Das Race: My '97 M3/4/5

[Jake]

Mad props to Jake for living really close in to DC and still having the trailer and race car stuff going on.

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The new job and extra income really enabled some moves, being single with no kiddos and no desire to buy a house anytime soon helps significantly as well. 

You could definitely replicate my setup for less money - a used 3/4-ton truck (older 1/2-tons may not tow an enclosed as well) for like $10k and a steel trailer vs aluminum would only be another $3-4k. At that point, the biggest issue is where to park the trailer, but Reston occasionally has space open up, and Lorton has a lot of availability.

Once the car is built, it's not all bad to send it to a shop for the upkeep. At least I'm telling myself that.

[Jake]

congrats Jake! I meant to get around to you and shake your hand.

I packed up early Sunday due to unfavorable schedule and just a big "want" to "save the car" for comp school... more like save from a potential headache added to the offseason stuff.

My kid brother was like "ugh you need an enclosed, its cold out here and you are suffering." After a year of rain and cold, it might be something to look into (next off season lol)

Thank you and no worries at all! Too bad we didn't get to catch up beyond chatting on grid, but the November event is always rough for that given the cold/dark factor after the day is done. Your Tundra is new/stout enough to pull a steel enclosed if you keep it small enough. Sell your open for $2k and buy an enclosed for another $2k out of pocket, it's worth the extra cash outlay in spades.

My little space heater ($30 on Amazon) did a great job keeping things tolerable all weekend long.

[navin]

Still waiting on my finders fee for that trailer

[Jake]

The Cobettos had their annual NASA chiefs' meeting/party on Saturday and I took the car down to Kevin while I was down there. He's got far cleaner/more interesting hardware in the shop than my old M3 but I am glad to have it in good hands. He is going to be inspecting the whole car, giving me a report, and then we'll pick and choose what gets done before March versus later in the year.







The Cobettos are the only people who can easily accommodate a truck and trailer in their side yard, and have another side yard with room to spare and a $300 Honda Civic waiting to be thrashed around whatever made-up course you can create.

[Senor_Taylor]

I doubt that much land is hard to find anywhere near Richmond. My family was poor and we had 5 acres.

Kevin's shop is looking mighty good these days. Race car > Street car any day of the week.

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[Jake]

I think Chris and Laura have 10? But not all of it is cleared. Anyway, I just mean out of my immediate group of friends + acquaintances, they're the only ones who could do the kind of shenanigans they/we do.

[Senor_Taylor]

Looked like y'all had a blast!

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[Jake]

So Kevin's had the car and been noodling around with it. The good news is that his initial inspection report didn't produce anything alarming. He's very detail-focused and that has me feeling good for 2019. 

Things he's doing:

Underneath

• Bimmerworld "Stage 1" clutch kit - E34 M5 clutch, JB Racing lightweight flywheel. The car still has the original clutch disc from 1997 installed and I just think it's time.
  
• Remove rear swaybar, which had already been disconnected for testing. I like the car with no rear bar.
  
• Replace leaky axle boot.
  

Underhood

• New power steering hoses - the non-OEM stuff has not been as leak-proof as on DJ's E36. Going with new OEM lines.
  
• New cooling system hoses - it's that time.
  

Outside

• Wing support cracked, being re-welded (likely from SE30 impact)
  

Inside

• Wiring clean-up, kinda everywhere
  
• Removal of passenger seat/bracket/harness
  
• New driver harness (expired)
  
• Seatback brace (required as seat ages)
  
• Fire bottle serviced and re-certified
  

Sooooo nothing too crazy, but lots of little stuff that I'm glad to have tidied up and done right. 

Additionally, GTS2 has a faster power to weight ratio for 2019 (now at 14:1, down from 14.5:1) which means I can either make more power, or lose about 100 lbs. I am choosing the BMWeightWatchers method. I had about 70 lbs of ballast in the trunk, so between that and the passenger seat, I should be about where I need.

I'll have Kevin pull all that weight, re-dyno the car for 2019, and order a new set of tires. Thinking BFGoodrich R1S this time around. I have been using the R1 (and still have a kinda-good set) but want to give the "S" a shot.

Once I get the car back from Kevin - probably won't have it home until after VIR - I'm going to run over to Tom's house and borrow some driveway space to spray-bomb my interior. He sprayed his Subaru all white inside and it is so nice. Going to leave the rollcage green but try to brighten it up otherwise.

FIVE WEEKS TO VIR!

Shout-outs to not only Kevin of FlimFlamSpeed but also OGRacing and Bimmerworld for their continued support this season. Every little bit helps.

[Jake]

Season Opener - March 2019 at VIR

OK, got this up on my blog so I can share the relevant bits here too. I sent the car to FlimFlam over the winter and it was SO nice to just pay him to handle everything. 

Friday was a great test day. I went out for one session on my new BFG R1S tires to break them in, then switched back to the year-old R1 set for the remainder of the day. I ran some 2:12's on the new tires, then ran 2:13's on the old ones. Realizing there should be a bigger gap between new and old, I kept pushing. Got the old set down into the 12s, I think. Went out and played/evaluated the Comp School students Friday afternoon and then ran the Fun Race with them and a bunch of other experienced racers. BIG congrats to Kaan, Sean, and Jeremy (from PDA) - all three of them faced some setbacks and all three passed Comp School!

Saturday saw a great qualifying, but then on the first lap of my race, my kill switch failed and cut the engine off at 100 mph, going down the hill to Oak Tree. I got a solid power-assisted push of the brakes, slowed it, got some cars past me, and coasted off into the South Paddock pit road. Came back to the North Paddock via tow strap. Bummer man. Kevin was on-site and he got the kill switch finangled enough to work for Sunday.



Sunday's morning qualifying is now a race! The "Beast of the East" is a race in which all Thunder or Lightning racers are gridded according to Saturday qualifying lap times. We were classed by lap time, so I went out to race against other E36 and E46 BMWs, a few older Mustangs, and a C5 Corvette. Ended up chasing a red Mustang driven by Bill Purdy for much of the race but it was a fun chase. 



Sunday's race was awesome. Had a good start (thank you, Alex, for calling the race for me) and slipped past Matt Davis somewhere around Turn 3. Got a sizable gap on him and held him off for about half of the race. At that point, I overcooked my tires due to lack of focus and he caught back up. I kept a nice gap on the rest of our field and finished fourth. The biggest accomplishment was getting solidly into the 2:10s for lap times! I worked with Dion Von Moltke and his Racers360 online coaching business to get some pointers for VIR - and they worked. He is working with me now for Summit Point, and we'll be there in a few short weeks!

[JPolen01]

Congrats on the 2:10! That's huge. And good thought on coasting into the south paddock and getting safely out of the way. It's always great to see people supporting businesses like Flim Flam. He is definitely one of the hardest working people I've ever seen.

[Jake]

Spring Rumble at Summit Point

Another weekend, another personal best! 

I had a client meeting in Bethesda that ended at 3:15 PM on Friday. Left straight from there to get the trailer and head west to Summit Point. I've said it before, but this #EnclosedLife is the fucking best. There I am in dress clothes, letting my electric tongue jack do the work as it drops the trailer onto the F-150's hitch ball. Ten minutes of hooking things up and I was on the road. It rained all Friday afternoon and didn't taper off until partway through the night.

We woke up Saturday morning to dry conditions but a damp track. Thunder's warm-up session was second on the schedule so we ended up tip-toeing around for 20 minutes of "warm up" - AIM showed a best lap of like 1:46, lolz. A friend from MD came down with his Mk4 GTI, excited to do his first HPDE 1 weekend. The water pump shat the bed after his first session, so he ended up packing it in that evening and heading home 

Saturday's race was okay. I blew the start - got to T1 with the rest of the pack, had a lapse in concentration/aggression and by the time I regained it, the pack was a little far ahead and I caught out-of-class traffic. Finished 6th of 8.

Sunday's qualifying race went well, I had a nice aggressive start and shot past several competitors at T1 - find your gaps and take them, dammit! Finished second (of 3) in the qualy race. Beast of the East format meant I was racing Mark in his GTS2 BMW and some guy in a 350Z. The Nissan was slightly faster on the straights and I couldn't get by him in the corners, he had rookie stripes on the bumper and his situational awareness was not too hot yet, so I didn't want to risk anything. I left Mark in the d-u-s-t after that good start which felt awesome.

Sunday's race again saw me find a very good start. The first turn was busy but we all somehow kept it clean with no contact. I stayed ahead of Jeremy. Bill's gas pedal broke and he pulled off. Mark (black and red #88) had a decent lead on me due to that start - he got ahead of some out-of-class slowbois and pulled away - but I reeled him in and made a somewhat aggressive pass at T3. From there, I just worked to keep him away and it worked out. I was initially trying to catch Matt (gray E36) but the rain started to come in and my desire to push super hard faded a hair. I finished the race in 5th of 8 - but the bigger news is that I set the third-fastest lap of the GTS2 race and it was a new personal best. AIM data showed a 1:22.9 and NASA data showed a 1:23.0. Super super happy with that as I've struggled to get out of the 24's for a while now.

The car is running well so I'm going to focus on some cosmetic updates before and after Hyperfest. Onward!

[Jake]

Phase One of the cosmetic enhancements has been completed! Thanks to Zach/Taylor/Tyler for letting me use their garage (and in Tyler's case, helping spray the whole thing) and to Joey/Paul for the heckling.

The interior of this car was g-r-o-s-s. Everything had a layer of grime on it, the black floors and doors made it dark inside, and I wanted to brighten things up. So, we pulled the seat and rails, masked off some wiring, and covered most of the interior in gloss white enamel. The cage is staying green (for now) and the roof is still black, because it seemed hard to do and we were tired. Maybe I'll do it later.

Before:



During:





After!

[BLINGMW]

... covered most of the interior in gloss white enamel.

Good call, that looks a ton better

[JPolen01]

Looks great. Should help with the heat in the summer time too.

[Jake]

I'm being a tease on purpose. Picking the car back up tomorrow.

[JPolen01]

Yaaaas

[ScottyB]

MOAR.  NOW.

[Jake]

OK so here's the deal. Maaco in Winchester does a lot of racecar paint jobs. They are single stage (base + clear mixed together), they are nowhere near perfect, they do it in a day, and they're c-h-e-a-p. I asked them for arguably one of the hardest single-stage colors to spray and they did a decent job of it. The car is now all one color (yay), all shiny (yay) and also kind of Technoviolet when the sun hits it just right (yay). They told me any other color would have come out brighter/more metallic. It's hard to photograph well from what I can tell so far.

Regardless, it's got hints of purple to it and for $524.99 I'm pretty happy. Going to do all white vinyls before Pitt Race in June. This is, by far, the best this car has ever looked in my ownership!

[NTIman]

Looks great! That's a damn good price too. If I'm not mistaken, Kaans race car was painted there as well and turned out quite nice.

[Goodspeed]

That looks amazing! I asked on your FB thread, but are you gonna get some clearshield & cover the front? I feel like its such a simple front end that a few squares cut in an afternoon would go a long way to keeping it looking good.

Only trick is I think you need to let the paint out gas for like a month before you wrap.