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.

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!

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.