Back in the saddle again.

We heard that the Porsche club was holding an autox a few miles from where we live. We signed up and were ready to go at 8 am.... not without the usual few glitches, like getting to the event and realizing the keys to the car were still at home! Christy was nice enough to go pick them up for us while we prepared the car for the tech inspection.


We both signed up, so we had a total of 8 runs each. 4 in the morning set, and 4 in the afternoon set. Jimmy's first 4 runs went without any issues other than the car running very hot due to a broken fan clutch.


Little by little he chipped away at his times, and between both the morning session and the afternoon session, he ended running a best time of 54.486.


Because of the broken fan clutch, we were running on borrowed time... with coolant temps in the 230's.


My runs were after Jimmy's and unfortunately the car had no time to cool down.


I spun on my first run, running a 60.081. On the second run I ran a 52.991, but hit a cone, so a second was added. My best time came on my 3rd run, a 52.451, good enough to put us in 14th position.


On my final run of the morning session, I cracked the hose connector off the radiator


We thought that was the end of our day, but fortunately Bartley and his son Sven were kind enough to lend us a spare radiator they had in their garage down the street. We swapped radiators, filled up the coolant, and made it just in time for Jimmy to go out and do his second session.



On Jimmy's final run, the car burst the lower radiator hose. With no spare, that was the end of our day and I wasn't able to do my last 4 runs. Even with the cooling issues, we had a blast, and were able to hang out with some really cool people, while giving the car a good shakedown. We know what we need to improve on, and what needs to be replaced/repaired before our next autox on December the 13th in Homestead. Our fastest time was good enough for 14th out of 52 cars in our class.


A bunch of our buddies came out to the event to support us and take some pictures(thanks Rolando). Christy fired the grill up and cooked some chicken, It was a nice day in the parking lot ;)

Parts cars are never boring!

After a hard days work, actually only 3 hours , we decided to have a bit of fun... as if completely dismantling a car isn't fun ;)



If you look at the second bounce, the tire left the ground, before the spring popped out!

Prep for 2010 begins!

Its been a little over a month since the 2009 Grassroots Motorsports Challenge. We have had time to relax and do everything we didn't have time to do in the months leading up to the event. Needless to say we are still motivated, and have big plans for 2010. The first step of our plan includes finding a good parts car where we can source some good metal panels for our new widebody. We recieved really good feedback on our fiberglass fenders, but I was never happy with the undercoating treatment that we had to resort to because of time constraints. I really would have liked to finish them correctly by smoothing them out with fiberglass filler and a light coat of bondo. Rather than strip them down and finish them, and still not be 100% happy with the shape, we are planning on creating a steel widebody similar to the e30 M3 widebody, only much more extreme.

Some friends of ours purchased this non running automatic 325is for $250. They want it for the LSD, wheels, headlights, spoiler and complete interior. Once they are done with it they offered it to us for next to nothing. Its got quite a bit of rust, and the paint is pretty far gone.



At this point the stripping has just begun, We have only pulled the front fenders and trunk lid for our challenge car.




A few days later we were back at it with a cutting wheel and a sawzall. We cut out both Quarterpanels and the inner wheel wells in one piece.



We also cut out the rear section of the roof panel for our sunroof delete mod that we will be performing in the near future.


I also took the headliner and quarterpanel windows for my 318is project which can be seen here, www.rede30.blogspot.com.