worse than usual, so I ignored it.

About 5 minutes out from Infineon I was treated to another illuminated light. It was red and said "brakes". Awesome. Guess I should check the brakes now? They still functioned, but operation required both feet and large amounts of pressure. Power brakes are for sissies anyway. I soldiered on, leaving extra braking distance, just in case.

As I cruised into the paddock, the ambulance lost power steering. Clearly there was a theme developing. I parked it and opened the hood to find 1 of 4 belts in its proper configuration. 2 more belts were present, but were hanging like shredded vines on the front of the engine. After a detailed analysis, I believe the alternator belt exploded, which killed the power brake belt, then the remains of the alternator belt took out power steering.

I was just relieved I made it to the race track. I unloaded the race car and went to drop off the trailer in the trailer lot. To top off my morning of broken stuff, the key promptly broke off in the trailer hitch lock. The ambulance and trailer were going to be coupled all weekend. I'd cut the lock off later.

Saturday Race

I had "super sized" my race weekend. This means that I payed a small amount extra to race in the PTE class in addition to Spec E30. PTE is a points based class, full of miatas and rx-7s and now spec e30's. There were a couple of other Spec E30 guys doing the same thing, so I figured it would be an extra spec e30 race, but with Miatas.

In PTE I qualified 8th with a traffic full qual session, then I finished 5th in the race. It was interesting to race with the Miatas, which are faster in the turns and slower on the straights.

In Spec E30 I qualified 8th with a 2:02.444 lap time. I got a pretty good start (for once!) and had a fun race chasing down MacKenzie in a 318is. It was the first time I've driven with a 318 in Spec E30. They have a smaller 4 cylinder motor, so they get a 200lb weight advantage and a lower geared differential to compensate for it. Much like a Miata, it's faster in the turns, and slower in the straights, which made for fun racing. We traded spots a couple of times through the race, and I ended up finishing an unofficial 7th. Thanks to 3 DQ's ahead of me (the top 2 cars were underweight, and MacKenzie was DQ'd for some reason), I jumped to an official 4th place.

The highlight of the race for me was putting down a fast lap of 1:59.924 (1.021 off the fastest non-DQ'd lap in class). I'm now a member of the sub 2:00 minute club at Infineon. I'm also now turning faster lap times in my spec e30 than I did in my M3 over a year ago (2:04's in the M3 on RA1's). This shows how much I was underdriving the M3, and maybe how far I've come?

SpecE30 @ Infineon 2009-02-14 from Adam Lazur on Vimeo.

Saturday Night

Thanks to the Selvigs who drove into town to get belts for me, I spent an hour Saturday night changing the belts on the ambulance. I was tempted to put it off, but it wasn't raining, so I decided to be responsible and get it done during the cold but dry evening. This paid off, since it rained all day Sunday.

Sunday Race

Sunday was very wet. I spent all day slightly soggy, but in between sog sessions I hid out in the dry and warm Speed Trapp Racing trailer.

Aside from it being uncomfortably wet in the paddock, I really like driving in the rain. Last year at Infineon we raced in the rain, and I was looking forward to more of the same kind of fun.

In PTE I qualfied 5th, and finished somewhere near the bottom in the race. I got a good start, and tucked in behind Brenden in the rain. I pressured him for a couple of laps, then we came around to turn 5 and there were 2 cars off. I got distracted gawking, and didn't notice the back of the car stepping out til it was too late. I slid and spun, ending up on the pavement to the inside of the turn facing backwards. I decided I'd turn the wheel, pop the clutch, rotate around and be on my way. I turned the wheel, let out the clutch, and promptly went straight into the grass and got stuck. So much for that maneuver. I spent the next 5 laps watching traffic go by. They eventually towed me out, and I drove the rest of the race, but it was mostly practice for the spec e30 race that was to come later.

In the spec e30 qual I ended up in 10th. We only got in 4 or 5 laps, and I was caught up in slower traffic for most of it before they yellow flagged and then black flagged the field due to a spun car. Going into the race, I was pretty sure I was faster in the rain than the 3 cars ahead of me. I proved that by getting a great start, I flew into Turn 1 where there was a river of water, and promptly spun. Luckily, I didn't contact anything and nobody contacted me. I watched the tail of the field drive by, and prepared for an uphill battle. I worked my way through a few cars, spun again at the exit of Turn 6. No contact. I gathered it up and spun again in Turn 8a. I got lucky again, and the car was unscathed. At that point, with 3 spins, I decided to calm down so I could drive my car home. This was further reinforced by driving through Turn 10 with a chance to look at Will with his car in the tire wall for a few laps til they towed him out.

I ended up fighting my way to 6th, after dropping back to 14th at the start. For that, I recieved the Evil Genius Racing hard charger award. The award certificate is a $100 bill.

Here's the video:

SpecE30 @ Infineon 2009-02-15 (rain race) from Adam Lazur on Vimeo.

planning the 2009 schedule

2009-01-09T14:52:00.000-08:00

The first Spec E30 race is almost a month away, so I decided I should probably plan out the year and get approval from my CFO (Chief Financial Officer, aka my wife) for the plan for '09.

Part of putting it together was taking a look at the data I've accumulated from 2008. In 2008 I:

spent 28 days at the race track
bought a Spec E30 race car
got a NASA license and started racing
bought an ambulance and trailer to tow the race car
averaged $968.68 per weekend

That last one is complicated, and the value really depends on what you include when you add up all the numbers. Instead of drawing the line somewhere arbitrarily, I decided to count every penny. If I had a burger for lunch, that counts towards the total. It's also a little skewed because I didn't include the race car purchase, and some of the improvements to get it ready (seat?), in the figure. I did include "maintenance" things such as a new transmission and the rebuilt head. You get the picture. Complicated.

All in all, it was a pretty good year.

I came up with this schedule for 2009:

2/14,15/2009 NASA race Infineon
4/25,26/2009 NASA race ThunderHill
5/23,24/2009 LeMons race Reno Fernley
5/31/2009 NASA race Llihrednuht
8/7/2009 PDC HPDE ThunderHill
8/23,24/2009 NASA race ThunderHill
10/3,4/2009 NASA race Llihrednuht
11/7,8/2009 NASA race Infineon
12/5,6/2009 NASA race ThunderHill

I'm only at 16 days at the track for 2009, down from the previous 28.

I had to throw out some of the Spec E30 races due to conflicts with other events. Alas, people do not schedule their weddings around the NASA Norcal schedule. There's a break in the middle of the year for what should be a happy/stressful time with the delivery of a baby. I'm still not sure how the baby's arrival will impact racing. Hopefully I can balance both, but time will tell.

Finally, I'm shooting for a lower per weekend cost. If I can avoid big expenses, like head rebuilds, it'll probably happen.

new domain name (or not!)

2009-01-06T12:53:00.000-08:00

I bought scienceofslow.com, so now all the old links will be magically redirected here. Fear not, Raul Mazda will live on, but not in the URL to my blog.

Soft Eyes

2008-12-14T08:03:00.000-08:00

While the off season is relatively short here in Norcal, there's always stuff to work on.

I have a laundry list of things I want to do to the race car "while I have time", but I also work on the driver in the off season. A few months back I spent a lot of time trying to find mental exercises that I can use to sharpen my skills while not on the race track. So here's one technique that I practice called "soft eyes". Read up on it at http://www.nlp-now.co.uk/softeyes.htm or Google search for it.

I practice on the street (safely, mind you). I try to soften my visual focus and use all of my peripheral vision to track the cars around me. See everything. All at once. In low resolution. I started off by trying to track everything in front of me, then added the rearview mirror, and then finally stretched it to encompass both side mirrors. I switch back and forth between focus and soft eyes. Switching back automatically is the hardest part, and takes effort to build the habit. Once I could do that every day, I started to do it and added random math problems (let's count out the powers of 13 or 17 or 29) to the exercise to simulate the kind of stuff I do during a race. I'm not adding numbers in my head during a race, but I'm always thinking. It could be strategy, or observing and storing where I could set up to pass someone on the next lap. Or even stealing someone else's line and figuring out why they're faster than me.

The more I train my brain to do the "easy" stuff automatically, the more I can use my brain to figure out the hard stuff. So I practice, and practice some more.

Data Crunching in the Off Season

2008-12-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

It's pretty boring when there's not another race to look forward to for a few months. I'm not sure what people do who live in climates where it snows. Probably drown their sorrows while watching horrible episodes of Pinks on SpeedTV.

I've been occupying my time shopping for faux fur on the internet and buying ridiculous wings on ebay (pics forthcoming, they'll be on the other blog). Unfortunately shopping can only consume so much time.

During the season, I keep a spreadsheet that tracks my expenses so I can thwart cost cutting efforts of the CFO (my wife). In addition to boring/depressing expense data, I also track what races I've done or plan to do. In the race schedule sheet, I also chunk away my fastest race lap time and the fastest race lap in the entire Spec E30 field. Early on I figured that I could look at the difference between the two over the season, and get a gauge for whether I'm improving or not. Every time I put that data into the sheet, I can see small improvements, which helps motivate me to keep plugging away.

Now that the season's over, I an look at the entire data set. I jammed it all into a chart, and here's what I got:

Throw out 8/23 as a clear anomaly: the headgasket was toast on my car, I was tangibly down on power and only did 2-3 laps per session:

Ah, much better looking :)

Things I observed:

I'm getting better
I'm always closer to the leader on Sunday (this may be due to who's running Saturday vs Sunday for some events, as some teams split days)

Just eyeballing the chart, the trend looks almost linear. If I was super cool I'd fit a trend curve to this data, then predict that in X races I'd be the winner. I decided to skip this exercise in unrealistic expectations. Now don't get all "Zen of Racing" on me and tell me I've got the wrong attitude. I'm being realistic. I know better than to believe that I'll continue to improve at the same rate. Getting faster is hard work, and it's only going to get harder as time goes on. I'll be ecstatic if I'm looking for tenths of seconds instead of whole seconds next season.

So to end on an up note: I finished the season with my fastest lap in the last race being 2.65 seconds off the fastest lap in class. That's about 5 seconds/lap improvement over the course of 13 races. I'll take it.

Race Report: November Infineon

2008-11-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

This is really part 2 of the weekend race report. The first race of the weekend was on Saturday in the rain, and was a non points race. Sunday there were 2 races, both for points, and both in our new run group with the Spec Miatas.

On Saturday I was fighting with wheel spin when lifting a wheel up over turn 2 and coming out of turn 11 (the hairpin), so I decided to try out disconnecting the rear swaybar to see if the car would hook up better in those spots. I went out for practice with no sway, and a few laps in I decided I was happy with the new set up. There's a little more understeer at turn entry, and the rear of the car is a little more squishy, but it felt better.

Next up was qualifying for the 2nd race of the day, since we already qualified for the first race on Saturday. This was our first qualifying exclusively with the spec miatas, which threw off my usual strategy of "put down a hot lap or two, then go ~~screw up~~ play with my competitors". Instead, I put down a compromised first lap due to traffic, built up a gap and tried to put down a fast lap or two, then I cruised for a few laps and decided to try for another fast lap. The timing data shows I did my fast lap in lap of 2:01.373 in lap #9 for a qualifying spot of 6th. The next 2 cars were right behind me with a .630 (AJ) and .655 (Scott C) so it was sure to be a fun race.

For the first race of the day I started 6th, but blew the start and managed to drop a few spots in the first lap. I spent the rest of the race fighting with 3 other cars and my own demons. I eventually pushed my way past the 3 other cars to lead the pack into the final lap, where I melted down and gave away 3 spots in the last half of the last lap for an 11th place finish. While I had a great time mixing it up with the other cars, I was pretty mad that I let a bad first lap get into my head and wreak havoc on my driving for the rest of the race. Here's some blurry video for you to enjoy:

NASA Norcal @ Infineon 2008-11-09 Race #1 from Adam Lazur on Vimeo.

Our 2nd race of the day was postponed due to a race car flying off track and landing in the grandstands outside of turn 1. After gawking at that for a while, we hustled back to grid up for the 2nd race. I put the previous race out of my head, and started fresh. This worked out for me. I started 6th, and finished 6th. I spent most of the race trying to catch AJ, but he kept up a pace that left me a few car lengths behind. Since the race was delayed, the race only lasted 7 laps. If you look at the timing data, specifically my lap times versus AJ's, AJ kept up a pace that was slightly faster than me but lost a lot of room on lap #6. I haven't gone back to the video to see what slowed him down that lap, but it made for a much more exciting last lap for me. Here's the video (not blurry!):

NASA Norcal @ Infineon 2008-11-09 Race #2 from Adam Lazur on Vimeo.

All in all I've had a good season racing in Spec E30. I'm looking forward to next year, when the field will be bigger and I'll be faster.

The Art of Racing in the Rain

2008-11-10T10:11:00.000-08:00

aka Race Report: NASA Norcal Sears Point - 2008/11/8

(I stole this title from the book, in hindsight I probably should've written up a book review since I've read it ... maybe that'll come later)

I hadn't touched the race car since the last weekend's worth of trying to get it running, succeeding, and then not racing. Then I got the LeMons car, spent a few weekends wrenching on it, and oh crap here comes a race weekend. The Friday before the race I adjusted the valves in the morning, then went to work for a short day that turned out longer than expected. I didn't have time to do anything else I wanted to do, so I threw the car on the trailer, and buttoned it all up for the next morning.

I decided I'd do a quick fuel run so all I had to do when I woke up was get in the ambulance and drive. The ambulance rewarded me for a month of neglect by not starting.

Dead batteries. Okay okay, it wasn't the ambulance's fault. I forgot to set the master electrical switch to the off position, and something in the ambulance consumes all available power when it sits. I spent half an hour jumping the big diesel's 2 batteries with the M3, got it to start, and headed over to the gas station. Wow, diesel is only $2.90. I topped up the ambulance, filled up the race car, and hopped in the ambulance to head home.

It didn't start.

So, 15 minutes later my wife arrived at the gas station to witness the ambulance start up again. Once it was running, I sure as hell wasn't going to just shut it off. I spent the next half hour sitting in a parking lot idling in the ambulance and watching the ammeter move from 100A output all the way back down to 25A. I figured that'd be good enough to start the next morning.

I woke up dark and early at 5am on Saturday.

The ambulance rewarded me for spending quality time with it the night before and started right up. The drive up to Sears Point (aka Infineon thanks to the asshole marketing dept Infineon) was uneventful.

I arrived at the track to ~~beautiful sunny weather that Norcal is famous for~~ oh crap, it looks like rain. That's not at all what I was prepared for, because I hadn't prepared for much at all. The day started out overcast, and track was dry for practice and qualifying. Bonus! I qualified 6th of 12 cars with a 2:02.521.

Shortly after qualifying the rain started.

We spent a few hours in the paddock with off and on rain, hoping that the track might dry up for the race later in the day. Don't get me wrong, I actually like to drive in the rain on a race track. It's lots of fun to play at the limit of adhesion at substantially lower speeds. I've driven ThunderHill, Sears Point, and Reno Fernley in the rain. Of those 3, the only one where I've slid sideways towards a wall driver door first is at Sears Point. I stopped 2ft short of the wall that time. That experience was etched in my brain, and it keeps me from being enthusiastic about Sears Point in the rain.

The track was pretty wet by the time of the race, but it had stopped raining. Of the 13 cars that qualified, 7 started the race. I got a free bump from my 6th place qualifying spot up to 4th place at the start (thanks Scott N and Kevin!). The out lap was comical with Donny in the lead spinning in turn 2 (see about 1 minute into this video).

We lined up for the standing start. I fully expected to spin wheels like a madman in the wet, but when the green flag dropped I feathered the throttle enough to get moving. We charged up the hill 3 wide: I dove to the inside of Scott C and Brenden cut to the outside. Brenden carried a lot of speed over turn 2, and spun to the inside. I tucked into 2nd place ahead of Scott C as we zipped by Brenden facing the wrong direction. I think I might have waved :)

I spent the rest of the race repeating to myself "stay smooth" over and over and over. I may have sounded like an idiot, but it paid off and I kept up a good pace slowly walking away from Scott C. Brenden tore through the field after his spin, and eventually caught up to me. His pace in the rain was insanely fast, so I could only ~~block~~ hold him off for so long before he snuck past. My only hope to gain the spot back was for him to spin again. Spin he did, off to the inside of turn 3, but I couldn't quite catch up. The remainder of the race was uneventful: I continued to put down boring smooth laps. I finished 3rd.

I wish I had video of my own from the race, but I didn't get my camcorder turned on. Here's video from Scott C's car. You can see me for the first coupla laps.

Nor Cal Spec E30 Race Infineon Raceway Nov. 08, 2008 from Scott Clough on Vimeo.

Wow that's a long post, and I haven't even got to the 2 races on Sunday yet. There's more to come.

there goes the neighborhood

2008-11-04T12:53:00.000-08:00

I took this scenic shot before I drove into work this morning. This is a shot looking back on my house:

So from left to right, there's the LeMons car in pieces in the carport (some pieces leaning on the house), my wife's car, the race car on trailer in "car shuffle" mode, the ambulance, and then my daily driver in the bottom right.

My neighbors love me.

Pandamonium Racing

2008-10-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

When I last left off, I skipped a race day to buy a car for the 24Hrs of LeMons. The tale of the purchase, and other bits of the build are documented on the blog at http://pandamoniumracing.blogspot.com.

(not)Race Report: October Llihrednuht

2008-10-28T23:23:00.000-07:00

I'll pick up the story right where I left off last time: the car was out of commission due to a blown headgasket.

After the race weekend full of overheating, I had about 6 weeks 'til the next race. Plenty of time. Well, except I had a pesky 4 weeks of work/vacation in Australia in the middle. So the plan was simple: pull the head from the car, send it to a machine shop, go to Australia and come back, then reinstall the head in the week before the race. Things all went according to plan, sort of.

I pulled the head off the car and found a head gasket in pretty bad shape. Here's a coupla pics of the valve train and the cylinders:

For some reason I didn't take pictures of the head? Beats me, that was a while ago.

At the recommendation of Ramon at Bavarian Motorsport, I sent the head out to Memphis Motorwerks all the way across the country. Shipping 70lbs of aluminum across the country is no small task. Ramon recommended that I build a crate and ship it in that. I wasn't looking forward to that, so I decided to buy the biggest cooler I could find for $30, and ship it in that. It worked out surprisingly well, with the exception of UPS charing me $11 for non-standard packing (wtf? it had handles!). I wish I had taken a picture of my cooler pack job masterpiece, but I did not.

With the head shipped off to the machine shop, I went to Australia and did 2 weeks of work. I talked to the machine shop on the phone and got them to do what I wanted (new rocker arms), then I was de-stressed during a relaxing 2 weeks of vacation.

Here are few photos from Australia:

The Karmann Ghia was parked out on the end of a pier in Sydney, and the ambulance with the snorkel was super cool in downtown Sydney. I now have an affinity for taking pictures of ambulances while abroad. I guess ambulance ownership does that to you. Not bad pics for a

When I returned to the states, the rebuilt head was waiting for me inside a familiar looking cooler shaped package. In a bout of what may have been temporary insanity, I also took an oncall shift for work right after I got off a plane from Australia. This threw my week for a loop, delayed some stuff, and I ended up cleaning up the block and other things on Tuesday. Here are some pics of the cleaned up block (too much work) and the clean valve train (post head gasket install):

Of course, none of my projects can be done without a few hitches. The head came back missing one of the studs for the thermostat housing. A trip to Pick N Pull netted the stud I needed. Second, I wasted a ton of time looking for a 3M bristle disc. I eventually gave up on that and got a knock off from OSH. By this point it was Thursday, and the head wasn't on the car. I ended up installing it late into Thursday night, which then bled into Friday morning to try to make the race that weekend. Around 3pm on Friday I finally buttoned everything back up and was ready to fire up the car.

There's nothing like the anxiety of firing up the car after having done such invasive surgery on the motor. It's the climax of anticipation from a long project. That's when the little scared voice in the back of your head starts talking. Did I tighten every host clamp? Maybe I overtightened something? Did I reconnect every wire? There are so many little things that could go wrong... which one did I overlook?

I turned the key.

To my delight, the car fired right up. The idle was a little rough, but quickly evened out to a nice e30 bauble. I was extremely pleased.

I sprung from the driver's seat to survey my magnificent handiwork. The new exhaust manifold gaskets were smoking a little, not a big deal. Then I spotted it. Coolant dripping down the front of the block. "TURN THE CAR OFF NOW" I shouted in my head. My heart sunk as I killed the ignition. I looked around enough to ascertain it was "just the water pump". I guess I should have been happy that it wasn't something worse at that point, but I wasn't. The new water pump that I had just replaced was now leaking coolant. I was mad. It was 4pm on Friday, my car was pissing coolant, and I was mad. And exhausted. Definitely exhausted.

I gave it up, took a shower, and headed to a going away party for a collegue at work. On the way, I picked up a water pump gasket from the $tealer for $6. I hung out at the party, mighty grumpy, and I decided I wasn't going to race the next day. My head just wasn't in the right place, and there's no way I'd be in the physical shape required to race. I'd get a good night's rest, wake up in the morning renewed, sort out the water pump (hope it was just a gasket), and drive up to race on Sunday.

Saturday morning I woke up, took everything off the front of the motor to get to the water pump, and found that I was a bit careless in removing the old gasket 5 weeks prior. There was a piece of old gasket cemented to the block in a corner. I had to scrape it with a razor blade for a good 20 minutes to get it all off, and I probably went a little overboard making sure the surface was prepped, but in the end I reinstalled it all and my car was running around noon on Saturday.

I wish I could say I went to race on Sunday, but I didn't.

I ended up making one of those hard decisions that I hate making as a grown up. Early Saturday morning I spied a car on Craigslist that would be perfect for the 24Hrs of LeMons. I called the guy in between turning wrenches, and we agreed to meet up at 2. I knew that if I was going to buy that car, it'd be better to skip the race weekend altogether to maintain a sane racing budget. Long story short, I bought the car. I had to be responsible and skip a race I could've attended to do it.

I missed the spec e30 crew that weekend, and I hear everyone had a good time. But I've got a new car now:
It needs, of all things, a headgasket.

Race Report: August ThunderHill

2008-10-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

I didn't write about this for a long while. At first it was because I'd rather forget it, and later because I was out and about and legitimately busy. Well, I'm on a plane now so I can no longer say "I'm too busy" and I should probably write it up.

I headed to Thunderhill on Aug 22nd for the typical Saturday and Sunday races, but as a bonus this weekend I also had signed up to drive on Monday with PDC.

The race weekend started off as it usually does with an 8 am morning practice session. This particular practice wasn't as uneventful as it usually is. I eyed a steadily rising coolant temp gauge as the session went on, despite it being relatively cool. I turned in a few minutes
early when the gauge hit 230. I was worried.

I had overheating issues at the bmwcca race school just prior, combined with loss of coolant, so I knew this problem was lurking. Somehow I kept hoping that it was an improperly bled cooling system, or a leak from some recent maintenance.

After practice I bled the cooling system and crossed my fingers. Crushing my hopes of a simple fix, the car overheated and I came in early. I qualified 6 out of 8 with a time of 2:14.921. Not great, but my excuse is being preoccupied with the car overheating. I sought some
advice in the paddock, and decided to pull the thermostat to try to remedy the overheating. In hindsight, this was pretty dumb.

I raced, had a good time, but bailed out early due to overheating. I was definitely off my game due to the overheating.

The next day, I bought some gasket sealant and decided that maybe I'd try to patch up what looked like a leak on the water pump. In hindsight, more dumb moves, but hey, I just wanted to race. I drained the cooling system in the morning, gooped it all up, and put it all back together in
time for the practice session. No help, more overheating. I was ready to pack it in at that point, but fellow racers convinced me to hang out, do a couple of qualifying laps, and then do a few laps of the race. This was an okay idea, well, with the risk of hurting the motor. I did just that. The race was cool, and I can always use more practice at the start. I did a whopping 2 laps in the race, and packed it in, pretty disappointed.

(the photo above is just before I packed it in on Sunday)

As an aside, this was the race when the top 4 cars were put on the dyno. There's a link to the race report on norcalspece30.com.

I also had a car that didn't work for the open track day with PDC the next day. I was pretty deflated. At one point while I was whining, Scott Clough, a fellow spec e30 driver and PDC member, offered to let me co-drive his car the next day. Once again, Scott Clough proves to be my favorite Spec E30 driver.

The next day we alternated 30-40 minute sessions on track through the morning, ate some lunch, then I toasted the brakes on his car. We're talking pedal straight to the floor toasted. We tried in vain to bleed the breaks, but couldn't build up any pressure to force the fluid out by
pumping the pedal. I diagnosed it as a bad master cylinder, and we put his car up on a trailer and headed out.

So I'm 2 for 2 on breaking cars that weekend. Nonetheless, the open track session in another car was lots of fun for me. I got to drive another car, that is drastically different than my car in feel.
His car is smooth and easy to drive. My car requires muscling and it's loud and vibrating. It feels more like a "race car", but it's probably more distraction than anything else.

That day salvaged the entire weekend. Thanks Scott!

dyno ramblings and spec e30 dyno sheets

2008-10-15T13:45:00.001-07:00

At the last Thunderhill race I attended the top 4 Spec E30 cars were put on a dyno at tech. The purpose of the dyno was informational, though I suspect the outcome was contributed to the great Spec E30 dyno library, which if the forums are to be believed may lead to a max dyno rule. Independent of the rule stuff, I suspect if there were local outliers they'd get a lot of scrutiny. I don't think they've published the dyno sheets, so this is from memory but the top 4 cars were putting out 147rwhp to 157rwhp. The highest hp car had the lowest peak torque, and vice versa. Kinda strange.

Anyway, today a guy on the E30 yahoo group asked for a stock E30 dyno graph. It made me think about the above, and then I dug up the link to the spec e30 dyno forum post on spece30.com. You'd expect something like that to be easy to find, but it's not for various reasons (I have a long suppressed rant about how spece30.com is an internet island).

I should probably put my car on a dyno one of these days to get a quantitative baseline. I'm also told that the big kids play games with the air fuel mixture while on the dyno to tune for a few extra hp. No hurry though. I suspect this would take away one of my excuses, since I don't feel like I have problems keeping up with the Joneses in a straight line.

Enough dyno ramblings. I'll post about my latest escapades in race car work (rebuilt head) and other car hijinks (24Hrs of LeMons?) when I get the chance.

my video setup

2008-08-20T15:11:00.001-07:00

Since I've started posting videos on Vimeo, I've been getting a bunch of inquiries about what I'm using to make the videos. My camcorder setup is as follows:

Aiptek A-HD camcorder
IOPort camera mount
0.45x wide angle lens (find on Google with wide lens 17mm-27mm)

The Aiptek A-HD camera is solid state and records MPEG-4, 1280 × 720, 29.97 fps (this consumes 4.00 Mbps, or around 30MB for a minute of video). I use a 1G SD card, and have learned to wipe it before every "important" session, like before every race. Aiptek makes a cam or two that are higher resolution, but this one is cheap and it works for me. It also uses a standard USB cable, so charging or transferring video is as easy as plugging it into a laptop.

The wide angle lens is required to get a good view of the cockpit from where it's mounted on my roll cage. The lens is an aftermarket add on, and ships with magnetic rings with adhesive to set up a temporary bond to the camera. This is not at all rated for track duty, so I've got it racer taped together.

Finally, the Aiptek camera needs a little help. For one, the battery rattles around inside the camera, occasionally power cycling it mid-session. Padding the battery a bit solves this problem. People also complain about the audio quality, so some take apart the case and cover the mic with foam or paper to dampen some of the noise. In my car, it isn't too bad so I haven't done this mod.

ggc bmwcca club racing school '08

2008-08-12T22:57:00.000-07:00

So I made it to Willows sans ambulance at 3:30am.

I set an alarm for 7am, surprised myself, and actually woke up when it went off. I checked my phone and groggily listened to voicemail from Scott Clough. He snagged a spot under the shade structure for me. Scott C is now my favorite Spec E30 driver.

I spent the weekend in the BMWCCA Club Racing School. This was a 2 day school tailored to prepare an advanced driving school student for club racing with the BMWCCA (sans other experience, it's a requirement to apply for a license). I was hoping to learn some secrets from old salty dog racers and have a good time.

I didn't learn what I expected to, and in hindsight, this school probably wasn't for me.

I have 10 or so races under my belt by now, so I was a little bit aggressive relative to the rest of the class. The school catered to the sheltered BMWCCA driving school student who has come up through the ranks and restrictive rules of the BMWCCA. The most advanced run groups in BMWCCA are passing with a point by, which produces timid, polite advanced level students who are distinctly lacking experience passing in turns. That said, most of the other students took to the new freedom of open passing pretty well. Our race "qualifying" ended up being a simulated NASA HPE4 rungroup, but with lots more polite drivers ;)

The school allowed anyone with a street car and a helmet to participate. This was a little odd for racing, as not all cars had the usual safety equipment. Because of this, the instructors set a tone of safety above all else. Any contact was not to be tolerated (though this was more of a 13/13 thing).

We did a couple of sessions with specific exercises:
- drive the track 3 wide, switch position every lap
- passing drill
- rolling start practice (wish I recorded video of this!)

There were also extensive classroom sessions. This is where I was hoping to learn a lot about racecraft. It turns out the classroom sessions were more administrivia about how BMWCCA club racing works, and how you should organize yourself for your race weekend. While this is probably useful for the complete newbie, it didn't really help me much. My big take away was that it provided a time for me to reflect on my own routine. There were also lots of good stories, but very little in the way of what I was looking for (tips and tricks for passing and defending, commentary on things they saw me do at the track, etc).

This was the first weekend on a new transmission and clutch (and motor mounts and trans mounts and short shifter). They all performed flawlessly. The new clutch allows me to shift a little too fast at times, but I like it. The short shifter is the stock shifter from my e36 M3. It's a little weird and probably needs to be bent a little, but I like it just the same.

Anyway, back to the actual driving part. The weekend culminated in a mock race (they called it a "simulated racing exercise"). Here's video with my first attempt at commentary overlayed on live video:

GGC BMWCCA Club Race School @ Thunderhill 2008-08-10 from Adam Lazur on Vimeo.

"then I get in my race car and drive away"

2008-08-10T21:49:00.000-07:00

Often I make a hilarious joke about having an Ambulance. The conversation usually goes like this:

Person: you have an ambulance?! WHY do YOU have an AMBULANCE?
Me: WHY do YOU NOT have an AMBULANCE?
Person: good question. I don't know. now why do YOU have an ambulance?
Me: so I can tow my race car.
Person: wow, your car can't drive on the street?
Me: well, it can ... but it's not very comfortable. also, if it breaks, I can tow it home.
Person: what happens if your ambulance breaks down then? ha ha got you there!
Me: then I get in my race car and drive away

Okay, it's not as funny when I type it. I think part of the hilarity involves my perfect timing and miming of "drive away"?

Whatever. As not funny as that joke is, it got less funny when it actually happened on Friday night. I spent all week prepping for a weekend at Thunderhill. By "prepping" I mean fixing a bunch of random stuff, swapping out the transmission, and putting in a fancy racing clutch.

Due to procrastination, I ended up getting the clutch at 6pm on Thursday. So I worked Thursday night and just about all of Friday on getting the clutch and transmission installed along with a few other things. I aimed to get out of town around 1pm, but ended up really being ready to go at 8pm. Just 2 broken bolts, and only 1 required extraction with a torch. Things were going great. That was sarcasm, broken bolts are not great at all. No worries though, I was done at 8pm! Exhausted from the day, all I had to do was throw the race car on the trailer, fire up the ambulance, and drive 3hrs to Thunderhill. Then I could go to sleep. What could go wrong?

Thunderhill ETA: 11pm

BRRRrrrrRRRRrrrrrrrrRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

...

...

(that's the sound of the race car not starting, then silence when the battery died)

So I had to jump start the race car. Awesome! I put it on the trailer, packed up my stuff and threw it in the ambulance. Then I got in the ambulance and turned the key. Not even a light in the dash. The batteries were dead. So, I jumped the ambulance. That takes half an hour or so, due to the current required to start a diesel. I don't know where the rest of the time went, but I left at 10pm.

Thunderhill ETA: 1am

All was going well til I was climbing a hill in the East bay and I smelled a hint of the sweet sweet smell of antifreeze. I thought the ambulance was trying to tell me something, so I aimed to check it out when I stopped to fuel up a little later. The ambulance wasn't pleased that I ignored its cry for attention, got angry, and blew plumes of antifreeze steam at me to get my attention. As the cabin filled with smoke, and the windshield fogged up, I pulled off an exit and had the coherence to limp into a lighted parking lot.

Thunderhill ETA: ???

I hopped out of the ambulance and was sad, but not surprised, to see large quantities of coolant on the ground. I opened the hood to let out a billowing cloud of antifreeze steam. The hood on the ambulance is not very large, so with a flashlight I could determine that the antifreeze was coming from precisely ... somewhere under the hood. After some of the steam cleared I could deduce that it was coming from the top of the engine somewhere. Awesome. I called Beth and let her know that I was in a park and ride parking lot somewhere near Dublin, and I may require assistance so she shouldn't get too comfy.

I dumped the 1 gallon of water I had in my ambulance into the radiator, hoping to get it to show me where the leak was. That didn't help. So with the ambulance in unknown broken state, I examined my options. I could call AAA and try to get them to tow the ambulance and trailer with a race car on it. I could back the race car off of the trailer and abandon the ambulance. I could try to fix the ambulance.

Thunderhill ETA: maybe not

I had all night to give up, so I decided to try to further diagnose the ambulance. Since the hood is so tiny, and I could only see a little bit of the motor, I decided it'd be wise to pull the center console out to get a better look. In vans like this, the motor sits almost under your feet at in the middle of the dash. The exercise in panel removal revealed a passenger footwell with antifreeze in the carpet, and antifreeze all over the top of the motor. After a little further examination, I noticed a big hole burst in the 3" diameter hose that goes from the top of the radiator into the top of the motor. It was on the back side of the hose so I couldn't see it from the front. The hole was pretty large, maybe 2" long or so.

Thunderhill ETA: ???

So here's the plan: patch the hose, find some water and fill up the ambulance, limp it to somewhere "safe" to abandon it, then take the race car to the track. No sleep 'til Thunderhill.

I pulled the hose and raided the ambulance for supplies. I came up with a few hose clamps, some racer's tape (duct tape, but non-permanent adhesive), and some zip ties. I ended up taping the hose, reinforcing the hole/crack with a band of zip ties, then taping over it again. It looked pretty stout, but the whole strategy hinged on the racer's tape adhesive holding under the high temps.

With the hose reinstalled, I had to fill the radiator with water that I didn't have. There was nothing around, so I was contemplating taking the race car to pick up water somewhere. Then I heard it. SSSsssshhhhhhhhh. The sprinklers just kicked on. I grabbed my 1 gallon container and wide mouthed water bottle to go harvest water from the sprinklers. The sprinklers turned off just as I had 1 gallon of water. Well, that's better than nothing. I filled up the radiator and heard the sound of sprinklers again, but further away. So I went further down the road to find the next set of sprinklers in the rotation. I repeated this routine a total of 3 times, for 3 gallons of water to fill up the collossal ambulance radiator.

So I fired up the ambulance and headed to my safe drop spot: Edge Motorworks. I know some of the Edge guys, and I figured they'd let me stow an ambulance for a few days if I had to. I fired up google maps and got directions. Then I promptly drove the wrong way for 10 minutes. The good news is that in those 10 minutes the ambulance didn't overheat. Eventually I got to the drop point. At 1am I was hoping that the race car would start so I could back it off the trailer. It fired right up, I backed it down, and threw a random selection of tools and stuff in the back of the car.

Then I got in my race car and drove away.

Thunderhill ETA: 3:00am

The rest of the trip was, to sugar coat it, miserable. The race car isn't very pleasant to drive on the highway at night. It's loud, uncomfortable (for long distances), and there are no front windows. I was sporting a hoodie with the hood up and tightened around my face and I was still shivering. I struggled to maintain focus to finish the drive. I didn't want to caffienate because I needed the few hours of rest I'd get to actually count.

I did make it to the hotel around when I expected to. I went into a sleep coma at 3:30am, and looked forward to a cheery 7am wake up call. At least I made it to the track.

Infineon Video - Sunday

2008-07-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

Here's the Video from Sunday's race at Infineon (the video thumbnail is just after the contact):

NASA Norcal @ Infineon - 2008-06-29 from Adam Lazur on Vimeo.

My ramblings from the description, in case you watch it inline:

There's a splice at the start/finish a few laps in. It cuts out boring bits, and gets the vid below the 500mb vimeo limit.

Transmission issues plagued me for most shifts into 3rd gear. I "compensated" by adding gas, which as you'll notice, is the opposite of what I should have done to match the revs. The transmission trouble got into my head and I got sloppy.

Highlights include:

lap1 turn4, contact (I'm ashamed of this, it should've been avoided)
lap2 start/finish, Ron (white e30, #18) and an rx7 split around me, almost hit, and slide off track avoiding it
a few bumps from Scott C. behind me (black e30, #224), and eventually he sneaks past me after a bump coming out of Turn 2

Race Report: June Infineon

2008-07-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

The day job kept me busy in the weeks prior to this race weekend. So much so that I didn't even pull the car off the trailer. I gave it a once over the day before the race, and off I went.

My wife forced me to fill out my racing expenses spreadsheet a week or two prior. This was a little traumatic, as all the little numbers add up to be a much bigger number. The math doesn't lie: I budget more per month on racing than I do for rent. And rent in the bay area is pretty expensive. That struck home, so I changed my accommodations strategy a little. No more $100/night hotel near Sonoma. Nope, I drove up on Saturday morning and I slept in the ambulance that night. This was a bit rough, but I survived. It really wasn't too bad in the whole scheme of things, and it was immediately worth the discomfort the first time I stared out of my helmet on the grid.

Saturday Race
The race strategy for this weekend was the same as previous weekends: have a good time, find a couple of missing seconds, and catch the faster guys. On Saturday I picked up a set of used rims (thanks Scott!). To my surprise, they came with a set of tires that had enough tread on them that I couldn't bear to throw them away (maybe 2/32"?). One had a solidly bad flat spot, so I threw that on the rear and decided I'd spend some time trying to round it out.

Enter the Lazy
and that's all I wrote ...

The rest went into the Infineon Race Report on NorcalSpecE30.com. I added the sections that say Adam, big surprise there :)

I didn't harp on how badly the 3rd gear transmission thing was ... but it was bad. It got in my head on Sunday, helped along by the taps from Scott C., and cost me the coveted 4th place spot. I need to cut Sunday's vid down below 500MB and throw it on Vimeo.

Also, the pic of Tommy Lo at the bottom of the article makes me laugh every time.

Anyway, here's a video from Saturday's race:

Spec E30 Race @ Infineon - 2008-06-28 from Adam Lazur on Vimeo.

Karting

2008-07-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

People always talk about how karting is an affordable way to get into racing. I don't buy the hype for 2 reasons:
- racing is always expensive (AKA the fundamental theorem of race driving)
- the hidden costs include neck/spine injury. See this video:

my laps

2008-06-02T12:36:00.003-07:00

I've got a race weekend at Thunderhill coming up this weekend. Lots of car prep to do (highest priority: re-mount fire extinguisher, try to figure out how to get my transmission through another weekend).

While I'm thinking about it, I'll mention that you can check out my lap times at laz.mylaps.com It's not really that exciting, but you can compare my (slow) laptimes to the others.

Also, you can check out my mighty standing for the season at the 2008 season points page. Right now I'm in 6th place. I would blame my position on missing the first 3 races of the season (is there a drop X% of races policy?), but it would also help if I wasn't a slow rookie ;)

24hrs of lemons

2008-06-02T01:33:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to drive in the 24 Hours of LeMons. It's an endurance race with a twist: the cars cannot cost more than $500. Safety equipment (cage, harness, etc) is specified, and is not included in the $500 budget.

I weaseled my way onto team Golden Shower. We drove a 70's Mercedes 240d, painted all gold. The plan was to emit a spray of malt liquor out the back of the vehicle, but alas that did not make it into the final version of the vehicle. Here's a pic of me piloting the panzer Benz:

You can check out a gallery of our car, or a gallery of all the cars provided by the fine gents at Jalopnik.

Driving the car in the race was both fun and frustrating. It handled surprisingly well for how jacked up the suspension was (cut springs in the front, but not the rear). Though I suspect the handling wasn't horrible because the car really couldn't build up much speed. I think we topped out at 60mph. The motor in the 240d is a dog, putting out a factory stated 72hp. As a result, we were vastly out accellerated. This drove our team strategy: drive a defensive line, clog up the works as much as possible.

We had a rough weekend, full of car breakage. The car was taken out of commission by rear brake failure on the first day (due to a stripped brake line). During the rear brake inspection, we also noticed the rear subframe was tearing apart (that was the horrible clunking sound I heard while throwing the back of the car around the hairpin!). The subframe was fixed with some pop rivets (?!) while I was out with a team finding brake parts. In the end, the brake parts weren't much help, and the rear brake lines were bodged together with the help of an ingenious homemade tap. By the time we had the car back together, the day was called due to a tragic incident that took the life of Court Summerfield.

On day 2, we rotated a few drivers through and I got to drive again. I put in half an hour of driving or so and the car felt good. I was on the bumper of a Volvo wagon exiting the esses, the yellow flag went up, they slammed on the brakes and I didn't stop fast enough. I rear-ended them, and our bumper was about 6" lower than theirs, so it took out the radiator. We eventually got a spare from a team fielding a BMW 2002 (surprisingly, the spare worked well with our hoses). We sent the car back out, only to have the oil cooler pierced. We cut the oil cooler out and turned it into a bypass (who needs an oil cooler anyway?). About half an hour from the end of the race it came back in with a bent suspension. In a brilliant move, Dave bent it back using a jack and the weight of the car. We put the car back out on track for the finish of the race, though the suspension was toast.

All in all, it was a good time. I drove to the event in the ambulance, which turned out to be useful for hauling diesel fuel. Hacking things together in the pits was an excellent time, as always, though I wish we had to do less of it. I'm already scheming to make an appearance at the next 24hrs of LeMons in December at Thunderhill.

my tow rig

2008-06-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

I recently acquired a used ambulance for a tow vehicle. It's a 1991 Ford E350 van with 139k miles that was converted to an ambulance immediately after it left the factory. It's equipped with a Diesel 7.3L IDI motor, 4.10 ratio rear, and a super pimp assortment of real ambulance cabinetry and style. The lights and sirens still work.

In addition I picked up a used trailer for the race car, resulting in this setup:
I took the ambulance to the 24hrs of LeMons (I should probably blog about that too), but took the entire setup in tow configuration to Reno Fernley last weekend. The tow out was about 7hrs in Memorial Day traffic and rain/snow in the dark over the mountains. We made better time on the return trip and did it in 5.5hrs. The ambulance performed admirably, though some of the mountain passes required giving up and lugging it out at 45mph locked in 2nd gear.

The ambulance + ~3500lbs of tow weight averaged 10.7mpg for the return leg of the trip. Not so great these days when diesel is $5/gallon.

Llihrednuht race report

2008-05-21T15:07:00.000-07:00

See the link above for my write up of the weekend at Llihrednuht (Thunderhill backwards). I've been meaning to write up other races, but have been too lazy. Luckily, I was motivated to do this one since I was the "race chair" for that weekend. Being the race chair mostly means you're in charge of recruiting new people, making sure everybody in the spec e30 race group knows where to go and when, maybe hand out some contingency cash (though the series director usually handles that) and writing a race report afterwards.

Also, there's a version of this report with more pictures up at norcalspece30.com

... trying to get back into the swing of things

2008-03-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've posted. I should probably update this ugly theme too. Lame.

Anyway, I guess I'll catch you, the loyal reader, up with my escapades. I've been doing 1 or 2 track days a month for the past few months while gradually building up the dual duty daily driver/track car M3. That only works for so long, as the compromises required are no fun.

So 2 months ago I picked up a dedicated track car:

It's a Spec E30 race car formerly owned by Steve Krshul. Steve raced the car in last year's Spec E30 season, and is working on moving on to bigger things, so he was willing to let me take it off his hands. So I picked up the car, spent some time making myself fit (Steve and I are differently sized), and took it to the track. I spent a weekend driving in NASA HPDE4 at Infineon. Wow, the car is way different than my usual E36 M3. Less power, softer suspension (!), and more punishment for mistakes.

I got caught up in the camaraderie of the Spec E30 racing crew, and was lured into testing for my racing license a month later at Thunderhill. I tested on Saturday and drove in my first race on Sunday. Qualifying was cut short by an on track incident or two, so I ended up with only 2 qualifying laps. I qualified 6th of 9, which isn't great but was about where I expected to be. To my surprise, the race director exercised the option to invert the starting grid. So in my first race I started 4th. I lost a position or two right from the get go when I missed 2nd gear (it was a standing start). By turn 6 I was back in 6th place, and I fell back to 7th shortly after. After that I drove with cars out of my class for the rest of the race. I'm not as fast as the rest of the pack, but I wasn't slow enough for the guys behind to catch me. The race was cut short about 15 minutes in due to an incident with a Honda challenge car.

I think that's about it. I'll post more later, but for now you can check out more pics of the new car in my gallery.

GGC BMW CCA AutoX Round 4

2007-08-07T00:51:00.000-07:00

Mileage: 102704

Another autox at Marina. This time, I got Mikey to bust out his fancy pants supercharged M3 for some autox excitement. The day started off rainy, but dried up in time for my afternoon runs. Mikey ran in the same class as me, so we did a 2 car fire drill during the whole session. It's amazing how fast the session flies by when you're either driving, waiting to drive in a couple of cars, or riding along.

As far as my own driving, I started off strong putting down a 39.5xx on my first run. Awesome! Fastest time of the day was in the 36's, so I wasn't too far off pace. My next run I was in the low 40's. After that, more of the same... I think my runs went up slightly, plateaued in the 41's, and then started to come back down. It was frustrating, to say the least. The good news was that most of my competition in AA were fighting with slow times too. I ended up finishing up my 8th run with a 39.511, only a hair faster than my first run. There are more pics of my car if you click on this link.

On the other hand, I got to ride along with Mikey and give him hints on where the course was going as well as the obligatory "gas gas gas" and "brake brake BRAKE" input. As is the case with most beginners, Mikey put down a high initial time and knocked it off in big chunks until he also hit a wall of improvement. With some higher quality in car instruction, I'm sure he'd have been even faster.

There were also fun runs afterwards. These runs were particularly fun for me. I took a hit from the forced induction crackpipe and drove Mikey's car. Initially the traction control was on, but we rectified that mid-run and I got a taste of copious amounts of power. So much power it was hard to put it down without breaking the tires loose. Wow, way too much power. Is that even possible? I may believe it now. Mikey's car was a different challenge to drive not only because of all the extra horsies, but because it understeers everywhere (corner entry, mid, & exit). Entry and exit I'm okay with compensating for, but understeer mid corner is new to me. I ended up coping with this by rotating the car with the throttle... which caused some tokyo drift style maneuvers. Possibly a little too much throttle? Definitely not the fastest way around a turn, but damn was it fun :)

Coming up: 3 days at Thunderhill!

Brake Stuff

2007-08-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

Mileage: 102660

Wow, I'm a slacker on posting stuff... I should write about the Nurburgring at least.

Anyway, this past weekend I rebuilt the calipers on the M3. I knew it had to be done when I changed the pads last time and the dust boot on the driver's side rear caliper was almost entirely missing. For those of you not in the know about this stuff, each brake caliper has a rubber seal inside and a rubber boot on the outside to keep grime out. When either degrades, it's time to replace them.

My tip for rebuilding the calipers is that every writeup (like this one from PelicanParts) I've seen says to use "compressed air" to blow the caliper out. I don't have an air compressor in my poor man's "garage" (it's really a car port, stupid california). I bought a mini 12V air compressor for tire inflation and that worked with the "blow up a rubber ball" attachment it came with. As a bonus, this will replace the cheapo air compressor I currently take to events to modify tire pressure. And what they say is true: the pistons do really fly out with a lot of force, keep your hands away or risk losing a finger!

While I was in there for the rebuild, I also put on stainless steel brake lines, new rear rotors, and painted the front and rear rotor hats (since they rust and I was the only person who didn't know this), and finally I painted the calipers while they were off the car.

The caliper cleaning and painting took a ton of time, and in hindsight, I probably should've just sent them out to be powder coated. I used a Duplicolor brake caliper painting kit. The kit consists of: caliper paint, brake cleaner, and a paintbrush. In hindsight don't think this kit is a good deal. The kit is $15. The paint is $5 when bought separately. Brake parts cleaner doesn't cost anywhere near $10, and the brush is super cheapo. Someone from Duplicolor marketing is on a beach sipping a mojito on me. Nonetheless, applying the paint with a brush is a good move. It allowed a lot more control than a spray can, or maybe I'm just too lazy to mask everything off properly?

In any event, the caliper painting took 3 hours to dry so the calipers could be handled. In that time I did all the other stuff. Then I slapped the calipers on the car and filled in the ///M with some yellow paint. Can you say "bling"? Here's a pic of the final result:

Ah, and after it's all back together, I got to bleed the brakes twice! With a pressure bleeder it's not that much work, and I finally sprung for the proper 7mm wrench for the bleeder nipples. Brake fluid wise, I'll probably flush the system one more time and put in Motul fluid in prep for the track days at the end of the month.

Slush 6 & Thunderhill with T.E.A.M. Racing

2007-01-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

Mileage: 97452

Slush 6

Matt, a coworker of mine, recently bought a Lotus Elise so I have been hounding him to bring it out to autox or the track. Well, it turns out he got to drive in both in one weekend.

On Sunday, Dec 10th, we headed to Oakland for a rainy SFRSCCA Slush Round 6. Rain poured down as I drove the 45 minutes up to Oakland. As I rounded the fence to the gate to Oakland Coliseum I was surprised to see a police car on the right shoulder with its lights on. I was even more surprised to see a red Elise perched up the curb facing the fence. I slowed down as I drove by to gawk, and noticed damage on the rear. It turns out, hard braking in the rain is a bad idea. I made it to the event to find Matt a bit frazzled by the rain and his leaky Elise, even with the hard top. I think the phrase he quoted from the Elise manual was "some leaks expected in this model". Despite the leaks, he looked excited to drive.

While many people don't like autocrossing in the rain, I don't mind it. While the sheer speeds aren't that exciting, driving a car quickly when the limit of adhesion is so much lower is a fun challenge. That said, working the course in the rain sucks royally.

We drove in the first run group, and luckily, the rain let up shortly after we started driving. I got us lined up such that we could do a quick fire drill and hop between cars to ride along. I drove okay times, but didn't do awesome. It's tough to compete with the all wheel drive cars in the rain. At least, that's my excuse this time ;) Matt did well for his first time at a "high performance driving event". He knocked 4 seconds off with each successive run.

Thunderhill

Since it's a 3 hour drive to get to Thunderhill from the bay area, we headed out mid afternoon right after the autocross. When we arrived that night, we decided to meet up with the T.E.A.M. Racing people and register the night before. We hung out at a mexican restaurant, ate dinner, and met Matt's instructor for the next day. He turned out to be an interesting guy. He's been racing for a long time (20 years?), drives a yellow Elise, and is full of interesting stories and funny anecdotes.

The next day we drove to the track on moist roads under overcast skies. My hopes were high that the rain would hold out. At the driver's meeting that morning I realized that the intermediate group I was in didn't have instructors at all. I won't lie, a little bit of panic set in. This was my first time at Thunderhill on a wet surface. It'd be nice to have someone ride along with me. Just as these thoughts went through my head, a guy I (vaguely) knew from work showed up late to the meeting and sat next to me. After I gave him details of what he'd missed, he told me he was there in the advanced group and may fill in as an instructor. Awesome, I had just found someone to ride along.

The rain held out for a while, but it was the fog that spoiled the morning. The workers at the track let us out for "parade" (i.e. 40mph max speed) laps for one session when the fog lifted a bit, but quickly closed the track again when it came back. I was alright with a few parade laps to help cement the memorization of the track in my head. It's easy to watch videos and read writeups to get the basics down, but those tools can only convey so much information. Driving a few laps, even slowly, really helps.

Eventually the rain and fog lifted enough to allow us out on the track for a real session. I headed out with my ad-hoc instructor onto a pretty wet track. The first lap out was comical. Coming out of turn 3 we saw a spun Corvette. In turn 4, there was another spun Corvette. And in turn 5a, there was another spun car (can't remember the model, but it wasn't a Corvette this time). I was a little smug that lap. My smugness went away 3 laps later as I came over the crest into turn 3 (a downhill off camber right) too fast and spun myself :) By the time I realized we were going a little too fast for the conditions it was too late. Instead of spazzing and braking, I tried to make the turn anyway. This didn't work out, the rear of the car came around and I gave up and let the car spin to a stop ("2 feet in" and all that).

A few sessions later the advanced group got to drive. My ad-hoc instructor was going to drive that session and offered a ride to Matt. Luckily, Matt declined. I quickly volunteered, probably with something very eloquent like "me me me me me pick me me me". I had known the instructor from the car mailing list at work where he posted about his turbo Miata. As it turns out, he replaced that car with a Ferarri F430 (crappy cellphone pics to the right). While a turbo Miata is cool, a Ferarri is way cooler. I was psyched to get a ride in it, even in on a damp track. We did several enjoyable high speed laps in the Ferrari. I timed one of them at 2:18, which felt extremely fast on the damp track.

We got 2 more sessions in during the rest of the day (for a grand total of 3, not great, but not horrible for $120). I gradually sped up over the course of the next 2 sessions as I started to get a feel for the track. I still wussed out on taking turn 8 (very high speed left) as fast as it could be taken. I also was braking much earlier than I needed to, as I was adjusting to driving with track brake pads.

My last session I took Matt along with me. He got a little motion sick. A sign that I'm not smooth enough. Well, and I like to throttle steer through turn 2 (a very long left handed 180).

I talked to Matt throughout the day, and he was psyched to drive his car on the track. I think that day planted the seed of addiction. He's planning on doing more track days to learn how to drive his car super fast.

Some pics of Matt's Elise (that looks good from every angle):

Some pics of my M3 (the ugly girl who only looks good if shot from the "right" camera angles):

More pics from the day are at http://adam.lazur.org/gallery/v/motorsports/thunderhill-2006-12-11/

Overall I had a good time, and can't wait to go back to Thunderhill (hopefully in the dry). Writing about the day only makes me anticipate going to Laguna Seca on the 8th even more.

Slush #5

2006-12-04T12:34:00.000-08:00

Mileage: 96542

Sunday morning I woke up extra early to pick up the nuzz in SF for a trip to Monster Park for SFR SCCA Slush round 5. I had to call him a couple of times before he appeared, hung over from the previous night's festivities. We made it to Monster Park after a stop at a super shady gas station to buy some gatoraid.

Nuzz posted some pics from the day here, and the photo to the right is also Nuzz's work.

Now for the driving report. Just prior to gridding up I decided I'd adjust the front shocks to full stiff. I have this fancy super adjustable suspension, I may as well use it, right? Well, that was a bad idea. I had forgotten how bumpy Monster Park is... stiff front shocks made the bumps much worse. The car was tough to control over the bumps, going from a little oversteer to a whole lot. This led to lots of steering adjustments to keep the car on a halfway decent line. I ended up putting down a 47.3 second first run with Nuzz in the passenger seat. With 47 seconds as a basis, I was planning on breaking into 46 or maybe even 45 on subsequent runs. No such luck. I blew the second run by drifting through a cone wall and my final run was a DNF when I got behind on the slalom.

Boo, bad performance on prep and on driving.

Hopefully I'll do better at Oakland (slush round 6) next weekend, and at Thunderhill the day after.

bmwcca driving school at Infineon

2006-11-07T23:59:00.000-08:00

Mileage: 95647

"it makes a crack addiction look like a mild craving for something salty."
-- Mark Dadgar (GGC BMWCCA Driving Events Coordinator) on tracking

I spent this past weekend at Infineon with the GGC BMWCCA. It was my first time at the track so I had a lot to learn.

Of course, I spent the month beforehand obsessing. Car-wise I refreshed/upgraded the suspension, bought new tires, flushed the brake fluid, and put the JTD underpanel back on. I also spent time learning the track in GT4, reading track notes from various sources (see thenobot's novice guide for a quick intro), and digesting various other sources of information on driving on the track.

Day 1

On Saturday I got up bright and early at 5:45 and made it to Infineon by 7:15 or so. I crashed at a friend's place in San Francisco the night before so the drive up wouldn't be too long.

When I arrived and registered I found out that I was in the Novice group. There was a driver meeting at the start of the day, followed by class for the novices. The class was useful to reinforce the passing zones and track driving basics. There were also question and answer sessions, but I think I payed too much attention because it felt like most of the questions had already been answered.

After class I headed down to the pits for my first session. There I met Patrick, my instructor for the day. He works at Yahoo but I didn't hold that against him. The first session was 4 laps instructor driven, then we swapped seats and I got to drive 2 laps. It was disappointing because once I got oriented and was getting ready to drive, the session ended. I looked forward to the next session, which unfortunately, didn't turn out to be much better than the first. The session was shortened due to an incident on track in the B group, so I drove 3 laps: 1 warm up, 1 real lap, then 1 cool down lap. I spent most of the one real lap riding a train behind a slow driver who didn't know how to point by ... it was frustrating.

Luckily, session 3 and 4 turned it all around. They were fantastic. While there were still occasional trains of cars, by this point most cars started to figure out how to point others by. With more point by's I was able to link together more turns in series to really have fun. I also gradually increased in comfort level and was shifting into 4th and flatfooting it a little more on the "straightaways". Straightaways is in quotes because it's not quite straight, and turning the wheel with confidence at higher speeds takes some getting used to.

Alas, my speed increase wasn't all greatness: in the last lap of the final session I spun coming out of the esses. The story goes like this: I had just spent an aggravating 2 passing zones behind a car that was pointing me by on the wrong side. They finally let me through on the proper side after turn 6 and I was quickly rewarded with a view of the esses devoid of any other cars. I decided I'd push it a little harder through the section because the track was wide open in front of me. I accelerated in 3rd gear and built up a lot more speed than I had carried through that section previously. This ended badly when I early apexed turn 8 around the top of 3rd gear (80+ mph). The rear end of the car got loose as I turned in. I panicked and lifted off the gas a little (bad bad bad idea). At high RPM in 3rd gear a little bit of lift turns into a whole lot more oversteer, which I didn't need. So, I counter steered and tried to save the turn. The back end of the car went from swinging out to the right to swinging out to the left. I caught that and brought it back to the right again, but at this point the oscillations back and forth were too much. I put "2 feet in" for the spin when the car was sideways. Luckily, we slowed down and ended up backing off the left side of the track about 10 feet into the dirt.

Shaken, I pulled back out on the track when it was clear. I limped it in to the pits per my instructor's direction to check in with the guy running the show. When I pulled up he asked "what happened?". My instructor hadn't said more than a word or two worth of explanation before he was cut off with "nope, I want to hear it from him" as he pointed at me. I took a deep breath and gave my explanation as above. I felt like I was in trouble, but I got some words of wisdom, some words of encouragement, and was sent back out on the track.

Unfortunately, they were waving the checkered flag by the time I pulled out of the pits, so it was 1 lap of shaken cooldown and my day was done.

Day 2

I was a bit sheepish heading back out on the track the second day. The reality of spinning didn't really set in until later that night when I had time to reflect on how much worse it could have been. I tried to put that out of my mind and woke up bright and early again.

It was a new day with a new instructor: Paul. Paul's driving style was a bit different than Patrick's, and was an interesting change. I remember meeting him and giving him my summary of the previous day. When I mentioned how I was 0wning everybody and passing a ton, he responded with "I don't care about that". But but but, I passed a guy in a new Porsche Cayman! That's gotta be worth something, right? Nope. This is a school. Passing someone driving bad lines in a fast(er) car doesn't teach you anything.

It was just the kick in the head I needed.

Paul and I headed out for the first session. He had me start out at 50% speed and asked me to show him the line I was driving for the first lap. On the second lap, he had me drive the same speed, but showed me his line (a little different in sections, like the entry to turn 6). His instruction was all about being smooth and he meant it. Throughout the session he wouldn't let me make what I thought were fine adjustments to steering input to hit the apex like I had been doing the previous day. Seriously, I had to turn the wheel and stick with it, bad line or not. I could make small adjustments with the throttle, but when your line is way off there's only so much steering you can do with the throttle.

I knew this was good for me, but I was initially pretty grumpy about it. There's a saying "smooth is fast". Well, I have a saying: "smooth feels slow". It's true. I've learned this lesson at autox time and time again. I'd focus on being smooth for one run and it would feel 2 seconds slower than the previous one. Usually I'd roll up to the finish to find just the opposite: it'd be 2 seconds faster but it still felt slow the whole time.

So I stuck it out, taking my medicine like a grumpy kid.

Session 2, 3, and 4 were more of the same: dial in a turn and stick with it. I slowly got better at picking good arcs and looking further ahead. As a result, I also got less grumpy. It's amazing how not being allowed to alter steering input forced me to look further ahead. Way way further ahead. A good example is coming out of 8a (the esses) into turn 9. To pull off a proper apex and setup for braking into turn 10, I'd have to dial in a tiny bit of steering input and make a massive gradual arc to late apex a turn a couple of hundred feet out.

Throughout the day I fought my demons in the esses. I altered my strategy and started short shifting into 4th so the torque wasn't as severe, which helped a lot (this tip is in thenobot's novice guide, I just forgot about it until it was too late). I blew turn 8 a couple of times, but rode out the speed and the turn without incident. Eventually I think I got the hang of it, but it was usually nailing 8 or 8a, but not both.

After going off track on day 1, I must admit that I was relieved to make it through day 2 without incident. I don't think I pushed as hard on day 2 but I was definitely smoother, faster, and I was feeling the zen of driving on the track.

Aftermath

On Monday morning, my drive to work was filled with smooth arcs and gentle unwinding of the wheel as I powered out of turns.

I can stop any time I want... I just don't want to.

tech inspected

2006-11-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

Mileage: 95543

Today I took the car to Bavarian Motorsport for a tech inspection for this weekend's Infineon Driving School. Last weekend I flushed the brake fluid with some ATE blue fluid and put on the new tires so I was hoping everything was in order.

The good news is the car passed. The bad news is there were 2 minor issues:

They found a crack in the subframe near the right motor mount. They installed some "big washers" to slow the cracking, though the long term solution will be to take it apart and weld it up.
The rear upper ball joints are starting to wear.

All in all I'm pleased that the car passed. Now the only prep I have to do is "drive" Infineon on GT4 a few hundred more times.

new shoes

2006-10-29T23:46:00.000-08:00

Mileage: 95125

My crappy Kumho Ecsta Supra 712's are on the wear bars in the rear, and are unevenly worn in the front. This wouldn't work for the track day at Infineon that's coming up, so new tires were on the list of things to get done.

My plan was to go with the Falken Azenis RT-615. It's a popular autox street tire because of the low cost and high grip (Note: if I were rich I'd buy the Advan Neovas). On Oct 6th I ordered the tires in 235/40/17 from Vulcan Tire who had the best price at the time. They were listed as backordered until "Mid October", so I figured it may be close but it would probably be okay. I was pleased to see that the estimated ship date was the 10th. The 10th came and went, the ship date was bumped to the 15th. The 15th came and went, the ship date was bumped to the 28th. This is when I gave up and looked elsewhere. I stumbled upon Edge Racing, who was conveniently having a sale on the RT-615 and who had them in stock. Since they're on the East coast shipping costs were more than Vulcan. Luckily, the sale they were running took care of the shipping difference.

With an autox coming up on Saturday and the track weekend a week away, I was eager to get the new tires on the car so I could have some time to get used to them. On Thursday, I eagerly waited at home all afternoon for the tires to arrive via UPS. Unfortunately, I had to leave the house at 5:30 to pick up my wife at work (her car was without power steering). Of course, the UPS guy left a "1st attempt" note at 5:35. I waited all afternoon on Friday as well. Around 5:30 I started to give up hope of the tires arriving at all, but at 6:00 the UPS guy showed up.

Since I wanted to autox on Saturday, I was left with very few options for mounting so late in the day. I ended up at the Firestone store (close at 7pm, suckers) and ended up paying $135 for mounting and balancing 4 tires.

The new tires are great. They were initially a little slippy. Internet wisdom suggests this is due to the mold release compound. I autoxed twice in 2 days on them and got used to the new level of grip provided by the new tires and the fancy new suspension. It was a great time.

Unfortunately, I can no longer use suspension or tires as myautox excuse ... maybe I'll have to start blaming the driver?

new suspension: coilovers and camber plates

2006-10-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

Mileage: 95021

Last weekend I upgraded the tired 95k mile suspension with the TC Kline True Match S/A Coilovers and Vorshlag camber plates. For the coilovers I opted for 500lb springs in the front and 600lb springs in the rear. This is a little aggressive for a dual purpose daily driver, but internet wisdom suggested that it was livable and that the TC Kline springs are magically well mannered on the street.

While I was in there I replaced the swaybar endlinks, tie rods (the guy complained about having to torch them at the last alignment I had), and other misc nuts and bolts. I also installed strut reinforcement plates in the front, replaced the rear shock mounts with the tc kline ones, and installed the z3 rear shock mount reinforcement plates. All the misc parts came from Zygmunt Motors.

The install took about 8 hours, plus another 2 hours or so of playing with the ride height the next day.

Speaking of ride height: the car is now noticeably lower. I have the front height at 4.75" and the rear height at 5.5" for a "rake" of .75". This is as measured from the bottom of the kick panel. I have to mention how it's measured because TC Kline tells you to measure from the kick panel, while everyone else measures from the center of the wheel hub to the fender lip for a measurement around 12" or so. The heights I have set have the rear on the bottom of the adjuster, so if I want to keep the .75" rake I can't lower the front any more.

On Wednesday I took the car for alignment at Motorsport Techniques in Hayward (they're highly recommended by the SCCA autox guys). The settings I ended up with are:

Front

Camber: -2.5° Left -2.7° Right
Caster: 6.7° Left 7.1° Right
Toe: 0.01" Left 0.00" Right

Rear

Camber: -1.9° Left -1.9° Right
Toe: 0.01" Left 0.01" Right

This was with me sitting in the car. I was hoping for more like -3.5° camber up front and -1.5° in the rear. Unfortunately, you can't always get what you want. Lowering the rear of the car left it at -1.9° at the max positive setting. Up front I originally thought I installed the camber plates on the wrong sides, but since then have confirmed that they're on the right way. Vorshlag says I should be able to get more camber if I decrease the caster setting. With these plates I have to pull them out to change the caster, so I decided to wait until after my weekend at Infineon to mess with it.

My first impression of the new suspension: WOW, the car handles amazingly. It's almost like driving a different car. The unsettling body roll while turning has been replaced with a solid, predictable response. Harsh highway bumps and speed bumps that used to be a harsh thump are now dampened bumps. It's great, even with the crappy Kumho Ecsta Supra 712 tires.

The ride is definitely a little harsher, but it's nowhere near unbearable. As a matter of fact my wife didn't notice a difference, but then again she's probably not the most sensitive meter for changes in car suspension. I have the shocks set 1.5 turns from full stiff for the street and it seems to be a good compromise between stiffness and absorbing harsh bumps on the road.

computer nerd stuff

2006-10-16T09:46:00.000-07:00

Computer nerd + cars = online stuff:

I'm keep a bay area autox calendar in google calendar
I'm tracking my m3's gas mileage with a spreadsheet

It's not new, but I track the expenses of maintenance and upgrades on my car at http://adam.lazur.org/m3/

smogged

2006-10-11T01:04:00.000-07:00

Mileage: 94735

I took the car to get smogged (CA emissions testing) this morning. I went to Jorge's Smog, which is a test only station. I took my wife's car there a little while back and Jorge was pretty cool, so I figured I'd go back. I was a little concerned about the Dinan cold air intake and chip I had in the car, but decided to risk it with the stuff on.

I did a solid warm up drive to the test station to make sure the cats were hot, but when I arrived there was another car doing the test. I let the car idle while I waited to hopefully keep things warm.

Jorge was concerned about the intake thermostat zip tied in mid air due to the Dinan cold air intake on the car. Blow up the pic to the right to see what he was talking about. He called me out into the garage to discuss the sensor. I told him I didn't know what it was (which was true at the time). We traced the hoses back into somewhere close to the block. I guessed they were full of coolant (later verified on the intarweb). Jorge was like "oh well, I guess we'll see how it does".

It passed, but just barely (click on it to make the pic less ugly):
Basically, the max allowable HC is 85 PPM and my M3 put out 85 PPM. One more part per million and I would've failed.

I'm happy it passed, but I'm still a little worried about the HC. Worst case, I've got 2 years to figure it out, though I'll probably replace some probable culprit stuff in between now and then.
I'm also going to try to sort out where that thermostat is really supposed to go...

happy birthday to me

2006-10-04T12:16:00.000-07:00

Mileage: 94495

About a week or two ago I saw the BMWCCA was doing a HPDE (High Performance Driving Event - AKA track weekend with instructors) in early November. So since my birthday was coming up, I started to drop hints (every 15 or 20 minutes) that it would be an ideal birthday present. My wife just made faces at me, which usually means she doesn't approve.

Yesterday was my birthday. The truth is she was making faces because I was ruining the surprize. She had already researched things and was planning on giving me the track day for a month or two. Awesome. Infineon here I come.

I've got a big checklist of stuff to do to the car before then:

replace the worn suspension - TC Kline SA Coilovers (may as well upgrade "while I'm in there")
flush brake fluid - ATE baby
fix up worn bushings (tranny mounts, motor mounts?)
replace tires - I'm thinking Falken RT-615's

That's about it. I'm psyched to hit the track :)

jesus built my m3

2006-09-30T18:32:00.000-07:00

Mileage: 94485

"Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry lee lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden, I found myself in love with the world
So there was only one thing that I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long" -Ministry

Today I crawled out of bed at 6am to make it to the Norcal UFO autox school. The school overall was a good time.

Since Beth thinks blogging should involve pictures, here's a pic from the last bmw autox:

In the morning we did a set of exercises: braking, skid pad, slalom, big fat box with lane changes. When I started on the skid pad I was a bit underwhelmed by my instructor, who told me I did it perfectly when I asked for feedback. I am a master of the skid pad, but perfect? I'm looking for some criticism here. So my second run we reversed the direction and went counter clockwise. I botched that one up a little more and fishtailed a bit and caught it. He said that run wasn't as good as the first. The other exercise of note was the box. Both runs I overdrove the car and slid all over. I plowed through cones both times and surely raised the blood pressure of my instructors.

After a lunch break we set out to drive a combined course. It was one of the best courses I've done at Marina because it was long (~70 seconds) with a good mix of high speed straightaways with technical elements in between. It also took up most of the Marina lot, and as a result there were some sections that were closer than I've seen with other clubs when there are multiple cars on course. There were no incidents though, so it worked out.

My runs were 71.xx, 73.585 (+2), and 70.793. I was frustruated with my first 2 runs and was overdriving the car as usual. I settled down for a 3rd run that felt slow and I botched the final turn, but apparently "felt slow" = smooth and I got into the 70's. I was moderately pleased with that, as the fastest car in the "advanced" student group was doing a 66.

So then the instructors drove. I got a ride in a 63 second trailered in and prepped Corvette. That car is a beast. I also got a ride in an NSX, though it was the driver's brother's car and it was his first time driving it... so he only did a 70 second run.

I was going to head out but they decided to have fun runs. I was hoping to break the 70 second mark. My first run I botched a couple of turns and got a 71.488. Man that made me angry. So I decided to change it up and try to stop stressing. I put in Ministry - Psalm 69 and put on Jesus Built My Hotrod prior to my next run. I pulled up to the line with music blaring and put down a nice smooth run. It just felt okay, but the timer told me it was better: 69.646. For my final run, I rocked to Ministry again and hit my groove: 68.198.

On the ride home, I decided that I may be addicted to the sound of my car's intake under full throttle (it growls). The music added noise so I didn't feel the need to gun the gas as much, and I was smoother. Either that, or Jesus built my m3...

new headlights

2006-08-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

Mileage: 91xxx

(should've posted this a while back, I'm a slacker)

The stock headlights on the US M3's suck. They're cheap plastic junk that leaves you unaware of what's out there. Seriously, they're a hazard. Okay, maybe I complain more because I know better. My wife's car, an e46 328i, has xenon headlights and they're awesome.

Enough whining. I ended up with some Depo elipsoid headlights from Umnitza. They're cheap chinese upgrades, but compared to the stock headlights they kick ass.

The lights take halogen bulbs (H1). I read up on the subject and you can pay more for higher quality european bulbs. I decided it'd be worth it, so I sprung for Narva Rangepower+50's from Daniel Stern Lighting. Daniel Stern runs a small business, so placing an order involved emailing him for pricing and availability, then calling him and leaving voicemail with my ccard info. Two weeks after I ordered, I still hadn't recieved the bulbs, so I emailed him. He replied and said he had been sick, and he'd ship them out right away. About a week later I got the bulbs.

So with the kit complete, I set out to do the install. I was at the "boy, this was easier than I thought" part. Then, of course, the high beams didn't work. I messed with it, and they still didn't work. I took it apart, put it back together, they didn't work. I took em apart again, busted out the multimeter, debugged where every wire went, rewired things differently than the first 2 attempts, and they worked. Awesome.

Since there's nothing worse than some jackass blinding you with their ill adjusted headlights, I headed to the parking garage at work with a tape measure and some painters tape to aim them. I followed the instructions on Daniel Stern's site to align them with a wall. It took a little while to get used to as the aiming seemed low at first, but I adjusted.

Obligatory lame camera phone pic to the right.
The lights are excellent. They're not as nice as my wife's car's xenons, but they're a huge step up
from the stock lights.

alignment & replacement rear tires

2006-05-23T22:31:00.000-07:00

Mileage: 91709

I got some cheapo kumho ecsta supra v712's on ebay ($4.75 for the tires, $65.87 shipping) to replace the badly worn rear tires. I took them to some shady local place that couldn't mount them for 2 days, then to Sears, who wouldn't mount them if I didn't buy them there. So, my 3rd choice was Firestone. Damn those guys suck. $70 for mounting and balancing 2 tires. I cheaped out, and it was still expensive in the end. No more stupid half assed tire setups for me... I'll get a full set of tires next time.

After doing the RTABs I needed an alignment for sure. While I was getting it aligned, I decided to go with JohnV's recipe for autox setup. I took the car to Rennwerks in Mountain View. I talked to Steve and he talked me out of 1/8" toe out up front. He said it'd eat my tires and since it's a daily driver it's not a good idea. So I ended up with 0 toe front and back, max/stock camber in the front (1.4* L 1.7* R), and -1* in the rear. Steve also noted that one of the tie rods is rusted and due for replacement, as are some of the rear adjustment bolts.

Hopefully the alignment will pay off in 2 weeks at the SCCA autox school.

new RTABs, new diff fluid

2006-05-21T22:21:00.000-07:00

Mileage: 91702

The rear of my M3 has always been loose, but recently it got a whole lot worse. Coming out of turns the car's rear would shimmy under acceleration, which totally sucks. I've also started to get rapid rear tire wear. Another warning sign. Since the rear trailing arm bushings are a typical e36 wear item that can cause this behavior, I decided to replace em. I did some interweb research and decided to opt for the Powerflex urethane bushings. In my research I also learned that the labor for replacement can be a total PITA if you don't have the proper bushing puller tool. Some people do it with a sawzall and an air hammer. I did the control arm bushings on my E30 with a hacksaw and a hammer. Boy did that suck. So I bought the Victory Product Design RTAB tool (a bargain compared to the $500 BMW tool).

I bugged a coworker (J Ho) to use his garage so I wouldn't get busted by the lame apartment people again. I read up on the procedure on the internet and saw mixed results. Some people claimed it took all day, others said it was a 2hr job. I was prepared for the worst. Surprizingly, the only real hang up was breaking the bolt loose that held the carrier to the bushing. Once I rigged up a scheme with the jack to pin a wrench between the frame and the arm, it came off with one solid full body weight push on the breaker bar. The first side took 2 hours, the second took half that. I was pleased. The old bushings are pictured to the right, if you zoom you can check out the tear in the rubber below the metal center. That's not good.

Since I got done relatively quickly, I drained the diff and changed out the fluid to Royal Purple Gearmax. Of course, you need another special tool to change the diff fluid. I used an $8 14mm hex socket from Autozone with the socket part hacked off. It worked like a charm.

Aside from the work on my car, 3 other cars went under the wrench. Weaver put a 120VAC plug setup in his glove box so he can charge his laptop anywhere (this is apparently higher priority than fixing his high beam only headlights). Rob swapped Astrid's car's front brakes. And J Ho swapped the tranny filter and fluid in his vegmobile Merc. Unfortunately, he snapped off a bolt head putting the drain pan back on ... this sucked a lot. He then broke off a screw puller in the bolt when trying to get it out. This sucked a lot worse. After a couple of hours of fighting with it, he gave it up and was going to get the car towed to a professional. Later, over beer, we discussed JB welding it back together since it's due to be replaced eventually.

Overall it was a fun and productive day.

GGCBMWCCA April AutoX

2006-05-01T21:02:00.000-07:00

Mileage: 91540
Excuse: rain, tires, suspension

I headed down to Marina for my first bimmer autox. It was a nice day when I departed Mountain View but as soon as I made it around the mountains the sky was full of clouds. Of course I left my semi waterproof jacket at home.

I helped setup the course (link to the map). It turned out to be more challenging than I initially expected. There were fast straightaways punctuated with wide turns that gave me just enough rope to hang myself picking my own line. There was some debate about the finish as we were laying it out. The finish of the course is always tricky to find the right compromise between wide open throttle fun and extra turns. Extra turns are fun too, but they take away from runway for a high speed finish. The slightly modified finish ended up as a tight right hand turn almost straight into a wall of cones across the finish line. I wasn't a big fan of the cone wall since I end up trying to carry as much speed as possible across the finish and came really close to plowing through the cones every time.

Prior to the autox I was concerned about the wear on my tires. The rear right one is getting pretty worn and is just about done. This is the same tire that had the bizarro inner wear when I first bought the car. I believe it's worn rear trailing arm bushings responsible for the excessive tire wear. So the plan is for new tires (probably Hankook z212's or Falken Azeni RT615's) and new RTABs.

Speaking of tires, there was a guy whose 325i had some horrible front tires that looked like slicks but upon close inspection were completely worn kumho MX's. They made me feel good about my tires. He had the misfortune of having a coolant hose blow off in the middle of a run, ending his day. I gave him a gallon of coolant that I lug around in my trunk just in case.

So back to autox. The bmw cca gives you 6 runs, which seems luxurious in comparison to the 3 runs at SCCA events. The crowd is more chill too. There is a much higher percentage of novice drivers with faster cars than they can handle. Yes, that's me too. I'm happy to say I was a little faster than a much better prepared m3 in the gonzo class. I progressively improved through the 6 runs, but still couldn't pull off a flawless one. I'd usually end up blowing a turn at the end of a fast section, understeering a ton, and slowing way down. The intermittent mist didn't help either. The course stayed relatively dry, but I could feel a difference on the runs when it was sprinkling.

After driving I grabbed my grub (they include lunch if you preregister) and hustled back home. I had to make it back in time to go up to SF for the beer festival.

SFR SCCA Round 5 @ Marina

2006-04-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

Mileage: 90890

I woke up bright and early at 6am this morning (really 5am to my non-DST-adjusted body) to head to Marina. "spring forward" my ass, I was dragging. Since it was my first time going to Marina, I budgeted some extra buffer room for mistakes.

I made it to Marina around 7:20, which was definitely early for the event. Note to self: the drive from Mountain View to Marina takes ~1.25hrs if you drive ~80mph. When I got there the course wasn't setup, so I helped put out cones for an hour. This counted as my work duty for the day, so I could bail early.

Marina is smooth concrete, which took a bit of getting used to. It was really windy, and borderline cold. My fleece wasn't up to snuff.

The course was challenging. There were a bunch of new elements that I hadn't encountered. My first run sucked at 54.8s, but I got a bit better for a best time of 52.4s at the end of my 5 runs. The fastest car in my class (an STi) was doing 47's... I've got a way to go. I fought with coming into tight turns too hot and sliding on the way out. On my final run, I still didn't nail the 2 tight turns. I kept coming out on the far side with the frontend plowing and my wheels turned way too far. I know the theory is that I should've braked a bit to get some traction on the frontend, or turned the wheel back out to stop the plowing. Connecting theory with practice is always a challenge. I couldn't get myself to do it better despite thinking about it before each of my later runs.

I noticed the car smells like gas after driving. I tracked it down to a little fuel leak on the driver's side ... it looks like it's an issue with the new fuel line that B-Line put in. Looks like it's time to cash in on the warranty.

new spark plugs, valve cover gasket

2006-04-01T16:42:00.000-08:00

Mileage: 90704

My wife was away today, so I got to spend some quality time with the car without fear of her getting jealous ;)

I replaced the what appeared to be the stock spark plugs (photo on the right) with NGK IX iridium BKR6EIX. I picked these plugs after reading some random threads on BMW forums.

As a preventative measure, I also replaced the valve cover gasket. It's common for the e36 valve cover gasket to leak, especially the rings around the spark plugs. Sure enough, when I pulled out the ignition coils there was oil in the spark plug holes for cylinders 2 and 4. I soaked up what oil I could before putting the new plugs in.

I took some camera phone shots of the head with the valve cover off. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was relatively clean compare to the shot from pelicanparts, though maybe the difference is synthetic vs dino oil?

Afterwards, I took the car out for a drive with a massage chair as my destination (2 hours leaning over the car left my back mighty sore). The car felt a little faster, but I'm betting that's all in my head.

norcal ls1 autox school

2006-03-25T21:59:00.000-08:00

Mileage: 90518

I rolled out of bed bright and early at 6am today. I hate my alarm clock. I woke up super early to hop over the mountains to Castle Airforce Base to do the Norcal LS-1 autox school. When I gained consciousness, I was in Merced (instead of Atwater) with a crappy google map with no labels. I eventually made it to Atwater.

The good and bad news was that it rained all morning. Driving in the rain isn't much fun, but it was good to be able to easily push the limit of adhesion at lower speeds. We did 8 or so runs on a big loop with slaloms on opposite sides. My instructor (can't remember his name) kicked ass. I let him drive the m3 around the course, he ate a cone in the slalom, but still lapped a lot faster than I was going. I picked up that he was left foot braking.

The rain stopped for the afternoon. We rocked the standard autox style course all afternoon. As usual: I didn't look ahead enough, I didn't brake hard enough, I did overdrive and slide all over. I've finally started to get used to steering with the throttle. My best time of the day was 38.8. I had one of the instructors (Scott) run a 38.1 in my car. He was also left foot braking. He blew a couple of the turns and could've been faster, but then again, that's the story of most of my runs.

If I could just get new tires ... Kumho 712's are keeping me down. Well, that and my own inability to put together a solid run.

Seat time. Need more seat time.

Update: pics of my car at the event by bvz (digi shots are pricey!)

busted!

2006-03-25T20:45:00.000-08:00

Mileage: 90214

I got caught with my car on standjacks in the apt parking lot with a bucket of murky transmission oil on Friday morning. I told the apartment guy that I had no idea it wasn't allowed, and that it wouldn't happen again. Lame.

I put in some Royal Purple lubrimax in the transmission. It was silky smooth on the commute into work. Later that night, it wasn't as magical. Today it's back to normal... I was almost a believer on Friday. Only time will tell.

I was short on time, or I'd have changed the diff fluid as well. Maybe when I do change it, I'll do it over by the apt office...

Matilda gets a nose job

2006-03-20T22:07:00.000-08:00

Mileage: 90186

So yesterday I replaced the stone chipped busted up nose panel on Matilda with a shiny new one. While I was upgrading, I bumped from the '95 style to 97+ style nostrils for a little more aggressive look.

<rant>
When I took off the nose panel, it was held on by 4 bolts/screws. There are supposed to be 12...
... so when $PREV_OWNER replaced the panel, he lost 8 screws?! Maybe I'm a little obsessive compulsive, but I don't put stuff back together missing bolts, screws, parts, whatever. If I lose one, break one, whatever, I'll go buy a replacement to put it back together. I'm a fan of the old adage "if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well".

So I spent an hour at the hardware store finding some metric bolts and metal screws. I spied a bunch of other missing screws in the front bumper plastic pieces while I was poking around ... more aggrivation. Damn those hardware store bolts, they're all shiny and look out of place.
</rant>

first post

2006-03-20T21:41:00.000-08:00

I'm so hip to teh interweb.