fresh meat

This is a special time. With the new car comes a whole new circle of forums for trading information. The age of the car means the owner community out there is pretty crusty too; battle-scarred sharks in waters they are very intimate. In swims a noob (me) immediately comfortable with the format though not familiar with all of the faces. He gnaws on a few tough questions and asserts his power cautiously, sniffing around for the leaders of the pack. A few loudmouths have left plenty of evidence behind in old posts that they talk a big game but are generally full of **it. Then there's me; cocksure, willing to wager despite a meager pile of chips in my number of posts pot. Yeah, this is a special time, the time I test my mettle a fit my way in. Won't change me though... I fully intend to follow my plan with the car no matter what the slammed, glammed, blinged, and now concours quality restored crowd may think.

175- 174 - 176 - 175 - 174 - 175

Those, my dear readers, are heckaslammin' scrumdillyiciously awesome numbers!

My good friends at Induktion Motorsports did me the honor of taking the little green car under their wing for a thorough checkup. I asked for an honest assessment of what the car needs to become a reliable little track chariot and I got their reply...

- swaybar endlinks should be replaced - ordering them both this weekend
- tie rod ends are bad - I'm going for full rods banking on the inner segments being tired
- front control arm bushing is bad - ordering/upgrading both sides to offset M3's
- right front wheel bearing is bad - also ordering a new one for the left
- shocks/struts seem to be blown - holding off here because A) the car drives great and B) the SpecE30 suspension probably won't pass state inspection... I am trying not to ever put a working stock kit back on this car
- rear diff is leaking - gotta see if I can do that or if I should shop it
- slave cylinder is leaking - see above
- oil drain plug and filter leaking - probably a new crush washer and the revised check valve o-ring are needed

But that's it. :o

Nothing about either subframe nor any of the rear bushings or rear shock mounts (common problem areas in this vintage). They'll get replaced in time, but what nice news not to have to do it right away.

I've been tickled to find oodles of parts sources so I can comparison shop. (It's a guy thing) Two or three standouts have appeared with great prices for all of the little things to refresh. In tidy little chunks too. All of the front suspension will come from my old friends at Zygmunt Motors whom were so good to my Passat. Bavarian Autosport comes recommended and they will supply some critical brake, timing, and cooling parts. Finally, the (in)famous Pelican Parts will cover my rear wheel works and ignition pieces. I like finding good prices for the best stuff!

Meanwhile, Zygmunt has the SpecE30 shocks and springs as a kit for a radically low price. I need to jump on it as soon as the last of the Cobra parts gets shipped.

Oh yeah, all the parts I'd been collecting for the Factory Five kit (another post for another time) have nearly recouped all of the cost of the BMW. :o

It's been a verrrrrry good week.

Now I've gone and done it...

It was two summers ago that I was hip deep in the mud of Life. Two years of marriage and a little less than that in a new house. I'd been track driving off and on for about three years and had been talking to a good friend about partnering on a car we could both afford to lose. Neither of us wanted to be stuck riding the bus to work. It is the American Way, doncha know?

My loving wife had consented, but my buddy jumped off on a car of his own. So here I was with the green light and nothing to step on. I tripped over an IT-prepped Rabbit only a few hundred miles away, with a trailer, and crates full of spares. Honey? Yesss....

Then lightning struck. Literally. Within hours of cutting a certified check and sending a registered letter to the car owner, our new house was on fire. Only by Grace was the house not more seriously damaged, but the toy track car was definitely on hold.

Fast forward almost two years through my wife getting a new truck, both of us getting a new dog, and that gnawing of my own that resulted in my new GTI. Track days continued and were that much more fun with the fast, but there is still this nagging feeling.

Half the reason for a dedicated track toy was the economic consequences of making a big mistake in the daily driver. I was getting smoother and faster in my old car and those experiences were built upon in the new car. It's a busload of fun too. But if I made a big mistake, I could very quickly wind up begging a ride to work. Compound that with a lien on the GTI (presently) and I could be begging for a ride -and- still paying for the car I couldn't drive.

The toy car makes its second appearance.

I'd still passively looked for that bargain track-ready car whose driver was in dire need of cash and letting go for pennies. Maybe you are too and I can tell you they are out there. I'd found Factory Five Racing too and thought it would be a hoot to build my own 5.0l Ford-powered Cobra replica. The reality there is too similar to that of crashing the GTI and saving the money up was taking a long time. But the money was being saved and some parts were bought as other great deals came and went.

A new spec racing series within N.A.S.A. debuted about the time the smoke was clearning from my house; Spec E30. That's the E30 model BMW 3-series cars kitted for inexpensive campaigning. You see, SPECified go-fast parts is effectively a budget cap that contains racers to a limited set of modifications and upgrades. It also makes for very evenly matched cars and results in a more genuine driver v driver comparison of speed.

I have no intentions of competing. For my money, open track days and schools/clinics net me more seat time on the track than racing does. :gasp: I may try time trials, but I will be looking to the SpecE30 results to compare myself to the guys racing door to door. Otherwise I'm just having fun.

Having? As in you're able to go do that? Did you buy another car?

Yes, the cat is out of the bag. I did buy a '91 BMW 325i coupe.




It's a very strong donor and quite nicely matches up to the power:weight ratio of a Factory Five Spec Challenge car (another spec series for Cobra replicas)... but it is a tenth of the price. Even less for what I paid. I had been planning a $25-30K budget for a Factory Five, but the BMW cost me $1400. Title, taxes, tags, and insurance won't even break the $2000 mark. A packaged SpecE30 prep kit with all of the build parts is $2500. For less than five grand, I will have a rip-roaring BMW track toy.

But that's in the future and probably next year. For now I'm following some wise advice to make the car safe, make it reliable, and then make it fast. In that order. First up will be the state safety inspection which I think the car is ready to pass.

Next will be reliability. Right away I want fresh fluids, fresh belts, a new waterpump, thermostat, timing belt, and idler, fresh hoses, new plugs, cap, and rotor, clean filters (air and fuel), new wheel bearings, new parking brake shoes, and all new bushings. Together, these parts will probably cost several hundred dollars. They will give the car a completely new lease on life... and it already runs very strong with a new clutch, young transmission, and new brakes. Plus, not a thing I've listed isn't something I cannot do myself.

Finally, the fast stuff. This is where I can take the time to get the car fully prepared and learn some of the same things I felt the Factory Five experience would teach me (except in a car I can fit into!). I will follow the SpecE30 rules which are very concise; very little of them have I not understood. My goal will be a track-ready car that can still be driven on the street and not pollute the environment. That is another big plus for SpecE30 too. I'm looking forward to the experience!

mean?

I've been told my blog is mean. As in I'm mean. Mean is a funy word. Even moreso now that I've typed it four times in a row. (You missed the post title) :wink:

Some might read and see the little postscript tacked onto that first paragraph above and think, "Yeah, that was mean. Why did you have to jab at me, your reader, whom at first saw only three 'means' but missed the post title? Yeah, they were right. Your blog is mean, dude." Okay, so I apologize for being mean. It is who I am though and it is not intentional. It's just how the stream of my thoughts currently pass through my set of output filters and through my fingertips to the keys. Believe me, my backspace key gets plenty of use as I edit on the fly.

There are the innocent who probably don't deserve to be dressed down; the lost out of towner more interested in their map than the green light and the traffic moving past them through an intersection. (Pull over. Get your bearings. Read the map somewhere other than in traffic.) But then there are the guilty; the immortal, infallible, know-it-all-at-age-18 morons who swear they're not hurting anyone but maybe themselves with the stupid things they brag about. (Get a clue. I was you.) I have few other outlets to directly blast these nuisances so I choose here. Mean? Sure. I'll give you that. Therapeutic? Definitely.

You see, it's not having the feeling that is wrong but what one does with a feeling that might be. Road Rage is a plague amongst drivers and there is no drug to cure it. Only self-control and therapy to express those feelings some other way have helped. I get my speed jollies at track days. The unintended side effect has been a sensation of more danger on public roads with all manner of crap close to the roads and streets compounded by traffic filled with frustrated, lesser-skilled drivers.

It was sobering to me to realize the vast majority of people I drive alongside have had no additional driver training since (gulp) highschool... back when we were all pre-occupied with being teenagers. Hormones raging, social circles expanding at different rates, peer pressure, parent pressure, reality so unlike Mtv enough to induce depression. This was the right time to learn how to drive? The conspiracy theorist in me would hypothesize that the system generates these barely-able-to drivers to guarantee a source of traffic revenue for future generations and keeps the auto repair segment booming. Lord knows we don't educate our teens to spend wisely or invest while inundating them with advertising for new cars and tolerating movies and tv shows where cars mean popularity. Am I being mean again?

I saw a pale horse...

You read it here first, The End is Nigh.

I know I'm getting older because, as many of the postings below allude to, I daily grow more and more frustrated with the "car culture" of younger drivers. Movies like The Fast and Furious and pathetic excuses for "tuner" magazines are the rock 'n' roll rubbish to my generation of car guys. I do not know how my grandparents coped until rock music was proven not to be the end of all things wholesome for my parents. They'd hate what I listen to...

So The End must be just around the corner with what I've witnessed lately.

This track season is well under way and I've put on the cap of promotions for my local SCCA chapter's new track driving program. It was a natural extension of something I was already doing on my own trying to appeal to driver friends. Having the program to pump gives me something I can immediately steer new drivers too once I get their interest. Gaining their interest has been a combination of simply sharing my experiences and making logical arguments for experience before expenditure.

Too many drivers in the web forums poast (pun intended) about their latest "mod" to their car only to be answered by similarly attention-starved wannabes congratulating them on the money they've spent. Big whoop. We all know you did it to impress the girls... I'm old enough and fed up enough to call you on it.

But lo and behold I'm not the only one saying so any more! I've got some friends whom have joined the choir, but now I'm seeing new screennames posting the same kinds of things. Adjustable suspension kits need to be tuned once they're installed. Big brakes are actually slower on the street than stock. Fart-can exhaust systems make noise while often killing torque. Heavy wheels drink gas and increase stopping distances... There's a wave of safety conscious advice out there!

And it doesn't stop with the mods either. Others are actually sharing their track experiences too! From out of the woodwork, young drivers are participating in performance driving events, learning from them, and encouraging others to do it too! WOW!

A week ago I drove a weekend-long event that a geat number of first-timers also attended. Several drivers dropped by my paddock to say hello and thank me for sharing my experience. They told me it was my writing that had given them the confidence to try it themselves. They'd faced their fears and found nothing to be afraid of and they wanted me to know. I was humbled. Really humbled. I was glad these guys had tasted track driving for themselves and it left me feeling these guys would leave safer on the streets I drive. I can't wait until they start bringing their friends.

If you don't finish where you start...

Dear Bonzo,

I saw you posting again about your trip to the "track" and opened your thread. My glee turned to poo upon the immediate realization that you meant "strip."

You see, I drive on tracks. Often. They're also called road courses, circuits, racetracks, ribbons of tarmac nirvana. (Okay, I made that last one up) What you drive on are strips, dragstrips, quarter miles, or in your case probably eighth miles. I see by your head scratching you're still confused. Oh, it's just a snack you're going after. Sorry.

Every time you confuse the two, you disappoint real track drivers like me whom are hoping to find a kindred driver amongst the bling bling, bolt on, spending mom's money, speeding to the weekend car show crowd. As you know, any monkey can squash the gas pedal. Key words in the car forums often catch the upright man's eye. This is my way of asking you to stop using the big boys words and go back to watching Pinks on Speed.

Buy a camera already!

Okay. We get it. You're excited. You bought a new car. You saw a funny billboard. You saw Simon Cowell on tv. You've just got to capture that Kodak moment.

Could you please use a real camera instead of your free-with-2-year-subscription celphone?

In your giddy rush to add that special picture to the swirling Interweb, you've passed Go without collecting $200 you could have spent of a much better performing, purpose-built device. I know that sensation of having another person look at your accomplishment is addicting. It is your high and you need your fix. But your camera phone is a used needle, junkie. Control yourself! Simon will be on tv tomorrow night too.

Your tax dollars at work

Get this noise...


I'm a contractor working on a government gig testing software. I've often felt a little sense of envy or been treated as second class by the government staff I work with, but I've always treated them as equals on the teams I've been on. It comes with the territory and I always get a bitter chuckle once a year at the Diversity and Inclusiveness mandatory training classes I have to go to. Nothing like feeling like the minority...

While I was away last week, word came down that resources were tight and wouldn't the contractors please minimize the amount of time they're spending in the nicer lab; the one with the machines I don't have at my desk but fit the requirements for tests I've been assigned as part of the team. I get home and there's four messages waiting with that very request. Whatever. I can bend. I adapt and immediately negotiate some adjustments to my current test to cope with the limitations of the machinery I do have. Coincidentally, the feature I'd been needing in the nice lab machines isn't required on this test. Great. No problem.

But then I get word that my name has been dropped in complaint about not enough resources to go around. I get a little pissed off and decide it's been long enough; me holding my tongue over some seriously unethical crap I've witnessed but not let get to me. That wouldd be government people using the lab machines for hours at a time to play videogames. Not just solitaire or minesweeper. Chess, Mah-Jong, some paintball looking thing that came with Vista, multiple iterations of video pinball, and the queen mother, Unreal Tournament. One of these screwoffs built a server to play from IN THE LAB. I start writing an email to finally blow the whistle.

Now it is true that resources are short. Our former lab chief moved up to office chief but hasn't truly taken off the lab chief's cap. This is disrespectful and not really helping the newly hired replacement lab chief but that's their rapport, not mine to criticize. This is the same office guy was the one who gave away half the lab to a research project thus causing the current shortage. When the new lab chief called a meeting and repeated the request to maximize what we had left and document it, I towed the line. When he asked if any of us had issues, I piped up that I felt it was the office guy's fault for causing the problem. This is without regard to knowing I've been named as using too many of the resources that are left. My email was still unfinished back at my desk.

We agree to disagree, but it was in a forum where the lab team had been asked and I felt no regret in letting the team hear my opinion. Frankly, many of them feel the same way but chose to sit there like sheep. And one of them had already pegged me as part of the problem... no mention of the farting off that a big chunk of the team do every day.

I get taken aside shortly after by the office chief (who wasn't there, the new lab chief had tattled to him) and asked why I felt it neccessary to make these remarks. I stood my ground. I told him to his face I felt he'd been a larger part of causing the crisis and had left us holding the bag. As a contractor, why did I have to say this on front of govvies? I responded it had nothing to do with where I got my paycheck and I was standing up for my team. Well, on and on and forth and so as a contractor I should just keep quiet. :stunned: I reiterated that I am trying to act professionally in the better interests of my team, regardless of how any of them may feel about me getting a paycheck from somewhere else. This despite knowing that at least one of them has mouthed off that I'm taking up his/her space as I get my work done.

Why is it that I need to sit in their lab? Their lab??? I thought we were a team here, office guy? But to answer your question, the last half dozen tests I've run, since Christmas, have all specifically required machines with features I first found in "your" lab. The lab you told me to tap into. The lab that's supposed to be an asset of the team of which half the people are contractors. If someone up there has a problem with that, they picked a helluva way to express it... especially with the amount of screwing off that's done up there.

What do you mean? You know what I mean. No, what? You've seen it yourself just on Monday, dude. There's videogames being played on your machines, often for hours at a time.

At this point office guy turns fire engine red. He's obviously angry. He starts out the door at which point I'm feeling disrespected because we're in a fricking conversation here. He turns around and grabs lab puppet and heads off for the lab sending me back to my desk. I had work to do anyway. I finished my email and called my contract and company section bosses before hitting send. Whatever storm was set off, I now care less. My metrics are amongst the best in the entire lab regardless of who pays us. I will jump off a bridge before I tolerate being blamed for a lack of resources while half the government people waste time playing games at work.

Huzzah?

This has always bothered me. Renn Fest People and their made-up expressions. Huzzah? Are you excited but sneezing? Or are you using some secret geek language only dorks with leather tutus and ugly girls hoping for a date with a fellow geek-speaker use? We get it. You're different and you want to feel good about it. Good for you. Could you do it in just a slightly more self-flattering way because you look and sound like you're proud of not having a clue.

No one ever spoke that way. You've seen Shakespeare in Love one too many times.

And you can bite me for not calling it the Renn Faire. Take your extra vowels and your near religious devotion to all fake Medieval hoohah and jumpe offe the nexte cliffe, with ye.

If he has to tell you he's one of the "nice" ones...

Many of us have had the new car purchase experience. And when you have a good one you tell people, right?

But this is the Internet Age and if there ain't pictures it didn't happen. And there are some dumbasses out there just stupid enough to push it over the line and call you a liar if you won't put up. So you do thinking you got the last laugh. The numbers are real. It really was a great deal and it verifies everything you'd been saying to these lowlife salesjerks. Instead of admitting they were wrong, they start crapping in new directions comparing apples to oranges all over again... bottom line to "invoice" ... insulting you and others even further ... and daring you to tell their boss.

Dude private messages me that my on the road price was $5 better than his secret order pricing book tells him "invoice" is. Can I see those numbers? They're probably confidential. And of course they're lower than anything online that the public could see... the root of the argument. The "invoice" price I found before I bought my car was $2300 more than I actually paid proving once again "invoice pricing" is nothing more than a sales gimmick. Even if it was a real price, it's still a number that hasn't been taxed and tagged and walked back and forth to some sales managers office. Is the apples and oranges allegory that hard to grasp? Do I let the insults slide or call the punk-ass 23-year old's "professional" bluff. He sent me his sales manager's address. I looked up the -owner- of the dealership in a matter of 2 minutes. (average guy... 61, married, address, phone, dealerships are straight with the EPA, and he gave money to the RNC in 2004)

I honestly want to convey to this kid that he needs to -earn- his million selling a million for a buck a piece. If he keeps up with this deceptive, manipulative, bullshit, high pressure, you-can-trust-me-because-I-say-I'm-not-lying approach he's going to have a shitty career as a salesman. Attacking and insulting people in public ain't helping much either. I'm just trying to decide if his insults are worth me taking another five minutes of my time to radically alter his career path.

I suck at poker. I never bluff. I can't believe I just called a 23-year old a punk-ass.

pet peeve

My dry old web personals ad used to mention "electronics that break" as a pet peeve of mine. With no moving parts, why should an electronic component ever break? Well, there are moving parts at a microscopic level. The expanding and contracting that a part goes through as heat builds up and leaves a part that is energized technically qualifies as movement... on a molecular level.

That doesn't change my peeve though as my nearly $3000 television reduced itself to 52 inches of widescreen paperweight this past weekend; all for the want of a thimble-full of transistors and resistors.

I found them. Charred. Melted. Looking really sad amongst a small collection of arguably some of the worst looking solder joints I've ever seen. Probing with my $3 GE multimeter, they offered no resistance. Or rather they offered nothing but resistance since they now represent open circuits. They were buried in the front left corner of the innards of the tv attached to a circuit board I deduced was the power controller for the master lightbulb. (Itself a $200 glorified flashlight that burned out last Friday starting this whole adventure.)

I've learned it is the "lamp power ballast" and my archaelogical dig through the tv paid off in the form of a part number. Google and its infinitely powerful ability to provide me with shopping links and product reviews instead of assembly diagrams or service procedures snarfed up the part number and actually provided several retail sources. This helped me determine what I should expect to pay from a retailer close enough to actually put the part in my hand instead of a box and some brown truck. Said truck would have doubtlessly visited my home three working days in a row leaving me small stickers to throw away instead of the part I need.

Eh, that's a whole other peeve. Two actually.

Instead of ten pounds of parts screwed to a metal tray, all known as the "light engine" and costing $570 to replace (best price I found), I've been able to isolate the problem to eight ounces of circuit board costing $48. That's probably still too high a price, but it is the price of getting caught up on a week's worth of my favprite shows.

posted without comment

Idiocy

My world has its fair share of idiots.

Take for example vwvortex.com where I am a casual user. I don't scour the site nor the forums; I just stick to the regional goings on and the more or less interesting bits in the areas that cover the car I drive. There are some truly moronic owners of the new GTI out there. Who else but a moron would take the time and effort to bang away at a computer keyboard to identify themselves as a moron in a message thread that had not yet labeled that person a moron?

The conversation starts with a compaint about people advertising the use of their tools for a price. Legitimate. Not really anyone's business but the tool owner, really. I tend to agree if you have a tool and someone might need it, the polite thing to do is lend it not rent it. Moron X has to immediately flail about his computer defending his right to charge a fee for the use of his tool. It is his right. Great for him. But just how stupid does said tool owner have to be to label himself as one of those cheapskates the conversation started with a complaint about?

Probably pretty stupid. Before the conversation was ended, he had to wonder out loud what anyone had against him.

Here's a clue, dude. No one knew you were cheap and stupid before you opened your mouth. Now that we know, you're the target of the complaint.

For the record, I don't charge people to use my tools.

The Great American Race?

Didn't watch the race (sic), but believe me I'm in the camp that says there should have been a yellow flag. It's not like the cars just stop at the finish line. If there are bits and pieces of "stock" cars ahead, the responsible thing to do is show yellow. :duh: