Near the end of the 2014 Season

So, haven't blogged for a while, but have gone from unemployed, to finishing my CCNP, to employed by a pretty shady company, to unemployed, to employed by the State of Texas, and then a short time later, as a Network Architect for the City of Austin.

Now that I've got a steady paycheck coming in, wife is finished with school, it's time to start taking autocross seriously again.

The 328 has had the Koni's installed, and that's it. It's running in F-street class, which I should win locally as the heavy hitters, including the 2013 F-Street national champion, race in what we call the X-Pro class, which is mainly for people that have had success at the national level and want to run on a PAX basis against the others with similar experience/car prep.

It's a bit fun still to likely win a class in what is probably the most underpowered, mis-classed car in the class, which includes V-8 Mustangs, Camaro's, and the E-46 and E92 M3. I mainly did it by showing up to the required 6 races. I'm not sure anyone else did or will have. A win by default. I'll take it, lol.

I don't think I've finished less than third, so I think I've put out the effort, and I think most of the cars competing had me by 100hp, except for one 128i, which was up by probably 35-50 hp.

This was all done on a set of cast off used Dunlop Z-2's. Autocross on a budget to the max !

and year end points with one race left

The 328 was rear ended a couple months ago, pretty much sealing it's fate to be an autocross car for the rest of it's life. The wreck has cracked the exhaust manifold, it appears, and will get some e-bay headers sometime soon. I'll have coinciding builds going on with it going to D-Street Prepared class, and a to-be-purchased Z3, for which the spare motor and tranny will be built up for for the F-prepared class.

I've been toying around with some ideas for an E-46 M3 as a daily as well, but one of the previously mentioned projects would have to give for that to happen. I'll need a tow vehicle and trailer of some sort as well, but that may not happen until later in the year. I'll be coming into some $$$ around the beginning of the year, but it is earmarked for quite a few different things.

Before

After

I've been toying around with some ideas for an E-46 M3 as a daily as well, but one of the previously mentioned projects would have to give for that to happen. I'll need a tow vehicle and trailer of some sort as well, but that may not happen until later in the year. I'll be coming into some $$$ around the beginning of the year, but it is earmarked for quite a few different things.

The 328 is BACK...

Don't know if I should be setting too much store by this, but the addition of used Dunlop Z1's brought the handling up on the 328i more than I expected. It may be able to be competitive locally.

I now have a second set, so I should be set into next year with tires.

Next up is:

1. pick some street/autocross brake pads
2. rear shock mounts
3. bump stops
4. mount the Koni's 
5. Get an alignment

It will be interesting then to see if I can pick up the second I need to be competitive locally. Ended up 5th this last event, only about a tenth of a second out of third.

Now that I'm thinking about the future Z3...

Saw these on Craigslist. $125 or best offer...

MurphysLaww Racing, may be back in limited business soon...

After nearly half a year sitting on the sidelines during lack of funds, time, and opportunity, I should be returning to limited racing in the Street tire class, with some hopefully semi-competitive tools.

Finally caught Koni's 20% sale with money in the Paypal account from recent new homebased business profits.

Added to a set of used Dunlop Z2's, I should have a somewhat added performance envelope over the stock suspension and crap tires I had been using.

The BMW 2.8 has a plan now too. I expect to be placing it in a stripped BMW Z3 chassis sometime next year, to compete, initally in F-prepared class if I can get the chassis into the class(the porsche boxter is there, so shouldn't be a problem), and then after adding an Active Autowerkes stage two supercharger to it, then to move to X-prepared class.

Not much racing, but this...

Recently acquired. Not sure for what yet.

2.8 from a 97 328i. (and 5spd Tranny)

I'll hopefully be rebuilding it completely.

2013 starts Sunday... with a sigh.

New racing season coming up, but I'll be somewhat on the sidelines. I'll be running, but in Street tire stock class.

The wife's schooling has stepped up a notch and will be at full speed this fall. Studying for network engineering certifications at work will take much of my time this year with at least 5 tests and 3 certifications planned.

The Bimmer will get new tires and suspension at some point, hopefully in the next month. I plan on attending the Texas National tour at the end of March, and probably the Texas Pro-Solo as well.

I have added 255/40-17 Sumitomo HTR-z II's to the rear, replacing the 225/45-17 all seasons and it resulted in  quite a bit of improvement at the Harris Hill event, autocrossing on a race track. Moving up to 4th out of 21, after some dismal finishes on the skinny all seasons.

Due to this, I think I may be remotely competitive in tire class with 255/40-17 Hankook or Dunlop Autocross tires, and new Bilstein sport or Koni Sport suspension.

Money's tight, so I have no idea when that may happen.

Screeching to a halt

Life stepped in and decided it was best for the family if I back off of Racing for a while, and get our finances a little bit more in order.

Sold the WRX, yep, sure did. Still can't believe it some days. It was a GREAT car for about 4 of the 4 1/2 years of ownership, including the last 3 years straight without an issue.

I will say that I don't enjoy driving it as much as I did the ol' BMW... And so, here is it's replacement.

1999 BMW 328i Sport Package w/ 125k on the odometer. Got it for about $3k below bluebook retail with a few issues. It needed some cleanup, a drivers side window lift, and has a door ding in the passenger side about the same size as the WRX had, ironically.

Took a week off of work, cleaned it up, replaced the the window lift, removed the tint, banged out most of the dent, Autocrossed it, Tracked it, and then had to replace the belts, and belt tensioner. Still seems like a good buy.

Not sure if it will be a good STX car or not. It's hard to find these things without sunroofs, so I'm just going to go with the flow on that. The problem also with this car is the Diff is generally open, and it's hard to find, if not impossible to find, a limited slip in a 2.93 ratio. May have to have it custom made. It may have a diff issue right now, so it will probably get replaced one way or another anyway.

It will at least get Koni's, 17x9 D-Force's and 255 star specs for some RTR/STX class action soon.