Nothing to polish

Sometimes there’s just nothing left to polish. This is especially true with cars from the 90’s. When the auto industry switched over to water-based clear coat paints, many of the earlier products started to fail before the new-car warranty even expired. The other area which caused problems was in door jams and trunks. The flexible …

Fender flair repair

As a general rule, I try to do minimally invasive work, only removing enough paint to get the desired level of shine and clarity before coating. But occasionally there isn’t anything to work with as was the case with this fender flair. A good bit of paint was scraped off down to bare metal which …

Leather Refresh

ColourLock LeatherFresh is a good alternative to replacing old tired leather. We can repair small tears as long as they are not along seams as well as deep cracks and creases. It usually takes only a couple of days to refresh both front seats as well as the rear seats. In this case, we had …

Seat color change

BMW E36M3 seats in good condition are getting harder to find. This customer found a good set, but they were in dove gray instead of black. Not a problem. The transformation starts with cleaning and repairing the surface of the leather. Really deep cracks or minor tears are repaired with liquid leather. Before starting the …

You’re doing it backwards

It’s not often that you get to drive a new circuit at your home track. But for our recent HPDE at the Summit Point Shenandoah Circuit, we got to do just that by driving counter race for a session.

Gauge cluster button fix

I’ve seen this happen in a couple of cars now and I’m not sure why. Perhaps someone who is unfamiliar with how they work gets in the car and tries to set the clock by spinning the knob, or a previous owner took the cluster apart and broke the tabs? Usually both knobs are affected …

Relocating the washer container

If you installed brake ducts in your E46 M3 track car, chances are you also removed the windshield washer reservoir (aka, “windshield cleaning container” part number 61 67 7 895 571). The container wraps around the AC dryer and sits in the path of the Hardmotorsport bumper duct inlet. If you no longer drive your car on the street, …

M3 at the Jeff

After a long break, we finally got back to the track in September. The weekend of 11-13 September saw the National Capital Chapter of BMW CCA back on the extended Jefferson Circuit at Summit Point. The format was a bit different with all lead-follow instruction, but the instructor run group was still a blast. I’m …