Qualifying an outstanding 3rd place Dave White attributed most of his success to DTOMRacing.

"Jim taught me most everything I know. I say James so that I don't hurt Clay's feelings since he just assumes I'm talking about him. The time I spent driving with Jim in the NASA endurance series really prepared me to take the next step in pro racing. There are so many things that NASA-SE has in common with GRAND-AM, like they both use the same flags. It was a real shock that we didn't have to discuss those and the rules for an hour in the driver's meeting, that was one thing I missed. I look forward to the race tomorrow and will look to keep it clean and try not to barf in my helmet."

Follow the real story at www.bimmerworldracing.com .....

When you have a 20+ year old car you accumulate spare parts at a junk yard-like rate.

Since I have limited room for inventory some things MUST GO!

Click here for Crazy Jim's Midnight Madness sale. Prices do not include shipping.

Email at j h rob in son a@t bells outh dot. net

eliminate the blanks, etc.

INVENTORY LIST

Hopefully these are worth a thousand words so I can cheap out on another DTOM post. I can say with confidence that things will be getting interesting soon I promise. In house news the brick portion of the garage was almost completed on Friday, so hopefully we can get that wrapped up before we go into month 4.

Brendan made an ill advised Ebay purchase of an S54, for you non-BMW types that is the motor that powers the 2001-2006(?) M3. The most powerful production inline six I think BMW made, 333hp at the wheels in the car. He also got a xmas present from his buddy Bobby Thrash at the Strictly German junk yard of a 70's ish 3.0. The goal will be to make a historic looking car that has modern underpinnings. Step one is probably going to be putting it in the E12 5-series. That work will start after the Feb. club race. Its a shame that BMW has ruined swaps like these with all their electronic gizmos, running this engine without a super computer attached is almost impossible. In typical BMW fashion the "M" stands for "money".

Since we're still in the off season here are some cool pics from the 9hr enduro to keep you company. Enjoy! The real deal pics can always be seen here.

Labels: lame

[Ed. notes] - answering a few questions, etc. on yesterday's entry.

First up a special DTOM congrats to Ted McMahan on getting a job. Poor Ted was a victim of the recession when the place he used to work at got raided (and shut down) by the Feds - mortgage stuff not car stuff. Yikes! You can find Ted at Hi-Tech Auto Repair here in the ATL. Ted is a good guy and great mechanic. Ted is a big fan of the blog so shout out!

This week will probably be a little lame in terms of narrative, this is meant more to shock and awe in terms of crazy sh!t that happens around me, then to be a laugh riot. If anything I sugar coated the animosity in the neighborhood over the great wall. It was a total pain in my a$$ and included about 20 pages of handwritten notes of conversations, printed emails, and certified letters. Some good questions that have been raised by the peanut gallery:
a) why didn't you move instead? Well hindsight is 20/20, at the time the location of our house was pretty close to ideal in terms of commute, I would have had to spend quite a bit more to get closer and really if anything we would have wanted to move farther out which would have meant a significant drive for me. Also we were a bit polly anna-ish in terms of "this will be easy" famous last words, you'd think I would know better - well I sure do now!
b) how recent was this? 2004, and I still bear the scars.
c) is "Tommy" that guy's real name? I don't know, I've considered calling Homeland Security to find out. I doubt it, just like IndyJim is my Nome De Plume. I call him a$$hole most of the time.
d) which is more aggravating the wall episode or Barber Motorsports Park. No contest the wall. This was pretty serious since we were talking about thousands of dollars and these tools acted like I wanted to plant a tree. Numnuts even suggested we build a '3' sided fence so that it wouldn't be close to his house, now what the f is the point of a 3 sided fence? Total morons, seriously.


If that curbing wasn't there, this would be a different story, probably involving a medical helicopter...

Now for today's show. This will also be more of a 'look what happened' episode. Christine was off on summer break and actually in the house when this happened. I get a call at work in the afternoon from her. She said, "You're not going to believe this the UPS driver is stuck in our driveway." I said, "What exactly does that mean?"

Turns out this dude was delivering a package that he claimed was heavy. I forget exactly what it was, but Christine picked it up and carried it inside so if your definition is less than 20 lbs, I guess that is accurate. Well Mario Andretti was lazy, it was late in the day and he figured he'd drive it up our hill instead of walking (turns out this is a UPS no-no for good reason). He gets up to the top and that is where his brain shut down. Instead of slowly backing down using his mirrors, or even leaning out and looking behind him, he tries a 3 point turn. Well the 3 point turn can be done, but probably not in a UPS truck. Or at least not with this guy driving.

UPS trucks are rear wheel drive and his was unloaded, so he had no weight over the rear wheels, the engine and all the weight were on the front wheels, when he tried to back up on the incline the rear wheels would just spin. I explained this once I got home several times but he seemed to think he could fix it by putting a board under the rear wheels and other acts of genius. Thankfully once he shot the board out he saw that wasn't going to work, thankfully it didn't go through my truck window or anyone's chest. About 30 min. after I get home and ask him what his plan is, his wife and father-in-law show up. They try again putting like a rubber mat under the tires. At this point I'm done giving advice because no one is listening and its clear we don't have the varsity team on the field.

Two more UPS drivers eventually show up, and each one comes to the "Yep, you're F-d" conclusion and leave. Finally the General Manager of the UPS branch drives out and is standing there scratching his head. He at least had the sense to call a big a$$ semi tow truck. I can't explain how awkward this all was. His wife is henpecking this poor dude, the old man keeps trying to find stuff to wedge under the wheels, the driver is sweating because he thinks I'm p!ssed (which I was but also somewhat amused) and he is going to get fired, then all these other clowns keep showing up shaking their heads, also it has become a neighborhood attraction and people are walking down the street to see if this thing will pitch over our front wall. Good times.

So we've been standing around now for a few hours and the tow truck finally shows up. This guy isn't at the top of his class either, but I pull him aside and show him how the rear end isn't getting grip which he at least understands. He has a tow cable but isn't sure where to put it. Together we determine that if he wraps around the front axle and drags the truck forward it should pivot enough to face down the hill. Or tip over.

Thankfully it pivots and the UPS guy drives away. Of course even after contacting them I get no $$ for the 4 hours they used my driveway as a loading ramp, the burnout marks from this dude practicing his tire warm ups that took like 3 months of rain to wash away, exceeding the driveways weight limit by several tons causing cracks, or the bush he ran into and knocked out of the ground. I guess all's well that ends well.


OH SH!T


That is about a 15ft drop head first.


Tow truck to the rescue.

Labels: Bad Attitude, house horrors, Pics

Or as it was sometimes known overseas "Robinson's Folly". Seriously this experience alone convinced me to never, ever get involved in any type of home improvement or construction project. I could write five days worth of rants just on this little gem. In fact if you ever want to get me wound up simply mention this - mission accomplished. I'll hit the highlights and then link to the 'visual essay' that is 7mb and will probably crush the limited DTOM servers - we'll see.

So after having the dogs and our house for awhile we were never happy with the layout of the yard. We're on a pretty steep hill, with another steep hill behind us so we constantly had drainage problems, there was no landscaping to speak of so it looked like crap basically. After living with this for awhile we decided that we wanted a) a bigger and level yard and b) the ability to put up a fence. Both of these would ideally help with the drainage that was washing out our yard every hard rain, and give more room for the dogs to use as a toilet.

Roughly at this same time there was a landscaper in our neighborhood that had just completed a fairly large and complicated waterfall / pond deal for some people down the road. We went and looked at it, and spoke to them about some options. Now my thinking was - building something with huge rocks, plants, and water moving around is a lot more complicated than a wall. Boy, what did I know. So we priced out the options, for a timber wall - cheap but ugly and didn't last, a paver type retaining wall 'system' - moderately expensive, durable, but still not that attractive, and finally settled on a poured wall with a brick face - expensive, durable, and attractive. The idea was this wall would blend in nicely to the wall that exists in front of our house.

After securing funding and establishing a rough 1 month plan from start to finish we broke ground. The first hurdle we faced was a large chunk of 'granite?' that prevented the wall from going exactly where we wanted. It also broke a few pieces of machinery and we spent probably 2 weeks chipping away at this thing. Finally the landscaper started talking about dynamite. I said we'd done well enough. Visions of every window in the neighborhood being blown out and me picking up the tab helped make up my mind. During this period of time we discovered our landscaper was pretty much the same as every one of these guys I've ever dealt with. The 1 month estimate was correct "IF" that was the only job he was doing and if he really paid attention to it.

The second hurdle was the wall itself. Given the placement now of the rock instead of doing 2 small-ish walls we decided we'd do one big one instead. This meant getting an engineer to draw the wall, and securing the permits and approvals from the city. This wasn't too much trouble, but did add time to the process. Oh and the way engineers draw walls is no joke. This thing would survive a direct hit with a bomb. I would later find out just how much extra $$ this would add to the project, there was as much concrete and rebar in the footings as in the wall itself.

So, we had our drawings, the basic excavation was done, and it was time to build out the footers. This was our third and biggest hurdle. Before we got started I had a survey done and also sent out our plans for approval to our neighborhood aesthetic committee. As the workers were building our footers, our next door neighbor came out and told them to stop or he was calling the police as they were digging on his yard? I come home from work and see that they're well within our property line. Being the good neighbor I attempt to explain where the property lines are and what that means to our 'foreign' neighbor who explains to me that he was an engineer in Egypt? Well the curriculum they're following must not be the same one the dudes that built the pyramids followed since this guy doesn't understand property rights, footers, or even how a poured concrete wall worked. He kept thinking it was going to fall over onto his house, but I think he was just playing the 'foreign' card because he wasn't hearing what he wanted.

We agreed to disagree and I gave him a period of time to get his own survey done since he didn't believe mine. In the meantime I also called another company just to double check the first places work. They came out and confirmed what we already knew. In the meantime "Tommy" wouldn't move on his. Then in some classic neighborhood politics their friend who happened to be the association president called and said we had to stop since he hadn't given approval. I informed him of what we sent out and who we had talked to, and sent him the copy of the approval email from the committee (that had the right to review per the bylaws). He basically said that didn't matter he was the president. At this point I finally lost my temper and told this dude to "F_CK OFF since I wasn't planting a GD bush we had already spent thousands of dollars." I also told him (knowing what a cheap a$$ neighborhood I live in) that I was getting a lawyer and if he wanted to go around with his hat out to all our neighbors to get one to fight me just for one guy after the other 3 houses saw what we were doing and liked it - he could be my guest. Roughly 3 days after that conversation we got a letter in the mail announcing his resignation. One of my proudest moments.

I come out of my pocket again to have a lawyer drive over review everything, talk to me, and then render an opinion. He tells me (again) what I already know, not only am I well within my rights I can actually tell Tommy to remove the poured concrete wall that is attached to his house off my property. We craft a letter to that effect and tell Tommy we're moving on. To this day I can't even look at that toad without getting angry, he still doesn't get it.

From this point it went pretty smoothly but all of this had consumed considerable budget so we went from 1st class to economy pretty quickly. Since several mistakes with the landscaper had eaten additional funds he couldn't afford to correct so he was working for free more or less and I was paying subs directly and effectively managing the whole process at the end. We finished on December 7th at 6pm I remember because Christine had a school Christmas party at our house and I was laying sod with mi amigos right up until the bell.

So if you want to see the "Great Wall of Jim" click the link and download a few months of my life and many of my dollars. We started in July and finished (fence and all) officially in Jan.

Tomorrow "Special Delivery"...

Labels: Bad Attitude, house horrors