Spec E30 Planet

Vimeo / Spec E30: july 2010 vir spec e30 race - sun

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:30:31 +0000

nasa-ma race (sweaty summer slam) on vir full course, july 2010. temps in the 100s again. had a decent qualifying lap and started 8th. the race got a lot more interesting when my left contact lens popped out on the first lap (you can see me holding it up to the camera), after that i was mister no depth perception. i hung with evan for a while but eventually bobbled in hogpen and went off.

Cast: jason tower

Vimeo / Spec E30: july 2010 vir spec e30 race - sat

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:49:46 +0000

nasa-ma race (sweaty summer slam) on vir full course, july 2010. temps in the 100s, and although it's my home track i'd never raced there before. wasn't able to get a clean qualifying lap so i started 14th, but had a good race and finished 8th. some slower traffic on the last lap helped me edge out travis wilson at the line to win $50 plus a love tap on the cool down lap :)

Cast: jason tower

DTOMRacing.com: “Special” Deliveries

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:56:55 +0000

This will be mostly a visual essay. Saturday proved to be a busy day at DTOM Racing world headquarters, we recently concluded a sale of the running gear from the wrecked e46 car, and struck a deal around the tub too.

So we dedicated the day to finally moving things “out” of Craig’s garage, much to his delight. Unfortunately most car parts don’t lend themselves to easy shipping being awkwardly shaped and heavy, or small and delicate. If you find yourself needing to ship a differential – that is basically a heavy lump of metal – The “tough box” was designed by the Steve Jobs of storage. It is made from super heavy plastic (rated at 400lbs), and it has pre-drilled holes for zip ties to secure the top. In short pure genius!

So now you’re saying “Wow is this what DTOM has come to? Stories about boxing sh!t up to mail. Very sad.”

How cynical you’ve all become, clearly you didn’t notice the quotes around “special” in the title. No, no, no – it certainly got more interesting. The 2nd part of our day involved putting the wrecked chassis sans wheels onto my trailer. As with most of our dicey propositions (or any involving potential heavy lifting) we made sure that reinforcements were present, so we waited for Ted and Brendan to arrive. Ted’s common sense observation that we really needed a winch or come-along to do this properly was duly noted, but we had to make lemonade with the cards that were dealt. This meant rigging up my shim shammy trailer to stand on its own, while I drug the car forcefully onto it. What could go wrong?

What could go wrong? This looks completely safe, but why the jack stands?

Here is why, the trailer jack that was going to support all the weight is only ’sort of’ welded together..

Surprisingly this all worked like a champ and we began our trip up to the car’s new home John Eversley’s shop, where we’d work out the next engineering problem for the day – How to get it off the trailer.

Step 1 – hook up to crazy electric pit buggy tug.

Step 2 – use landscape timber to lift while tug pulls it onto the trailer. Nothing to it.

Step 3 – enjoy crazy weird stuff at John’s farm / shop. Like ….

Smallest Horse in Georgia.

One of the three remaining cars used for Gone in 60 Seconds.

Did you know Vespa (the scooter people) made a car? Neither did we. You don’t buy parts for this, you make them.

DTOMRacing.com: Progress?

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:41:37 +0000

In case you haven’t noticed its pretty hard to have a niche racing blog when you’re not really racing.

I get two questions so this is probably the shortest FAQ ever.

1. What is going on with the car?

I got an email from Clay the other night that read “You guys still building that CTC car?” This was concerning on a number of levels, not the least of which is the car is supposed to be at their shop. At last check the status I got was “it’s in the old shop”, that is akin to you putting something in your attic. How often do you go up in your attic? Exactly. So the truthful answer to this question is “Not much.” My personal gut feel for us making Daytona 2011 is at 50/50.

A) However, we’re not at a complete standstill. A Grand-Am Spec E90 Limited Slip Differential is en route from Diffsonline in MA. This is sort of like buying curtains before the house has a roof, but any forward progress at this point is good. Dan at Diffsonline or Diffy Dan as I call him can amaze you with some esoteric knowledge about things like ring and pinion, machining the carrier, and a bunch of other mumbo jumbo. Bottom line is he knows his shit about diffs and I expect this to be worth easily 10 seconds a lap. He said if you don’t see a 10 second a lap improvement with one of their diffs its probably driver error.

If you’re one of our 2 or 3 ‘non’ racing fans a good explanation of a limited slip differential can be found here.

If you know all about diffs check out Dan’s site at www.diffsonline.com or order through Clay and BW.

B) We’ve also made contact with an electronics guru. I have a rubbermaid container of wires, gizmos, and doo-dads that theoretically can make a car start and run. At least they made the wrecked E46 car start and run. So the trick is finding out a) if everything is there and b) how to plug it all together. We’re meeting with Eric at ElectronSpeed in the next week or so to keep this ball rolling.

C) More good news in that we managed to maybe sell some of the E46 parts, which should help fund A&B.

2. Whats the car going to look like? / What colors are you using on the car?

Great question. You’d think this was easy. Ever since DTOM started I’ve been abusing every designer I know for free work. I think everyone of them did a great job but nothing seemed to fit. I blame myself 100%, giving creative feedback is difficult and there is some code that designers speak that I don’t get. Certainly being a straight man doesn’t help the communication. Anyway Craig took the keys to the car on this one and told me to sit in the backseat and shut up. He worked with a Spec E30 buddy of ours Scott McMiniMe and came up with the little gem below. Its mostly just a logo right now. The car design is a WIP, its difficult to get a drawing of the E90 to work off of, Craig thought he found one on some weird European site for $25, but he probably just gave his credit card to identity thieves since the promised download never arrived.

Anyway without further adieu. We may do a t-shirt if anyone has clever slogans they’d like to submit (PG-13 please).

The colors will be black / silver (gray) / yellow, sort of like Clay’s GearWrench car from last year minus the cheesy ‘extreme’ skull and p!ss poor vinyl wrap application.

Axis of Oversteer (Spec E30): Axis Glossary: "Cole Trickle" (v.)

noreply@blogger.com (Fearless Freep) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:09:24 +0000

Cole Trickle: (v.) To avoid a crash by the narrowest of margins. Example: "In today's video, Axis Pete takes his chances and successully Cole Trickles his way through the nastiest club racing crash we've seen in a long time."Bonus Entry:Pete Trickle: (n.) Mysterious, pot-bellied, little-known cousin of Cole who drives for Axis of Oversteer. Thought to be intimately familiar with Dick Trickle.So

Vimeo / Spec E30: Nasa NorCal Spec e30 Race Infineon Raceway 6-27-10 Scott Clough #224

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:18:35 +0000

Unedited from Sunday's spec e30 race. Qualified 8th and finished 6th.

Cast: Scott Clough

Vimeo / Spec E30: Nasa NorCal Spec e30 Race Infineon Raceway 6-26-10 Scott Clough #224

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 06:37:15 +0000

Unedited race from Saturday June 26th at Sears Point. Qualified 11th due to a blistered tire in qualifying. Started 11th and finished 5th.

Cast: Scott Clough

DTOMRacing.com: P’tree failed to kill me again

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 00:40:18 +0000

My performance sustaining cocktail did the trick. Steve D. did manage to find a race he can beat me in though. But like Kenny Powers I play real sports. Not trying to be the best at exercising.

Jason Tower's Spec E30 campaign: Firecracker Run at Lowes

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 17:13:58 +0000

The second one-day event at Charlotte Motor Speedway, picture perfect weather and a good turnout (12 cars in qualifying). Having repaired the damage from last month’s accident at CMP, the car seemed to be in good health and was running well, at least when it wasn’t too hot. I hooked up with my pal Evan in qualifying and was able to get a 1:28.0 which put me solidly in second place. Woohoo, I’m on the first row! Which meant that I and pole sitter Eric Palacio were responsible for pacing the group before the green flag was thrown. New experience for me and a fun one, but after that it was sheer terror. I’d never been at the sharp end of the field before and was more nervous than I had been for any previous race. Evan and Brian Jones (who qualified 3rd and 4th) made sure to let me know that they’d be gunning for me and I took it a little too much to heart.

In the first race Eric got in front of me as expected and I did my best to keep him in sight while fighting off hard charges from Jones and Evan from behind. They kept the pressure on and eventually got by when i overbraked for turn 1. Then thunder roadsters came zooming around like mad hornets, with my relative lack of traffic management skills it was difficult to keep the front runners within reach. With their light weight and sticky Hoosier tires they tended to be quicker on the infield but topped out slower than the Spec E30s on the oval. At one point they were three wide in front of me and I had to lift, throwing up my hands in frustration. That allowed Robert Patton to get behind me and make a…um…creative pass to get by in turn 3. I stayed behind him hoping to get the position back but wasn’t able to before the race ended with me in fifth.

2010 firecracker run – spec e30 from jason tower on Vimeo.

In race #2 I got the jump on Eric who mistakenly was in third gear instead of second. For about ten seconds I was leading the race! That didn’t last long as Eric got beside me and we were two-wide for most of the infield and entering the oval. In a trick apparently learned from Johan he pinned me on the apron while three cars queued up behind him and the entire group bump drafted their way past. Evan snuck in at the last minute too, suddenly I’m in sixth place! I was *pissed*, but in a way slightly relived as I’m more comfortable following a fast car than trying to keep one behind me. Several laps later Jones spun in turn 1 which opened up a few gaps. I was chasing Evan and he was chasing David Walsh, at one point I got past Evan on the oval then immediately braked too late for turn 1 and he took the position back. A few laps later, a swarm of thunder roadsters descended upon us and David and Evan tangled in turn 2, putting them both in the wall and out of the race, allowing me to cruise in for third place and my first podium finish.

2010 firecracker run – spec e30 from jason tower on Vimeo.

All in all a great day of racing, I learned several important lessons that will hopefully enable me to continue my development as a driver. Congratulations to Eric for winning both races! Coming up next is lots of VIR stuff – instructing with Chin Motorsports this week, Ferrari club the following week, and what is shaping up to be a huge race at with NASA-MA in late July!

DTOMRacing.com: Happy Birthday America!!!

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 03:07:04 +0000

Suck it England! Getting ready for my annual run at the Peachtree 10k. In other words this may be my last post ever since the odds of me dying increase with this bad life choice every year. Started training on Monday. Hoping that rage, expired asthma medication combined with red bull and sudafed can give me the super human strength I need. Fingers crossed.

DTOMRacing.com: Just in case…

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:36:05 +0000

You happen to live under a rock I’ll continue the tradition of posting stuff that everyone else has already put up. Mainly as a service to my non-facebook using audience (aka Brendan). Here is the full version of the commerical from BMW.

Not sure if anyone else noticed they spend a lot of time talking to Turner but when they need a podium shot its BW and Seth…. Anyway lots of friends in this so pretty cool. En’joy’.

Axis of Oversteer (Spec E30): Tin Top Attack.

ac@axisofoversteer.com (AC) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 03:09:39 +0000

Just because I've been on vacation it does not mean the rest of the Axis has been sleeping: check out the Freep's heroic climb from 17th on the grid to 5th place at the 2010 NASA Hyperfest SpecE30 races a held at Summit Point in West Virginia last week. Check out the near misses, notice how "the Freep don't lift" and don't miss the Felipe Massa style opportunistic pass towards the end of the

DTOMRacing.com: BimmerWorld in the new BMW ad

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:35:12 +0000

As usual I’m probably the 50th person to post this up, but just in case you’re using DTOMracing as your sole source of racing news… Here is the latest in a viral series of videos being produced by BMW and this one features a lot of the Grand Am teams including Seth and Bill on the podium. Pretty cool! Clay finally got around to giving us a shout out in his blog as well. We managed to hit over 100 fans on our facebook page which means I’m obligated to tell the unfortunate tale of Jim’s Mystery Ball Rash. Despite its name it is family friendly and I hope mildly amusing. Stay tuned.

Vimeo / Spec E30: Road Atlanta turn 7 crash

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:06:43 +0000

What Not to do if your sideways through 7

Cast: David Walsh Jr

Vimeo / Spec E30: NASA Road Atlanta Spec E30 Race (Saturday 6-21-2010)

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:51:30 +0000

16 cars in a Spec E30 split start to separate us from other classes. I started on pole, dropped as low as 3rd, and finished on the top step.

Cast: Steve DeVinney

Vimeo / Spec E30: NASA Road Atlanta Spec E30 Race (Sunday 6-20-2010)

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:33:54 +0000

Cast: Steve DeVinney

Vimeo / Spec E30: BW Racing - Jim Bucha, SE30 at Llihrednuht May 23, 2010

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 20:44:39 +0000

Cast: BW Racing

DTOMRacing.com: All ‘work’ and no play make Jack a dull boy.

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:12:13 +0000

If you’ve been a frequent reader of this blog you’ll know that we’ve been pretty heavy on tearing things apart lately and pretty light on racing. This is due to the fact that neither Craig nor I are lotto winners, so the sacrifice for building the Grand-Am car meant that this year’s schedule would be infrequent track time, however that didn’t mean it had to be non-existent. Our DTOM brethren Jason Mascow had been promised a ride in one of our Spec E30’s for close to two years (mostly by Craig) and due to a variety of reasons (excuses by Craig) had never got a chance to actually race one. Another of our key helpers Ted McMahan still hadn’t done a formal driving school, Digel would be his instructor. All of this coincided nicely with NASA-SE’s return to Roebling Road Raceway one of DTOM’s favorite race venues.

Early on we dubbed this DTOM family day, since Craig’s wife, baby, and mother-in-law decided to go to Savannah while he did his pre-sale shakedown of the #82 car. For the #36 we’d be doing triple stints with Jason in the Spec E30 race trying to beat up on Craig, Ted would be in the HPDE group, and I signed up for the Thunder race just to have something to do. During a Robinson family meeting my wife also expressed a desire to go to Savannah, I corrected her with “Pooler”, and she again said Savannah. Over the course of the weekend she would come to fully understand the big difference between Pooler and Savannah. Since it was the DTOM extended family the dogs got to come along as well. The dogs aren’t the best at traveling since Indy gets car sick and they both like to stop frequently to smell the sights (so to speak) as a result I was fully expecting this trip to be the stuff DTOM legends were made of (ie. a huge pain in my a$$).

The week before the race we met at Jason’s shop to make the necessary ‘enhancements’ to the silver car so that it would pass its annual tech inspection. In my mind that meant – changing the oil and replacing a severely cracked windshield, maybe checking the brake pads. I confidently told Jason,and Brendan as Ted drove it onto the lift. “We’ll be out of here by noon, just needs an oil change really.” Jason immediately asked, “What is that clunking noise? When was the last time you looked at this thing?” My response of “I don’t know it always sounds like that, and December after our 9 hour enduro” didn’t inspire much confidence but earned me some sad looks and shaking heads. Needless to say we found the horrible clunking sound, and many other things, enough to take 3 1/3 mechanics until 4pm. I confined myself to the usual getting lunch, watching, and fetching things (hence the 1/3).

As we made our preparations for the weekend we found the local hotels in Pooler to be surprisingly snooty about pets, which meant we ended up in a Jameson Inn. That would be Christine’s first clue that we weren’t in Savannah. The second came as we drove through the ‘neighborhoods’ outside of Roebling, or as Jason calls them the ‘meth shacks’. We had left around 10 am in order to have enough time to drive leisurely, and arrive at the track in plenty of time to unpack and get the aforementioned technical inspection and registration. The third clue that this wasn’t a vacation or as glamorous as the races on TV came as the always logical and friendly track staff precluded anyone from entering the track until 5pm. We arrived a little before 3pm. Nothing says fun like sitting in a crowded sandy lot with two hot dogs (or baby for Craig) and no water for 2+ hours. Eventually we did get in, inspected, and unpacked. As we finished up and I got in the car soaked with sweat Christine observed, “I’m surprised you find this fun.” I think that was a jab at my love of hard manual labor, or maybe my conditioning, either way I don’t think it was a compliment.

We arrived at the Jameson Inn before the various transient vagabonds hogged all the good rooms and were able to request a penthouse away from doors and elevators that we knew from experience would upset the dogs. Unfortunately they only had a queen sized bed. Over the course of the evening we found that 2 large dogs, 1 large-ish man, and 1 regular sized wife don’t fit neatly in that configuration. So much so that the entire room possibly got 2 hours sleep.

Thankfully the demands at the track were relatively light (for me) since I didn’t especially care how much I drove over the weekend. My practice session was first up so I strapped in to make sure the car wouldn’t fall apart on someone other than the responsible party. During my shakedown I discovered a gremlin that our mechanical barn raising missed. The clutch was slipping and not going to improve with use. This put myself and Ted into car conservation mode so that Jason could use what was left to make a run at his race. I practiced doing the fastest laps I could using only 4th gear, which actually was kind of fun, but not very impressive from a time or results perspective. Jason’s race came up and he did pretty well coming in a respectable 6th place out of maybe 15 or so. Not too shabby for a car he hadn’t driven before against some fairly stiff competition. Craig managed an also respectable 3rd after the actual 1st place finisher was DQ’d on a tech issue. Jason was disappointed the famous 6th place trophy had been retired.

What a difference a few months makes, there is a new crop of Spec E30 guys and we didn’t know most of them. A lot of the old crew has moved onto greener pastures, but Brian Jones showed up. Last time I saw Jones (maybe a few months ago) he was single, had a red pickup truck, and beat up steel trailer. Now he is married, with a baby on the way, a new ‘free?” aluminum trailer and a suburban. Oh yeah and a pit bull. Jones sells wine for a living so I think the pit bull, and wife were to address some un-asked questions… In congratulating him I managed to strike a deal where I would get the rights to name the baby for a set of used (good) race tires. I immediately dubbed his unborn child “Gumball” Jones – “Lil Gumball” until he is of age, and “Gumballa” if it’s a girl. I could tell that Brian was a newlywed since a) his wife Clarissa was sleeping in a tent on the RRR grounds, b) looked to be enjoying herself. She even took the news about Lil Gumball in stride. If anyone has better suggestions please put in the comments. I’ll make sure to pass them along.

Ted continued to solidify his “Hardest working man at the track” reputation by not only doing his first driver’s school, which can be stressful enough, but also serving as crew for another racer / customer from his shop. The guy (John) he was working for benefitted? from the DTOM curse, I will say I’m enjoying being able to offload the bad luck on nearby pedestrians like Craig or this 944 guy. Unfortunately Ted also got caught up in the swirling bad mojo.

John had asked Ted to drive his nearly brand new Dodge 3500 diesel pickup down with his nice 28 or 32 ft trailer down for him. This worked out perfectly since it allowed plenty of vehicles for everyone to have access to, and a sweet enclosed trailer for us to sponge off of minimizing truck loading / unloading time. Well except for the guy that actually owned it, it didn’t really work out perfectly for him. He had modified his original plan of flying into Savannah and replaced it with driving down in one of his other Porsche 944’s. 20 year old cars being 20 year old cars it broke down on his way to the track. After getting it towed, the problem proved un-fixable without the types of parts you won’t find in Pooler on a Saturday or Sunday. His exit plan didn’t prove to be much better, since he mounted up his still running race car for the trip home and then called us 3 hours in saying he had run out of gas and was on the side of the road. At the same time the check engine light in his truck went on as the turbo on the diesel wasn’t making boost.

Poor Ted in an effort to check the truck picked the wrong exit to pull off of, and drove into the gas station parking lot of doom. This is the place where I got my trailer stuck and Craig, TJ, and I had to do some quick thinking to avoid disaster. Just as I was telling Christine (and the dogs) this, and about to pick up my phone to give advice, Ted got the nice trailer stuck. Those concrete pillars by gas pumps are the bane of 32 foot trailers. Somewhat thankfully my experience in the same predicament meant that we had a solid game plan for getting it ‘unstuck’ with minimal damage, but the local audience complete with 6000 kagigawatt bass stereos didn’t help defuse the tense mood. We managed to get gas to the racecar guy before he died of heat exposure, and then limped the truck home. It only made a 4 hour trip about 7, but what would you expect from DTOM family day? It certainly lived up to my expectations. No word from Christine on how she enjoyed her trip to Savannah yet.

DTOMRacing.com: Everybody’s Talkin’ bout Pop Music

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 10:12:43 +0000

I’m far from a trendsetter; in fact as far as pop culture goes I’m more of a lagging indicator. However, when it comes to cars I’ve been known to sniff out a good thing every once in awhile.

If you have Netflix (which again I think almost everyone does), then you’re probably familiar with “instant view”. Since I can’t figure out how to work the mailbox, our household is divided into me watching stuff on instant view, and Christine managing the DVDs. The point of all this is a few recommendations. Part of the inspiration for our latest adventure is a documentary called “Love the Beast”, maybe later I’ll explain how / why. It is about movie star Eric Bana (300?) and a car he has had since he was a teenager. I won’t give too much away but it is really really good. I think it does a nice job of maybe conveying what makes ‘car guys’ tick. Unfortunately it has Dr. Phil who is an absolute moron, but thankfully it has very little of him and he isn’t super annoying. Trust me the rest of the film makes up for it. This is also old news but there is a documentary that Audi produced with the NFL films team (queue Monday Night Football Da Da DUH dun nu dun nu) available for free on iTunes called “The Truth in 24” about the 24 hours at LeMans. Now it is of course a glorified commercial but it doesn’t feel that way. I knew how this race ended and even watched it live and it still was very cool.

Here is BMW’s more limited response, still pretty cool, and it deals with the 24hr at the Ring. A race I (unsuccessfully) tried to get Clay to enter with his old World Challenge cars.

24 HOURS IN 19500 FRAMES from tim hahne on Vimeo.

I’ve been subjected to ridicule for my music selections since I was exposed for having Christopher Cross in the truck’s CD player. On the flip side of this some friends were SHOCKED that I would enjoy loudQUIETloud a documentary on the 80’s band the Pixies (also good and on instant view). Finally “The King Of Kong”, if you watch the TV Show “The Office” and thought characters like Dwight Schrute didn’t exist in real life you may be forced to reassess your thinking. The best line I heard about this was “Nerds that have been perfectly preserved.”

I was going to post my iPod playlist to prove how cool I really am, but Craig said no one cared.

Vimeo / Spec E30: Llihrednuth (Thunderhill Backwards) NorCal SE30 5-23-10

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:55:08 +0000

Qualified 5th of 14 cars. Had a great battle with Tony Zwain #48 and Greg Peterson #76. I unintentionally "bump drafted" Tony in Turn 15 which I felt bad about. Finished 3rd.

Cast: Scott Neville

Vimeo / Spec E30: Llihrednuth NorCal SE30 May 22, 2010

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 05:38:09 +0000

Had a crummy qual session (12th out of 16 cars) finished 10th ...got sideswiped on the last lap :( But I had a lot of fun chasing and passing Sean Trapp of SpeedTrapp Racing!

Cast: Scott Neville

DTOMRacing.com: Our first and probably only..

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 21:41:11 +0000

Birthday Present from the BW guys, our long lost chassis fresh from the media blaster!

Axis of Oversteer (Spec E30): Great Week End for Team Axis!

ac@axisofoversteer.com (AC) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:53:15 +0000

4 wins (5 if you count Time Trials) and 6 podiums for Team Axis this Memorial Day week end. On Saturday, at New Jersey Motorsport Park with NASA, Pete took first place and set an new track record in Spec E30 with the Freep coming in third. On Sunday places were reversed with the Freep taking a commanding victory with a car severely damaged by shrapnel from a competitors exploding motor.

DTOMRacing.com: Catching Up

Mon, 31 May 2010 14:52:51 +0000

A quick editorial note we do post pictures and little tidbits from time to time on Facebook. If you’re a FB user join us at www.facebook.com/dtomracing .

Just to set expectations up front, this one won’t have a great comedic narrative stringing all the events together. Its purpose is twofold, one a general status on the various projects we have going on, and secondly to stand in abject amazement that DTOMRacing (as a blog) turns 2 years old. That’s right we’ve kept this nonsense up for 2 years. Trust me I’m as amazed as you. What is even more surprising most of these posts hold up pretty well. Anyway happy birthday to us! If you don’t like this post go back and read some of the better ones, or just take solace in the fact that you generally get what you pay for – a DTOM principle since day one.

What is the status?

As usual no short answers with us, my assumption is that most people reading this are also BimmerWorld fans, so you are probably aware that during the VIR race James was taken out in one of the fastest parts of the track resulting in a wreck that made the #80 car look like a pop can someone stepped on. This led to the BW guys working a deal with the ‘other’ BMW E90 team RRT so that they could make the race since RRT wasn’t planning to attend this event – win/win. Now since Craig and I are the generous sort and 2011 is still some time away we offered the chassis to Clay if they needed to do a complete rebuild, however Steve Bassen autobody man extraordinaire said “I can fix that” and he did.

See the crash video here:
Clay Gets Wrecked

Wreck Picture

Like Brand New at Lime Rock Park.

So that meant our car was ‘safe’ and at last check it was still at the media blasters being stripped of paint, seam sealer, and other stuff that gets in the way of welding.

In conversations with RRT James found out a key piece of information that set in train this next set of events. This will require some explanation. Fuel injected cars require a computer to operate. The computer balances the mixture of fuel and ignition to match the amount of air that the car is receiving to achieve precise combustion in the cylinder. This technology has been constantly improving since it first appeared in the 80’s but as with anything the manufactures’ computer usually has to balance reliability, fuel economy, and performance. It also plays a huge role in emissions. Grand Am rules dictate that you can use two types of computers to run your car – the stock electronics (ECU) or a Bosch Motorsport unit. If you hear of a car being “chipped” that increases its performance it is usually altering or re-programming the existing manf. ECU to shift that compromise more towards the ‘performance’ end of the specturm.

Our plan was to sacrifice the horsepower that you can gain with a true race ECU, and use the one that came with the car since it is an order of magnitude cheaper (ie included in the price of the car). We had ‘heard’ that RRT was able to run with the stock setup so we figured that we could to, it might just mean more time figuring it out. What James uncovered during his talks with the RRT guys was that “Yes” you could technically run the stock electronics, however you’d also need to carry along the completely stock cooling (radiator, fan, etc) system in the passenger seat not doing anything but hooked up to the wiring harness so that the computer could see all the sensors it needed to work. This was a little too half ass even for DTOM, so that led us to our next adventure.

The Search for the Bosch ECU.

No this isn’t a Hardy Boy’s mystery, but as you can imagine this wasn’t good news for us since it would mean finding almost as much dough as we had sunk into the original car just for some fancy computer bits and pieces. We looked on the bright side that at least we had this information with enough time to try and make adjustments, take part time jobs, whatever it took. Then something very rare in the DTOM universe happened. We caught a break.

Our buddy Ted fell into a race crew job for a Porsche Cayman support series that was running at “The Mitty” up at Road Atlanta at the start of May. Brendan and I decided we’d go up for a visit and see some of the historical racecars that the event is based on.

[Interesting aside, The Mitty is an annual race of historic race cars held at Road Atlanta. We saw an Audi R8 factory race car parked outside a nice semi-truck and trailer, under a nice awning, on a nice portable plastic floor setup being maintained out of….. a sh!tty craftsman tool box with less stuff in it then mine. BD and I thought about this a minute and then I said “Well I guess it makes sense – WTF are they going to fix on this thing.” If you have a factory designed super race car you’re not getting the parts at Pep Boys, its either not going to break since these cars were designed for the 24 hours at LeMans or something (and probably someone) is being flown in from Germany to do the heavy lifting for you..]

We stopped by to visit Ted and while making the introductions Ryan Eversley another Grand Am superstar said “You’re building a BMW, hey I know a guy that is selling a wrecked BMW ST car.” And sure enough this dude was selling a wrecked Grand Am ST car, only the slightly older model than what we are building, BUT it did have the coveted Bosch Motorsport ECU. I got his info and huddled up with Craig and the DTOM advisement committee (ie Clay).

We got a list of everything included with the sale and it looked like a pretty good deal, however since this stuff is older and these cars only have another year left in Grand Am it was still risky. We discussed it some more and decided that faint heart never won fair maiden. A deal was made on Tuesday, and since I was going to be busy at work that gave about a day to figure out what to do with an entire non-rolling race car and a truckload of spare parts.

You may have read this in some other write-ups – storing dead race cars ain’t DTOM’s business. That is we are not in the business of storing dead race cars (to paraphrase Pulp Fiction). Thankfully my Spec E30 was scheduled to go up to Jason’s shop which freed up a garage spot in Craig’s museum of non-running 80’s cars. Learning our lesson with the shoddy dolly of death, I entrusted the transportation of the car to the pros that know, and called a flat bed tow truck. Best money we’ve spent so far. So we’re now in the process of dismantling yet another car, my garage has 19 wheels and tires, and another 10 tires, and three bumpers, and the list goes on… But at least it gives us something to do while we wait on the E90 car to come back, and we got the Bosch ECU.

Vimeo / Spec E30: Spec E30 NASA NorCal Llihrednuht 5-22-2010 #55

Sun, 30 May 2010 23:29:23 +0000

Team: road runner
Driver: the Shoe
Car: 55
Saturday Sprint Race, Thunderhill Backwards
Camera was cutting in and out, so here is a little of the battle with Andy Chittum, which, ... I lose.

Cast: Shoe Nichols

Vimeo / Spec E30: Spec E30 NASA NorCal Llihrednuht 5-23-2010 #55

Fri, 28 May 2010 15:40:59 +0000

Team: road runner
Driver: the Shoe
Car: 55
Sunday Sprint Race, Thunderhill Backwards
Camera was cutting in and out, so here is a little of the battle with Derek Welch

Cast: Shoe Nichols

DTOMRacing.com: Spec E30 For Sale!

Tue, 25 May 2010 16:42:39 +0000

#82 Spec E30 ‘87 325is $12,5k OBO

For sale is the #82 NASA-SE race and SE30 podium frequent car. 1 season on fully refreshed motor, last dyno was 161-162 rwhp – very competitive power. Professional rebuild and install by Brendan Digel included new cam, valves, springs, guides and rings, more. Car is built to the limit of the rules, and now also eligible to race in the BMW CCA Club Racing. Sale will include spares and extra maintenance items, should be able to go 4 or more weekends.

Engine

Full stock rebuild (top and bottom) in Aug 08
AKG motor mounts

Transmission

UUC short shift kit with ball bearings
AKG transmission bushings
Professionally rebuilt differential Feb 09

Suspension

Brand new Bilsteins front and rear
Ireland front and rear strut bars
Ireland sway bars & rear welded sway bar tab reinforcements
New tie rods
Ireland Engineering Rear toe kit
Ireland Engineering RTABs and subframe bushings
Ireland Engineering CABs

Brakes

2 sets of new PFC01’s front and rear
Brake backing plates and ducts in front
Brass guide pins F&R

Body

Brand new windshield
Longacre rear view mirror

Wheels

Two sets of Team Dynamics Pro Race II’s
Two sets of brand new shaved RA1’s

Interior/Safety

Custom roll cage with foot protection and dash bar
Recaro Pole Position with seat back brace
New Schroth 6 pt camlock harnesses
Teamtech mesh center net
SPA 4 nozzle Fire System

Trailer is also available – $13,300 with open trailer. Serious inquiries please contact Craig Geiger (craig@brandnewengine.com). Witty inquiries, just leave comments!

Vimeo / Spec E30: May 22 Llihrednuht Spec E30

Tue, 25 May 2010 05:21:28 +0000

Cast: BW Racing

Vimeo / Spec E30: Spec E30 NASA NorCal Infineon Raceway 11-08-2009 #55

Sun, 09 May 2010 03:01:21 +0000

Team: road runner
Driver: the Shoe
Car: 55
Final Sunday Sprint Race of the NASA Norcal Season. Q 9, Finished 6th. Donny "Hollywood" Edwards (aka: Apple) became Season Champion at the completion of the race. A thrilling first season for our team, although a partial season. Speed Trapp Racing made us feel like old pros with their Professional support! Thanks Sean and Tony!

Cast: Shoe Nichols

Jason Tower's Spec E30 campaign: NASA-SE Pit Bull Run at CMP

Sat, 08 May 2010 17:26:26 +0000

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Joy and pain. Then I am happy and sad for you. All sum up last weekend’s race at CMP.

Started off with beautiful (and hot) weather Saturday morning, practice felt good but I gridded late and didn’t get a clean lap in qualifying. Managed to get a 1:56.8, good for 12th of 17 cars. The race that afternoon was exciting, we did a standing start (my first) and everyone was clean, charging around the track without any first lap incidents. A lap later I got a little too aggressive in turn 14 and stuck a nose inside on Fred Switzer, spinning him out but doing no real harm. Sorry Fred! Eventually I ended up behind Alex Reznikov, I was a tad quicker than him but couldn’t quite get set up for a good pass, every time I’d get close I’d somehow goof and ruin my chances.

spec e30 at cmp, part 1 from jason tower on Vimeo.

spec e30 cmp, part 2 from jason tower on Vimeo.

An exciting moment occurred near the end when my steering wheel popped off on the back straight at over 100 mph, the car veered off track but I was able to reattach it in time for the kink:

look ma no hands from jason tower on Vimeo.

Chased Alex until the end and finished eighth with a best lap of 1:56.2.

Sunday was gonna be the day, I was raring to go. It was hot but I had my homemade cool shirt, car was running well, tires in good shape, got on grid nice and early for qualifying. Felt great in the morning qualifying session, I was behind Aaron Rankin in his E36, together we were turning nice laps and gaining on Brian Jones. Then this happened:

spec e30 crash from jason tower on Vimeo.

Aaron put two wheels off in turn 5 and spun, unfortunately I didn’t see it clearly since a miata was directly between us. The miata took evasive action, I did too a second later but not in time to avoid a collision with Aaron. Fortunately the damage wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked, a bent control arm and some wrinkled sheet metal but nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

Adding insult to injury, the lap I turned just prior to the accident (1:55.7) was good enough for 4th position! And since one of the top three cars didn’t finish I could well have been on the podium that afternoon. We tried to find a replacement control arm but nobody in the paddock had one, guess that’s something to add to the spares list. Oh well, such is racing.

Stopped off at my friend Mike Whitney’s house on the way home to check out the damage. Put it on the lift, removed the control arm and hammered out the body panels, got it looking as good as new (well not quite for good enough for racing).

Turns out the damage was a little worse than we first thought, the wheel was bent along with the strut and shock. But the strut isn’t so bad that the camber plate can’t compensate, might be a little bit off but I’m gonna try it and see how it feels.

Coming up: a few HPDEs, a trip to Mid-Ohio, and another race at Lowes. Keep those fingers crossed.

Vimeo / Spec E30: 5.1.2010 PART 4 CMP

Tue, 04 May 2010 19:52:45 +0000

BeerTech Racing #380 Brian Jones presents the forth part of the Saturday Lightning Sprint race at CMP.

I didnt upload parts 2 and 3 as they would put me over the limit for the weekly uploads. Ill post them later but you get the idea from these two parts, it was a good close battle.

Cast: Brian Jones

Vimeo / Spec E30: 5.1.2010 PART 1 NASA SE CMP

Tue, 04 May 2010 12:19:57 +0000

BeerTech Racing #380 Brian Jones
This is part one of the Sunday Lightning Sprint Race.

Cast: Brian Jones

Vimeo / Spec E30: Spec E30 NASA NorCal Thunderhill 4-24-2010 #55

Mon, 03 May 2010 03:58:58 +0000

Team: road runner
Driver: the Shoe
Car: 55
Saturday Sprint Race
Qualified 10th of 15, Finally got a decent standing start. Finish up 4th after a little give and take. Very fun weekend in Willows, CA. Special Thanks to Tony Zwain and Sean Trapp of Speed Trapp Racing and Donny Edwards. NorCal Rockstars weekend!

Cast: Shoe Nichols

Vimeo / Spec E30: NASA SE Spec E30 CMP 5.2.2010 BeerTech Racing #380

Mon, 03 May 2010 00:20:48 +0000

Great race. Battled down to the last lap with Evan Levine. He beat me by the front bumper to take 2nd place.

As usual, this video camera is crap and the audio has about a 1 second delay. Sorry, may be better to watch with no sound.

Cast: Brian Jones

Vimeo / Spec E30: NorCal SpecE30 Thunderhill April 24, 2010

Sun, 02 May 2010 21:47:05 +0000

NASA NorCal SpecE30 road race at Thunderhill. Qualified 5th...finished 1st! Not without some pressure from Brad McClure #91 and Greg Peterson #76. My first SE30 win!

Cast: Scott Neville

Vimeo / Spec E30: GTS2 NASA NorCal Thunderhill 4-24-2010 #55

Sun, 02 May 2010 15:12:54 +0000

Team: road runner
Driver: Austin James
Car: 55
Saturday's GTS2 sprint race.

Cast: Shoe Nichols

Axis of Oversteer (Spec E30): Team Axis Strikes on Lightning

ac@axisofoversteer.com (AC) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:53:56 +0000

Justin and Pete rocked New Jersey Motorsport Park's Lightining course this past week end at the NASA Northeast races. Justin won his first race and Pete set a Spec e30 track record in qualifying. But let's hear it from them...Justin:It seems like only weeks ago team Axis Of Oversteer Spec E30 racers were ripping through the twilight at Summit Point during an EMRA enduro in which a small

Vimeo / Spec E30: NASA Spece30 March 21st Infineon Raceway + RaceChrono

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:41:39 +0000

Sunday Race, as driven by Andy Chittum. Start 4th, run 5th after the 1st turn...but not for lack of trying. Nice dicing with Steve Ferrario and Scott Clough.

Display by RaceChrono with RaceChrono2AVI, Nokia N85 using internal GPS.

Cast: MadManMotors

Vimeo / Spec E30: 03/21/09 NASA Spec E30 Race

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:09:22 +0000

Speed Trapp Racing driver Sean Trapp successfully completes a Spec E30 race and finishes 8th.

Cast: Speed Trapp Racing

Jason Tower's Spec E30 campaign: Uncle Sam’s Tax Run at Charlotte Motor Speedway (Lowes)

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:46:38 +0000

This was a last minute thing, I hadn’t intended to do this event but since it looked like a lot of Spec E30 folks were going and I got $50 off for attending the HPDE at NCCAR, what the heck. Plus I had never driven there before, or on any banked oval for that matter, so it would be a good experience. It was only one day but with practice, qualifying, and two sprint races it was a busy one.

I arrived the evening before and barely got there in time to drop off my trailer in the paddock. Fortunately Scott Lusted and his family was kind enough to let me stay with them overnight which ended up being a huge relief since camping at the track wasn’t a possibility. All hands meeting Monday morning at 0700 and practice at 0800 meant we got an early start.

The first couple of laps were intimidating. You can’t get a sense of the size and banking of the track until you see it in person, video just doesn’t do it justice. After a couple of laps I was comfortable enough to take the oval flat (full throttle all the way around) since I heard that’s how it was done. Even with the steep banking and the modest speed of a Spec E30 (about 125 mph) the g-forces are significant, I felt almost like a fighter pilot between the compressive force of the banking and the lateral load provided by the tires at the limit of adhesion. The infield portion of the track was relatively straightforward, it even had some elevation and camber change which was a pleasant surprise. After a short break we headed out for qualifying which put me at a severe disadvantage – many of my competitors had driven this track before (NASA-SE ran at Lowes in 2009) whereas I had barely 20 minutes of time on it. Not surprisingly I qualified ninth out of ten drivers with a 1:29.8 (four seconds faster than practice) but the good news was that the next five cars were less than 0.7 seconds faster so I was only slightly off the pace.

Race #1 was just before lunch, we got a clean start but the car one spot ahead of me (Fred Switzer) spun in turn 4 forcing me to lift slightly. I caught up to the next pack of cars but after several of them teamed up to draft in the oval I was left behind and drove the rest of the race solo, finishing eighth.

spec e30 tax run – race 1 start from jason tower on Vimeo.

Race #2 was after lunch but since we used the same qualifying time I still had to start in ninth position. Again we got off to a clean start and I spent the first half of the race mixing it up with Fred; we traded positions a few times and had a couple of driving oopsies but kept it clean and had a great time. Eventually I was able to open a bit of a gap and cruised the second half of the race. A couple of guys didn’t finish (Alex Reznikov was black flagged for an exhaust problem and Al Taylor had an unfortunate encounter with a concrete barrier) so I finished in fifth position.

spec e30 tax run – race 2 from jason tower on Vimeo.

At one point I spotted former Cleveland Cavalier and current NASCAR analyst and NASA racer Brad Daugherty walking past my car so I asked him if he’d pose next to the Kirk Key (located just outside Cleveland) logo, which he graciously did without a moment’s hesition. In fact Brad was running in the same group as me (meaning we were on track at the same time) but in a different class.

Beautiful weather, friendly people as always, and great racing (my good friend and fellow rookie Evan Levine, also in his first time at this track, qualified sixth and finished fourth and second, a fantastic result). Coming up next: the Pit Bull Brawl at one of my favorite tracks (CMP). Let’s get it on!

Vimeo / Spec E30: Charlotte Motor Speedway Spec E30 April 2010

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:36:42 +0000

There are two old sayings in racing: (1) "You can't win the race on the first lap but you can sure as heck lose it." (2)"It's better to be lucky than good". This illustrates both.

Cast: Fred Switzer

DTOMRacing.com: What I did over Spring Break

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:21:00 +0000

You probably can’t learn to run a race team in four days, but we don’t know how to build a race car either so let’s not get caught up in the details. Using our Ready, Fire, Aim approach to this pro racing thing – since we had purchased and stripped a car, I figured it might be a good idea to actually see how a Grand-Am event runs. I had been to this same race last year when the BimmerWorld crew were doing their due diligence on the series (before they made a decision, announcement, and bought / stripped a donor) as a spectator but that doesn’t always give you the subtle details working behind the scenes allows.

I made my gracious offer to Clay, that in return for credentials, food, and lodging I’d serve as his apprentice team owner. For my mental model I used a combination of Roger Penske and James when he fell off the team transporter, basically a guy looking grumpy wearing some type of hat, sunglasses, and radio earphones. We started negotiating on specific duties based on my diverse skill set – eventually settling on Car Helper / Tool Fetcher as my official title, which I modified to “Chief” Car Helper / Tool Fetcher due to the fact that I was the only one with that job description. I still maintain I could have served as Dave White’s security detail, but will reluctantly acknowledge that he wasn’t swarmed by female groupies like Patrick Dempsey and his four police officers so in hindsight probably not the best use of my time, that is the call an experienced team owner makes. He also made me promise to bring Craig.

DTOM Security Detail

When we got there we were asked to reprise our roles from the famous car stripping video i.e. Craig Geiger as President of the Film Club, and Jim Robinson caterer. Then at the end of each day James or Jason Marks would ask “Did you learn anything today?” I certainly did! I know where all the fast food spots in Leeds, AL are. Now how that connects exactly to managing a professional racing team I’m still a little foggy on, but I’m sure it will come into focus down the road. Thankfully we also were able to sneak in Ted, Jason, and Brendan and they got a chance to look over the cars, ask intelligent questions, and receive intelligent answers from Marks, Ryan Kuhn, Dave Simpkins, et al.

Craig’s handy work.

In addition to getting lunch I also tried to generally stay out of the way, the BW crew does an amazing amount of work getting the cars prepped and ready, setup changes, not to mention some of the obiligatory work required like packing & unpacking the rig, Grand-Am inspections, etc. This just reinforced my opinion that driving the car is somewhat the easy part in all of this, having the right support people are crucial to success. Wayne Yawn the team’s engineer also dazzled us with his 911 engine trivia and successfully answered Craig’s one tough question – “Why are manhole covers round?”. His friend Amy showed some awesome jump rope skills too, the most attention I think the team got all weekend was when she was jumping rope – see a small taste here.

Since we’re talking about Barber it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t complain about the track a bit. First of all it is a coin toss between which is more miserable; standing outside in the paddock when it is 100+ degrees, or standing in the paddock with huge clouds of pollen floating around. By the end of four days I was ready to pluck my eyes out of my head. Unfortunately every time I had a run in with the legendary paddock police of Barber, Clay was sitting right alongside tsk tsk-ing me into not running over cones or people, and not destroying property. I took some satisfaction in seeing the huge grassy fields that they use for parking absolutely destroyed by the heavy rain that came through on Thursday. It was a total mess.

“Ha Ha” – Nelson from the Simpsons

Superstar racer Randy Pobst was making his own parking space all weekend to keep his baller ride clean, I had to one up him.

Another thing I ‘learned’ while standing on the pit lane was more about the Indy Racing League than Grand-Am. There is always a higher level. Grand-Am has some nice stuff, there are pro teams that have huge semi’s, big dollar stuff. IRL takes that and turns it to 11. There wasn’t a guy on pit lane that looked like he’d ever changed his own oil. They looked more like engineers and computer geeks. They had massive ‘war wagon’s’ with seats and awnings, and carbon fiber bits. They had huge antennas for telemetry and weather gizmos. In short probably about as close to Formula One cr@p that you’ll ever see in Alabama. Also all the drivers are like Shetland people. Danica Patrick is a tiny tiny grumpy girl, Helio Castoroneesess (The dancing with the star tax cheat guy), Tony Kannan? All borderline midgets.

How much does the umbrella holder guy make a year?

So after 3 days of car helping and fetching lunch, Clay introduced me to my race time duty – “Deadman”. The picture will help explain; basically the GA fuel rig has a valve that someone has to hold open while the car pits and fuels. I’d like to think they call it the “Deadman” because it so easy a dead man could do it, but in fact its called that because when it blows up and the dude holding the valve open falls to the ground as a pile of ash the fuel shuts off and saves everyone else that isn’t standing next to a firework. I didn’t give this a second thought, and with Clay’s encouragement of “Don’t screw this up” I figured no problem.

Pull the yellow handle and don’t blow up – Mini in background pre-blaze.

Since it was very easy I didn’t screw it up, I only mention this because it has forced a review of my well documented safety first policy. Here I am in jeans and a golf shirt surrounded by dudes in nomex fire gear next to 60+ gallons of fuel when towards the end of the race a Mini goes up in flames. Not – ohh a leaf got caught on the exhaust and started smoking, a “WHOOSH” and oh sh!t they’re pulling that dude out of the car on fire, type fire. No one was hurt, and we had earlier noticed that one of the Mini’s were leaking fuel into a puddle but assumed it had dried up. Well whatever problem it had didn’t fix itself, unless you count burning to a crisp a ‘fix’. The pit crews put the fire out three times, before the big fire truck dudes rolled up and foamed it down. Unfortunately we’re not building a Mini otherwise I would have seen if the wheels were for sale since that is about all that wasn’t a melting pile of cr@p afterwards.

Mini – post blaze.

In summary what did my apprenticeship teach me? Well that if you need a guy to feed between 10 and 16 people with fast food, I may be your man. Craig is really good at sticking a bunch of cameras on a car and pressing a button. You wear fire proof snowsuits for a reason. Grand-Am looks like a lot of work. The End.

Congrats to Dave White for sitting on the Pole! Pictured here in his second big time interview – remember hands down.

Here Dave celebrates sitting on the Pole, who says racers aren’t athletes.

DTOMRacing.com: How To Video

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Step by step instructions on how to dismantle car… in only 3 minutes!

Jason Tower's Spec E30 campaign: THSCC at VIR North

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 05:02:39 +0000

This weekend was all about driving – no racing, no instructing, just a chance to focus on the nut behind the wheel. My tires weren’t up to the task (three of six were corded at the edge, and the other three were close) so I asked the guys at Long Road Racing if they could help me out. Fortunately they had a set of BRG R1s sitting in the scrap pile about to go to the dump and Glenn graciously offered them to me. Two were flat spotted but the other two seemed ok, Glenn insisted they were toast but beggars can’t be choosers. I also purchased two used but decent 888s (even though I hate them) to round out the set, I figured I’d put the tires BFGs up front and the good 888s out back since understeer was safer than oversteer.

Saturday morning I went out with my instructor (I was in the solo group but wanted someone to ride shotgun in an effort to improve my weaknesses) and the car felt terrible – just bouncing all over the place, the front and back ends felt like two different cars, only managed a 1:55. Turns out I didn’t bleed enough air out and they were over 45 psi hot. Drained 5-6 psi out and went out for session #2, car felt MUCH better and I ran a 1:51.1. Amazingly it didn’t understeer at all, in fact it oversteered more than ever but felt wonderful, just a delight to drive. Guess those free tires were better than anticipated! Third session I went out solo (my instructor said he couldn’t teach me anything which was a little disappointing) and promptly flat spotted the RF tire braking for turn 1, ending my session:

e30 braking fail from jason tower on Vimeo.

The removal of 200lb on the right side of the car may have contributed to the lockup, along with new PFC06 pads that don’t modulate as well as the PFC01s I had been using, and the lack of ABS certainly didn’t help either. Most disappointing was that I’d have to switch to my crappy backup 888s which meant losing the wonderful balance I’d achieved with the BFGs up front. Oh well, such is life – I put the 888s up front, added two extra pounds of air in the back to loosen it up a bit and went out for my very first time trial. Here’s how that went:

e30 braking fail redux from jason tower on Vimeo.

Un-smegging-believable, I did it again. So that session was also completely shot. Time to regroup and hope for a better day tomorrow.

Sunday morning found me with a mixed bag of tires: two decent 888s on the back, a tired 888 on the LF corner, and a near death R1 on the RF corner. Not a recipe for success but that’s all I had to work with. First session I went out and the car felt better than expected so I pushed it a bit and got a 1:50.0 lap, nearly two seconds better than Saturday’s best. Second session wasn’t quite as fast but more fun, traffic was heavy but fun, got some good video:

spec e30 vir north – fun laps from jason tower on Vimeo.

Third session I enlisted a fast and capable Jason Franklin to help me find some time, he made a few suggestions and together we turned a 1:49.8. I was quite happy to break into the 40s as the end of the video shows:

spec e30 vir north – coaching from jason tower on Vimeo.

Last run of the weekend was the Sunday time trial, I was still a little hesitant on braking after Saturday’s misadventures but everything else fell into place and I ended up with a best lap of 1:48.7 which made me very happy:

spec e30 vir north – time trial from jason tower on Vimeo.

That’s still a couple of seconds off the fastest Spec E30 guys but given my tire condition I was pleased with the time. Furthermore, my traqmate data showed a theoretical best lap of 1:47.9 which means that with fresh tires and a little more consistency I should be able to hang with most of the front runners.

All in all a great weekend – terrific weather, friendly people (including Michael Czeiszperger of sponsor Web Performance who did his first HPDE in a Mini Cooper S), and a solid car. Coming up this weekend – the first group to run at the brand new NCCAR track in Roanake Rapids!

DTOMRacing.com: Dude, where’s my car?

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:27:00 +0000

“Matured,” daily driving, air cooled, 911’s hit their sweet spot during spring time. The ac system in these cars suck and the heat is 50% breathable air and 50% carbon monoxide mixed with oil vapors. They are truly awesome cars, but not for everyone. With the windows down though, they’re perfect for anybody.

Right now in Atlanta is window down driving weather. And won’t be for long…

On the eve of the great 330 strip-a-thon, my mother in laws car got stolen (94 Accord, not too surprising), which provides another karma strike against tearing apart a perfectly functioning, really nice car. Her car also had our second kid seat base in it. I will spare you the complicated and obfuscated logistics that Jim manages to mastermind at the 11th hour in order to get a third non running race car (and in the case of what’s left of the 330, I use that term even more liberally) into my garage. The short version is that my 911 goes to his garage (his stupid SE30 doesn’t have an ECU to run currently), my wife takes the pick up truck to work every day and my mother in law uses a 1 series vert temporarily. Meanwhile… Jim takes my 911 to work or dinner or his daily trips to the pet store or wherever when he feels like it to pimp as his own and, somehow, someway….THERE’S AN EMPTY GARAGE SPOT WHERE MY 911 SHOULD BE.

I can’t believe this. I’m so pissed off that I think about how I can drop off his non running SE30 paperweight at his driveway and take back my 911. But sparing you the even more complicated logistics (trailer, tow vehicle and kid seat swap nonsense + number of trips), without going through two days of enourmous wasted effort, all while bringing my daughter with me through the entire boondoggle, it’s rendered impossible. Jim 1, Craig 0. Noted.

Update: The AV club down at the local middle school that Jim managed to entice into editing our timelapse video for free, is working feverishly and should have them ready by weeks end.

DTOMRacing.com: No turning back now!

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:24:00 +0000

In for a penny in for a pound, don’t lift mid-corner, and whatever other clichés you want to drag up. Long story short we took a car that had some value and reduced it to its component parts (i.e. ‘no value’) in a little less than 7 hours.

(sidenote: Apparently the car part removal gods read my thoughts a little too literally since the first thing that was removed early Sat. morning was the plastic piece that controls the tail gate on my truck, it exploded into non-working plastic pieces. You could get the tailgate unlatched with a pair of big channel lock pilers, I considered for a few moments not fixing it but I didn’t own channel locks big enough and I already get a ration of sh!t from Clay et al. on the crack in my windshield. Seriously what engineer or accountant said, “Hey on a Heavy Duty work truck lets make the tailgate handle out of plastic. People will never break that.” Oh and insult to injury the component parts to fix $83. Steve D. just looked at me as I explained, “And that is how DTOM writes itself”)

Clay likes to brag that all his employees are racers. DTOM likes to brag that all its ‘employees’ (i.e. unpaid volunteers) are mechanics, well with the exception of Craig and I. In fact even the camera guy we convinced to show up to help ‘memorialize’ the event was a mechanic, but only on Volvos so we didn’t let Brian actually touch anything. Seriously what is harder to find, someone to race / drive your car or someone to work on it? Try this little test, go to a race track and yell out “HEY anyone want to race my car for me?” see how many offers you get. Then go back the next week and holler “HEY anyone want to come work on my car for me?” and compare the two results.

Everyone wants to be a race car driver, we got that part licked, very few people find it exciting doing real work for nothing. In spite of that, and due in part to my amazing capacity for bull sh_t, we managed to have the usual suspects in attendance for the big tear down – Ted, Brendan, Jason, Craig and Myself. However – we also had two late additions to the line up in Steve DeVinney and a guy named Mo. I never caught Mo’s last name but he was of significant assistance since he worked at a dealership and gave a lot of much needed guidance to removing the dash and some of the trickier bits. Mo if by some chance you happen to read this – Thanks! Steve D. also showed a tremendous capacity for tearing things apart, probably as an outlet for his ongoing arguments on the Spec E30 forum.

In case you ever find yourself needing to tear a 2006 330i BMW apart here is a pretty good list to help guide you:

- Get your head checked before you go to step 2.
- Remove windshield front and rear. In our case we have to reuse these so we paid a ‘professional’ instead of kicking them out with our feet, which would have been more fun.
- Remove doors, hood, and trunk for easy access
- Remove seats and interior
- Remove wiring
- Remove rear subframe and running gear
- Remove front subframe and running gear
BTW if you find yourself in the market for E90 parts let us know, we now have a substantial inventory of cr@p for sale. Email DTOM Racing at Gmail.com for more info.

There you go, nothing to it! Few other minor things you’ll want to plan for. Have a place to store this sh!t. We rented a storage spot, which we thought would be MORE than adequate. In fact it’s already full and we don’t have the engine, or rear subframe in it yet. During the removal process we had stuff strewn from one end of Jason’s shop to another – roughly 6000 sq feet of junk. The car itself was down to bare metal around 3:30pm; it took another 3 hours to sort through and move all the parts and determine what absolutely stayed, what could possibly be sold, and what we could throw out. Remember to ratchet strap the car to the lift, thankfully Brendan thought of that. Turns out when you remove everything but the engine from a car it gets a little nose heavy, you don’t want to have a car nose over 6 feet in the air.

Have a plan for what to do with a 500 lb. chunk of car shaped metal. I always acknowledged this was the weak point of my plan. Around 10am Jason said “What are we doing with this thing”. My reply of “I’m still thinking about it” didn’t inspire confidence. The debate was over leaving enough on the car to enable the wheels to roll or not. Leaving it as a roller would have required a lot of work later and we were trying to get this as close to ‘ready’ as possible, but would have been a lot safer. We opted for the build a dolly play. Basically this meant constructing a giant skateboard to sit the car on so we could roll it around. As Craig has learned from his numerous ill fated home improvement projects you’ll be required to make at least two trips to Home Depot. Our first one we scored the necessary lumber, then we needed some uber wheels for this monstrosity since rolling it around on a nice smooth concrete floor is easy, over a rough bumpy parking lot and up my trailer ramps requires something a little more all terrain so we went to Northern Tool. Only upon our return did we notice that we had neglected to purchase any means of affixing the casters / wheels to the frame. Craig borrowed Steve D’s midlife crisis mobile (aka 996 911 turbo) and went to get some lag screws. Since he is retarded he got some about an inch and half long instead of like 4 inches. More on that in a bit.

So we got to the point where the mess was cleaned up (sort of), the car was on its skateboard and strapped down securely, and my trailer was in the parking lot ready for loading. We rolled the chunk of metal out and started pushing towards the ramp. It gave a sickening lurch and stopped. The tiny screws on one of the casters had ripped out of the wood, this left our paperweight teetering precariously on a 3 wheeled homemade shopping cart. Craig affected immediate “repairs” and the ‘car’ was gently rolled onto the trailer. Then we had to affix the dolly /skateboard to the trailer. This (for me at least) generated a fair amount of anxiety since I had just seen one of the wheels collapse and had witnessed what was holding this entire rickety operation together. In this case I feel that a picture literally is worth a thousand words.

We were ready to set off. Now I’m not normally known as a safety sally like Steve D., who practices his exit drills from his various race cars on the weekend, but I think everyone noticed my distinct lack of enthusiasm about driving this Beverly Hillbilly setup down one of the busiest highways in America – in a truck without license plates, or registration (I had removed them to put on the car to drive over to Jason’s shop on Friday and forgot to put everything back when I left in the morning Sat.), on a trailer with no working lights. Oh, and on the car we had removed the VIN Plates, and I had no bill of sale or title. I told Craig “We’re doing this Smokey and the Bandit style. You stay glued to my bumper and if a cop comes by wreck into him and I’ll gun it.” With that game plan sorted out we started off towards Craig’s race car storage facility (aka his garage).

We had gone about two blocks on another very busy two lane road (41 for locals of ATL) and my phone rings. Its Craig saying “The rear ratchet straps are loose you need to pull over so we can tighten them”. I looked around and the next available option was a left turn. So I jumped over to the turn lane and sat waiting for the light. It turned green and I slowly inched up the hill into the shopping center parking lot. I am checking my mirrors when I see Craig on the back of the trailer holding onto the car and waving at me. Uh Oh.

I wish that we had caught this on film; unfortunately I’ll try to do it justice. Imagine this rig in a left hand turn lane. Craig in his pickup truck behind me gets out of the driver side door and hops onto the back of the trailer and starts tightening the straps, the light turns green and I take off (much to his horror.) His truck is sitting in the left hand turn lane with the door wide open and I’m driving off with him on the back completely oblivious. Brendan thankfully was in the passenger seat and hopped over and got Craig’s truck moving in time to run the red light. All this happens while about 5 people at the bus stop point, laugh, and shake their heads.

We finished the day by placing another non-running race car into Craig’s garage. This displaced his cherry 911 from its prized garage spot, this ’89 911 is so nice that you can’t even tell it was once wrecked at Road Atlanta on a warm up lap at a DE. I gleefully offered my now empty garage spot to which Craig reluctantly agreed. So to summarize – Craig has 2 partially running Spec E30’s, my trailer, and a car shaped paperweight in his garage, while I have a sweet 911 that I’ll drive to work in lieu of my pickup truck. I’m smarter than I look.

Programming Notes: We’re going to milk this one day of work for all its worth. We ran several time lapse cameras, and had a friend shooting a bunch of pics with a ‘good’ camera as well. Eventually Craig will get around to building the new site to host all this frivolity so stay tuned. In terms of next steps for the car, it goes to a media blaster to get paint, etc removed and then to BimmerWorld HQ for the cage.

DTOMRacing.com: How to turn a really nice car into a pile of cr@p.

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 02:49:00 +0000

****UPDATE****
Craig told me no one likes looking at a random web directory. So we added these pics to FLICKR with some added commentary.

Click here to see!

In one day or less. A visual essay. These are just my junky camera shots. We did this right for once and will have good pictures by a pro, some time lapse stuff, video, etc. If only we would have done as well organizing all the parts…

Old directory is still up if anyone is interested.

See all the pics here.

Vimeo / Spec E30: Spec E30 Saturday rain race - Road Atlanta

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:18:54 +0000

Start of the Saturday Lightning Race - March 13, 2010. Fun in the rain!

Cast: Fred Switzer

Vimeo / Spec E30: NASA Spece30 March 21st Infineon Raceway

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:40:08 +0000

Sunday Race, as driven by Andy Chittum. Start 4th, run 5th after the 1st turn...but not for lack of trying. Nice dicing with Steve Ferrario and Scott Clough.

Simple start to finish, I'll have a version with additional footage up in a few days.

Cast: MadManMotors

Vimeo / Spec E30: Spec E30 NASA NorCal Infineon Raceway 03-21-2010 #55

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:22:47 +0000

Team: road runner
Driver: the Shoe
Car: 55
Sundays Sprint race. Started 7th, dropped to 11th, finished 7th. Battled with Scoot Neville, he won......this time. A Double Yellow early in the race creates an opportunity for "The Pass" which occurs on the end of lap 2. Some buddy "flipped" or should I say "flipped out" over it.
Thanks to Donny Edwards, Scoot Neville, Evil Genius Racing for the "Hard Charger Award" and Sean & Tony @ Speed Trapp Racing.

Cast: Shoe Nichols

Vimeo / Spec E30: NorCal SpecE30 Infineon March 21, 2010

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 05:43:31 +0000

Sunday's Sprint Race. Qualified 9th in a field of 15 cars, finished 6th with some fun racing with Gary Rieger (#29), Kevin Nichols (#55) and Loren Trefethen (#92).

Cast: Scott Neville

Vimeo / Spec E30: NASA NorCal Spec E30 Sunday Race Infineon Raceway 3-21-10 Scott Clough #224

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:24:21 +0000

Again sound is all wrecked, sorry! Qualified 5th and finished 4th in Sunday's race. Full course caution on lap 1 due to a E36 starting behind our grid running into and taking out one of our cars in turn 1. Very competitive and fun race.

Cast: Scott Clough

Vimeo / Spec E30: NASA NorCal Spec E30 Saturday Race Scott Clough #224 Infineon Raceway 3-20-10

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:37:57 +0000

Sorry for the poor sound! Qualified 6th and finished 4th in Saturday's race the third race of the 2010 season. The video cut out 2/3 through the race. Very fun race as usual.

Cast: Scott Clough

Vimeo / Spec E30: Spec E30 NASA NorCal Infineon Raceway 03-20-2010 Qualifying #55

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:04:41 +0000

Team: road runner
Driver: the Shoe
Car: 55
Saturday qualifying. Following Tony Zwain of Speed Trapp Racing. Best qualifying performance ever for me as I qualified on Pole. Unexpected. Following Tony was the key, along with words of wisdom from Scoot Neville and Donny Edwards. Also the expert car set up from Tony and Sean at Speed Trapp. I finished 2nd on Saturday. Tony won Sunday's race!

Cast: Shoe Nichols

Vimeo / Spec E30: 02/28/09 NASA Spec E30 Race

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:17:56 +0000

Speed Trapp Racing driver Tony Zwain battles his way to a 3rd place finish at Infineon Raceway

Cast: Speed Trapp Racing

Jason Tower's Spec E30 campaign: NASA-SE Pot of Gold Rush Road Atlanta

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:04:35 +0000

My second race at Road Atlanta this year, this time with a substantially larger and more competitive group. Weather on Saturday was marginal, it rained on and off all day so we never had consistent traction. Spotty rain is often the worst – you end up with a dry racing line but offline is wet which makes passing even harder than usual. And that’s exactly what happened during the Saturday race, plus we only got about 15 min of racing since the last half was run entirely under standing yellow. My video camera ran out of memory so nothing was recorded but there wasn’t much to see anyway. Qualified 13th out of 20, finished 11th.

Sunday was cloudy and overcast but dry (meaning no rain, but the track was quite damp for our early qualifying session). I managed a respectable seventh out of about twenty cars which put me in a decent starting position for the afternoon race. Unfortunately I drove too conservatively, which simply won’t get the job done in such a competitive field, and lost a few positions as the race progressed. Things got even worse when it went full course yellow just after the race leader (in a different class) passed me so the pace car came out in front of him and trapped me, everyone that I was chasing ran off ahead and everyone that I had been pulling away from stacked up right behind me. But hey, that’s racing! Lost a couple more spots thanks to some nice driving by my competitors, but we all finished without any incidents and had fun. Finished 13th, giving me plenty of room for improvement next time.

spec e30 road atlanta sun race part 1 from jason tower on Vimeo.

spec e30 road atlanta sun race part 2 from jason tower on Vimeo.

Coming up next: instructing at several HPDEs in March and April, then the next race is at CMP in early May.

Vimeo / Spec E30: David and Johan Battle for the lead at Road Atlanta March 2010

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:09:18 +0000

Hard fought battle for the lead at NASA Southeasts Pot of Gold race at Road Atlanta. March 14th 2010

Cast: David Walsh Jr

Vimeo / Spec E30: Battle for the lead. March 2010 Road Atlanta SpecE30

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:01:26 +0000

Fun and hard fought battle for the win between David and Johan.

Cast: David Walsh Jr

DTOMRacing.com: Reality Setting In

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:04:00 +0000

Forsehadowing at Step 1: Going to pick up the car.

“Fans” of DTOM Racing should realize by now that Jim is plagued with more bad luck, misfortune, poor judgement and vindictive karma than any single human should burden. To truly understand this, one must know his 2009 season strategy for SpecE30 and then compare the outcome… I’ll let him fill in. Why did I sign up for this new “good idea?” I asked myself this using my outside voice once we set off in Jim’s show dog transporter to go pick up the new track rat. It began pouring rain, Jim’s weak immune system had made him even more frail, unmotivated and grumpy than usual and all I could think of was how do I interpret and act upon this sign of things to come.

Fortunately, I test drove the car, it runs great, it’s way too nice to be a race car, I didn’t wreck it (test drive would surpass out-lap) and the sun came out. Maybe it will all balance out? Stay tuned to find out.

Vimeo / Spec E30: Spec E30 NASA NorCal Infineon Raceway 02-28-2010 #55

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 04:58:18 +0000

Team: road runner
Driver: the Shoe
Car: 55
Opening race weekend for NASA NorCal 2010 Season. Sunday Sprint Race. Started 4th, finished 8th. Poor braking technique, contact from behind in turn 7, and tires conspire to take me back 4 positions. Weather clear 60 degrees. 16 competitors. Start and 5 laps of video. Remaining laps driving alone not included.

Cast: Shoe Nichols