It was a busy week here at GeorgeCo, with three events in five days. Saturday started it off with half a day with some of the BMW club instructors on the skidpad at Summit Point. About a dozen drivers, three at a time on the skidpad for four hours. Very helpful in finally mastering a …
I’ve had my MINI for 6 years as of last week. About the time it passed it’s six birthday in September, I started hearing a hooting sound — sort of part barn owl, part Stanley Steamer. It took a while to figure out where it was coming from. After initially thinking it was a faulty …
Read more “MINI Turns 6, Becomes a Barn Owl (Power Steering Fan Failure)”
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 …
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 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) …
I’ve been having some problems with the MINI’s suspension lately. First was a thumping sound in the right rear, and the left front seemed to bottom out on even the slightest bump in the road. That and the fact that my family won’t ride in the car anymore because of the harshness of the ride, …
Well the February car washing weather control experiment was successful. Today school was canceled and E got her snow day. I decided to take the day off and go sledding as well.