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

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!

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.

Thankfully the magic of welding and $5 of angle iron has saved our lives.

We had an opportunity to ‘test drive’ the prevention aspect of this later in the day when a ratchet strap coordination incident allowed the car to spin a little too freely. This should prove to everyone how easy it is to weld since Craig’s half ass job stood up admirably. Since at the time I think we were all stoned on paint fumes the gravity of the situation wasn’t immediately clear.

Our goal for the standard 3 hour DTOM work day was to finish prepping the car for paint. The cage and underside of the car weren’t to the fit and finish we desired so we wanted to add a second / better coat of white, and then finish off with the holy trinity of DIY paint solutions – preval home sprayer, UPOL bed liner, and POR-15 super paint.

The first step was to tape up the car like Dave White used to with his DE car to protect the “nice” paint.

Step two was our homemade paint lab.

Step three, apply paint liberally.

So far we can only speak to the combination preval sprayer and two part auto paint, but it appears that the finish is equal to a paint booth / semi-retarded painter / “professional” equipment. Craig took a nod towards safety and staying cancer free by using a respirator. Since I didn’t have one I felt my mental processes slowing, and developed a splitting headache.

Join us next week when our dynamic duo will deal with spraying the clear bed liner UPOL on the undercarriage, and POR-15 for the cage.

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….

This story starts a few days earlier when Craig (as part of his impending child’s birth) was forced to relocate BrandNewEngine corporate offices from an upstairs guest bedroom to the penthouse suite on top of DTOMRacing Enterprises LLC World HQ. The window view he requires as CEO, meant that the Geiger family gym had to be broken up and partially moved. Thankfully Jim’s Gym had an opening for a treadmill.

I suspect this was motivated by Craig looking at me and thinking about sharing a car that has a fixed weight limit attached. Meaning every extra pound over what the car’s mandated weight is dead. So like a jockey it pays to be skinny. I had decided when we took a year off of racing I’d take a year off of being fit as well. So saying “Here why don’t you take this treadmill” was sort of a polite Craig way of saying – “Hey fat ass shape it up.”

As we carried the treadmill precariously down the penthouse suites narrow steps, and again up my steep muddy hill into its basement Jim’s Gym home, we quickly discovered – if you move treadmills for a living you probably don’t need one.

Later that afternoon I went for the final assembly / test drive. The basement has one outlet, so I put it conveniently next to that outlet which is one of those bathroom sink GFI types. When I plugged it in, I heard a “pop / click” sound that those make when they go off. I immediately tried to reset it without luck.

Now there are two background things to keep in mind here:

1) From June of ’09 DTOMReaders will remember this about my house.

and

2) I have a caveman like understanding (fear) of electricity.

So keeping those things in mind I’ll proceed with the chain of events.

After trying to reset the outlet, I check the clock radio that was plugged in as well just to make sure it didn’t have power. I swap plugging things in different, reset again. Nothing is working. I check the breaker box to see if any of those have tripped. Nope, everything still looks to be on. For giggles I find the one labeled “BASEMENT” and flip it on and off. Nothing. Oddly the lights (which go off when the “BASEMENT” breaker is flipped) remain on despite no power to this outlet.

Okay, I figure it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that this outlet box has achieved its usable life span. On Monday I consult with people more practiced in electricity and home repair than myself and that is the consensus. So on Tuesday I run to Home Depot and pick up a new GFI outlet and a little tester dealio. Thanks to the tilt of the earth, and Daylight Savings time it is dark when I have time to do this. So I go downstairs, flip the breaker marked BASEMENT and proceed to wire this new outlet in the dark holding a flashlight under my chin.

Much like Clark Griswold in Christmas Vacation I throw the breaker and proudly plug in the little tester. Nothing happens. Now I’m out of ideas, I had one shot in my locker and that didn’t work, so I retreat. The next morning I call in the big guns, my buddy Matt has a father-in-law that is a master union electrician (retired), he conferences him in and we go play by play. Based on my explanation the best he can come up with is – perhaps the outlet you bought is supposed to be wired differently (since I just copied how it was already set up), OR something about the circuit line and load, GFI blah blah blah that I couldn’t follow.

SO – keeping in mind numbers 1&2 I figure I’m out of my depth here time to call in reinforcements. So the electrician arrived at 8:30am. I recited my tale to him, and he pulls out a little electric detecto light. It isn’t showing power to that outlet – so far so good. He asks “Are you sure this outlet is on the basement circuit?” To which my only answer was “Well we’re in the basement?”. He said, “Do you know if your bathroom outlet(s) are working?” Turns out, the BASEMENT labeled circuit was only for the lights. This particular outlet as he proceeded to find out was part of something called “OUTSIDE”.

Now it did turn out that the particular breaker for OUTSIDE was going bad, after he fixed it he points to my outlet now proudly showing its bright little green light. He said, “See you did wire it right all along!”. To which I said, “You mean I wired that box up with the power on, and did it in the dark for no reason since that wasn’t even the right breaker.” The electrician guy really got a kick out of this and started just laughing. So I asked, “How did I not get electrocuted?” His response was an unsatisfactory – “Thats a good question, I don’t know.”

We need a rotisserie to make some of the stuff we need to do on the car moderately easier. The moderately part means it isn’t worth buying (or building) one, but if some loyal DTOM reader in the greater Atlanta area has one they’d like to store in Craig’s garage on a temporary basis. Well – win / win. (We had hoped Santa would provide but I guess the reindeer balked at lugging around 500 lbs of square steel tubing and he had his hands full with Craig’s tickle me elmo requests.)

A rotisserie basically serves the same purpose as the one you use on the grill, or that the gyro place has. Except in this example the car is the chicken / turkey / lamb&beef amalgamation.

If you have one, or know someone that does that wants to loan / sell / donate – please contact us at: dtomracing [at@] “G” male dot. com. Or you can just post a comment to this post and we’ll get back to you. Thanks!!

NOT this kind.

LIKE THIS!!

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.