Busy day

Picked up vinyl for a last minute sponsor (thanks Celito) along with a fresh set of tires from fellow E30 pilot Mark Cooper at Performance Chassis. First race is this weekend, I haven’t been on track for almost three months so hopefully I can shake off the rust quickly.

Weighting for Guffman

Needing to add some mass to the car in order to make minimum weight, I asked the folks at Kirk Key if they could make up something and they came through with flying colors. Today I received ten 15lb steel plates cut to my exact dimensions, mounting holes drilled, and zinc plated for corrosion protection. Beautiful work, and exactly what I need to balance out the car. Drilled a couple of holes in the floorpan and mounted the plates, fits like a glove. Thanks Kirk Key and Kirk Machine!

It looks di-vinyl!

Eric from Extreme Vinyl came over today to install all of the sponsor graphics, along with driver name and car numbers. Took a little while to get everything lined up and applied but it looks great, I was so excited i took a bunch of crappy photos with my iPhone!

Afterwards my neighbor Josh stopped by with his fancy DSLR and took some far better shots:

Thanks Eric and Josh!

Keeping cool

Decided to flush out the cooling system since I wasn’t 100% sure what was in there. Opened the radiator and block drain plugs, the fluid coming out looked more like mud than water. I guess that’s what happens when no corrosion inhibitor is used, the block starts to rust from the inside out. Flushed it with three gallons of tap water, then filled with two gallons of distilled water and a bottle of water wetter. Now I just have to hope the garage stays above freezing!

Got video? Oh yeah!

Took advantage of the nice weather this afternoon to perform a quick camera and traqmate test, everything worked as it should. Still playing around with the camera and video settings but it’s pretty decent as is.

spec e30 camera test from jason tower on Vimeo.

For once I’m underweight

Now that everything has been installed I broke out the scales and weighed the old girl.  Turns out it’s quite a bit underweight, at least with me in the driver seat (empty car is 2500lb on the dot, min weight with driver is 2750lb).  Tossed eight brake rotors on the passenger side which brought it up to 2775lb which is gives me a little bit of leeway.  Next step is to figure out where and how I’m going to mount the ballast, ideally such that it can be easily removed or changed.  Passenger side floor is the most likely option but I may have to remove the nice diamondplate floorpan

Car empty

Car with me and eight brake rotors

V=IR is now ready for VIR

Mock up of auxiliary electronics wiring a complete success, a single 12VDC feeds two switches so I can control power to the traqmate and camera independently. An old 12VDC wall wart + leftover terminals and wiring from my brake controller + $3 Harbor Freight cigar lighter adapter + discarded cell phone charger + switches from Stephen and Judi Westerfield + scrap Lexan from my side window project = win. And to think that I cheated my way through EE classes in college!