The Long Awaited: The Myth, The Legend, The Douchebaggery

[SlimKlim]

I ended up not getting to the brakes at all last week, but I did manage to finish up most of the other stuff. Thursday night I banged out a quick ICV change and installed the motion motorsport underpanel from Jake.



It's a bit wobbly but I got the upright supports for the rear from him yesterday and will throw them in at some point to steady it up.

Friday night I stuck on the new 5mm spacers for the rear, installed my fire extinguisher bracket & new rear parcel shelf and got the car on stands. Saturday morning I took it for a little test drive and spent most of the day making the interior presentable and giving it a quick wash.

The difference in how the car drives with so many new bits & pieces is pretty amazing. The new ICV resolved my perpetual low idle issue, seems to have fixed the occasional scary noise on hot starts, and stopped 95% of the idle-hunting when coasting in neutral. As an added bonus, it also "fixes" the oil pressure dummy light in the dash flashing on when the idle gets too low thanks to the increased sensitivity of the new pressure sender. It only does it now when the idle dips thanks to a big electrical load, aka, the fan.

The gauges seem to be working correctly, except for the oil temp. The water temp warms up to about 185 and stays around 185-190 when the thermostat opens. If you come to a stop and idle for a while the fan will switch on around 190-195. I'm really glad I decided to do the override switch, I've noticed there is a temp spike in the head when you first shut the motor off, which makes sense, and I can avoid it by just running the fan for the last couple of minutes before I park. It's nice to have control.

Oil pressure is also working as expected, it sits at about 60psi when the motor is cold and varies during use depending on gear & throttle. The temp on the other hand slowly climbs to ~150* and stops. It doesn't make sense that the water temperature would be running 40* higher than the oil circulating around the same motor, so I'm going to give the guy that owns Leatherz a call and see what might be causing it to be out of whack.

Anyway, the concours yesterday was an interesting experience. Despite all the (deserved) flak I take from track people about doing nothing but wash my car, I quickly discovered I do NOT belong with these guys who take cleaning very, very, very seriously.

I had a good time seeing a lot of really gorgeous cars and chatting with other hardcore BMW nerds but after a couple hours I was bored & pretty much done. We ended up bailing an hour before the wine & cheese even kicked off and going to get margaritas and snacks at taco bamba.

I'm glad I went but probably won't seek out stuff like that in the future, I prefer the shorter & more informal setting of C&C, hopefully FFX PD can keep the riffraff out of Katie's this summer and keep it a nice meet to go to.




(bidibodi bidibu)