Portland Déjà Vu

(c) 2003 J. Sage Schreiner

www.unsage.com

 

It had been almost 10 weeks since my last race. During my intermission, I had fixed broken stuff, acquired a tow rig and put a race exhaust on the 318i. As always, thinking of the up-coming race weekend put knots in my stomach, but I looked forward to a chance to wring out the car.

 

Using my con-man skills (Admiring women! Prize money! Fame!), I convinced a friend of mine, Matt, to be my crew-chief for the August 10 / 11 race weekend at Portland International Raceway. Matt and I towed the car to Portland, using the new-to-me ‘72 Ford F250 and a borrowed tow dolly. The truck barely even noticed that there was another vehicle attached, and despite a lack of modern amenities, was many times more pleasant than the race car. Springs in the seats, working power steering, no elbow-cracking roll cage, and, relatively speaking, blessed silence. It could be a little difficult to keep in one lane because of a tendency to wander, but the towed car seemed to improve its stability. Truly Freude am Shleppen!

 

Matt and I got the car out on track Saturday morning for the practice session with Group 2. The first thing I noticed was – holy crap! – the car was much, much, much faster than it had been the last time I was at PIR. While I'm sure my driving (and thus corner exit speed) was improving a bit, I was more than 10 mph faster on the back straight at PIR, and the engine simply pulled much harder above 4500 RPMs through all the corners. I didn’t expect to get this much performance out of an exhaust system, but because my engine had been opened up at both the intake and exhaust ports, it made a big difference. It felt like the guys at Muffler King had bolted on another two cylinders!

 

During the second session, I had an exciting rotational moment. Just past the apex of a moderately high speed corner, significantly slower than normal (a VW was holding me up – I wish I could say this was a common problem) the back end of my car just dropped out from under me without warning – it stepped out about 45 degrees. This was disconcerting. I knew the car very well, and have always been able to anticipate its dynamics. I caught the car by just letting go of the steering wheel briefly, since the wheel can unwind itself faster than I can. The car oscillated once about 10 degrees in the opposite direction and then straightened out. It was confidence shaking and threw me off for the rest of the session as I tried to figure out what had happened.

 

In the paddock, I found that the front of my car and windshield were misted with a fine layer of synthetic motor oil. This is the slickest substance known to human beings. On making some discreet inquiries (“Hey, dude, are you, like, spraying oil everywhere?”), I learned that Judge (the old guy) and Jeff Peneck's Honda was leaking oil by the bucket full out of a not-seated valve cover gasket. The car was three liters low when it came off the track. Luckily, Honda engines hold up pretty well, and no permanent harm was done. (Vaguely related, I once helped a friend change his oil – and found that the oil on his Civic hadn’t been changed for something like 4 years and forty-thousand miles. When I opened the oil drain pan plug a few chunks of tar oozed out, but no oil. The car ran, but I hate to think what the cylinder wear patterns were like.)

 

At the end of my last novice practice session, the shifter suddenly got very loose, like it was barely connected to the car. I was able to nurse the car off the track by shifting carefully. I tracked the problem down to a small rubber nipple in the shift linkage that had popped out of a piece of sheet metal. With Matt’s help, I pushed the nipple back through the hole (PG-13?). Unfortunately, it popped out again the next session. I jammed it back in and slathered it with glue (the singed smell was my forearm against the exhaust). When the glue dried the nipple stiffened up (R?), and stayed in place for the rest of the weekend. I think the problem was the result of the new exhaust.  Its lack of heat shielding heated and softened the rubber nipple. The ’84 318i uses an identical shift linkage as the E21 320i. It’s a crappy design, and it was changed for the ’85 318i cars, and refined throughout the rest of E30 lifetime. Matt and I got the car out just in time for my novice race.

 

For the first time, I was actually faster than some of the other (slowest) cars. Fewer cars were able to simply blow by me like I was parked. I was a long way from winning races, but there was a glimmer of hope.

 

As the race progressed, I was able to make several reasonably aggressive passes, my first-ever at Portland, and for the last two laps I held off a VW Rabbit and a Honda Civic by driving a defensive line that made it hard for them to pass. On the last lap, I watched the Civic and Rabbit dice back and forth – until, barreling down the straight toward the finish line, the Rabbit successfully drafted off the Civic and was able pull ahead by a bumper. Front row seats indeed! My final place was 13th of 17 cars. It gave me a sense of accomplishment, considering that my previous race here had been a fight for dead last.

 

During Sunday morning’s Group 2 qualifying I barely squeaked past someone who spun right in front of me. Jill, the driver, came over afterwards, introduced herself and thanked me for not hitting her tiny Datsun hatchback. I met yet another cool person at the track!

 

Sunday's race was a big step forward. For the first time, I didn't come in last in my Group 2 race! I was able to pass and stay ahead of Jill’s Datsun, as well as another driver in a vintage Saab. I also "passed" at least one other person in my class who had mechanical troubles. For the first time I was faster than another senior driver, and I was within about 2 seconds per lap of the slowest person in my own class, G-Production. This was a huge improvement over the previous 5 second gap.

 

Thus ended another sun-strewn race weekend of terrible food, jury-rigged fixes defining the line between mobile and immobile, and meditation at 110 mph. Keeping the car running and my head screwed on straight was a lot easier with someone to help. I think Matt put it best. "When you're here alone, how do you ever make it out on track on time?”

 

My planned next step was to put fully adjustable, stiff-as-hell race suspension on the car. Once car and the driver were sorted out, I hoped that race suspension would be good for several seconds per lap. Then I’d be able keep up with the slow folks in my class. That would be the final big step (other than the all-important bright paint job) in transitioning my car into a fully prepared race car. As an added benefit, I wouldn’t have to listen to 2 or 3 people a weekend say, "Hey, did you know that you have an awful lot of body roll? Have you thought about…" After about the 23rd time or so, you just want to whack the person with a jack handle or a Formula Vee or something.

 

So far, I was on schedule to meet the last big goal for my first year of racing – being able to keep up with my class!

 

Unfortunately, “racing” and “plans” are notoriously incompatible.