It has been a little over a month since this year’s Rolex 24 hour race at Daytona. Rather than recap the racing action, I thought I’d reflect on the event. It was my first time at a 24 hour race and my first time at the Daytona International Speedway. Neither was what I expected. The …
This is turning out to be a much colder winter in the Mid-Atlantic region than originally planned. As a result, I’m falling behind in sorting the X5. This past weekend was the first since early November where I could get out and work on it. The previous owner (Mr. Magoo) managed to scrape paint off …
I recently spent some time contemplating the Electric MINI concept car at the LA auto show. In many ways it was very old-school: The future was supposed to look different than it’s turned out. This reminds me of those concepts from the 60’s where you didn’t really believe that’s what the future would hold, but …
I’m sure you’ve seen the blob before: bad touch-up paint that looks almost as bad as the scratch it is attempting to cover up. Our new BMW X5 shop truck came with some seriously bad blobs on the hood. In the photo below you can see the blobs on the left before application and the …
GeorgeCo recently acquired a 2013 BMW X5 to use as a daily driver and tow vehicle. We’ve been spending the last couple of weeks fixing the little things that were wrong with it when we bought it. The previous owner — “Mr. Magoo” — had curbed all four wheels, one of which we decided to …
The stock Wilwood rotors have held up well, but really aren’t intended for extended track use. Earlier this year I upgraded to calipers with steel pistons and no dust boots, so when it came time to replace the rotors, I thought I’d upgrade that as well. The Spec-37 rotor is Wilwood’s Premium Grade, Heavy Wall …
Last weekend brought the final track event for NCC BMW CCA this year at Summit Point. Although I had a great time as usual, the weekend wasn’t completely worry free. If you run wheel studs instead of bolts, you may not be aware that you need to replace them every couple of years. I know …
The oil MINI uses in the Getrag 6 speed manual transmission is supposed to be a lifetime fill. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean: If you kill the transmission because of bad fluid, that’s the end of its lifetime. A safer bet is to change it yourself every 30-50,000 miles. It’s cheap and …
Read more “MINI R53 Manual Transmission and Differential Fluid Change”
Getting the brake ducts right on the MINI is slowly becoming my white whale project (call me Ishmael). In Part Deux of this adventure, we found a good cooling solution using brackets from Chris Sneed, but the location on the passenger side ducting was less than ideal. First we got the hose caught in the crank …
Keeping mind my past experience with a carpet swap in a BMW E30 some years ago, I finally found a good replacement for the carpet in the 996 and, uttering those infamous words “how hard could it be”, set off to do the carpet swap last weekend. If you’re curious how much of your interior …