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The End

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

TA DA - nothing to it.

Red from Shawshank Redemption:
There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left.

The airing of the grievances:

Not a very cheery way to start things off. 3 years ago – yep 3 years ago. I got lazy – since after every race weekend people would say “How’d you do?” I mistakenly mistook polite conversation for genuine interest and decided, “Heck instead of repeating myself 15 times a day I’ll just write it all down.” In the meantime I got to amuse myself and waste a few hours cataloging my free time shenanigans.

Then about a year and a half ago I had another not so good idea. Hindsight is 20/20 and there was a logical pattern to my reasoning, unfortunately as we’ve seen on the Spec E30 boards when you start with flawed initial assumptions any conclusion you reach is almost certainly going to be wrong.

Here was the main one:
For some reason one day I read the Grand Am rules and it slowly dawned on me. This wasn’t a World Challenge $500million car with bespoke invented pieces from the Space Shuttle parts bin that needed a Doctorate in engineering to understand.

This was naïve and knowing now what I should have known then, a rule book is a poor guideline to use in terms of a blueprint for a race car build. It is more like general suggestions. The car we ended up with along the way is every bit as complicated as a modified super type race car. The ONLY saving grace is the limit to motor modifications, and the relatively simplistic suspension.

Another horrible assumption was thinking we could use the stock electronics. BMW’s are generally good cars, however this experience has taught me one thing (simply my editorial) IF your race class requires significant engine tuning, modifying the engine, standalone engine management, extensive suspension modification – 1) get your head checked 2) pick another marque of car. Look for something American if engines are your thing, Nascar helps keep the cost down and knowledge up. Electronics, modifying the ECU, etc. Honda appears to be the easiest in this department. In general Mazda’s are a good ‘safe’ choice. This is simply because Mazda, unlike every other car company aside from maybe Porsche and Ferrari ($$$$) actually gives a sh!t about road racing. Their cars are in no way exciting and many times I have poked fun at them, but there it is – facts is facts.

We did realize (about when we got the car back from BimmerWorld) just how in over our head’s we were, but unfortunately the way out was paved with money. You can’t sell or use a pile of lumber as a house and you can’t drive, race, rent or sell a bunch of boxes of parts as a car. There were quite a few depressing months where I desperately wondered when the money pit would end, and exactly how we would assemble this thing into any semblance of what it had the potential to be.

Feats of Strength:

Thankfully, even though I despise using ‘luck’ and ‘hope’ as the foundation for any plan, they’ve rescued their fair share of mine. Seth Thomas (like many people not me) realized, probably more quickly than Craig and I, just how deep we were into this and mentioned to a friend Chris Smith that we might need help, or a buyer, or something.

Chris used to work (and sometimes occasionally still does work) for Kinetic (they run the Kia ST entries and M3 GS cars in Grand-Am) and had his own team racing at the 24 hour of Daytona race in the Rolex GT class. Long story short we were able to construct a deal where he would finish putting all our puzzle pieces together. Even with that agreement in place we still had a lot of work. For the past month up until 2am on Friday the 17th Chris and his guys, Electron Eric, and to a small extent, myself have been putting humpty dumpty together again. The goal of this was to be able to shakedown the car and get it sorted out so that we could potentially rent out a few seats for the rest of the Grand-Am, World Challenge, [Insert Racing Sanctioning Body Here] seasons. I’ll let the visual essay on FaceBook tell the story since pictures do a better job than me of showing and describing what had to be done (see almost a car album – facebook.com/dtomracing).

Almost Done

The June Nasa event became somewhat of an arbitrary deadline just so that we could get this thing into drivable / raceable condition. I informally mentioned to Steve DeVinney what we were shooting for and he said, “Well if that doesn’t work out you can race my Spec Miata that weekend.” I think he only made this offer because he had seen firsthand (to his amusement) how poorly I fit in a rental Miata back in December at Roebling.

We managed to make enough progress throughout June that the Nasa event looked feasible. In an attempt to salvage some feeble reward for all this time, trouble, and expense I gifted myself the maiden voyage. Chris busted his butt and called in more than a few favors to get everything prepped and ready. Friday morning came and the car ran under its own power, and even had stickers. I somehow managed to get the flattest tire ever on the truck going from the gas station to Chris’ shop (apprx. 5 min.). If I were superstitious that would have bothered me or maybe it was just to let me know that I still had that ole’ DTOM racing luck.

That ole' DTOM touch - still got it!

We successfully navigated the Nasa paperwork. 8am and we miraculously hit the track, the car even had stickers. The plan was to do one lap, come in and check for leaks, etc. As I entered turn 6 at Road Atlanta the steering went from pleasantly light to awfully heavy. I pulled in for our planned look over, as Chris popped the hood and the smoke billowed out, I knew we had a problem. Power Steering belt and tensioner had broken. I wasn’t too disappointed since this was pretty much meeting expectations. The team went to work and over the course of the day we got several laps in and worked on and off on the problems as they showed up. (At the time when I saw the smoke though – I won’t lie and say I didn’t wonder if one lap was all I’d ever get.)

Problem with the hyperdrive.

The aluminum pole(s):

We even managed to get Steve D. in the car for a session as a ‘thanks’ for all his hard work. Being greedy I had taken Steve up on his miata offer, figuring if the ST car didn’t work out I’d be covered either way. The ideal miata driver is a small man that is very flexible, roughly the opposite of me. After 4 laps in practice, and sitting for 15 min. on a brutally hot track (after our 1 lap qualifying was red / black flagged) it dawned on me that Steve’s race seat wasn’t the best possible racing position for me in terms of driver comfort. Thankfully I had a seat that fit just across the paddock in the BMW. Now making the RaceTech “wideboy” seat fit in a miata was a feat of engineering prowess and required equal parts optimism, invention, and stubbornness. Chris Smith once again fit the bill. OPM Motorsports was there supporting Steve, another miata driver Tom Hall, and myself. I had also gifted myself the present of being a gentleman driver. Since it was clear I wasn’t going to the pro ranks I’d be d@mmed if I sweated my a$$ off changing tires all weekend.

Now OPM knows miatas like a fat kid knows cake, there were three guys looking on as I pulled that seat out of my truck and none of them thought it would fit. I had a few surprises as I learned a little about miatas over the weekend. The first was pleasant (for Chris anyway) the top comes off a miata, this makes getting a seat in and out slightly easier than a car with a roof. It still wasn’t too easy since it took about 2 solid hours, but it made a huge difference and I could suddenly fit in the car. The second surprise was that spec miatas don’t have ABS, Steve has four square tires to prove it. The third surprise was taking a year or more off from racing doesn’t help you, I was slow – embarrassingly slow. By the end of the weekend I had gotten down to a more respectable lap time / last place but it was like learning to ride a bike all over again. The fourth surprise (not really) was that having people at the track to take care of the car – fuel, tires, brakes, help you get strapped in, pep talk you on the radio – makes the entire weekend more fun. I think I had more fun goofing around with the OPM guys than I did racing.

We even had a good time almost getting killed by a storm. On Saturday the forecast had called for severe weather, and around 6pm it looked pretty dark. We all pitched in and got everything safely put away or covered. The remaining ‘to do’ was to unassemble the huge canopies that provided shade and shelter to our little parking spots. No one was excited to do this, and since we figured it would just be a strong rain, having the canopy up couldn’t hurt as long as it was tied down properly. Then the wind hit, holy cr@p did the wind hit. I don’t have a strong recollection of the next ten minutes but at one point I think at least 3 or 4 of us were lifted bodily into the air holding onto the frame of this canopy. I do remember thinking “oh sh!t I don’t know that this going to end well” as I saw the face of one of the OPM guys with his feet dangling off the ground. It destroyed this canopy and about a hundred EZ-Ups and knocked over 4 or 5 port a johns. The next morning the place looked and smelled like a refugee camp.

The aftermath. Holding aluminum poles in a thunderstorm. What could go wrong?

The End and Final Credits

So the weekend is over, the car is finished, now what?

I think it is safe to say that Craig’s racing career has come to an end, he is a full time dad now and like TJ, JP, Travis (sort of), etc. has found that trying or even wanting to balance racing with family responsibilities isn’t worth the effort.

And let’s face it I haven’t kept up with this blog much lately, part of that is my own lack of enthusiasm. If I haven’t hammered this point home, this project wasn’t a roaring success and it is has killed a lot of the fun I used to have doing something that I enjoyed and was moderately good at. The spec miata thing was a toe in the water to see if I still had any interest and right now I can’t say for sure. It could have been my disappointing performance, or maybe it is still too soon.

I can’t definitively say this is the end of DTOM until I’ve made that final decision, however if I’m not racing there isn’t much else for me to talk about. And really the fact that a racing team sponsored by a pre-pubescent girls book club has nearly 3x as many “fans” as DTOM on Facebook has clearly shown me the market for hard core racing blogs (also taking away our title of number 1 amateur racing blog in the SouthEast in the process) perhaps isn’t what I thought it was. It could just be that Evan Levine is the Justin Bieber of SE Spec E30.

For now we’ll say this is the end of this chapter.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t list out the people that helped salvage what we did manage to get out of this adventure, and that was a pretty kick a$$ car. It took longer than we thought, and cost more than we wanted, but truthfully without the help of the individuals below (as hard as it is to imagine) it would have been much worse.

Brendan Digel – poor BD had his own albatross project at the same time and along with helping with mechanical stuff we lent each other joint shoulders to cry on (very miata I know).
Ted McMahan – it took me years of knowing Ted to realize I’ve pronounced his last name wrong almost the entire time.
Jason “The Cobra” Mascow – Jason fell in love shortly after we tore everything apart, and even though he (along with others) questioned my sanity throughout the entire process, that never stopped him from lending a hand.
Craig Geegar – Even though Craig was my partner in crime, I talked him into this thing, the fact that Craig and I can still talk and joke around is pretty amazing when I think back on some of this.
BimmerWorld – specifically Ryan, Josh, and Dave. All of those guys (especially Ryan) were super supportive and did their best to answer any hair brained question I might have. Ryan and Josh were cool enough to even help put about half the car together in a day and drive 6 hours for the privilege. BTW I did forget Clay, Marks, Seth, DW, etc. everyone at BW helped out and shared waaayy more information than could be reasonably expected with a “competitor”…
Diffsonline Dan – Dan is a hoot, and knows more about car differentials than anyone should.
Scott Mc Minime – he went through about 45 iterations of comments from Craig and I on some awesome logo and creative stuff. I offer my sincere apologies that it won’t actually get to see the light of day. Scott is a super talented dude.
Eric Schieb – Electron Speed. Eric was awesome, he took the project despite his better judgment, and lived up to every promise he made and always went above and beyond. I can’t recommend him enough.
Chris Thurman – speaking of I told you so, Chris pretty much said I was bat sh!t crazy from day one, but still did everything he could to help us out.
John Eversley – he gave us some great advice coming from about a hundred years of practical experience, he also gave us some great work at an almost free price, basically because I think he took pity on us.
Steve DeVinney – Steve has been a great sounding board for some of the various decisions, he can be a surprisingly rational voice of reason. He also pitched into any project with the car that he could, for no apparent reason other than being a decent guy.
Robert Patton – besides pretty much talking both Craig and I into racing, Robert was kind enough to become DTOM Racing’s adjunct storage facility so we could reduce our expenses and still keep Craig’s garage ‘somewhat’ usable.
Chris Smith Racing – Chris is super enthusiastic and is a talented mechanic that has a great understanding of what it takes to compete and succeed at the pro level. The DTOMracing 328 E90 will be in his more (than us) capable hands from this point on.
DTOM ‘fans’ – all 128 of you on FB and the 1000 or so hits a month we get on the site. Thanks I hope you got what you paid for.

Chris hates these tow hooks, but I love my OEM fit and finish!

Posted in Bad Attitude, Coni build, Race Recap | 6 Comments »

When it rains it pours… the sequel

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Who’s up for a little old school DTOM? Apparently fate and / or a malevolent God that’s who. Between Wednesday and Sunday of last week I (with Craig) had to figure out how to get our painted car back into Craig’s garage, fly to California and back, then drive to Savannah in time to race with Brendan at the final BMW Club Race of the year. Here are the details of how that all worked out.

We dropped the car off at the end of November to be painted. The dude said it would be done (this was a Tues.) by the weekend. Craig and I rolled our eyes. This is like being the parent of 9 kids and having the youngest tell you “Honest I did my homework”. You know it’s a bold faced lie, but you’re too tired to give a shit. And really at this point it doesn’t matter, Daytona was the big race, we wanted to get the car done prior to that for the 8 hour NASA enduro shake down – that schedule came and went so the next realistic race would be Barber in April (Grand Am schedule here). So because of that and the fact that both of our garages are still chock full of crap we weren’t in a hurry and had gotten used to using these destinations as a sort of temporary storage to complement our already robust set of garages and storage units.

Another universal truth we’ve discovered – beside cost estimates that don’t even cover parts let alone labor, and delivery dates that are mere figments of someone’s imagination, -is that when something is done it is a) done immediately and b) needs to be picked up right that minute. As frequent DTOM readers will testify most of this project has involved shipping unwieldy shit from point A to point B. Getting a non running, sometimes not rolling car moved around isn’t the easiest thing in the world and often requires two people and some thinking. Knowing all of this I guess it should have come as no surprise when my phone rang early Wednesday (12/8) morning with painter Rob saying “Hey man I need you to come pick up your car it’s done, how quick can you be here?” It must not have dawned on this guy Tuesday at 5pm that he would be done on Wed. at 8am, but those few hours would have helped with the planning.

[As I finished typing that I just remembered that this guy, and honestly most ‘budget’ painters, don't / doesn't paint with a respirator, so it is completely 100% plausible that simple observation never occurred to him. Safety first has never really been part of the DTOM credo, but breathing industrial paint and solvent fumes isn't a good early retirement plan, unless by retirement you mean die of some weird cancer.]

Unfortunately like the perfect storm this was becoming, I was on my way to the airport to fly out for work. Craig and I formulated a plan whereby I would get my trailer and truck and leave it with him, he’d fetch the car from painter dude on Thursday, and I’d take one of his fleet of vehicles to the airport. I imagine his bitterness about my driving the 911 to work during the summer was behind the ‘rental’ car being his POS dodge pickup.

I hate to fly. It has nothing to do with the flying and everything to do with people, the airline industry, and all the stupid crap that comes with it. With that said, if I have to fly anywhere for work, going out to Irvine, CA. is usually not that bad. Irvine is pretty nuts. I maintain that they staff the entire town with actors and models. There are no ugly people in that place, it’s almost surreal. My other semi-frequent destination is New Jersey. You couldn’t find a more opposite experience since I think all the ugly people from CA get shipped to NJ. Newark airport is like a poster child for the decline of civilization, I’ve witnessed domestic violence while waiting for a flight, I’ve seen a man almost beaten to death by a crowd when he “mistakenly” cut in line, and I’ve smelled things that would make a hardened sanitation worker wretch, all while in lovely, sunny, NJ.

On the flip side John Wayne airport is pleasant, there are rarely lines, and even the security dude apologized to me when he needed to pat me down. Regardless you’re still getting on an airplane. If I could have one wish that wasn’t a winning lottery ticket, it would be for the entire airline industry to go bankrupt and be replaced by “Something”. I don’t care what it is – super fast Japanese trains, hang gliders, covered wagons, it doesn’t matter at this point ANYTHING is better.

For my flight out I had a middle seat, which I was lucky enough to change to a window, no matter the 6’5 gent in the middle seat made sure I wasn’t comfortable. Then to top it off he was a Delta employee, and quite possibly the most cheerful flyer I’ve seen. He proceeded for the next 5 hours to regale the dude on his right with how awesome flying was, how he loved to travel, blah blah blah. I carry earplugs with me at all times for just this reason and the screaming baby that I think the FAA mandates must be on all planes. I wanted to point out to Delta Employee of the Month to look around at all the smiling faces, the feeding frenzy for overhead luggage space, the aged lunch lady appearance of the stewardesses (Not flight attendants), his oh so comfortable barely adequate for a 5 year old child seat, to say nothing of the disrobing in front of strangers as fast as you can in some kind of anti-terrorist metal detection obstacle course, etc etc etc.

On the way home I had another middle seat, now before you blame me and say well there’s your problem jack ass, this meeting had been scheduled and cancelled four times so I was playing a game of chicken in hopes that it would be cancelled again, or that I could somehow weasel out of it. I lost that roll of the dice which meant booking the flight literally at the last minute and everything that follows was the result. No luck changing my seat again so I was stuck in the middle seat on the red eye back to GA. Again I have a professional wrestler on my right, and some more normal sized human on the left. The normal dude broke out his uber traveler sleep kit, with the neck pillow, eye shades, and zip around blanket sleep sack. He then proceeded to go into some type of night terror infested coma. It was like sitting next to my dog when he is dreaming, I’m not sure if this guy was running from the Viet Cong, or chasing bunny rabbits but my shins were bruised by the time we touched down at 4:35am in Atlanta. To say nothing of the back and neck cramps from rolling my shoulders over to ‘fit’ in the seat.

Not fitting in seats would be a theme for the weekend, as I made my way back towards Craig’s place to swap out his truck for my truck and trailer and pick up the big boy seat for Brendan’s car. Club Racing is in collusion with all the safety gear sellers to mandate expiration dates for EVERYTHING in the car, this ensures that every year you’ll need to drop $1000 on crap that was perfectly satisfactory. Because of this Brendan had bought a slightly used Sparco seat with a fresher sell by date, that I think was the basis for the airlines, combined with all the custom work to make the cockpit fit him, meant it certainly wasn’t going to fit me. Just sitting in it made people start doing the fat guy in the little coat joke that Chris Farley made famous. (Somehow Clay fit in this thing, he has some type of snake unhinging jaw ability to fit into cars that would appear to be physically impossible, it is almost gumby-ish.) So at 5am in the freezing dark I was feeling my way around in Craig’s garage looking for the seat theoretically dedicated to our car. There hasn’t been a car on his lift for months now, so with the early morning / lack of sleep, and the darkness explain how I almost knocked myself out walking directly into a rear tire attached to the painted car on the lift. Thankfully it was the tire and not the lift post or anything metal since I probably would have froze to death after being rendered unconscious before anyone found me.

I carried this huge box down his alley and loaded up my truck and drove home to grab a few hours of sleep before taking the trailer back and heading off to Savannah / Roebling Road for the debut of the S54 powered E12. 3 hours later my phone rings and Craig tells me that Rob the painter has more parts that are ready for immediate pickup. Apparently just the car was done, not the bumpers, doors, hood, trunk, etc. So I hurry up and unpack and repack, unload the trailer and drive back to Craig’s. Where I then unload the seat I had just put in the truck and we drive up to pick up more painted parts. I finally get to the Bradbury Suites Best Western in Pooler, GA at 11pm.

7am came quickly and as Brendan, Ted, and I are leaving for the track we exit our room and there is a dude that looks like one of the Hanson brothers from Slap Shot (but with a beard) wearing – 100% true – just long johns doing some type of stretching exercises in the hallway. His twin, thankfully fully clothed, joins him and they catch the elevator with us where we have the following exchange.
Q (Long John Hanson Brother): “Are you guys going to work?”
Ted: “No”
LJHB: “Oh, you guys look sad so I thought maybe you had to go to work.”
Ted: “No, we’re going to race”
LJHB: “What kind of race?”
Ted: “Car race there is a race track down the road”
LJHB: “Cool”

Reggie Dunlop: Oh you cheap son of a bitch. Are you crazy? Those guys are retards!
McGrath: I got a good deal on those boys. The scouts said they showed a lot of promise.

He and his twin proceeded to walk through the lobby and stand outside and smoke. He had on long johns, no shirt, no shoes, no hat, JUST long johns and glasses with tape holding them together. I think it goes without saying that in all of men’s fashion long john’s, spandex bike shorts, and those really high cut runner’s shorts are in a deadlocked tie for the most unflattering things a dude can wear.

As usual the racing was anti-climatic to everything else. Brendan’s car consists of 50% parts from every model of BMW every made, and 50% custom invented stuff that you can’t buy or replicate without a bunch of fabrication equipment and an expert fabricator (See Day of the Dyno post for details). So it came as no surprise that it was cold, raining, and that the car was having some growing pains.

I love the new “Green” bathrooms, “green” is code for Cheap. I think Roebling’s bathrooms were designed by MC Escher or someone with a sadistic sense of humor. To begin with the urinals are ‘almost’ too high for me to use, so to anyone shorter than 6ft you’re standing back and shooting from the 3pt line. The stalls on the other hand have a lot in common with your airplane bathroom, you almost have to back into them since once you close the door you can’t turn around. In an effort to be green / cheap – I mean consider the irony of ‘green’ restrooms at a racetrack? – everything is automated except the soap. So I get a handful of soap and start waving my hand around to get the water to turn on, just in time for the power to go off. Now its pitch black in this glorified outhouse, I have a handful of soap, no water, and they installed hand dryers not towels. My only option is to walk the ¼ mile away with my hand cupped like I have a hand full of bird crap to where we’re parked to get either a rag or a bottle of water to solve my problem.

So in summary besides getting cold and wet I learned how to rebuild a half shaft (sort of like an axle), on a dirty car mat, in less than an hour which includes all the ball bearings flying out of their cage. It’s sort of like a child’s puzzle but covered in axle grease. We did fit the big boy seat in the car and I eventually got to drive about 20 laps or so on 5 cylinders since one wasn’t firing. The final result DFL with a blistering 1.26 fast lap almost as quick as what I’ve done in the dry with the old Spec E30. On Sunday it rained even harder, I tried one lap for qualifying but no wipers or rain tires, and standing water made the executive decision to get home early that much easier to make.

Posted in Bad Attitude, Paul Newman, Quotes, Race Recap, Roebling Road, logistics | 2 Comments »

All ‘work’ and no play make Jack a dull boy.

Monday, June 14th, 2010

If you’ve been a frequent reader of this blog you’ll know that we’ve been pretty heavy on tearing things apart lately and pretty light on racing. This is due to the fact that neither Craig nor I are lotto winners, so the sacrifice for building the Grand-Am car meant that this year’s schedule would be infrequent track time, however that didn’t mean it had to be non-existent. Our DTOM brethren Jason Mascow had been promised a ride in one of our Spec E30’s for close to two years (mostly by Craig) and due to a variety of reasons (excuses by Craig) had never got a chance to actually race one. Another of our key helpers Ted McMahan still hadn’t done a formal driving school, Digel would be his instructor. All of this coincided nicely with NASA-SE’s return to Roebling Road Raceway one of DTOM’s favorite race venues.

Early on we dubbed this DTOM family day, since Craig’s wife, baby, and mother-in-law decided to go to Savannah while he did his pre-sale shakedown of the #82 car. For the #36 we’d be doing triple stints with Jason in the Spec E30 race trying to beat up on Craig, Ted would be in the HPDE group, and I signed up for the Thunder race just to have something to do. During a Robinson family meeting my wife also expressed a desire to go to Savannah, I corrected her with “Pooler”, and she again said Savannah. Over the course of the weekend she would come to fully understand the big difference between Pooler and Savannah. Since it was the DTOM extended family the dogs got to come along as well. The dogs aren’t the best at traveling since Indy gets car sick and they both like to stop frequently to smell the sights (so to speak) as a result I was fully expecting this trip to be the stuff DTOM legends were made of (ie. a huge pain in my a$$).

The week before the race we met at Jason’s shop to make the necessary ‘enhancements’ to the silver car so that it would pass its annual tech inspection. In my mind that meant – changing the oil and replacing a severely cracked windshield, maybe checking the brake pads. I confidently told Jason,and Brendan as Ted drove it onto the lift. “We’ll be out of here by noon, just needs an oil change really.” Jason immediately asked, “What is that clunking noise? When was the last time you looked at this thing?” My response of “I don’t know it always sounds like that, and December after our 9 hour enduro” didn’t inspire much confidence but earned me some sad looks and shaking heads. Needless to say we found the horrible clunking sound, and many other things, enough to take 3 1/3 mechanics until 4pm. I confined myself to the usual getting lunch, watching, and fetching things (hence the 1/3).

As we made our preparations for the weekend we found the local hotels in Pooler to be surprisingly snooty about pets, which meant we ended up in a Jameson Inn. That would be Christine’s first clue that we weren’t in Savannah. The second came as we drove through the ‘neighborhoods’ outside of Roebling, or as Jason calls them the ‘meth shacks’. We had left around 10 am in order to have enough time to drive leisurely, and arrive at the track in plenty of time to unpack and get the aforementioned technical inspection and registration. The third clue that this wasn’t a vacation or as glamorous as the races on TV came as the always logical and friendly track staff precluded anyone from entering the track until 5pm. We arrived a little before 3pm. Nothing says fun like sitting in a crowded sandy lot with two hot dogs (or baby for Craig) and no water for 2+ hours. Eventually we did get in, inspected, and unpacked. As we finished up and I got in the car soaked with sweat Christine observed, “I’m surprised you find this fun.” I think that was a jab at my love of hard manual labor, or maybe my conditioning, either way I don’t think it was a compliment.

We arrived at the Jameson Inn before the various transient vagabonds hogged all the good rooms and were able to request a penthouse away from doors and elevators that we knew from experience would upset the dogs. Unfortunately they only had a queen sized bed. Over the course of the evening we found that 2 large dogs, 1 large-ish man, and 1 regular sized wife don’t fit neatly in that configuration. So much so that the entire room possibly got 2 hours sleep.

Thankfully the demands at the track were relatively light (for me) since I didn’t especially care how much I drove over the weekend. My practice session was first up so I strapped in to make sure the car wouldn’t fall apart on someone other than the responsible party. During my shakedown I discovered a gremlin that our mechanical barn raising missed. The clutch was slipping and not going to improve with use. This put myself and Ted into car conservation mode so that Jason could use what was left to make a run at his race. I practiced doing the fastest laps I could using only 4th gear, which actually was kind of fun, but not very impressive from a time or results perspective. Jason’s race came up and he did pretty well coming in a respectable 6th place out of maybe 15 or so. Not too shabby for a car he hadn’t driven before against some fairly stiff competition. Craig managed an also respectable 3rd after the actual 1st place finisher was DQ’d on a tech issue. Jason was disappointed the famous 6th place trophy had been retired.

What a difference a few months makes, there is a new crop of Spec E30 guys and we didn’t know most of them. A lot of the old crew has moved onto greener pastures, but Brian Jones showed up. Last time I saw Jones (maybe a few months ago) he was single, had a red pickup truck, and beat up steel trailer. Now he is married, with a baby on the way, a new ‘free?” aluminum trailer and a suburban. Oh yeah and a pit bull. Jones sells wine for a living so I think the pit bull, and wife were to address some un-asked questions… In congratulating him I managed to strike a deal where I would get the rights to name the baby for a set of used (good) race tires. I immediately dubbed his unborn child “Gumball” Jones – “Lil Gumball” until he is of age, and “Gumballa” if it’s a girl. I could tell that Brian was a newlywed since a) his wife Clarissa was sleeping in a tent on the RRR grounds, b) looked to be enjoying herself. She even took the news about Lil Gumball in stride. If anyone has better suggestions please put in the comments. I’ll make sure to pass them along.

Ted continued to solidify his “Hardest working man at the track” reputation by not only doing his first driver’s school, which can be stressful enough, but also serving as crew for another racer / customer from his shop. The guy (John) he was working for benefitted? from the DTOM curse, I will say I’m enjoying being able to offload the bad luck on nearby pedestrians like Craig or this 944 guy. Unfortunately Ted also got caught up in the swirling bad mojo.

John had asked Ted to drive his nearly brand new Dodge 3500 diesel pickup down with his nice 28 or 32 ft trailer down for him. This worked out perfectly since it allowed plenty of vehicles for everyone to have access to, and a sweet enclosed trailer for us to sponge off of minimizing truck loading / unloading time. Well except for the guy that actually owned it, it didn’t really work out perfectly for him. He had modified his original plan of flying into Savannah and replaced it with driving down in one of his other Porsche 944’s. 20 year old cars being 20 year old cars it broke down on his way to the track. After getting it towed, the problem proved un-fixable without the types of parts you won’t find in Pooler on a Saturday or Sunday. His exit plan didn’t prove to be much better, since he mounted up his still running race car for the trip home and then called us 3 hours in saying he had run out of gas and was on the side of the road. At the same time the check engine light in his truck went on as the turbo on the diesel wasn’t making boost.

Poor Ted in an effort to check the truck picked the wrong exit to pull off of, and drove into the gas station parking lot of doom. This is the place where I got my trailer stuck and Craig, TJ, and I had to do some quick thinking to avoid disaster. Just as I was telling Christine (and the dogs) this, and about to pick up my phone to give advice, Ted got the nice trailer stuck. Those concrete pillars by gas pumps are the bane of 32 foot trailers. Somewhat thankfully my experience in the same predicament meant that we had a solid game plan for getting it ‘unstuck’ with minimal damage, but the local audience complete with 6000 kagigawatt bass stereos didn’t help defuse the tense mood. We managed to get gas to the racecar guy before he died of heat exposure, and then limped the truck home. It only made a 4 hour trip about 7, but what would you expect from DTOM family day? It certainly lived up to my expectations. No word from Christine on how she enjoyed her trip to Savannah yet.

Posted in Craig, Dogs, Race Recap, Roebling Road | 1 Comment »

Deleted Scenes

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Well as promised here are few additional things that just didn’t ‘fit’ into the overall O’fest writeup but were still amusing enough as stand alones but first a message from our sponsor. Not really but I am going to grouse on the govt. for a bit. I can hear the collective groan of the audience. I feel like the teacher that promised movie day and gave a quiz instead.

Speaking of teachers, here is evidence that the govt. shouldn’t run anything. I mean that literally, short of the military and maybe the police, I honestly think anything else would be better off in private hands. Eliminate all but the very minimum amount of taxes and let us pay ala carte. I’ll call out the non-funny stuff with tags so you can skip ahead if you’d like.

[not very funny]
Why do I say this? We take our dogs on a nightly walk / park trip and my wife announced she was tired of being a teacher yesterday and wanted to look for a new job. I can’t emphasize how shocking this was. My wife was named teacher of the year at her highschool for 2008. Now I don’t particularly like her job, but I will be the first to admit that I think she does it very, even exceptionally well. She is one of those lucky people that has known since they were a kid what they wanted to do and has always enjoyed her work and looked forward to it. As a further testament to her teaching skill she managed to teach me enough calculus that I got a C in my one last gasp at math in college.

So why the change of heart? Well here in GA since the schools do so well, they figured kids weren’t learning math due to the curriculum and really the ‘order’ of how concepts were presented. So they completely changed everything mixing alegbra and geometry together (among other things), they’ve also added extra fun stuff on teachers like reading/writing in math class. Makes perfect sense to me. Now the math that you learn in highschool hasn’t changed in literally hundreds of years, most of these concepts are old timey Greek civilization things. In my business mind to be efficient and good you assign one teacher a ‘type’ of math let them learn it up and down and that is what they teach, maybe 4-5 classes of it in a day. Pretty much learning by assembly line. What does the school system do? They give their teachers a bunch of different classes so they can’t get in any type of routine and are teaching something new each period. This just creates confusion, busy work, added overhead in terms of preparation and grading, and you have some teachers that are more qualified than others in terms of the high level math classes so this ‘equal distribution’ means some students don’t get the right people instructing them. So this is what has brought on her career crisis, right now she comes home from work around 4-5pm and spends an additional 3 or so hours grading papers and planning. All for the amazing salary that you could make managing a gas station, and minus the college and advanced degrees. Way to go govt.! Also all kids must now take college prep. math regardless if they want to, if there parents want them to, if they’re not going to college they’ll just sit there and fail it which will certainly help bring those test scores up! As with most govt. programs I’m sure this was based on good intentions, and like most of them no one will pay attention to the actual results.
[/end not very funny stuff]

Okay on with the show.

Clay takes great pleasure in his jokes and for O’fest he had planned two that he (and I’ll admit to an extent – I) both thought would be pretty hysterical. The first was a rigged raffle where Dave White would win a prize. I coordinated with Chuck and Patty to have this raffle done during the final awards ceremony where they’re giving out trophies, prizes, etc. So there are roughly 50 or so people standing around. Dave’s racing number is called to win a “Special prize from BimmerWorld” and he immediately knows something is up. Chuck hands him a plain brown box which he unwraps and quickly sees his ‘gift’. No one else can see what it is and Dave isn’t too pleased with our humor. So he walks off and no one in the crowd gets the joke. Clay has to awkwardly take the microphone and explain the punchline to an uncomfortable smattering of laughter and tense silence. Joke Fail 1.

The 2nd involves the crew and a horrible experience they had with an E30 3 series, very similar to mine. For a long time I had tried to get Clay to do some work on my car and he was very reluctant. It all stemmed from an E30 that had come to the shop with some ‘electrical’ issues. The geniuses that built the car had spray painted the interior white, but had neglected to cover up any of the wiring bundles. When trying to trace problems with wires, it helps to be able to tell them apart – which is difficult if they’re all white. To further exacerbate the problem, they had removed all the car’s fuses and simply jumped them together. Apparently Marks and the guys spent weeks trying to fix this thing. So what does James do when he sees this beauty for sale? He buys it and secretly arranges to have it delivered during the BW BBQ so that Marks can be horrified as he sees this nightmare coming back into his life. Unfortunately for Clay his clever plan fell apart when Marks informed him the trailer this car was to ride back to Virginia in had left about 4 hours eariler… Joke Fail 2.

On a more positive note, Steve Bassen who wrecked his car in the Friday race won the “Spirit of Club Racing” award. This is a very cool thing that the BMW Club Race guys do for each event. Every racer signs a flag and it is presented to the guy that has the best attitude and most closely embodies the ‘spirit’ of Club Racing, meaning he spent the most money on his car — NO — meaning an all around good guy, that is helpful and generally liked and respected by all. Anyone that knows Steve knows that description fits him to a T.

Next up at DTOM – our 3rd annual IFU race at CMP along with the enduro. Should have that out early to mid November. Some pics to entertain in the meantime -

Steve with his well deserved award.

My car parked ‘uncomfortably’ close to Dave White’s fancy ride. Note Joke Fail 2 / finding nemo car in the background…

The amazing Mark’s family grill. Smoker, gas grill, and 2 mini-keg fridge capacity. John in the blue shirt is ironically a vegetarian.

My awesome plan of taking down BW property values with the car on jackstands. I at least made sure the amateur body work wasn’t facing the ‘street’.

Posted in Bad Attitude, BimmerWorld, Race Recap, Road Atlanta, Wrecks | No Comments »

Grand? Finale! Part 3 – The Club Race

Friday, October 9th, 2009

You can use a rock as a hammer, but that doesn’t mean it is always a good idea or that is what it is designed to do. That sums up the 5 series. It tries really hard to be a race car, and Brendan has done his best to make it act like one, but its almost 30 years old. They had a number of entries since this was a big event and so they split the race groups into slow and fast. Because the sled is technically a ‘modified’ car, it was put in the fast group. Brendan invested in some racing slicks to hopefully help the old girl stay on pace with the rest of the crazy cars in that group. To help non-BMW CR guys understand – the fast group probably has several cars that cost over $100k. They circle the track in 1min 29 secs for just over 2 miles. The sled is more like a 1:38.

The sled takes the green. Which of these cars is not like the others…

He went out for practice as I warned him to be careful and take it easy. Racing slicks are tricky and if you’re not careful heating them up you can spin out and wreck on the out lap, like Craig did with his 911 (although that was more a case of street tires and poor driving so really not a good analogy I guess). He went around a few times as we watched from pit lane, and everything looked good. Then as I saw him coming down turn 12 something looked odd. That wasn’t a drift it was a slide. I said “oh sh!t, oh sh!t, oh sh!t” with increasing urgency as the proximity between the sled and the wall got smaller. In one of the luckiest things I’ve seen Brendan remains one of the few people to lose it in that turn and not have the car hit the wall.

The next practice session and Brendan comes in after a few laps with smoke and water pouring out of the car. The little off road adventure had loosened some things up and one of the belts had flipped and cut a hose. Ted quickly fixed that and Brendan took the car back out for qualifying. He came back again after a few laps. Apparently that belt had stretched and wouldn’t stay in place. I ran off to AutoZone to get a replacement so that he could make the race. With the new belt installed and everything (we thought) checked out, the fast group takes the grid.

I was still concerned about the tires, neither Brendan nor I are ‘slicks’ guys. I race on glorified street tires, I was worried enough to bring a set of RA-1’s to fall back on if the fancy tires proved to be too much. The green flag dropped and we watched the fast guys go. Two or Three laps go by and Brendan’s car is missing, I get that sick to my stomach feeling. The Black Flag comes out ordering all cars into the pits. This turns into a huge mess, as the flaggers messed up, and no one in the race or on pit road can make heads or tails of what is going on. Still no Brendan, but Steve Bassen, who is friend of ours and hand’s down the best Body Shop guy maybe in the world, is missing too. I’m getting sicker to my stomach thinking please God don’t let Brendan and Steve take each other out. One of the guys with a radio finds out that Steve has crashed his car and that is the reason for the black flag. No word on Digel.

Ted’s cell phone rings. Its Brendan calling from a corner worker’s phone. He doesn’t have a radio in the car so he borrowed a phone to call us and say the driveshaft broke and he is behind the wall. This seemed pretty absurd at the time, Ted almost didn’t take the call! The race ends with more flagging drama, and the 112 comes in on the hook. The driveshaft (which spins at roughly the same speed as the engine) had broke free and knocked around in the transmission tunnel with such force to bust through the sheet metal around the pedals. Brendan is okay and lucky he didn’t take a knock on the leg, but the sled is done. Maybe permanently.

Now this is on Friday, and there are races on Saturday and Sunday, with no car – sitting at a race track loses its excitement almost immediately. My car is still holding a parking space hostage under the tent, so we devise a plan to put everything back together (hopefully working) and I’ll drive that for Sat. and Sun. With lots of help from Marks, Ryan, John, and Ted we get the wheelspeed sensor fixed and the dash put back together. I’m also missing the ‘required’ stickers so we track down a set of those from the super cool Mike Hinkley and then put them on like the dude that Clay got to wrap his car. Chuck Taylor and the other O’fest folks bend over backwards to switch around the paperwork needed to change cars.

More stickers, hastily applied, will make the car look less like sh!t, right?

There are some issues classifying my car – it is at separate points in time K prepared, Spec E36, and finally Spec E30 (but too late), long story short I qualify first in class ( about 18th or something on grid) and end up winning the enduro race for my class. This isn’t recognized at the time due to the above Timing and Scoring error, but whatever, little known fact – I get paid the same for first as I do for last. I take solace in that Clay jumps in to “co-drive” the last 6 or 7 laps of the “enduro”, and my fast lap is about 1.5 seconds better than his.

Proof is in the pudding – fancy Stack data!

[Ryan Kuhn who is Seth's car chief was nice enough to help out during the race. My radios were acting up, so the mic in my helmet was on the entire time. Ryan did an awesome impression of what it sounded like - vroommmmmm, upshift, vrooommm, blip, downshift, rumble rumble (curbing), vrooooommm..... listening to that for an hour, except for the occasional road rage profanity.]

This is probably the reason Dave and I are winning the NASA-SE enduro series. I explain “addition by subtraction” to James over the sweet sweet free BimmerWorld BBQ. Mark’s brother is some type of semi-professional barbeque guy. They literally towed his super grill down from Virginia and he stayed up all night Friday into Sat. cooking. Shockingly I think there was enough food for everyone. The super grill has a huge smoker / wood fired deal, a regular gas grill, and two keg fridges all on a trailer. It is a pretty impressive piece of engineering, and of course I don’t have a picture of it.

Sunday rolls around and I’m about as tired of being at the track as you are of reading this. (If you made it this far.) My truck has decided to start making a noise that sounds like a cat caught in the axles mixed with metal on metal. I show up late to the track, go and qualify and get hung up in traffic so I don’t get a clean lap which makes me mad. The car isn’t handling the way it should but I don’t have anything to fix it since I never planned on racing the car this weekend anyway. All of a sudden a nap, and not getting stranded at 6pm on 85 / 285 / or 75 with a broke truck towing a race car and trailer seems more important than racing. If this sounds soft, it probably is. But Club Racing for me is more about hanging out with friends / driving different cars, than the racing. The stuff we do with NASA is much more competitive and exciting since there are 20 or so cars all the same vs. different prep levels of BMWs coming and going. My mission accomplished I drive slowly home with the radio off trying to listen for the truck to break something while also trying ‘not’ to fall asleep at the wheel.

Side Notes -
Truck turned out to have 2 of the 3 U joints rusting together. The grease was gone and during the flood driving through huge puddles meant water had gotten in them and started rusting things up.

Congrats to Dave White on probably locking up like his 10th BMW National Championship. People like to think its just Dave’s car that is fast, but he had some serious competition this weekend including Clay racing another guys car and proved he could handle the pressure.

Stay tuned later this week I’ll post up the deleted scenes: of the practical joke on Dave White that went horribly wrong, comments on Clay’s running, how I got screamed at by a safety official, and Clay’s practical joke on Mark’s that also went sideways.

Posted in Race Recap, Road Atlanta, Sled | No Comments »