It’s time to start a new year of Autocross and Driver’s Schools. Time for a little Spring maintenance. So before heading back to the track next week I thought I’d switch back to the cold air intake, replace the spark plugs, change the brake fluid, and change the oil. Since I have to get an …
I have always hated exterior bits that serve no real purpose. Faux brake vents; solid grilles — that sort of thing. The stock MCS rear bumper has two fake grilles that have always driven me nuts. With the way the bumper cover is designed, the rear valance hangs down in the airflow coming under the …
It turns out that my new Konig Feather wheels won’t work with the stock size lug nuts. They require “tuner” nuts. Who knew such a thing even existed? So now I have my first ever JDM parts. At the widest point, the Muteki nuts are about 1/16 of an inch smaller in diameter than the …
What is that goo that comes out of an electric motor that has seized? We took a brief trip to CA to escape winter and while we were gone, we had some friends watching our house. Because we had some snow and sub-freezing days, we had them run the BMW every couple of days. They …
Since I had the respirator out and the garage all in “spray-booth” mode, I went ahead and painted the M7 Extreme Scoop I bought last Fall. I’m not sure it actually improves performance of the inter-cooler at all, but it seems like it does according to the butt-dyno. My cunning plan for this autocross season …
One thing that drives me nuts about the “bottle cap” rims is that they’re impossible to clean. If you leave the brake dust on the wheels it eats into the surface and you cannot really get your fingers in the slots to keep them clean when you wash the car. Since I had a little …
I talked to the experts at Paint World and upon their recommendation, added a third coat of clear to the hood. That made all the difference to get the repainted hood to match the shine of the fenders. I had some paint and clear coat left over so I also repainted the rear panel around …
It took a week longer than I planned, and many more cans of paint, but I finally finished the hood. I still need to polish it, but it looks pretty good.
The hood on the BMW has one of the worst paint jobs I’ve ever seen. It’s like the history of paint. I think there’s at least 4 layers, the top coat being a very cheap, very thick respray one of the previous owners had done after something fell on the hood. The paint was burned …
I always thought the stock grille on the Cooper S was a bit of a contradiction. It wasn’t all chrome and it wasn’t all painted. It just looked incomplete. I like the look of the grille included with the Aero Kit, but didn’t want to go through the expense of replacing both bumper covers and …