Smokey

Also a bummer to see that the hit by pitch call should have been a foul tip strike 3 call which would have ended that inning. Hopefully Tanaka will show up Sunday and pitch the way he can which is lights out with a slider that drops like a rock. Otherwise if he leaves stuff up in the zone he's very hitable.

That was a brutal way to lose. Yanks got to the star pitcher and had the game in the bag, CC pitched a good game, and they blew it.

Go Yankees! I still miss Andrew Miller and wish we would have never given him up. If the Yanks lose I would like to see the tribe take the title, it'd be good for them and the AL which is already a monster competition-wise.

So can GM make an EV truck that I can tow my 5000 lb car and trailer from here to Watkins Glen NY in 7 hours or less? If not then they can't go 100% electric and hope to survive as the truck business is big for them.

Yes Robs car. I'd love to finish it but I'm over my head with my own projects and available time gets shorter every day it seems.

Looking to run AER or another racing org? Want a track car that will be fun and cheap speed? LOVE a project? I've got the car for you! Price: $3,500 Up for sale is a 1995 BMW M3 track car project that has not been finished. Lots of great parts and care taken with the car, just needs someone to finish it up and enjoy. Title is rebuilt Salvage due to the previous owner hitting a deer. The passenger front frame horn was replaced by a local body shop. Body: - 1995 M3 2 door w/ sunroof. - Trunk lid has been gutted - Sunroof panel now bolts in place (cassette removed) - Full rollcage including nascar bars on both passenger and driver and a-pillar gussets - Factory dash upper and pad, but trimmed to cage install (not yet installed) - Doors have been gutted - Front glass is gone, but side quarters and rear glass remains. Currently off the car - The hood and front fenders go along with the sale, but are not on the car currently. Electrical: - All factory BMW wiring has been removed. A Painless wiring 8 circuit kit is included in the sale. Pigtails were retained for taillights, fuel pumps, and other small items Driveline: - Ford 5.0 long block (stock) - T5 trans - Engine and Tran mounts from E36v8.com along with installation CD-Rom - Ford performance engine wiring harness and factory Ford ECU - Several header options all of which need custom fabrication (Factory, shorty headers and long tubes) - Trick Flow upper intake for EFI, Summit racing carb intake. - Many assorted accessories and misc parts Suspension: - TC Kline S/A Coilovers (500/500 spring rates I believe) - TC Kline Delrin LCAB and RTABs. - Ground control Race front sway bar - Rear Adjustable Turner Motorsports Camber Arms. (new) - Turner Motorsport Differential delrin/Aluminum bushing kit (New) - Turner Motorsport Subframe Aluminum bushing kit (New) - Turner Motorsport Upper control arm inner monoballs (New) - Rear outer Trailing arm factory monoballs for upper and lower joints (New) Steering: - Z3 Rack - Adapter for NRG quick release hub (quick release and wheel not included) Interior: - Vorshlag seat brackets and sub harness mount (both driver and passenger) - Several gauges not mounted (stepper motor tach, etc) Brakes: - Brass bushing front and rear for stock calipers - Stainless lines Wheels: - DS1s pictured with RA1s along with contours with BFG R1s. There are other items that will go with the car as there are several boxes of misc parts. If you would like additional pictures of the MISC parts please let me know.

Clay I'm literally getting ready to post my buddies unfinished e36 M3 5.0 swap track car project. I can see if he wants to separate the swap stuff he has but he'd want to sell all the swap stuff together. Text me if you'd be interested.

Good luck Rich! I won't be able to make it out but have a good time. That front straight feels forever long.

Gonna need pics and more details to really narrow it down. The interior condition specifically will drive interest/price for knowledgeable buyers. The CYM color is take it or leave it. Some like and some don't. They do look good when clean and they are a rare option. I'm going to the race track this weekend but let me know if you want me to call you on one of my drives home and talk your face off about variables to FD values.

Auto Assets

Yeah this year feels crazy busy. On top of the track events and needed prep I've also been squeezing in work on the DD/tow vehicle such as transmission service (drop pan, replace filter and 1-2 accumulator), diff fluids (still need to do rear), plugs/wires, oil changes etc. Also trying to do more karting with my son this year so trips down to circileville. Got a family vacation in there and trying to make sure I get to the gym to keep from getting too fat. This spring and summer has flown by. That may eventually happen, but I'm trying my best to put it off. The amount of money it'll cost to do it right far outweighs the power I want/need out of it. We'll see how long I can hold out though as my current turbos are starting to smoke....doh

Next event. Watkins Glen. Once again pretty quick turn around with 2 weeks in-between events. I changed the transmission fluid and diff fluid and took samples of both to send to Blackstone. Haven't gotten the results back yet. Also put in fresh brake pads front and rear. New Ferodo DS1.1s up front and Hawk DTC-30s in the rear. I typically run HT-10s or DTC-60s in the rear, but for Watkins I wanted a little less rear bias since it involves a lot of trail braking zones. I may play around with both compounds at Mid Ohio to see if I can really notice a difference or it's just mental. haha. I had thrown a set of backup pads in the front at Indy and even those got run to the bones Gave a fresh bleed of the brakes. I had to flip 2 of the Nittos because they took some abuse at Indy and were wearing unevenly. I also got a new set of slicks to run for the 2nd half of the season. Unfortunately one of them developed cracks in the sidewall when mounting....bummer. I didn't see them prior to mounting so I can't prove one way or the other. Had to get a replacement sent right to the track because I wouldn't have time to deal with it otherwise. This is the risk of running used race tires though. I also tried to perform an old-shcool smoke test on the vacuum leak. Didn't really give me any new leaks to chase, but did give me a nice buzz huffing down a cigar to blow in there. I picked up a used Improved Racing strut bar which I installed. I had to cob together hardware for the M/C brace since it didn't come with any, but it appears to be holding up. I cleaned up most of the rubber off of the car. Bought this stuff to help with cleanup, and holy crap does it work. Must cause cancer or something because there's no good explanation of how it works so well. Spray on liberally, wait 30 seconds, wipe off. before: after: Just like with Indy when I typically go to an event I start on Nittos and then move to slicks once i feel I'm up to speed. I told myself I wouldn't mount the slicks before I went as fast or faster than last year on the Nittos to make sure I wasn't slowing down and cheating with the tires. I was able to get down to the mid 2:09s on Nittos which is better than last year by over a second so no complaints there. Andy helped me mount the slicks while I was out with my student and I ran the first session on them Friday night. Got down to the 2:05s first session out on the sticky rubber ever at Watkins so I was happy with that. I was prepping the car for the next morning. Filling gas, emptying catch can, filling oil, top up the meth tank, and torquing the wheels. As I torqued the wheels the VERY last lugnut snapped right the hell off.....FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU At this point it's 5pm Friday night in upstate NY so I'm not in a good position. NAPA was closed as they always are whenever you want some shit. I ended up finding an AutoZone 30 mins away that said they could get one from Buffalo the next morning. The other option was to drive up 2.5hrs each way to the warehouse and get it myself. I took the option to get it the next day. The other challenge was that I had a student so I couldn't just abandon him to go get parts. The student takes precedent. I was able to get the part the next day at lunch and get the car back together to run in the afternoon. I mounted the Nittos for the afternoon Saturday because I wanted to feel out the Duralast wheel bearing. Can't say I have a ton of faith in it, but it did well. I have to 2 spare Timkin units in the basement so I need to figure out if I want to change them out before the next event or just leave well enough alone and deal with it in the off-season. Sunday morning I mounted the slicks again once i was comfortable with the wheel bearing. I was able to get some more free space and have more success with lap times. Watkins takes a lot of balls to get good times out of it because there are corners where you can't see the apex and/or exit when you enter and have to carry speed. The other is that I was able to work up to going flat out thru turn 2 so that'd mean going full throttle at the apex of 1 and holding it all the way to the floor until the braking zone at the back straight. May not sound all that scary or look bad in the videos, but I was gritting my teeth the first few times of doing it. Here's a video where i ran a 2:04.00, then 2:04.11 and my miracle lap of 2:02.84 haha. Of course as usual when I get faster, so does the infamous yellow GT3. But it's crazy impressive what his car can do. He's also pulling a full 6-7mph more than me down the back straight so I have to make it up in other places. Most notably I just barrel into the damn bus stop and make it stick.

After the 2nd day of running the instructors and volunteers were invited to a dinner at the Dallara factory. That was cool, they basically have the place setup like COSI for car guys. There is a theatre with Momo race seats to sit in for everywhere where it shows the history of Dallara. I didn't know he designed the Ferrari 333SP and was also involved in the Veyron. Then they have actual carbon tubs of cars you can play around with, suspensions, cars you can sit in, and even simulators running iRacing where you can run laps of the Indy 500 course. back to the driving, the course is fast, but HARD on brakes and HARD on the LF tire. 2 of the 3 heavy braking zones lead to tight 90 degree or more right handers that you carry speed into and blast the LF tire. Here you can see the slick I was running (last event for it) and how there's a swath of rubber missing from the outside. Look at the rubber that was being left on the inside and outside of the wheel as well. Brutal. You can also see how much rubber was on the side of the car when I was done with the event. I also had to change out the brake pads mid-event. You can see the abuse here. Good news it the Ferodo pads are pretty easy on rotors. This set has gone all year so far. The cooling is definitely helping too. The AP rotors live up the hype though. They're forged by Jesus or some shit and way better than the Wilwood and Coleman rotors I ran before. I will say the only downside to this event is that it's crowded. I'm not sure i had one full clean lap all weekend. Also had some higher HP cars who would drag you down the straights and then not point when you caught them in the corners. Can be frustrating. Also, left the front of my car covered in more rubber than I've ever experienced from being right behind people running sticky rubber. I did hook up with 2 guys with really fast BMWs. Both the e30 and e36 had S54 swaps (e46 M3 motor) along with full e46 brakes, ABS, and PFC big brakes for an e46 M3. Here's a session where I went out with them and ran together. As you can see no matter how I tried to run onto the front straight the e30 would gap me. I seemed to catch him on the brakes though and have a bit more corner speed.

Heading to Indy. I had put a new fancy hinged license plate holder on my trailer so I could stop dragging the plate everywhere. Not sure exactly how this happened, but this is the condition of the plate when I showed up in Indy....weird. Back to the drawing board on that one. I eventually took off the bracket and drilled holes in the trailer frame below the tail light and mounted the hinge directly there for more clearance. The Indy event is cool mostly because of the location and fanfare that surrounds the event. The MORPCA team does a great job with this event and dealing with all of the different rules of Indy. I rented a GP garage for the event. Here was the view from my garage....pretty cool and being in the pro pit lane at Indy is just cool all around. When the cars stage and go out for sessions you drive right thru Gasoline Alley. The track itself is laid out to run the opposite direction of the oval and has 14 turns. It's A LOT of time on full throttle with basically 3 very long full throttle zones followed by 3 heavy braking zones and 3 short tight sections. Here's a track map for those not familiar http://indymotorspeedway.com/files/IndyCar_GrandPrix_Map.gif As you can see it uses pretty much all of the front straight....it's the longest damn straight I've ever driven on. Places like Watkins likely have as long of a section on full throttle, but it's not all straight....that straight is like tunnel vision you can barely see the end of it when you get onto it. Some cool parts of the event. After the first day of driving the club hosted a dinner at the Indy motorsports museum. Cool stuff in there we got to hang around. Probably my favorite in the museum. lol One thing I found hilarious was in the bathrooms at the GP garages was motorsports related graffiti

Next event is Indianapolis Motor Speedway with MORPCA. This is the 3rd year they've hosted an event at Indy and I wanted to try it out. Couldn't make the schedule work the previous years. The Indy road course itself isn't overly exciting, but....it's freaking Indy! To my knowledge this group is the only one that hosts a DE there. Of course I also had a family vacation in-between Audi club and going to Indy so I had to turn the car around quickly in basically one weekend. First thing was that I noticed my driver's side headlight cover wasn't aligning correctly....cracked....damn. Used epoxy to fix it for now and seems to have worked. Let's hope it holds cause getting a good paint match on new ones is a major pain in the ass. I also wanted more airflow to the diff cooler. Unfortunately due to the small size none of the standard oil cooler fans would fit/work. I ended up finding a CPU fan that says it's waterproof and moves 65CFM. Not a ton, but better than most I've seen. Of course my fabrication skills are pretty much non-existant so this is what I came up with. Seems to be working so far. Fan puts out more air than I thought it would, but still not sure it's ideal. Indy will be the true test as it's gonna be hot and LOTS of time on throttle. I also bled the brakes. I sent out the diff fluid from prior to the cooler to be tested and they came back with "high wear metals" especially for the low mileage...no surprise there. I'll send some more after the cooler to see if there's a difference. Took the car for a shake down and things were going well. Ran it thru 2nd gear and into 3rd and came to a stop to have this idle surge greet me...damn Untitled All is well that ends well I suppose. I found the vacuum line I had plugged when removing the PCV valve had spit out the "plug" i had put in it. That'll cause an issue for sure. While I was in there I also found/fixed 2 other issues I was having. First was that when going full throttle there was a "click" and resistance at the end of the throttle travel. I could feel it in the pedal but couldn't figure it out. Turns out that the zip tie I put on the MAS sensor line was just barely interfering with the throttle linkage...dumb stuff like that will drive you crazy. Turned it the other way and problem gone. Also my oil fill neck was leaking and causing an oil leak that was driving me crazy. Now was the time to fix it if I was going in there anyway. I was getting leaking from the 2nd fitting which led to the PCV I've since removed. Also the o-ring at the base was pinched and leaking. cleaned up fittings and capped off the 2nd here's the solution for the PCV fitting on the intake manifold. Not ideal, but seems to work for now. The idle is still a bit lumpy, but workable for the weekend at least. Untitled

July Audi Club event. Always a good event, well run yet still pretty laid back which is nice. Only one student which was Aaron from CR. We had a good time and he was able to get his best times at Mid Ohio which always makes instructing fun. Overall the car did well. We struggled with weather and rain on and off. The rain was starting to clear and I'd be out right after lunch. 10 minutes before run time this happens: Bummer. It seems to have rained on us a lot more this year than previously, but not much you can do about it. The good news is that the diff cooler appeared to be doing its job. I would check case temperatures when coming in from the pits and was seeing only up to 180 degrees on the cover as opposed to 200-220 previously. It's not as scientific as using a proper gauge on the fluid but i want another gauge like I want a swift kick to the groin. I also rigged up a LED that's zip tied to my rollbar so I can see when the cooler kicks on. It takes longer to kick on than I honestly thought, but you can also tell that temp builds as the day goes on. Later in the day it'll come on earlier and earlier in the sessions. It also NEVER turns off once on, even when back in the pits. Tempature to turn on is 190 and to turn off is 160 so I'm not surprised, but thought it might get cooler during a cool-down lap and pit-in. Not the case. There's currently pretty limited airflow to it though. Coolant temps got up to 100 and 101 in a couple of sessions and we had ambient temps in the high 80s and very humid. Just need to keep an eye on it and make sure it's not going to cause any issues. Here's a longer video from the last session of the weekend. Andy and I went out nose to tail and our cars were pretty warm so we went right after it and not much warm up. As you can see he's still getting away albeit not by a ton. Then we catch traffic and I get balked...BTW guys...a S6 is a sweet car...not a good track car though! haha. This was a combined session with advanced drivers and instructors so I was a little less polite in traffic than I should have been.

Other bits updating for the July event. First was while I was trimming back the fender liners I also took the opportunity to refresh my "wire harness protection" there....which is aluminum flashing zip tied around it. It can at least take some rubbing without causing issues. I was also still having problems with the rear brakes being sticky. I got new hardware and rubber parts. I also switched lubes back there. Some people were saying the grease I was using could be causing the rubber to swell/stick, so I switched to this 3M silicone paste. The hardware was frustrating as i found out after this photo that some of the pins were slightly bent which was also attributing to poor movement of the rear caliper. I basically had to play around with the new and old hardware to find the best combo to put on the car. I also found that I had to not use the little rubber doughnuts on the end of the pins as they'd bind things up. Goofy. I also replaced my troublesome idler pulley with a FFE unit. The new stuff was well built and came with a belt. I knew i had an aftermarket water pump pulley but didn't think it was bigger than stock. Evidently that was wrong: I'll be honest....getting a proper sized belt was a MAJOR PAIN IN THE ASS. Parts store employees were less than helpful and going to different stores also revealed that they measure/code their belts differently. Took way way too long to get that sorted. Also made an update in the interior. Moved the PFC commander from the ashtray position and to a commander holder so I could more easily monitor intake and coolant temps. While this is great for viewing while driving, I f-ing despise the commander holder. Can't believe they're so popular. The fit with the glovebox is junk, the commander was loose and rattling around in the holder and required me to get creative to stop that. Doubtful I'll find a better solution this year though. I also attempted to replace my trailer brakes for the event and one of the nuts on the back of the drums rounded off....ugh...gonna have to wait until later.

Trying to get caught back up on this. Haven't been able to download and re-load the old photobucket stuff, but want to update going forward. Getting ready for the July Audi Club event at Mid Ohio. Main goal for that event was to put together the differential cooler and be able to test it out. Using a Mocal cooler - this little guy: Also using a Mocal pump which has brass pump gears as opposed to the diaphragm setups in some of the other pumps. Hoping this will give longer life and more reliability. Here's the pump mounted to the back of the rear subframe. As usual Tinman helped me fab up the pump and cooler. This car would never work without him. Then put the lines together using -8AN push-lock line and fittings. Also put an in-line filter with an internal stainless element: Coming out of the diff I have a nice contraption which allows me to put a thermo sensor in place. Looks a little goofy sticking out like this, but works. Putting the lines together, I borrowed the Kool Tools push-lock tool from my buddy. This tool is worth its money FOR SURE! Makes putting the lines together a breeze. for the filter I drilled and tapped my rear tow hook and then mounted the filter with a large cushion clamp to support it. while working on line routing I took off the muffler guard which of course then the hanger broke off. Luckily my old harbor freight rivet gun came to the rescue. Here's how the lines are routed. First they come out of the diff at the place the drain plug was: Then the line routs up beside the gas tank and by the muffler. Fortunately my exhaust including the muffler is fully ceramic coated, but if you don't have that, you might consider a fire sleeve or other protection for the line. That line then connects to the cooler which has another line that goes out and toward the driver's side where the filter is: here is the filter where the lines make a 90 degree turn and go back toward the front and subframe. the lines goes up and above the rear fender liner and back to the pump suction side then there's only one pressure size which is a short line that leads back to the differential and uses the fitting that is already cast into the Greddy cover.

Put me down for a special reserve

Damnit saw this too late. Bob, text me if you're getting any more Weller. Met a liquor distributor from NYC over the weekend who was recommending it.

This happens to me often. Not many people around c-bus that I've met have the same first 3 digits of my cell number so it's easier for me to pick up on now.

Glad to see you're putting the car to good use. Please fix the sub belts properly as they're worthless going over the front of the seat. I wouldn't ride along as an instructor with them like that FYI. Also, go stronger than HP+ pads for Mid Ohio if you plan on driving it hard down the back straight at all. HP+ aren't going to cut it. DTC-30 at a minimum if you're sticking to Hawk. I'd recommend go HT-10 and only use them as track pads. A,so make sure your fluid is up to spec and fresh. Cool project and keep up the good work.

I have a bunch of used but "in their prime" Nitto NT-01s. 17" 255/40-17 and 275-40-17. I'll work on getting some pictures.

Sadly with the current FD market that thing could be worth $5-$7k depending on body condition and interior plastics and carpet condition.

Nobody covers HPDE/track activities anymore on your standard policy. You either self-insure (eat the loss) or pay for event specific insurance which can be a bit pricey. Specialty insurers as noted will do agreed value coverage.