Seattle

Bodhi Racing

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One of the things I liked about racing was that, no matter how bad I sucked on the previous lap, there was (assuming nothing got bent, anyway) another chance to get it right. This appealed to me. On the front straight, relax, check gauges, shake out hands, put the last lap out of mind, prepare for the next lap and give it another go. This repetition was sort of like the Buddhist take on suffering and rebirth in the search for transcendence, if Bodhis required high temperature brake pads. Driving an ugly 100 horsepower car, I understood the suffering part, in a suburban and cheerful sort of way. I definitely hadn't gotten fast enough to find transcendence yet, and I don’t think that Buddhists see reincarnation as a competitive sport. To extend the Bodhi thing too far: I was still stuck down in a cockroach state of sub-being, at least in the racing world. Of course, what the bald guys in the funny robes don't tell you is that cockroaches can have a lot of fun on a tight budget. Not that cheap racing is actually that cheap...

Due to budget constraints, I had made the decision to race a limited number of times in 2003. I had raced (and done poorly) in May, 2003 at Pacific Raceways, but had not raced since then. I had, however, been instructing high performance drivers education for the local chapter of the BMW Club. I found it very rewarding to work through difficult problems with a student and help them find the grace in a particular corner complex. I also gave rides, hoping that I didn't become too rusty and giving students a chance to observe "don't do this" moments at speed.

I had also purchased a new (to me) tow vehicle, as my '72 green monster / rust bucket wasn't confidence inspiring for long distances. The new truck was a fuel-injected '88 F250 with a really big engine. The gas mileage wasn't good – the consumption was single-handedly responsible for keeping several Saudi princes "in" at the Monte Carlo baccarat tables – but it had working A/C, power everything and quaint John Deere mud flaps. I mean "quaint" in the same sense that one refers to velvet paintings of dolphins or moose at sunset as "quaint". Chrome step-side aside, it was pretty much as pimp as anything from our dear friends at Ford Motor Company can be. Before purchasing the truck, I had eyed a '93 Chevrolet Suburban with a "classy" red velour interior. "Classy" in the same sense that a person with 10 inch high-rise hair and 2 inch nails might refer to herself (or himself) as "classy". All things considered, I was probably better off with the new truck.

The weeks before my upcoming August race, I worked to make sure that the fugly gold car would be reliable. I put a wrench on every nut and bolt under the car that I could reach and gave the car a general inspection. As always, I found a few fasteners that had begun to work themselves loose. I also found that an exhaust hanger had torn out, leaving a hole. I patched the hole with high temperature tape (although I didn't expect it to stay) and refastened the hanger using a very complicated and precise technique I call "big ass ball of wire". Very classy.

Additionally, I ran the valve cover breather hose to a drop tank (an empty quart of oil strip-tied to the chassis), and plugged the old hose with a rubber cork. Essentially all cars have a valve cover breather like this. It takes the filthy, air from under the valve cover and pipes it into the intake so that it can combust more thoroughly. This is for emission purposes. It would help keep the intake and throttle body of the car cleaner, and would probably net about 1/10th of a horsepower.

While I was mucking around up-top, I also pulled the valve cover off and adjusted the valve eccentrics to assure they had the proper gap. This was an important part of making sure the old engine stayed in top-tune.

Strictly BMW gave me a good deal on a set of their used racing wheels. They weren't clean, but they were straight. They were each about 6 pounds lighter than the wheels I had been using. This meant reducing both the rotating weight and the unsprung weight of the car by about 25 pounds. They didn't quite qualify as either classy or quaint, but were the last major performance-oriented part that I needed for my car. Other than, of course, a shiny paint job. Or some John Deere mudflaps.

In my May race, I had heard a clattering or rattling sound from the front of the car at times. I wasn’t exactly sure what the problem was, although I knew it was coming from the front-right strut area. I took apart and reassembled the strut twice, but the problem remained. It didn’t seem to be too bad, so I decided to live with it until I had the winter to work on the car.

Last of all, I tried to bleed my brake fluid. Tried, in that I discovered why it is a bad idea to leave caustic fluid in a plastic bleeder for an extended period of time. A brake bleeder works by screwing onto the master cylinder and pressurizing the system, so that you don't have to call Bob the neighbor and have him pump the brakes while you try, and probably fail, not to get air back in the system. As I wasn't able to get a new bleeder in time for the race weekend, I did without fresh fluid. Brakes just slow you down, anyway.

A newly employment-challenged friend, Seth, had volunteered to be my crew chief for the weekend, while the usual suspect (Girlchief) hung out with her mother. Seth showed up Friday evening about 11 seconds after I finished the hours-long process of packing tools and equipment and loading car onto trailer. I tried to send him to the store for some headlight fluid and muffler bearings but he didn't fall for it.

Saturday morning, we paddocked with several other E30 BMWs including Greg Miller’s 325e, Lance Richert's 4-door 325i, and Dale Beuning and Ken Hill's 325i's. The impromptu race team was handy. It meant that there was almost always someone available for advice, parts, snacks or at least to point and laugh.

The car seemed to be running well, but I was getting a vibration on hard right handers. The vibration didn't seem to negatively effect handling, but Seth and I got the car off the ground to give it a closer look. There was nothing obviously wrong, but we fiddled with this and that. For some mysterious reason, we disconnected the front sway bar. For some even more mysterious reason, we failed to reconnect it before I went out for my next session.

Oversteer is essentially the state in which the back of the car wants to get through a corner before the front. My car was oversteering. I couldn't figure it out. Was the track super slick? Was I doing some different with my driving style? Regardless, it was silly fun. Not, perhaps, the best way around the track – I could barely start to get the power down without the back end of the car stepping out – but it kept things interesting. I progressively hung the back end of the car out farther and farther in turn 8, until the last time through in which it stepped out quite significantly, i.e. I was driving kinda sideways. I held it there, steady on the throttle, until the car had bled off a bit of speed and then corrected, getting it back in line without a wiggle or "tank slapper" oscillation in the opposite direction. When I came back in I had a few folks comment on the nice catch. I was pretty happy with it, as I hadn't ended up pointing backwards in front of an audience.

Returning from the session, I found an extra nut and washer sitting on my tool chest. Right away I realized that we had forgotten to fasten the swaybar link back to the control arm. D'oh! Up went the front of the car again so that we could reconnect it. Previously, I had had the front sway set at its intermediate setting. As I hadn't done so poorly with it entirely disconnected, we set the sway on it's softest setting. Essentially, a sway bar, more correctly known as an anti-roll bar, works as a big spring that helps reduce side-to-side body roll. Generally speaking, the softer a sway bar is set, the more relative traction that set of tires has. Setting the front soft meant the front tires had more traction relative to the rear, and when the front had more than the rear, a more oversteering state of suspension tune ensued.

I had been working on getting my corner entrance speed higher throughout the track. My afternoon Group 2 qualifying time wasn't very good, however. I was disappointed to see that I had a 1:51.9. I felt like I had been driving the car pretty hard, but it hadn't really helped. My previous record from the year before with almost stock suspension was 1:51.8, a tenth faster. I had been hoping to break into the high forties.

As a change from my race weekend in May, I had decided to run the Saturday afternoon Novice race again as I had in 2002. Sitting on pre-grid, the Novice director came over and asked me how many races I'd run. “Errrr… 22…” He gave me a funny look. To date, I hadn't made an effort to upgrade to an advanced Senior license, as the intermediate Area license allowed me to race on Saturday and Sunday. I got the impression I wasn't going to be allowed to race with the novices much longer.

After things sorted themselves out at the start of the Novice race, it settled down with the front runners far ahead of me. Behind me was Greg Miller's white BMW 325e, also a G-P car like my own. We were closely matched, and he didn't make up any time on me. About half way through the race, he touched a bit of dirt on the exit of Turn 6, and his car got sideways. After that, there wasn't much chance of him catching me. The one bright side was that I had a 1:50.6 for my fast lap time in the race. That wasn't great, but at least it put me on par with what I had achieved racing in May.

My hopes weren’t high for my G-P race Sunday afternoon. If I was going to do well, it would take luck and a bit of Bodhi-aspiring perfection-in-repetition to find the extra speed I needed.

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