Videos

Here's the week in review, in-car camera style.

Day 1

Wet Skid Pad - TireRack

http://youtu.be/P_MNdPVZSNo

Autocross - Grissom Air Force Base

http://youtu.be/-fpFn1av12M

http://youtu.be/TMP5BcJI-bk

http://youtu.be/TMP5BcJI-bk

http://youtu.be/weaXBkP4dQA

Day 2

Summit Point

Morning/Qualifying

http://youtu.be/K0E3TagoEhw

Afternoon

http://youtu.be/rLB7kJJfWI0

Day 3

Carolina Motorsport Park

Morning

http://youtu.be/XBrJ0KR5ouk

Afternoon

http://youtu.be/KHHY8aLz5gU

Day 4

Daytona International Speedway

Morning

http://youtu.be/7hd0x4Vl3wI

Afternoon

http://youtu.be/TW57VbxQz1Q

Day 6

Barber Motorsport Park

Morning

http://youtu.be/YnBEywU8hDU

Afternoon

http://youtu.be/d9yunKSPoZE

Day 7

Autobahn Country Club

North track, Morning

http://youtu.be/Bp3YMjnFpC8

South track, Afternoon

http://youtu.be/UcyAKLEh3EU

Day 8 

Dry Skid Pad - Tire Rack

http://youtu.be/dgUYgN6Rc2E

Back in Business (sort of)

Back In Business

The One Lap of America is tough on the drivers and the car. The former recovers quickly, taking only a few nights of good sleep.  The car on the other hand takes longer. This is a story of what it took to bring the car back into shape following the end of the race in May.

Before the race even began the car was falling apart. There was the minor issue of the head and the crack that caused so much frustration.  After the race, there was a loud clunk in the front suspension.  A number of the exhaust manifold studs had either fallen out or were loose, so there was some extra noise. So the first task was removing the head for a full rebuild and then it was on to the front suspension.
So the work started in June with the head removal and proceeded all summer and culminated with the car passing Connecticut Emissions in the beginning of September for the first time since 2001.  This was critical because the registration expired the day of the test and there was no way to get around the requirement this time.
Here’s an overview of what was done.

Front suspension:
We knew that one of the front struts was loose inside the housing and needed to be shimmed. But when we pulled the wheel off we discovered that strut had completely come apart. This made me wonder when this happened and how long it had been affecting the handling of the car.
We also found that the front wheel hubs, which were replaced shortly before the race were shot and needed to be replaced.
After fixing the housing, the Koni lasted about 50 miles before it blew up. We’re currently waiting for another custom one to be built and it should be installed by the spring. Shortly after that, the steering box went from tight German steering to 60’s muscle car. Another thing added to the list.

Intake:
Our sponsor, Guten Part and Service, sent us a new powder coated intake manifold to replace the Dinan intake manifold.  The Dinan manifold, despite being polished had smaller ports than stock, so to increase airflow, it had to go.

Head:
With the modified head cracked and hastily repaired, I had the repair inspected. The engine builder found a couple spots where the weld didn’t extend thru and would have to be repaired. While he was inspecting the head, he turned his attention to the port and polish work that had been done. After looking it over he told me the port job was poorly done and was probably hindering performance and instead of the 5 angle valve job, I had gotten a 2 angle valve job.  Based on that, I decided to scrap the modified head and transfer as much stuff to the stock head as possible.
So off came the stock head for the cam swap. Because of the design, the head can only be disassembled out of the engine bay.  So the stock cam came out and the turbo cam with a new adjustable cam gear went in. I also transferred over all of the newer rocker arms and shafts. While the head was out a number of the tapped holes had to be rebuilt with heli-coils. A new headgasket (4th in 4 years) topped it off.
After starting the engine up an oil leak appeared at the back of the head.  Many hours later it was fixed and the culprit was a broken paper gasket. Sorry a broken, brand new paper gasket that must have torn while being installed.

Exhaust:
With the exhaust manifold now being properly held to the head with all the bolts instead of half, the bolts, the next focus is getting a new catalytic converter.  Despite only having 8,000 miles on the exhaust system, the old cat was quickly destroyed with the old tuning.  Without a cat, there was little chance the car would pass emissions.  
So Baer brought the car up to Lou’s Custom Exhaust in Salem, NH.  They cutout the old cat, welded in 2 new flanges and installed a new cat.  They also made a “track pipe” which eliminates the cat.  This allows for us to preserve the good cat for future emissions tests and will give us slightly more power on the track. And we don’t have to worry about littering the shop floor with the internals while doing the tuning.

Interior:
The interior held up well during the race with the exception of the seats.  Already 10 years old, fading and starting to tear before, the race, the seats were completely shot by the end of the race.  While trying to decide whether to get them re-upholstered, I came across a set of barely used Corbeau A4 seats.  The black and grey microfiber matches well with the interior of the car and will suffice for sometime.

Paint:
Well the miles damage the paint, but that’s nothing that a little polish can’t handle.  The tough part is removing the decals without damaging the paint. And that didn’t go so well.  There is now a large piece of clear coat missing on the drivers door. Noticeable if you get closer than 10’. Unfortunately, paint is not in the budget.

Tuning:
In April the car was tuned on the dyno and was running good. That all changed when we had to do the emergency head swap.  Due to the different flow characteristics of the stock head the old tuning didn’t work. So Nick from ACE retuned the car so we could do the race. But he was only able to tune parts of the “map”. The car ran fine at wide open throttle above 4000 rpm and would cruise ok on the highway around 3000 rpm and get decent mileage. However, everything in between those points was less than pleasant.
Nick was able to work his magic on the new setup.  And despite no dyno tuning the car runs better than ever.

Day 8: Dry Skip Pad, Banquet and the drive home

The only day where we needed to have dry track conditions is also the only day with rain in the forecast. It was a gray morning in South Bend when we left the hotel.
We made it in time to be apart of the group photo.

The dry skip pad competition is just like the wet skid pad competition except that the track is dry so the grip levels are higher. Also, they reverse the run order so those of us at the back of the pack get to run first. I was the fourth car to head out, so that should tell you what happens to your score when you miss 50% of the events.
The car handles very neutral. It neither wants to oversteer or understeer. So in the counter clockwise direction the car did great. For some reason in the clockwise direction the handling seemed to revert to understeer. Regardless the car pulled a 0.90 g for both directions. Not bad for a 20 year old car becuase that's better than most new cars can do. So I was in first place, for about 3 minutes.  In this crowd .9 put you in the middle of the pack as we finished 46th overall for this event.
A new record was set in a GTR of 1.11g which is insane for a street car.  Moving forward I need to find a way to get my car to grip better if I want to do this again.

Following the dry skid pad anyone who wants to destroy what's left of their tires heads back out for a smoke show.

Following the smoke show, we pulled together all of the BMWs to survive for a group photo. We were the oldest by nearly 10 years...

So after all the scores were tallied we ended up 5th (out of 6) in class and 63rd overall (out of 75).  We managed to beat a number of the other cars that dropped out and one car that made it to all the events. A disappointment but at least we were driving our car home.

The awards banquet took place inside the Tirerack warehouse which is immense.

Following the banquet we hit the road home. Originally we were going to stop for the night at some point but the GPS had us arriving in CT around 1:30am and the lure of sleeping in a real bed and not having the drive the next day was too much, so we powered on and by 2 am Sunday we were asleep and the car was home in the garage.