A Good Winter’s Work
(c) 2004 J. Sage Schreiner
www.unsage.com
... in four weeks. This is what happened:
At the end of the 2002 racing season, I had completed 17 races over 10 weekends. My hands ached from too much wrenching. My back ached from awkward under-car contortions. My pocket-book ached from hotel bills, brake pads, synthetic oil, gas, entry fees, transmission and other consumables. I felt so tired that I didn't want to race again the following year. Despite my sense of accomplishment, I was done with racing! Done, I say!
That lasted about three weeks. I celebrated the end of this momentary lapse of insanity by purchasing a dual-axel flatbed trailer from an SCCA racer who had been put upon by the man, aka laid off by the bean counters. The trailer came with a tire rack, just in case I ever had the funds for more than the four tires on the race car. With the trailer out front to piss-off any remaining neighbors that still referred to me by name, I set out planning my winter’s work. Race suspension was second on the list, right behind “fix all broken stuff.”
Unfortunately, what non racers refer to as “real life” intervened to head off any pre-emptive work for the next season. My erstwhile crew chief / girlfriend, aka girlchief, and I decided to buy a house. For those that are buried head first in racing, a "house" is where you keep your stuff between races. Houses provide a work-space that is out of the elements, through the common modification “roof”. Many houses also come with optional living areas and bathrooms, although a true racer views these conveniences as a sign of weakness, ala heated seats and air conditioning. Girlchief and I rejected many houses because, quite simply, finding parking for four or five vehicles and a trailer within a reasonable commute to both our jobs isn't to easy. In the end we settled on a house that (and I swear this was a coincidence) was within about 200 yards of Carb Connection, 300 yards of Tool Town, and less than 2 miles from Tacoma Screw as well as a variety of other automotive-oriented businesses.
By the time looking, financing, moving, unpacking were complete and my garage was organized to my liking, it was early April. There was not a lot of time left before the racing season started. Because of the new house, I decided to only attend a few race weekends for 2003, but to challenge myself by instructing high performance driving events with the BMW club. All the same, there was a lot to do to get my race car ready for the track. I finally had all the bits I needed to convert the car to full race suspension. It would be lower, stiffer, adjustable, and hopefully faster.
This is when The Problems began. I had decided to work with Ireland Engineering, a small independent BMW-racing specialist company in California. The previous season, I had run into a variety of issues with their shipping department, but now that I “had everything” I figured it would be straight forward to get the suspension on. Riiiiighht.
Problem: rear springs are easy, so I decided to do those first. They seemed a bit long, and once they were mounted on the car, my ride height increased about 4 inches. Kinda the 'baja buggy' look, but massive mid-corner oversteer was not what I was shooting for. I called Ireland (Enegineering). They apologized profusely, and had their supplier ship me new springs. I decided to start on the front suspension.
Problem: they had sent me two fully assembled left front struts. Since, like most cars (Reliant Robins excepted), my car has both a left and a right side up front, this was not going to work. I called. They apologized, and sent me a new strut.
Problem: the new strut was about 2 inches too long. It was, however, for the right side of the car. An incremental improvement. I called Ireland, again. They apologized profusely, and sent me a new strut.
Problem: the new-new strut was an inch too short. I called Ireland. (By this time, this was feeling a bit hallucinatory. “Racing suspension: just like drugs, but more expensive!”) I was directed to cut the aluminum spacer that sits under the inserted shock. I did. While this is technically okay, it leads to the right shock topping out earlier than the left shock. Among other things, with the suspension off the ground, this made it hard to adjust the front sway bar links properly since the left wheel hung lower than the right wheel. It was a barely adequate solution, and not what I would have hoped for after spending so much money on my suspension.
Ireland Engineering was always very helpful, and definitely provided me with quality suspension components for less than their primary competitor, but if you're going to work with them, expect to spend a lot on phone calls and antacid tablets. It probably won’t be an easy experience. A number of the other folks I've polled informally have had similar experiences.
It was time to finish up the suspension and move on to other projects. One of the great benefits of a garage over a carport is the ability to leave projects partially finished, and tools lying around. As a matter of fact, resisting this temptation can be very difficult! Additionally, the carport had limited the kinds of tools I could use and buy.
My first new tool I purchased was a vise. This alone makes numerous projects much easier. Tool town offered two large vise options: the Chinese one, for $50, or a slightly nicer American made vice for $450. Let’s just say that I chose to do my part to encourage the end of Communism through investment. The Chinese one seemed perfectly adequate at squashing and holding things.
The wild spending didn’t end there. I went to Sears and purchased an air compressor and an impact wrench. Air tools are fun! While there were many jobs that still required hand-tools, air tools proved great at taking things apart, if not actually putting them back together. They make very satisfying noises, and can save a lot of time. My first use was helping a friend change the oil on his S2000. One ‘viiiiiiip’ and oil was pouring all over the garage floor. Sweeeeet!
My new air tools and vise helped immensely as I finished up the suspension installation on my race car. I drilled lots of holes, attached reinforcements for the sway bar mounting points, and got everything bolted on reasonably well. Doing the suspension on the car wasn't really that difficult – mostly it was a lot of unbolting and rebolting. Admittedly, this leaves out the gory details. Like the fact that I had a lot of trouble drilling the rear sway bar reinforcement holes – since they were right through the roll cage mounting plates. Hard on my drill to say the least! I ended up having to drill and file the holes before I got them to line up well enough to get the bolts through. I noticed that the sway bars seemed to be bending the sway bar tabs on the trailing arms. I fiddled it with them, bent the tabs back, and the problem seemed to go away.
One of the things I had been thinking about was moving my battery to the trunk. I looked into moving the stock battery. I just couldn’t see a good way to do it despite hours and hours of head scratching and experimentation. The stock battery was too big, too heavy, and was still going to splash acid everywhere.
After some online research, I purchased a small dry-cell aircraft battery from Odyssey. It saved about 25 pounds over the stock battery and came with an aluminum mount that would hold and protect it. Dry cell batteries are tougher. Battery acid has an irritating tendency to leak and splash all over the place, and rust / corrode everything in sight. A dry cell battery doesn't do that.
I relocated the battery to the trunk of my car. I ran a long battery cable pulled off a 325i through the passenger compartment. I also made a ground cable and mount out of a copper-covered bolt and some other odds and ends. Finally, since I already had to do a lot of wacky wiring work up front, I added a master cut-off switch while I was at it. This was an externally accessible safety switch used by safety workers to turn off the car if I was upside down and unconscious, presumably because I had just done something really stupid. The switch cut power from the alternator to the battery, but because the spark plugs were driven directly off the alternator (not the battery), it also interrupted power between the alternator and the main coil.
I did a variety of other odd jobs while I was at it, including replacing the rear right differential output seal, an oil and filter change, brake fluid, brake pads and wiring issues. I also added a timing transponder.
But I ran into a strange problem with the new battery wiring. The '84 - '85 318i has a notoriously sensitive idle control system. For some reason, after installing the trunk-mounted battery, something caused fluctuations in the idle control valve, leading to a rhythmically surging idle. It was very soothing, but didn’t seem otherwise desirable. The problem was significantly worse when there was additional current draw (such as when I turned on the electric cooling fan). My first guess was that it was related to an insufficient ground at the battery. I spent a day troubleshooting this issue and was able to confirm that it wasn’t related to battery, ground or corrosion. In fact, when I moved the battery and wired it to the OEM-ground, but used an extended length cable, the idle fluctuations continued. I chatted with Wes Hill about it, and we decided that it was a non issue. The cable resistance for a low amperage current should (theoretically) be minimal – but it looked like that was the problem.
Just before my first race weekend of the year, I took my car into Strictly BMW. Because I had new suspension on the car, I had them align the front suspension. Additionally, I had them adjust the front ride height of the car for optimum corner-weighting. They also welded some reinforcing tabs for the rear sway bar. This would assure that I was getting the most out of the new suspension. Since they were already working on the car, I also had them test the alternator voltage regulator, on the theory that might have been causing the idle surging. The voltage regulator was fine, so that wasn’t the problem. The last thing I had them do was replace the transmission output seal. I would have had them do this at the end of the previous year when I had the replacement transmission out of the car – but no one in Seattle had a seal immediately handy. This meant that I had to pay the extra $$$ to have Strictly do it on the car. Bad luck!
I picked up my car Thursday evening, and just left it on the trailer overnight. My first race weekend of 2003 was a few hours away. The car was ready, even if the driver was not.