Das Race: My '97 M3/4/5

[Jake]

Taylor was in town Friday for an interview, so he crashed at my place and got a taste of NoVA between going out in Clarendon Friday night and Katie's Cars & Coffee on Saturday morning. He stuck around to help spin some wrenches, and Tom came over as well.

The highlight of going out with Taylor was meeting these four women who were all married, slightly older than they first appeared, and on their way to being heavily intoxicated. Our favorite kept trying to dance/twerk with the DJ.



Tom basically single-handedly pulled my old diff while Taylor and I removed the busted VANOS unit. A few of the axle bolts' heads look pretty crappy so I will likely order some new ones as replacement. Otherwise, the old diff came out easily. Chris Davis came by to grab the set of M-Parallel wheels I had sold him a while back, and we talked through the bushing removal. I don't have the new bushings yet but should get them early this week.

The old 3.23 diff is already sold to my friend Jake, who texted me asking if it was available after seeing the photo on Facebook. Easiest sale ever and at full asking price, even.



The VANOS replacement was pretty easy (thank you DJ for the tools!). I threw a new valve cover gasket on the engine while we had it all apart. The shaft of the VANOS gear(?) thing had quite a bit of play, whereas the rebuilt unit had none. I'm excited to see how much better this makes the car drive.



Chris is coming back over next Saturday to help with the diff bushings and the reinstall. We also talked about the merits of installing my front splitter without installing a wing, since I have one but not the other, for Dominion. I've already sold the Motion Motorsport undertray to Joey so I would like to get it off the car and stop kicking this giant piece of plywood around my garage. I have been working to reduce some front-end push, so the splitter alone may be useful there.