My E90 M3 Dedicated Track build (with pix!)

[roastbeef]

i've been offered the keys to two different people's cars before at the track. i've turned it down each time... i'm not willing to take on that risk/responsibility.

[SYT_Shadow]

Originally Posted by roastbeef

i've been offered the keys to two different people's cars before at the track. i've turned it down each time... i'm not willing to take on that risk/responsibility.

I'll take them for a ride in my car if needed. Don't want to drive theirs

[ThunderMoose]

Originally Posted by SYT_Shadow

I'll take them for a ride in my car if needed. Don't want to drive theirs

I've let a few people drive my car. I assume all the risk when I do so. I really have to trust them as a driver to do so.

[Kelse92]

I loan my car out all the time for co-driving at autocross. But I’m with y’all at the track it’s just too risky.

[SYT_Shadow]

Originally Posted by ThunderMoose

I've let a few people drive my car. I assume all the risk when I do so. I really have to trust them as a driver to do so.

I lend one of my cars to a friend every year for 4 events, but generally just my brother and I will drive them.

One time I had a student with a CaymanS who swore it was not possible to rev match in his car due to his brake booster being a gt3 one, so I did drive his car.

[Richbot]

With all of the groups I’ve helped with it was optional. I have had one taker who regretted it because he felt a little nauseous after but none were ever compelled.

[roastbeef]

Originally Posted by SYT_Shadow

I'll take them for a ride in my car if needed. Don't want to drive theirs

It wasn't even for instruction... it's was more of a "want to see what mine feels like?" situation.

[SYT_Shadow]

Originally Posted by roastbeef

It wasn't even for instruction... it's was more of a "want to see what mine feels like?" situation.

that's what she said...

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by SYT_Shadow

that's what she said...

awwww dammmmmn haha!

You know, I've been wanting to make a comment like that on that thread where the guy is asking about the clicking/flapping sound on right handers......the innuendo seems so obvious! hahahaha

[roastbeef]

I've never been so lucky as to have those words uttered to me, but it went something like that. Lol

[dogbone]

Made a last minute decision to go to High Plains Raceway today. Lucked out that the turnout was low. I thought it would be insane with 24 Hours of Lemons going on at HPR this weekend, but it was quite sparse. The minor downside is that, of the cars on track, many were Lemons cars so they were damn slow hahaha. Ah well no big deal. Was just out to have a good time and do some driving.

Met Melchior out there today. Very nice guy and great driver. He was out there in an F80 M3 with full aero, some kind of tune, down pipes, race seats and was on RE71. hehe in my E92, I could not keep up with that car! He blew right by me on the back straight! My top speed is like 129 and his was 144mph. Ah yes, NA at 5000 ft versus turbo.....it's not even close. He was running 1:56's. I was running 1:59's. It was fun to see another M3 getting tossed around the track.

They ran open track until lunch. I ran like 6 sessions by 11:30 and was ready to go home. Was home by 1PM! Had lunch with the wife!

Anyway, I went out to turn some laps and have fun and it worked out very nicely.

Here's Melchior taking care of business. He went right by me without any issues hahaha

[Melchior]

It was awesome running into you at HPR. Seeing your car out there made miss my E92, for how capable and easy it was to drive.

The new turbo car is a brute, but it's tough to drive smooth until I get more seat time in it.

I'll look for you next time I'm out there.

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by Melchior

It was awesome running into you at HPR. Seeing your car out there made miss my E92, for how capable and easy it was to drive.

The new turbo car is a brute, but it's tough to drive smooth until I get more seat time in it.

I'll look for you next time I'm out there.

Until next time!

[rhyary]

Originally Posted by roastbeef

Pros use wristbands. Does the job and less weight than a head band. (1/2 joking)

Aspired to be a worthy E92 M3 owner, and always inspired by roastbeef ideas, before and after:
.

[roastbeef]

Not THATS a nice fitting fluid stopper! Bravo!

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by rhyary

Aspired to be a worthy E92 M3 owner, and always inspired by roastbeef ideas, before and after:
.

hehe nice! I’m doing the same dam thing.

[///Mobbin]

And here I was soo excited about having the Bimmerworld reservoir on the new-to-me e92 m3 I just purchased ... will go ahead and order some sweat bands!

[Richbot]

My spoon sports replica fluid reservoir condom did a commendable job of catching the spittle from my PS reservoir at a track day last weekend. Didn’t stop it all, but caught enough to keep it off the whole engine bay

[dogbone]

So sad that this is a problem

And there are several aftermarket options....and I don't know that any of them fix it. I mean......for goodness sake, can't someone just create a vented cap that goes straight to good solid hose connection and then you could just hook up a hose and send the fluid wherever you want to a catch can? ARGH!

[dogbone]

I attended the PCA-San Diego Chuckwalla CCW event this weekend. They always put on a nice event.

As with all track weekends, there were ups and downs.

Prior to the event, on Friday, I arrived at Minicorsa for some regular maintenance stuff, opened the back door of the trailer and was greeted with fluid under the car. It was coming from the passenger-rear damper. I have been concerned about rebuilding the dampers for awhile because it’s been a long time. I wondered how long you could go. My answer is——don’t wait 4 1/2 years between rebuilds. The last time they were rebuilt was May 2015. So, yeah, my bad. The problem is that the logistics behind such a rebuild are complicated since I don’t live in CA anymore, so I’ve been sort of avoiding it.

I started looking at my options right away. Danny at Minicorsa investigated the situation and thought the damper would be ok for one more weekend. He simply suggested I do nothing and just run it. After a flurry of phone calls, I found Rob at Chewerks in City of Industry. He’s an authorized JRZ rebuild shop. He said that he could rebuild the damper by 7PM that evening. I was thrilled to have that option and appreciated him being willing to do that. However, the running around town in really crappy Friday LA traffic (the brush fires just hit) that I would have to do would be pretty insane. Looking at Waze, it was going to take a long time to get across town and back (I had tires being mounted in North Hollywood) and then back down there again to reinstall the fixed damper---and then having to still drive 200 miles to the track……argh…..After a lot of deliberation, I decided to follow Danny’s advice and do nothing to the damper for the weekend. Nothing was at stake at the event. If the car didn’t drive well, I would simply stop driving and just chill out and enjoy hanging out with friends.

I was tense during the first session. I was very delicate for the first couple laps. The car seemed generally fine, so I pushed harder. It handled it well. So, I started going for it, and maybe at the hairy limit (or past the limit) it was mildly funky, but I decided the car was ok to hammer on. Whatever mild funkiness I felt was manageable. By the 3rd session, I had the fastest lap of the event so far. That held up until the 5th session. PCA started doing a competition session on Day 1 during the 5th session. Several people (not me) put on better tires and ran faster than me. I didn’t care about that session because it was for points in the Porsche TT series. Sine the car felt ok, my sights were set on achieving a new personal best on Sunday morning——cool weather, a day of track under my belt, good tires. So, I kept driving all day Saturday—working on getting the track in my head and keeping an eye on the rear damper.

Sunday morning, I fully committed to trying to get a new personal best. I decided that the time trial in the afternoon on Sunday was secondary to me. I knew that I could not set a new personal best in 92ºF temps. When the temps are in the 90s, the engine just simply does not pull like when it’s in the 60s, and of course, grip is down when the track is blazing hot. So, I put on my good (almost new) tires, and——I was happy that I was able to run a new personal best of 1:52.57 (0.13 sec faster), and ultimately that lap was the fastest lap run at the event. I did run the time trial. Ran a 1:54.33 and got second place by 0.09 sec. The winner had brand new sticker Yoko slicks. I was happy that my not-new tires almost won the TT.

I had another problem that crept up at the track on Sunday after I set my PB. Some electric wires that are tied to a brake booster in the front-driver side wheelwell somehow got loose and rubbed on the top of the tire to the point that they separated. In the middle of one of the sessions, I had to start pressing the brake harder——talk about freaking out. The first time it happened, I was entering the Bowl. Holy mackerel. I had to do a monster leg press on the brake pedal just to not fly off the track! A tech at the track jumped under my car and electrical-taped the wires back together. I dunno……it’s better now, but it’s still feeling funky at the limit. Not sure what the solution there is gonna be. The sad part is that someone saw the wires hanging down and told me, and then I got busy and forgot and drove it and wore through the wires. Sigh….my bad.

I also noticed that one of the brake pads on the front brakes is wearing quite a bit faster than the other 3 front pads. So I replaced all four, even though the other three still had plenty of material. I’ll keep them as spares. Jeff at Essex says this is normal and suggested rotating the pads around the front calipers. Ok, I can do that.

Sadly, I don’t have video of my fast lap. Again, my dumb error…..the SD card ran out of capacity on my warm up lap. My bad…..it had two other track days on it. So, if anyone wants to see 4 minutes of me sitting on pit lane and then 1/4 of my warm up lap right before my fast lap, I can assure you, it’s riveting video. Hehe you know, this weekend had a lot of “my bads”……

The biggest bummer of the weekend wasn’t actually my problem: my friend with a 996 GT3 had a motor seize up on him while on track. Some techs came over to investigate and found metal shavings in his oil filter. Argh.

And what about the damper rebuild? I want to thank Rob at Chewerks because he helped me come up with a solution for rebuilding my dampers that will save me a LOTTT of time and trouble. He allowed me to drop off my car at his shop on Sunday night while driving back from the Chuckwalla event. He’s gonna keep the car for a couple weeks——pull the whole suspension, rebuild all four dampers, reinstall the whole setup and re-align it. I need to be back in LA for work stuff in a week-and-a-half, so I’ll fly back and pick everything up all finished. Amazing. I don’t have to tie up a raceshop’s lift for several days and rush ship dampers out of town for a rebuild and then rush ship them back. I was even gonna ship my stock dampers from CO to CA to use as a placeholder suspension so a shop could roll the car around. Ugh this is why I was avoiding the rebuild. So, now I’m excited about getting the rebuild done.

Anyway, I’m glad that Danny suggested running the damper as is. I would not have done that on my own. And I’m even more glad that it drove as well as it did. And I’m even more glad that I was able to work out this solution for getting the dampers rebuilt. Phew.

Ok, onto the next question: should I run at Super Lap Battle next month? For sure, I have no hope of ever winning in Unlimited. But I have podiumed before. hmmmmmm

[ThunderMoose]

Originally Posted by dogbone

I attended the PCA-San Diego Chuckwalla CCW event this weekend. They always put on a nice event.

As with all track weekends, there were ups and downs.

Prior to the event, on Friday, I arrived at Minicorsa for some regular maintenance stuff, opened the back door of the trailer and was greeted with fluid under the car. It was coming from the passenger-rear damper. I have been concerned about rebuilding the dampers for awhile because it’s been a long time. I wondered how long you could go. My answer is——don’t wait 4 1/2 years between rebuilds. The last time they were rebuilt was May 2015. So, yeah, my bad. The problem is that the logistics behind such a rebuild are complicated since I don’t live in CA anymore, so I’ve been sort of avoiding it.

I started looking at my options right away. Danny at Minicorsa investigated the situation and thought the damper would be ok for one more weekend. He simply suggested I do nothing and just run it. After a flurry of phone calls, I found Rob at Chewerks in City of Industry. He’s an authorized JRZ rebuild shop. He said that he could rebuild the damper by 7PM that evening. I was thrilled to have that option and appreciated him being willing to do that. However, the running around town in really crappy Friday LA traffic (the brush fires just hit) that I would have to do would be pretty insane. Looking at Waze, it was going to take a long time to get across town and back (I had tires being mounted in North Hollywood) and then back down there again to reinstall the fixed damper---and then having to still drive 200 miles to the track……argh…..After a lot of deliberation, I decided to follow Danny’s advice and do nothing to the damper for the weekend. Nothing was at stake at the event. If the car didn’t drive well, I would simply stop driving and just chill out and enjoy hanging out with friends.

I was tense during the first session. I was very delicate for the first couple laps. The car seemed generally fine, so I pushed harder. It handled it well. So, I started going for it, and maybe at the hairy limit (or past the limit) it was mildly funky, but I decided the car was ok to hammer on. Whatever mild funkiness I felt was manageable. By the 3rd session, I had the fastest lap of the event so far. That held up until the 5th session. PCA started doing a competition session on Day 1 during the 5th session. Several people (not me) put on better tires and ran faster than me. I didn’t care about that session because it was for points in the Porsche TT series. Sine the car felt ok, my sights were set on achieving a new personal best on Sunday morning——cool weather, a day of track under my belt, good tires. So, I kept driving all day Saturday—working on getting the track in my head and keeping an eye on the rear damper.

Sunday morning, I fully committed to trying to get a new personal best. I decided that the time trial in the afternoon on Sunday was secondary to me. I knew that I could not set a new personal best in 92ºF temps. When the temps are in the 90s, the engine just simply does not pull like when it’s in the 60s, and of course, grip is down when the track is blazing hot. So, I put on my good (almost new) tires, and——I was happy that I was able to run a new personal best of 1:52.57 (0.13 sec faster), and ultimately that lap was the fastest lap run at the event. I did run the time trial. Ran a 1:54.33 and got second place by 0.09 sec. The winner had brand new sticker Yoko slicks. I was happy that my not-new tires almost won the TT.

I had another problem that crept up at the track on Sunday after I set my PB. Some electric wires that are tied to a brake booster in the front-driver side wheelwell somehow got loose and rubbed on the top of the tire to the point that they separated. In the middle of one of the sessions, I had to start pressing the brake harder——talk about freaking out. The first time it happened, I was entering the Bowl. Holy mackerel. I had to do a monster leg press on the brake pedal just to not fly off the track! A tech at the track jumped under my car and electrical-taped the wires back together. I dunno……it’s better now, but it’s still feeling funky at the limit. Not sure what the solution there is gonna be. The sad part is that someone saw the wires hanging down and told me, and then I got busy and forgot and drove it and wore through the wires. Sigh….my bad.

I also noticed that one of the brake pads on the front brakes is wearing quite a bit faster than the other 3 front pads. So I replaced all four, even though the other three still had plenty of material. I’ll keep them as spares. Jeff at Essex says this is normal and suggested rotating the pads around the front calipers. Ok, I can do that.

Sadly, I don’t have video of my fast lap. Again, my dumb error…..the SD card ran out of capacity on my warm up lap. My bad…..it had two other track days on it. So, if anyone wants to see 4 minutes of me sitting on pit lane and then 1/4 of my warm up lap right before my fast lap, I can assure you, it’s riveting video. Hehe you know, this weekend had a lot of “my bads”……

The biggest bummer of the weekend wasn’t actually my problem: my friend with a 996 GT3 had a motor seize up on him while on track. Some techs came over to investigate and found metal shavings in his oil filter. Argh.

And what about the damper rebuild? I want to thank Rob at Chewerks because he helped me come up with a solution for rebuilding my dampers that will save me a LOTTT of time and trouble. He allowed me to drop off my car at his shop on Sunday night while driving back from the Chuckwalla event. He’s gonna keep the car for a couple weeks——pull the whole suspension, rebuild all four dampers, reinstall the whole setup and re-align it. I need to be back in LA for work stuff in a week-and-a-half, so I’ll fly back and pick everything up all finished. Amazing. I don’t have to tie up a raceshop’s lift for several days and rush ship dampers out of town for a rebuild and then rush ship them back. I was even gonna ship my stock dampers from CO to CA to use as a placeholder suspension so a shop could roll the car around. Ugh this is why I was avoiding the rebuild. So, now I’m excited about getting the rebuild done.

Anyway, I’m glad that Danny suggested running the damper as is. I would not have done that on my own. And I’m even more glad that it drove as well as it did. And I’m even more glad that I was able to work out this solution for getting the dampers rebuilt. Phew.

Ok, onto the next question: should I run at Super Lap Battle next month? For sure, I have no hope of ever winning in Unlimited. But I have podiumed before. hmmmmmm

Great write up. You really need to get car classed for TT1 and run at least two weekends with SoCal region next year. Nationals will be in Utah.

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by ThunderMoose

Great write up. You really need to get car classed for TT1 and run at least two weekends with SoCal region next year. Nationals will be in Utah.

Thanks.

Since you know where Nationals are in 2020, is the 2020 schedule posted already? I looked briefly but didn't see anything for 2020.

I have slowly been working towards NASA. I completed my TT check ride and participated in one TT in Colorado with my E92 street car. I need one more event for my full license. Then, I need to confirm that my E90 can get into TT1.