Well, I didn’t trophy on Sunday, but I came agonizingly close. I got nudged out on the last run by the person who was in 5th. The worst part of it was that I just messed up a little bit at the finish pushing wide just enough to cost me the faster time I’m pretty sure I had that run. So, I finished 5th out of 12 on Sunday and 3rd of 7 with a Trophy on Saturday. Overall, a good weekend with mixed weather.

Today I placed 3rd in ST2 (indexed street tire class for WWSCC events) out of 7 competitors, which qualifies me for a trophy! Hooray. The event was at Cheney Stadium. It went well and no one got shot in the face. I don’t know if I’m getting better or the fact that the pavement at Cheney is not very grippy. But it seemed that the AWD cars might have had an advantage over the FWD or RWD cars. I was getting sideways a lot, but I kept it tidy on my 5th run to pull out a mid-37 second run.

My trophy was a mini RC car. It’s a 2006 Dodge Charger ROLLIN’ PHAT ON SUM DUBZ, YO! w00t.

There’s another event tomorrow at the same place. We’ll see how that goes.

* Technically I trophied when I was a novice, but that doesn’t really count (even though I beat like 45 people)

In my continuing effort to improve traffic flow without spending any tax payer money I have devised the following informational license plate frame. It is available through my old Xtreme Tek store via Cafe Press.

Apparently, people don’t know this is a law, which baffles me. I mean, it should have been in your driver’s education course and there are signs on the freeway that say it.

I’ve been pretty busy the last couple weekends with Autocross. Because we lost the Everett site, they’ve all been in Bremerton and it takes up a considerable portion of my day to compete there. Anyway, for those of you actually paying attention to this blog, I thought you might enjoy this picture of me rounding a higher-speed sharp corner.

I would wash my car today, but I can’t afford the Fukken Wax.

Actually though, I might still wash my car.

Well, after the last track event I evaluated my car’s consumable situation. I checked my brake pads, rotors, and tires and, well, everything was dead.

My tires were the worst offender, they were shot. So I ordered up some wider tires and from a different manufacturer, Dunlop Direzza Z1 star specs. I wanted to return to a stiffer sidewall than the RE-01R offered, more width, and more grip. The Z1’s offered all that, so I picked them up. Since the tires were coming off, I took the opportunity to get minor curb rash repaired on my wheels as well. So, far, the tires feel great but I only have limited amount of miles on them and they were over inflated at the time.

My front rotors were also toast and my rears weren’t in the best shape ever either. So, I got lighter 2-piece rotors up front (Gyrodics). My front EBC reds had 30% life left in them, but I was unhappy with the performance. So I spent the $5 to upgrade to the package deal from AMS Performance and get the PFC 97 series compound front pads. My EBC Reds in the rear are still OK, so I’m reusing them in the rear. In the rear, I went with some Powerslot rotors, they were cheap and the rears don’t see a ton of heat. I think they will be adequate. My only concern is that the slotting in the rears goes all the way to the edge of rotor, which could induce cracking. Hopefully the lack of real heat in the rear will keep that from happening.

Also, my new Tarmac 2 coilover suspension came right before all this stuff arrived too. I got those put on just before my new tires got here. Now all I have left to do is get the car aligned. I’m pretty excited to see how these, coupled with the new Dunlop’s work at autocross. Buuuuuuuuuuuut, now I’m broke.

So, I wanted to get a real V-Limited lip for a long time. Mostly for the aerodynamic benefits, but I really think the lip completes the look of the car’s front end. Also, since my car is already dropped about an inch (actually a bit more than that in the front because of all my additional camber from my camber plates), I don’t have a lot of clearance. I figured it would be a waste of a nice $450 V-Limited lip if I got one for the streets.

In order to save some money and frustration, I got a polyurethane lip for $175. They look like crap out of the mold, so I went to Home Depot and grabbed some 600 grit sand paper and then to Schuck’s to grab some Duplicolor plastic adhesion promoter and then some flat black bumper paint.

I then wet sanded down the lip with the sandpaper, wiped it clean and then looked for imperfections. There were a lot of cracks and scratches in the lip so I gave them a college try but couldn’t get most of them out; none of them are too serious though. I cleaned the lip again and then sprayed on about 3-coats of the adhesion promoter. I let that dry about 10 minutes. Finally, I applied about 6 coats of bumper paint. Lighter, faster arm-movement coats and then the later coats were slower and thicker. I think it turned out really well.

So, now that everything is finally back in order, I think it’s time to recap this story.

This story actually starts way back in 2006. I had my STI for about 4 months and one day took a small rock to the top of windshield from one of Washington’s notoriously uncovered dump trucks (remember kids, don’t speed, but it’s OK let cargo hit cars at 60 MPH). The chip wasn’t even really a chip. It didn’t spider web or anything, I couldn’t even see where it hit until I left my car in the garage for a weekend to find a giant crack down my windshield. So, being that it wasn’t in my way visually and I knew Washington State Troopers would rather pull over well equipped sports cars to generate revenue than enforce dangerous things like uncovered dump truck loads, I opted to not fix it until something else happened.

Fast forward to March 2008 and I’m working from home most days because I’m “on the bench” at work. I decided this would be a good time to get my windshield fixed that I’d been putting off for 2 years. After a lot of research and unanswered queries to people who claimed to have a “great windshield guy”, I gave up and just went with Safelite. Their windshield paint pattern was exactly like OEM glass and everyone was out of the PPG glass that I wanted.

So, a few weeks back a guy from Safelite comes and replaces my windshield. When he’s done I come out and do an inspection. John the install guy asks if I have questions. Naturally, I do because everything looks weird. The glass looked like it was mounted too low. The bottom seal didn’t look like it was on right and the grooves for the glass weren’t sitting right. He said that the “glass was just a little smaller than normal” but that it was OK. He also told me that the sun and natural wear and tear would make the bottom seal sit back into place. I said ‘OK’, paid him, and then he was off.

After he left, I walked around the car to pull it back into the garage. Then I noticed a shit ton (that’s an official metric unit) of scratches. The roof line, A-pillar (really bad here), and hood were all scratched pretty badly. That pissed me off. I left my car in the garage for almost a week. Next time I drove the car, I adjusted the mirror; it was completely loose and wobbly. Awesome, I couldn’t even see out of it because it was vibrating so badly. I filled out an online complaint form and heard nothing back. I tried to repair the scratches as much as possible with Meguiar’s ScratchX and some elbow grease, but I was only able to minimize the look of most scratches. My friend Nick also managed to reattach the bottom seal. Also, I took apart the rear view mirror and assembled it properly.

Fast forward another week and Safelite sends me an online satisfaction survey. Still pissed, I filled another online form. This time I get a call from a Safelite corporate representative. She put me in touch with the local Safelite, who sent out a damage control guy. The damage control guy completely agreed with me (windshield was mounted an inch too low, sloppy work, and the paint was scratched).

Today they sent out a different glass technician and a paint repair guy from Same Day Auto Scrach and Dent Repair. My car feels whole again. Scratches are 95% gone, windshield sits right, and the seals all line up. Hooray! Without repainting the car, I’ll never get the deep scratches out of the paint, but the paint guy did a good job of cleaning up what he could.

Friday night I headed down to Ocean Shores in the BMW, broken wheel bearings singing the whole way. The goal for Saturday didn’t seem very ambitious but, in retrospect, turns out to be insane. We wanted to replace both rear wheel bearings (really important), replace the torn CV boot, change the transmission fluid, mount the fire extinguisher, and maybe have time for a few extra fun things. We got started around 11:15 and our pain became obvious quickly.

We got the wheel, brake, and emergency brake off quickly. Then we had to take out the rear axle and CV joint assembly. There are 6 bolts that hold the assembly to the differential (black round bolts with a hex head key hole). 5 of them came off with no problem, however the 6th one decided it would round out the hex. It took about 10 minutes and attempts with several tools but eventually Robby used his hulk like strength and gigantic vice-grips to break it free. Good for now, but now we were short a bolt. With the axle assembly out, it was time to remove the axle-stub and then the wheel bearing, we would worry about the CV bolt later.

Robby pounded on various parts with a BFH (big fucking hammer) and a brass punch for, I don’t know, a hour and we just could not get the axle-stub or wheel bearing to come out. Robby looked around and saw that behind the axle-stub, there was a C-shaped pressure spring/ring. We decided we needed to try and take that out before pounding anything else out. Robby’s tools for removing that pressure ring were meant to be used on something that wasn’t so obscured behind a part (e.g. straight on or at a slight angle).

We headed to our local (kind of) auto parts store to replace the stripped boot screw, get right-angled spring clip removers, and possibly find a CV boot. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention we found out the CV boot kit that came in the mail was meant for the inside boot, not the outside; so we needed a CV Boot too. The local store didn’t have anything we needed. So, off to Aberdeen we went. We stopped at Schuck’s and got the tool we needed. Then we drove all the way to end entrance of Aberdeen (pretty much as far as you can go and not be in Central Park) to Ace Hardware only to discover that Ace didn’t have a bolt that matched up. There was something close, but it wouldn’t work because the bolt was too long and the blank part of the shaft was too long. Fortunately, I brought my tap and die set, so we bought 3 of them and prayed I could make it work. Back to the bat cave (no CV boots anywhere)!

When we got back to the shop, we tried to get the clip out of the hole but, that’s right, there was a problem. The tool couldn’t open wide enough to get to both tools. I looked at the tool a bit and suggested to Robby that we grind out the center part of the tool so it could open further, he agreed, we did, and it worked. We got the spring clip out and then started pounding with the BFG and brass rod some more. It wouldn’t budge.

We gave up on being nice and decided to get the assembly red-hot. However, even torching it, it wouldn’t come out. We went online and found a guide but the guide just made it seem like the half-shaft could be pulled out with ease and then you could simply take off the pressure ring (Robby had the tool for that) with the axle-stub out. However, there was no steps for removing the axle-stub, just simply “now take the half shaft out and set it on the ground” — very funny. In frustration, I took a rubber mallet and started smacking the axle stub from the bottom at the same time Robby would hit it from behind with the punch. It moved! So, we just timed our strikes right and I swung harder and it came off smoking hot in 10 hits or so, pulling the existing wheel bearing in half. The inner ring was positively stuck to the axle-stub.

Then we had to get the rest of the wheel bearing out of the hole. Lots of heat, pounding, and blood (well, Robby’s blood) later, the wheel bearing came out. Then using the press we got the left over bearing off the axle-stub, cleaned it up and pressed the bearing on. Robby had the new bearing half way back into the car when I stopped him. We forgot to put the retainer spring back on before we pressed the wheel bearing onto the axle-stub. Some pressing, swearing, and whatnot later, we separated the axle-stub from the new wheel bearing and the new wheel bearing from itself — yeah, we thought we broke it, the seal got pretty bent. Well, we had to press on, so we got the other new wheel bearing out of the box, put the retainer spring on, then pressed the bearing on, and pounded the assembly into the car. Don’t worry, things didn’t go smoothly yet, we then realized we forgot to put the dust boot back onto the suspension arm. On some cars you can take these off with no problem, but BMW decided this would be a good place to hook the emergency brake spring to. Well, we didn’t have any more wheel bearings, so we cut the dust boot in half bolted it on and then we tack-welded it back together. Yay!

Now, we had to take care of the CV boots. After a long time searching online to figure out how to get axle apart and only finding guides telling us to replace the whole unit (dumb and expensive) we found a guide showing that we could just take off the inside shaft caps. We came up with the idea to use the boot kit to replace the part that it was supposed to even though it was broken and then take the rubber boot and use it to fix outer boot (the broken one). Anyway, this story is getting too long, so let me summarize. We were able to create a properly sized bolt, get the boots fixed, and get the assembly back together.

While we put the emergency brake on, Robby realized he didn’t remember exactly how it went back together. No problem, I just took the other wheel and rotor off. Robby looked at it and got everything put back together properly. While I was trying to get the caliper open, I popped open the bleeder to release the pressure and make it easy to pull back. No fluid came out and we then we found the brakes didn’t work properly. To make a long story short, we found out that the rubber brake line was blocked and the caliper was completely blocked as well (like 25 psi of air wouldn’t go through it blocked). We fixed it with some brute force and air pressure. Then we bled the brakes and they work now, hooray.

With the car all back together, after a quick test drive (revealing that we fixed the quieter of the two wheel bearings) we decided to do something fun. Being that it was already midnight, why not? Robby showed me some aluminum grain-stamped extremely thin aluminum siding. He then used his hemming tool to hem the aluminum on the top and bottom edges to make it a little bit stronger (though it was clear it wouldn’t be strong enough). We put the smooth side out, bolted it on, flared out the edges by the tires and painted it black. Interestingly enough, I got noticeably better gas mileage on the way home.

It flexes at speeds above 40 MPH, but we kind of figured it would. It’s just kind of a proof of concept. I think when we make the real one we’ll flare the bottom out more and we’ll get it closer to the ground. Also, the final product will have a splitter.

Oh, and for one last thing before I left, finally, we got the fire extinguisher mounted.

After work weekend 6 the team hasn’t been very active. We’re waiting on the guys to order things and we are also waiting on making another trip down to Robby’s shop. We’ll need his press to put in wheel bearings I ordered. Additionally, we’ll be putting on a new CV Boot because our current one is cracked.

During work weekend 7 we officially got our racing seat in. We got the cheapest seat possible from Speedware, which, while semi-intentional because we’re on a budget, worked out well because the seats that were slightly more expensive had really short race harness slots. Most of the driver’s on our time are taller than 6 foot tall and none of us are huge fans of spinal compression (especially me). The variance in height also required us to get sliders, which then also required us to get the Speedware seat bracket.

This last weekend Nick and I worked on my STI on Saturday (thanks again Nick) and then the BMW on Sunday. We re-tapped the oil pan to use a much bigger bolt. Nick accidentally tapped it at slight angle so the seal isn’t perfect even with a plastic washer. I don’t blame him because we can’t afford a new oil pan gasket so he had to do it a crazy angle. In fact, I think he did pretty damn good considering the circumstances. Then we moved the BMW “check light console” from the ceiling area to where the CD player used to go. I didn’t bring my Dremel, so we went to town with a large file. It actually fits pretty pretty well and is a pretty tight interference fit. Oh, also Nick found and removed a 1 pound bracket left over from the A/C unit.