Like so many things with this car, you never really know what’s wrong until you get out the grinder. After I finished painting the roof, I found a bubble in the paint on the hood. At some point in it’s tortured existence, something very heavy landed on the hood of this BMW. The hood is …
I finally finished my rattle-can respray in black. Well almost. I have a rust bubble I have to finish on the hood, but otherwise it’s finally done. My goal of a more or less uniform satin black finish is almost realized. The last bit of major painting was the trunk and deck-spoiler. That actually turned …
It was a beautiful morning for an autocross. The National Capital Chapter of the BMW CCA held another points event at the MD State Police Training Facility in Sykesville. I was eager to get the BMW back on the road, so I gave it a try, even though the U-joint beats the drive-line like a …
It was a beautiful weekend to be at the track. (Actually, there are no bad weekends to be at the track. Except maybe when it snows — been there, done that.) Except for a brief deluge, it was sunny and warm all three days. I really appreciate the Friday IA days. I get more track …
Since the BMW is still on jack-stands in the garage, I decided to take out the MINI for the Capital Driving Club autocross at Bowie Stadium this weekend. It was sunny and hot, but fortunately, not yet so humid. I was competitive with the other MINIs that were running, but I wasn’t up there with …
I’m pretty sure that there steering rack belongs somewhere under the car… Day 1 of the steering rack adventure is complete. Without making too much of a mess, I managed to get all of the hoses off, fluid drained, and the old rack removed. The tie-rod links proved to be a pain, but after much …
I was hoping I’d be able to make it to the May NCC HPDE at Summit Point at the end of the month without having to replace my steering rack, but no luck. The boots are full of fluid. There’s also a vibration in the drive-line which probably indicates the U-joints are shot. Of course, …
I recently lost my cell phone which turned into an opportunity to get an iPhone. There are a couple of interesting automotive apps available for iPhone so I thought I’d test a couple of them. The image above shows the Dyno results for the MINI using an app called Dynolicious. It shows a 12.82 second …
On Saturday I finally made it to a CDC autocross event. This one was held at the Triple Skid Pad at Summit Point — same place as the BMW Club event, only this one wasn’t a sogfest. BSR has finally paved the aprons around the inside of each skid pad and cut-out, but the infield …
This past weekend featured the first SCCA Autocross event of the new season at FEDEX field. It was a chance to test out my new suspension and tires. During the winter, I picked up some Hankook Ventus Z214 competition tires from Frisby Race Tires. For a while, they had a special on the C50 (medium) …