Its about that time...
Time for another update. For those of you that have not seen these videos yet. They are both Challenge videos from the Autox. The first vid is of our first 4 timed runs. The second vid is 2 fun runs, in which we were trying to beat our best time.
Enjoy.

12.3 second drag run at the GRM challenge

This is our first of many videos that I will be uploading. This was our second run of the day. I ran a 12.9 on the first run, The car ran better than expected, and it really hooked up well in first and second gears, compared to last year(thanks John for the drag setup pointers), I hot lapped it and went straight to the line for run #2. Little did I know that we were going to loose the hood on this run ;) We ended up running our best time at the event, a 12.3 sec drag run at 117 mph. The car has an HX35 running 21lbs of boost with a Stock m20 motor. Tuning was done with the stock motronic and a 535 AFM. We blew the Head-gasket on the next run(3rd and final)! Have you ever seen a bunch of people celebrating the ripping off of a hood? Get ready to... (In reality we were happy about our time,...no really we were ;)

So we're back from our 4th year at the challenge.
We had an amazing time hanging out with all of our old friends, and we were happy to have made some good new ones. Every time we go to the challenge we have the best time hanging with REAL people that love cars and are passionate about wrenching! We are happy to report that we duplicated our results from last year, 3rd overall, and 2nd in the Autox, plus we finished 3rd in the concourse this year, which was no easy feat!


Challenge Winners

Overall Winners: (All 3 going to the Ultimate Touring Car Challenge)
1) Wreck Racing / Ga. Tech Mazda Miata
2) Westside / Hooligan Mitsubishi Mirage GT
3) Condor Speed Shop BMW 325is


Drag Times:  
1) PACC Racing, MG MGB: 10.67 sec.
2) Westside / Hooligan, Mitsubishi Mirage: 10.82 sec.
3) Team MiniMe, Dodge Aries: 11.64 sec.

Autocross times:
1) Wreck Racing / Ga. Tech Mazda Miata: 32.303 sec.
2) Condor Speed Shop BMW 325is: 33.118 sec.
3) Hong Norr Honda Civic: 33.564 sec.


Concours Scores:
1) Wreck Racing Mazda Miata: 22.8 pts.
2) PACC Racing MG MGB: 22.7 pts.
3) Condor Speed Shop BMW 325is: 21.95 pts.



Jimmy and i got together to create a build video to document the 4 years it took us to get the car from a normal every day BMW to a full on turbo track monster, which runs 12.3's in the drags. Another sweet prize for this year was winning admission to the UTCC at Virginia International Raceway in July of 2011!

I haven't posted updates to my blog in a while, because we were trying to keep things secret from a certain team that will remain nameless ... I will say that their car looked a lot like ours did (hey!). In any case, we have a lot of respect for those guys, and were flattered that they used our 09 car as inspiration for their build. Hopefully they will return more competitive next year. I will post all the previous build updates, and videos in the near future.

We're off to the 2010 grm challenge!

Ok, well after an all nighter last night, we are on the road somewhere in central Florida, on our way to Gainesville. We have a good group with us this year, Jimmy, Christy, John, jay and Brian. We want to let you all know that if all works out we will be streaming the grassroots motorsports 2010 challenge live with in-car video. Video will start at approximately 9:00 and can be viewed at Justin.tv/condorspeedshop. Thank you all for the support.

Fill'er up!

...with body filler! but before we get to that...

Last Wednesday we were back at it. It was only 3 of us, John, Jimmy and I.
John quickly finished the new intercooler pipes. they dont look like scrap but they came off a stock Hyundai exhaust that was given to me. (thanks Eric)






The car sits ready for the bodywork to begin!


Jimmy and I began by taking the panels down to the bare metal.


With all the sanding and grinding, our first paintjob(the warbird) was coming through)


This fender is ready for bodyfiller.








I began laying the body filler & sanding with the file...


... while john finishes up tacking up a small corner near the door jamb.


Once the night was over, I had layed about 2 coats on specific areas. It still needs more block sanding and more filler, but I think that with another work day, we can be ready for primer!


Today, Jimmy had the day off and spent all day working on the car.
He installed our dashboard that we scavenged from the Parts car we had a while back. Its still cracked and not perfect, but its better than the one we had.



He began prepping the entire car for paint, which includes dissasembly, and scruffing the bodypanels with a scotch pad...



...and taping up the windows.


Its looking scruffy!


Jimmy has also spent some time sendig emails to some of the larger manufacturers asking for free stickers. I dont know where we are going to fit all of these!

The past week's work

We got some more work done this past Wednesday. Not as much as we has planned for, maybe it was because we had so many visitors.... more than the weekly Tuesday night e30 meet! You can see everyone here:

Some of you have already seen this video, but i'll post it for those that haven't.



I spent most of the night trimming the rear bumper some more...

 
.... and cutting, bending, and welding....

 ...these brackets to the rear of the car.

Jay was on caulk duty for the first half of the night,

 ...while Brian supervised... that is, in- between his trips to the toolbox. Brian had bad starter motor in his 325, and had to swap it while we did our thing on the race car. (You can see him and Bartley, in the video, working on the right side of the screen.)

John and Jimmy spent some time pressure testing our intercooler pipes, and found some leaks which required re welding some areas.

Today I spent a few hours finishing up the rear bumper installation...

And chopping up & test fitting the new front bumper covers

I think its coming together rather nicely.

I was so happy with the progress, I thought I'd share how it all has come together in a quick video.

Finishing the front fenders

This past Wednesday Jay and I were back at it.

While I was working on mounting the rear bumper (more on that next week), he took care of the lower rusty portions of the front fenders. The first step was to cut the rusty bottoms out.

After making some templates out of cardboard, we traced them on a scrap body panel, Jay grabbed the cutting wheel and went at them.

Once the cutting was done, he sanded the paint off and prepped the fenders for welding. I threw them on my welding table and spot welded everything together.

I threw the finished driver's side fender on the car.

It still needs to be bolted in, but this is the general idea of how it will look.

Using the second piece Jay made, I was able to reproduce the same look on the passenger's side.

Widebody metalwork complete!!!

This past Wednesday night we had a super productive workday. We had a few things on the agenda. 1. Finish our rear suspension work by re-installing the drive shaft. 2. re-install the clutch slave I "borrowed" for my daily driver a few weeks ago. 3. Work on our "TOP SECRET" experimental project. 4. Finish the metal work on the passenger side quarterpanel. 5. get the car started after about 3 months of sitting.

Unfortunately, Jimmy was stuck tightening the drive shaft bots with 2 adjustable wrenches... Thanks Jay, for bringing my tools back ;)

We got a ton of work done because there were 4 of us working on the car at once. After installing the Drive-shaft, Jimmy Aaron and Jay tackled our "TOP SECRET" project, while i jumped on the final cutting & welding of the quarter panel.

Once we finished, we threw the race wheels on it, and quickly lowered it off the jack-stands. That's when the camera phones came out!

Check out the stance on this thing, I can't wait to roll it out of the shop and take a look at it from a distance!

We even propped up the rear bumper with some empty beer bottles :)

I just want to thank the Jay, Aaron and John for coming out and helping Jimmy and I.

Widebody metal work almost finished

I know its been a while since we've posted any progress, but it just seems like every pic I take of the car looks the same. Its hard to see progress when all you see are welds all the way down the a bunch of seams. but, I can say that this post contains some light at the end of the tunnel for those of you following the wide-body progress.

One of our newest team members, Tony came by two weeks ago to lend a much needed helping hand on our front fenders. He went at it with a grinding wheel and some bondo.

After a couple hours, he had sanded and filed the fender into what you see below. I cant wait for him to come back.

This past Wednesday both Jimmy and another new member, Jay came by to help again. They were working on some "very top secret" upgrades to the car. I can't show you any pics yet... but its good!
While they did their thing, I was able to start the final top section of the driver's side rear fender.

Again, i used some old scrap metal cut off of our old parts car.

It took a good 4 hours but I was able to finish it.

Next week we tackle the passenger's side.