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Done Painting the Stealth (for now)

rear view

It’s easy to forget what a long road it’s been, but if you click through this set of photos, it’s really amazing how far this car has come in the last 13 months. I put the badges back on and hooked up the spray nozzles on the hood tonight. Once I knocked the dust off, I was amazed that this actually looks like a real car from about 5 feet.

before

The challenge with flat black paint is you can’t really appreciate it in bright light, but once the light starts to fade, it really looks great. Who would have thunk it.

front now

And all it took was about 15 rattle cans of black, half a dozen cans of filler-primer, and two tubes of bondo.

front before

MINI Paid Off & Stealth Bubbles

Hood respray

Like so many things with this car, you never really know what’s wrong until you get out the grinder. After I finished painting the roof, I found a bubble in the paint on the hood. At some point in it’s tortured existence, something very heavy landed on the hood of this BMW. The hood is mostly straight, but it sits about a quarter inch lower than it should at the hinge mounting point. It sat so low, it rubbed against the top of the throttle control link which wore a hole through the hood liner. I took the liner off, but there was no rust from the underside of the hood. I took the grinder to the bubble and found nothing but bondo. Evidently the bondo wasn’t bonding to the metal so well and had created a bubble in the paint. Sort of odd, but fixable with better prep work and more bondo. I tried to blend the patch, but trying to blend flat paint doesn’t work so well and I ended up respraying the whole hood.

But that wasn’t the big news of the day: I finally paid off the MINI today. If you know my history with cars, you’ll appreciate the magnitude of this day. For the first time since March 1988, I don’t have a car note of some kind. Now I just have to resist all of the deep discounts, once-in-a-lifetime-sales-events, zero percent financing, and cash-for-clunkers offers. That convertible we have, which probably wouldn’t sell for $1500, is worth $3500 if traded against a passenger car that gets 22 MPG or better. And Volvo currently has a $2250 discount on new 2009 V50s. The BMW 335d qualifies for a $4500 tax credit. I’m just saying….

Stealth Gets a Deeper Shade of Black

Roof in primer

I finally finished my rattle-can respray in black. Well almost. I have a rust bubble I have to finish on the hood, but otherwise it’s finally done. My goal of a more or less uniform satin black finish is almost realized. The last bit of major painting was the trunk and deck-spoiler.

spoiler primer

That actually turned out pretty well.

spoiler black

I need to rub-out and polish the whole thing, but it’s coming together nicely. I’ll post pictures with the spoiler painted as soon as it stops raining. This one shows the roof done before I finished the spoiler.

roof done

And the Beat Goes On

BMW

It was a beautiful morning for an autocross. The National Capital Chapter of the BMW CCA held another points event at the MD State Police Training Facility in Sykesville. I was eager to get the BMW back on the road, so I gave it a try, even though the U-joint beats the drive-line like a madman. The 16 inch MINI wheels and R-comps are a bit too tall for the E30. I can’t quite get lock-to-lock without some rubbing in the wheel well. In the future, I’ll have to stick with the RA1s on the 15 inch wheels instead.

The steering rack performed flawlessly. It’s probably psychosomatic on my part, but it seems easier to steer and more responsive to input. Maybe that’s because the system is holding pressure and not just pumping fluid into the boots. The drive-line is something I’m going to have to deal with. I think I progressed backwards today: my fastest run was the first one; slowest the last. I found as I went on, that the vibration became worse and by the end, I couldn’t give it full power without shaking the whole car.

Caliper Paint

I also managed to finally finish painting all of the calipers last week. Red calipers must be good for .2 secs a run…

Update: 6/14/09. Just checked the results and I won my class!

In action

Thanks to the NCC website, I just got some photos of the Stealth in action last week at Sykesville. There are a couple of things to note in these photos. The first one is under hard braking, just turning-in to a fairly tight right turn, body roll isn’t bad and the front doesn’t seem to be really loaded.

The second thing I notice is how much better the paint looks on the door and front fender than the rear quarter panel. That’s because I haven’t painted the rear quarter panel yet. I’m also thinking that if I really want to stick with the whole black-out theme, I need to tint the windows and paint the chrome trim black as well.

turn in

NCC BMW CCA HPDE Shenandoah Circuit 5.29.09

MINI at the track

It was a beautiful weekend to be at the track. (Actually, there are no bad weekends to be at the track. Except maybe when it snows — been there, done that.) Except for a brief deluge, it was sunny and warm all three days. I really appreciate the Friday IA days. I get more track time in that one day than I do in the rest of the weekend. So much in fact, that I almost ran out of gas.

The two videos below show the last run session on Sunday for the A Group. The groups all had about 12 students each which was an ideal size for this track. We were also fairly close in speed, with a few faster than the MINI (OK, most) and a few slower. This was also the first time I’ve run with another MINI on the track that wasn’t driven by an instructor. It was cool to see the difference in performance between the R53 (mine) and the R56. With about 20% more torque, the new turbo really pulls away on the straight.

The skidpad was interesting. I don’t know what BSR has done to it, but you’d think a skidpad was supposed to be slick. This one had an amazing amount of grip, even when soaked. We were hitting speeds above 42MPH before getting any understeer. It wouldn’t be a problem except there isn’t much run-off area when you start to spin or push outside of the wet zone. I managed to get the MINI to oversteer by increasing the pressure differential between the front and rear tires. When the tires were cold, it really came around with just a throttle lift. When the tires were hot, we had to induce it with the E-brake.

not so slick skid pad