tourenwagen

I did my first race on June 21 at an NCRC/ARC event at Thunderhill. The race was fun. I was bottled up behind a car I should have been able to pass. I need to work on setting up cars to pass.

In race 2, I blew a head gasket on the second lap. With the head off, the pistons aren’t quite what I should be running and the deck of the block isn’t flat. The 3.0 liter engine in the 1995 M3 is prone to blow head gaskets. And it’s the wrong engine for the IP class in BMW CCA. So I bought a used engine from a MZ3 with 42k miles. Bavarian Motorsport in Milpitas is doing the swap for me.

I spent Saturday night helping some enduro teams. They all had support teams in place already, so I was some extra hands. I helped two drivers do change over. I cleaned lots of windshields and headlights. I held a fire extinguisher during a fuel stop. And I held a light and some tools during a fan belt change.

Here are some nuggets I picked up.

- It’s good to have a lot of lights in the pits. Flashlights, camping lights, cordless trouble lights are good task lighting. The sanctioning body had some huge lights on the pit lane, which left huge shadows behing the pit wall. Some fill lights behind the pit wall will cut down on the tripping over stuff, inability to find stuff etc. Battery powered camping lights on stands or hanging from EZ UP is one way to go. Lights on trailer (if it’s close enough) is another way.

- In prep for quick repairs, have tools ready and sorted. Don’t have metric and SAE mixed. If there’s a bolt that might be loosened as part of a repair, make sure it’s been loosened (and properly retighted) sometime within the past year.

- Practice, practice, practice. Fuel stops and driver changes should be practiced. If people from another pit are pitching in, have assigned rolls well before the stop. Have the radio person get everyone staged before the car comes down the pit lane. Rolls include: driver helper(s) (optional 2nd on passenger side) one of whom can be the exiting driver, fueler (optional second fueler for faster pit stop), fire bottle holder, window cleaner, lolly pop holder. Having three people plus exiting driver is a decent number. 1 on fuel, 1 on fire bottle, 1 on radio, lolly pop, windows, and the fourth person being the exiting driver helping the entering driver.

- Have some means of indicating where a car should stop. A lighted lolly pop would be frickin’ awesome.

- Have a lighted indicator on the car so it’s easy to spot at a distance. One the side is good for car on track. While coming down the pits a flick of the headlights timed with radio communication is good.

- Have awesome forward lights. Overspec headlamps plus aimable rally lights looks like the hot ticket. (As a corollary, put stripes via masking tape or duct tape on rear window to cut down on glare.)

- Have a water bottle with tube/straw ready for driver (for non-driver change stops).

- For the spill catch bucket, fabricate something that fits up tight to the wheel.

- Try to avoid more than two cars per radio. Drivers should practice yakking/listening while driving.

- Sliding seats and seat inserts are a really good ideal when dealing with different sized drivers. Stuffing a husky guy in a narrow rib-buster seat for a 1:40 hour drive will lead to pain.

Nice shots of an M3 LTW in the Pacific Northwest, at speed and at rest.

EPS files for doing you own vinyl.

The guy in the Suburban and the guy in the auto hauler were playing chicken at 65 MPH on 101 northbound on Friday afternoon. Before these shots were taken, the auto hauler was swerving in traffic, causing other vehicles to take evasive action, with chain reaction evasive action. Shortly after that, once some of the nearby traffic cleared, it appeared that the Suburban brake-checked the truck. From my perspective I could see the semi lock up under emergency braking. The trailer left massive skid marks as it wagged and encroached on the adjacent lanes.

I followed them from about 3:00 to about 3:05 PM, from approx Fair Oaks Ave. in Sunnyvale to Shoreline Blvd in Mountain View.

Perhaps someone will recognize these images. The Suburban guy, if he did in fact brake-check the semi, has a death wish. The semi driver needs to find another line of work.

Click on the images to see them at full resolution.