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Stealth Gets a Deeper Shade of Black
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.
That actually turned out pretty well.
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.
And the Beat Goes On
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.
NCC BMW CCA HPDE Shenandoah Circuit 5.29.09
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.
Well, there’s your problem…
I’m pretty sure that there steering rack belongs somewhere under the car…
Day 1 of the steering rack adventure is complete. Without making too much of a mess, I managed to get all of the hoses off, fluid drained, and the old rack removed. The tie-rod links proved to be a pain, but after much wrangling, the whole thing finally came out.
If installation is the reverse of removal, do I have to bust my knuckles and pinch my fingers in the same places as I put it back together?
Stealth Not Ready for Prime Time
I was hoping I’d be able to make it to the May NCC HPDE at Summit Point at the end of the month without having to replace my steering rack, but no luck. The boots are full of fluid. There’s also a vibration in the drive-line which probably indicates the U-joints are shot.
Of course, this model doesn’t have replaceable U-joints so you have to replace the whole drive-shaft. The good news (as such) is that a replacement isn’t that expensive, and a good, re-manufactured and balanced shaft is only about $400. Of course, you have to drop the entire exhaust from the header back to get to it…
Since there’s no way it will be repaired before next weekend, I thought I catch up on some of the details I skipped when I rushed on to the track in March.
I’ve always really hated how the stock rotors and calipers just rust away. If you’re running the old bottle-cap wheels, you never see it, but with the open track wheels it really looks poor. Hopefully the extra coating won’t add to the heat build-up.
And no, I didn’t forget the retention spring. I’m just letting the paint dry before putting it back on.
