Streets of Willow Again?

So I can't seem to get away from Streets of Willow. My most despised course. The bunny hill of socal tracks. It really doesn't fit my car and continues to beat the shit out of just about every part on the car, but people insist on going to SOW just when it happens to be the time my car is ready to run. But the course choice was not why I went this time.

Early 2012 I hooked with Honda R&D doing what I do as a CG/Visuialization Designer in Torrance. It's a great place and a great job. One of the perks is a racing enthsuiast club where any of the stlyists, engineers, CAD modelers, painters, marketing dudes, accounting guy or even the mail room guy can sign up and hang out at the track or different events. Honda will sponsor a little chunk of the event to help with the cost which is awesome. A lot of the guys have s2000s which in turn means they like Streets of Willow.

So the first event of the year was SOW and the car was ready to go so I decided not to be a party pooper and just go to have fun with everyone. And that's what I did. It was extremely hot and I hadn't made any adjustments to the car since last SOW other than the wing and the race seats. The wing was totally unnecessary for this course since it's pretty low speed.

I guess the highlight of the day came when I learned someone had a bigger wing than me so I took a ride in this car, Mike Tsay's s2000. If you don't know Mike, it's probably cause you don't have an s2000.

Here's a video from a different event of Mike doing 1:26.0 at Streets in the fucking dark. This is CW with his best day time at 1:24.2 If you don't know Streets his Buttonwillow CW13 best is 1:58. So he's fast and taught me a few things.

We were racing CCW which is also not really my preferred route as you're hard braking into the skid pad which can be fun but gets boring. T1 in the other direction (CW) is probably my favorite corner of the track.

And you're running up that hill. When you get to the top of the hill (I don't know corner names T8 I think) and have to brake for that bowl it can be kind of scary. This is the one section I could probably gain a second or two on. Mike waits WAY late and trail brakes deep into the corner. Scared the shit out me to say the least.

This is footage from the event. I am in the car and around 1:30 Mike drops 2 wheels and comes within stopping distance of the port-a-potty.

The rest of the course is a lot of tight corners that benefit from sticky tires and a lightweight vehicle  Two things I did not have. I didn't push the car. Just enjoyed the day. Didn't best any times from last SOW event. I can't remember what they were but they didn't break 1:32.

HPD was there messing around with their Acura RSX. It was cool to talk to the team and some of the techs and ask how they got into it. One of the guys used to work for Turner! We talked BMWs. He said there's a large turnover out there. I'm happy to be where I'm at now, but always think about being more involved as a race tech and what that's like. Working at Honda gives me the chance to actually talk to those guys and see what they do.

I've seen designers build splitters in the workshop after hours. Another guy is a CAD modeler and essentially built the ILX raced at NASA 25 hours of Thunderhill. There's a lot of guys doing design related work who have track cars and love racing but don't work directly with race cars. It makes me feel more than satisfied about my position. Maybe if I worked directly in racing I'd get bored. It wouldn't be a hobby anymore. Plus all the race engineers, mechanics I've talked to are like you and me. They want to be behind the wheel but it didn't work out that way. Only a select few get to drive around in circles for a living.

There's a lot in the works coming up for 2013 track season if I find the time. New tires, brakes, fluids, rear end refresh, diff, bushings, shifters, mounts, coilovers etc. A lot of basics I didn't know about until the past year or so. I have some s2000 catching up to do.

AFE Cone for Eurosport E36 M3 3.5" CAI ITG Filter Subsitute

My ITG filter fell to pieces like most of them do. I have the eurosport carbon fiber intake with ITG filter. I wanted a replacement mesh K&N style filter that wasn't blue that was cheaper and would last much longer than the ITG. I found the biggest one that would fit behind the headlight that was gray in color! Here's the part number 21-35008. Its is the 8" AFE Pro Dry S non-oil filter for $55. It's here at summit racing. You can do it too when your ITG filter disintegrates.

Racetech RT4009 Race Seats and Wedge Engineering Seat Brackets

The blog has seen a lot of maintenance, a lot of learning and a few track days. I'm focusing more now on track goodies so the car is starting to transform more into a pure track car, that for now, gets driven to the track.

Some more parts I added to the build in 2012 were a pair of lightly used Racetech 4009 seats. These are probably my favorite seats next to Recaro SPG which look almost identical. I like these better because I see a lot of racers using them. And well if I'm going to pose I'm going to pose hard. The seller said he has had both and feel the Racetech's were more comfortable.

They were off a Subaru and came with Wedge Engineering brackets for a WRX. I sold those, but since Wedge is local I decided to try their E36 brackets. Here's what they look like if anyone is considering them.

I have a long review of these brackets that you can read here. I'll basically go over the same problems I encountered when using these brackets.

The WE brackets tend to only use Recaro Sliders. There are two types of Recaro sliders. You have to speicify which kind you have. I had the kind with the tabs and 3 holes. Someone had cut down one of the tabs pressumably to fit with their application. I put them on the scale. 5lbs 13oz.

Wedge also makes their own seat mounts. No one bothered to paint these so there was some suface rust. 4lb 8 oz for these bad boys.

Now the bracket itself comes in at 9lbs 9 oz.

All that being said we're looking at 19.8lbs of hardware per side. That's a little hefty. The seat itself only weighs 20lbs.

I cleaned up the seat mounts with some sand paper.

Set up my ghetto paint booth.

mmmmm gloss black...

Bye bye vaders. I love you but you have to go. We will see each other again one day. :(

It was really hard to sell the vaders but there just wasn't any more room. They're one of my favorite parts on the interior of the e36 M3.

I prepared the interior for the new seats.

Alright, so here is where the problem with the brackets begin. Wedge designs them so that you can use your stock seat belt recepitcle. To do this you need about 2" of room by the tranny tunnel. Guess what? This moves you over 2" from the center of the steering wheel. Which sucks. There was no way I was going to live with that. Also this seat is a little more narrow than the stock width their brackets are measured for.

I call them up to ask what I can do. They're aware of the problem and said to bring the brackets back in with the measurements of how far over I want the seat mounted. Since wedge is in Long Beach about 30 min from me, it wasn't a problem. Over the phone with shipping etc. forget about it. Use someone local or buy the VAC plates. They're not that much more when you start to break it down.

So I get down there and tell them I need it moved over 1.75" I figured this would be enough and there is room on the seat mounts to adjust side to side about 1". The way the brackets work is with recaro sliders. I don't know how else you would use them. The sliders attach to 2 tubes that the weld to the frame.

Here's the only picture I have of the custom mount. He just welded a tube 1.75" over from the right. My seat  was able to use the location of the original tube on the other side so he didn't have to weld on an additional one. Narrowing the width obviously changes the width of the slider bar, so they cut that down and reweled it. Above you can see the original width which will be the passenger bar and the new driver's side bar. Also you can see the "old" tube not being used to the right side of the slider.

It was like right at lunch time and they were kind of pissed or in a hurry to do the work so they charged me $20. He bascially gave me a wet painted slider bar. I held it there waiting for it to dry...

Would I go with Wedge again. Probably not. They're ok dudes, but I mean they make mass market drag car seat mounts. Down and dirty. A race seat mount is going to be custom for every driver and VAC gives you that DIY customization on the fly with the flat aluminum seat bases with a hundred holes. That's why they're so popular. You don't have to sit at some industrial fabrication shop in the asshole of Los Angeles watching Judge Judy, breathing metal fumes watching a teamster eat King Taco sipping down 64oz of his favorite sugary beverage while it's 110 degrees outside when you should really be at work, but you said you're going to drop your parents off at the airport, and when you get back you've spent 2 hours each way in traffic, but at least you have a seat bracket that points you directly at the seat. So yeah they're local, but it's a pain in the ass. So unless you're already buddies with you friend who does fab and it's more enjoyable experience to watch him weld shit up, go with a VAC mount.

So I was able to get the seat the driver's seat the way I wanted it. When I did a test fit with my helmet my head hit the headliner. Without a helmet in a kind of slouched down driving around town position the height was ok. But with the harness and everything in race position it was no good.

I hit up racetechna (which seems to no longer be in business?) to buy the 2-piece seat which is the older version. I also prefer this look to the one piece bottom. Maybe because it looks more like the Recaro. I don't know. It's about 1.5" lower than the one piece seat which is intended to be more comfortable. The height of the seat mount in combination with the sliders could make the whole seat a little taller than most people want it. I'm 5'11" but made it work with the lower seat.

I happened to have another Schroth Rallye 4 that I bought as a pair but never installed. So that went on the passenger side.

So that's about it. They are amazing. I now have baby seats in my car as my wife calls them.

I believe I can Fly. MA Shaw E36 M3 PTG EVO Rear Wing

Sometime around the end of 2012 I opened bimmerforums to see a MA Shaw PTG EVO wing with cosmos mettalic trunk for sale in Laguna Hills. Well how about that? I have a comos metallic M3 and aren't we going down to Laguna Beach today to see some friends?

It turns out this is Dan Wennerberg's wing from his IP car of Pure Performance. I love getting parts that have race history/energy already in them. If you've ever bought some race parts from Dan you know he's a good guy with reasonable prices.

A big part of the sale for me was that it came with the trunk. I could keep my stock lid and not have to worry about installation, drilling holes etc. For this reason it was a pretty simple install.

A little information about the wing. You can buy it here. This one is full carbon fiber and weighs 12lbs. It is adjustable to 3 positions. MA Shaw makes the best replica from what I've read. I would stay away from DTM fiber works replica. VAC always makes great products and they sell one too. I haven't heard if their quality is good or bad.

My car is this kind of hybrid track/street car so I kept the inner toolkit and carpet. It weighs 3lbs 6oz for anyone wondering. I weigh a lot of things.

I weighed the rest of the stuff but can't find the pics. I think the trunk lid weighed 22lbs and together it was 34lbs.

Like I said there was nothing to the installation. Just put the other trunk on and adjust each side about 50 times until it lines up. I did a test fit and decided I liked the sticker placement he had on there so I filed that idea away for later. It's of course no secret that YOU HAVE TO put a sticker on the bottom side of the wing.

I removed the stickers to give it a full cleaning and polish.

The black matched perfectly. (Black generally isn't the hardest color to match.) Here's a quick polishing overview of the different pads and compounds I used. I'm hardly a pro and I learned all this stuff on bimmerfoums. So there are thousand products and ways to buff your car but this is generally a thorough 4 step method after cleaning and clay bar. Cutting power of the pad and polish can move up and down in range but essentially the Menzerna line and Lake County pads give a good range. I used a Portal Cable which doesn't cut very much and won't burn the paint. It's hard to get out deep stuff. I'm going to try a Flex next.


Step 1 Orange/Yellow Lake County Pad and Menzerna Super Intensive Polish

 Step 2 White Pad and Super Finish

Step 3 Black Pad and Finishing Glaze

 Step 4 Red Pad and Power Lock Sealant or Wax.

Like I mentioned earlier I liked the sticker placement Dan originally had on there so I ordered a BMW Motorsport decal from Acromann. 34" in width and created my number 27 here at work. I like the way it turned out. M Power would also work and be taller if you made it 34" wide.

Acromann has everything. They're in China and it will take almost a month to get your sticker. If you have the ability to print it yourself I would just do that. The font is Helvetica.

So needless to say it gets more attention than I need on the street, but hey, it looks like it can fly now.

Getting Back to Business

Alright, so it's been awhile. For those of you who know me, you know we had a little duder come into our lives last year on June 1st. West Lee Pinkerton has brought tons of joy and pride to our lives and a lot less sleep. Needless to say priorities change prior to and after such life changing events!

So first things first of course include fashioning an ///M onesie and a 5pt harness. But before this becomes a baby blog, other happenings of 2012 included a new job at Honda R&D doing visualization design within the styling department. A goal of mine since studying transportation design focusing on animation and visualization at the Art Center in Pasadena.

I sold the e28 and made room for a 2012 Honda CR-V. I know, blasphemous. Here's a link to the for sale photos of the e28. I'm not going to back date the blog with the happenings of that car since there is just too much and I want to stay focused on the M3.

But to summarize what didn't make it in the blog, I found a set of new comfort seats, installed a dash, wired up some audio goodness, replaced the antenna 3 times including the factory wiring which was gone, changed some P/S hoses, got it detailed and sold it to a nice man in San Diego. It currently has euro bumpers. I couldn't be happier. It was a cool car, but not the time for it.

Same could be said about the M3! But there is too much invested to stop now. We're getting used to the routine with West and I've been able to dedicate a few weekends here and there to getting the M3 back to where it should be. It took a back seat and has been sitting for the most part. I'll be updating the next few posts with some of the more major items that happened in 2012.

There's going to be a lot of overhauling happening in 2013 including a complete rear suspension overhaul which I've naively just started the other day. (gulp)