Smokey

thanks, I know you were looking for one recently, did you ever find something you like?

tough call. Now I vote car, but before I couldn't afford to have a decently fast car, so I had a bike which was faster at a fraction of the cost. I also wanted to do track days which was cheaper with the bike as well. Now, i'm strictly doing it with cars. I suppose I've cemented my decision though, I sold my bike at the end of the summer and just bought a car as a replacement.

e46 M3 is always going to look great. I may have missed it, what were you taking the pictures with?

I wouldn't sell the M3 to have gotten the FD. They're just two different cars with two different purposes. I'm also glad that I didn't try to find a really nice FD and have it as a nice street car, because it's just not what the car was meant for. For now, the M3 will still be a track car as well. Mostly for schools and what not, and the FD will probably only see Fundays this year. (such a shame to have 2 track cars huh?). I'm hoping with time that the wife will take the reigns behind the M3 at the track.

It Was The Tranny You Kicked Out Of Your Office!

it looks passable in the pictures, but when you see it up close it doesn't match very well, so it'll be painted black when I get around to it, and then probably replaced with a new one (they come black) sometime after that because it's getting beat up as well.

holy quick reply batman! It was there by the time I refreshed the page from my edit. Oh yeah, thanks.

Anyone who's talked to me about cars for more than 10 minutes has probably heard the story about how I've always wanted a FD and would own one someday. Well, that day has come! My camera was dead so I couldn't get any new pictures of it, so I took some from the FS ad. The car is a 93 touring with the R1 lip, wing, and seats. This car will be a nice day/weekend/track(the ones with turns) car. It is built very close to how I would have done myself. Stock ports, still stock turbos, still sequential, PFC, SMIC, full exhaust, no A/C, no P/S, and pretty light all around (2820 full of fuel). It also has a nice brake upgrade, and GC coilovers with Advance Design shocks. I would have preferred a no-roof car, but I suppose we all have to compromise somewhere. Hopefully I can make the R1 seats in it work out, if not i'm sure they'll bring decent money cause they're clean. I'm not the biggest fan of the hood, but it's a necessary evil on these cars so it'll stay. At least it's painted. The exterior condition is not quite up to spec in my opinion, but for a FD it's in good shape and it'll clean up nicely. And yes, I'll paint the front lip back to black. Anyway, on to the pics. http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z56/kutschca/FD1.jpg http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z56/kutschca/FDside.jpg http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z56/kutschca/FDUnderhood.jpg http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z56/kutschca/FDinterior.jpg edit: Mods, sorry if this needs to be moved to pics & vids you can do so.

went there about a month ago. Food was great and of quality, but I wouldn't put my meal above House of Japan (Had Salmon both places). Prices were slightly above the rest of the Japanese steak houses around town, but not by a rediculous amount. The atmosphere is quite above the rest in town however, so if you're willing to pay for that sort of thing then it's completely worth it. Overall I was satisfied and would go there again.

got an idea of how much $$$?

what brakes did you put on the car? the picture looks good as long as you can get the travel you need. you coming to the track this year? My budget is getting cut a bit short this year due to buying a new toy (i'm hopefully wrapping that up this coming weekend).

Hey Rich, I realize that you run OVR events, but do you know if any other quasi-local regions put on an auto-x drivers school as well? I'd like to get my wife driving our cars this year, and I was hoping to have her do her first day in her stock Mazda6 for comfort reasons, but then have her do another school in my M3 that she'd eventually be driving. I suppose it would be a good idea for me to take the school as well since I haven't done an auto-x in 8 years or so. What does it cost?

It's probably best to just call her. As for the dates, probably the only way it'll work would be to piggy-back on one of their currently scheduled Fundays (usually Fridays). If we try to rent the whole track for ourselves it'd require more people than I think we can produce unfortunately. I was hoping for possibly June, but let me know what you come up with.

Grant, I have a set of 235/40/17 615s on 7.5" wheels and they definately run big. If I recall correctly Derek refuses to actually take them back off of the rims. The tires could have easily been at home on a 8.5" wheel, so I'd imagine that 255s on 9.5s won't look too strange. If you want, you can come look at my 235s, but I don't think it'll give you much closure

^^ yes, Nelson is the best bet for us to actually get something setup for a reasonable enough price to bring out more than 3 people. When they have the bigger groups of new people they'll run a "sighting session" for experienced people to take the new people around and show them the track and where to pass and what not. Except last time that involved a e30 M3 blowing up and delaying the first session for about an hour.... Like I said before, they don't offer any in-car instruction. I'll be happy to help someone out as long as they realize that i'm in no way passing myself off as an instructor. yes, Auto-x experience will help you out a lot.

^^ Agreed. Although I'd be a little more comfortable taking people out in my own car to show them the lines. edit: also when the Prelude group was up there they split into 3 run groups and most of the novice people got to all be in a group together which I think helped ease some tensions.

yeah, i missed the cutoff by about 4 months

Last year at one of the Fundays there was a Prelude club that came up and had some sort of pre-arranged deal with Nelson. I didn't see them exclude anyone outside of the club but they definately knew the club was coming. The GIANT upside to Nelson is that it's easy and CHEAP, you won't find anything cheaper than that....EVER. The biggest downside is that it's pretty relaxed and there's not any instruction which can be pretty intimidating to drivers that have never been to a HPDE before. I guess if we could get some of the more experienced drivers here to team up with someone as a sort of "instructor" (calling all amature racers [AI Coupe]) it might be a little less intimidating for the newer guys.

it'd be easier to just arrange a CR track day through an organizer that is already having a day there. We could also all go up to Nelson Ledges for a Funday which is pretty damn cheap.

uhhhh......IMPRESSIVE. dunno who I'd look at but Rahal Racing and TC Kline are both based in Hilliard. TrueChoice is still in town last time I checked too.

+1 if Derek and Dave can handle all the goofy alignment settings that my brother and I throw at them, they can handle anything.

happy birthday E, Sorry I wasn't able to make it out. I was in Charlotte over the weekend getting Rob's new car

if you're set on going to the bahamas and can afford it, stay at Atlantis. It's clearly FAR above in terms of quality and presentation to anything else there. Sandals there didn't look bad (didn't stay there), but once you actually see Atlantis you'll understand.

there used to be people who would take the E-car bottom end and put an IS head on it. Supposedly in order to make the car more stout on the bottom end the motor is actually bigger than 2.5 liters and with the IS head can be a real runner. Unfortunately I don't know much else about the differences between the e and IS.

*clap* *clap*