Driving by Steve DeVinney, shifting by Jim Robinson, editing by Craig Geegar

I was lazy the other day and didn’t feel like messing with the pictures so I added those where appropriate, I also cleaned up some typos, and added some additional credits. So re-read as the director intended.

Good Bye from DTOM Racing

A lot of people seem to think I’m morose about this whole thing and admittedly after re-reading the last post it was bit more melancholy than intended. No one is taking my shoelaces and belt at work, and while this wasn’t a sound financial decision Craig and I both have our homes.

The car turned out great, it was a blast to drive and while there are still some teething pains to work out I really think it should be cool to see it on TV even if someone else is driving it. After all we built it (sort of).

Craig uploaded some pics of us in action.

Thanks again, and I’ll see you at the track.
Jim

In 2012. Happy April Fool’s Day!!

This is becoming less a funny ha ha blog about all the wacky stuff we get into, and more like some grim survivor’s diary. Like Shackleton’s journey this started with a great idea and has quickly descended into madness and terror.

Anyway with that uplifting intro out of the way. Here is another visual essay for the 6 people not on Facebook. Craig had a baby about a week before this, so I was fighting one handed. We brought in some paid & highly skilled labor to try and kick start things into high gear. We made decent progress doing ‘race car’ stuff, basically fabrication and things that neither Ted, Brendan, nor myself have a ton of experience with. We worked from 7:30am to 3:00am, it was brutal. Most notably I only lost my temper with a rant once, and really only felt like crying once too.

I work occasionally for a day, sometimes 3 with limited sleep (or none). I can tell you there is a significant difference between 20 hours of ‘computer’ type work, and actual manual labor.

Front view with Engine, Radiator, and front clip installed.

Diff and Tranny Oil coolers

The E90 has an electric water pump stock, this one is bigger.

And the coup de grace, the tow hook was done by yours truly and is one of 5 or so things I’ve done that I’m pretty proud of. Its more impressive (to me anyway) when you consider I did it at 1am. OEM fit and finish.

Alternative titles for this would be:
Measure twice cut once
Ratchet Straps, jacks, and dead men – Oh My

We bought the rotisserie to make it easier to work on the car. Unfortunately it took about 4 full DTOM work days (3 hours per) to get it assembled and ready for business. It was designed to mount up to an old school american car so making it work on a modern german chassis took some ‘modifications’.

The beauty of a rotisserie is being able to turn the car upside down, or on its side, etc. Once we had it mounted and found that it took the weight of the car and was going to do what we wanted, we got cocky and that was nearly our downfall.

A normal car shell (I’m guessing) doesn’t have the weight distributed the way one with a big metal roll cage in it does. This also didn’t occur to us in a timely manner. Craig and I decided to turn the car on its side and begin prepping for the ‘enhanced’ paint job we’re doing on the bottom of the car. It started turning simply enough, and then all of the weight in the top half of the car took over. Now before we had started turning I had – completely out of character – asked “Do you think we should measure it?”. Meaning should be measure to make sure it was high enough so that if the car rolled over onto its roof we’d have clearance. Craig (also uncharacteristically for him) replied “No, it will be fine.”

Well as the weight took over and the car started to spin of its own accord, it quickly became clear it ‘wasn’t’ going to be fine. Now Craig and I both exerting our full strength, the same adrenaline fueled strength mothers use to save their babies by lifting cars, we could keep it from hitting the floor, but it was a losing battle. We frantically searched for something that we could wedge in place as a prop. There was a deadman within reach (like a big jack stand), but it is the junkiest one known to man and takes forever to adjust to the right height. (Since I advised it purchase I was subjected to several minutes of expletives around my decision making.)

Craig took the full weight for a minute while I grabbed and fiddled around trying to adjust and get into place. Having no patience for being slowly crushed to death while I screwed around with this thing we decided to play to our strengths so I became the human wedge, while Craig finally got the deadman in place. We reinforced our position with a jack (complete with obligatory 3-4 wood blocks) and a ratchet strap to provide our legendary DTOM Racing triple redundancy safety solution….