The agony...

...of defeat!

Well, I got down to VIR fine, the trusty F-150 towed just fine as it always does. Got the car through "tech" Sunday afternoon without a hitch. Then I dropped the trailer, got in the truck & drove into North Carolina to meet up with a Spec E30 racer who was selling his used Toyo RA1's for cheap! $75.00 for the set cheap! I was really looking forward to having them mounted up for the Audi Club's spring VIR event that I was down at VIR attending.

Upon my return to the hotel parking lot in Danville, VA, I threw the tires in the back of the BMW, and headed off to find a place to get them mounted. Being a Sunday evening, the only place that was open was the local Wal-Mart auto center, so I headed there. The car drove fine for a while but the dang Check Engine light came back on & it started surging again, and to top that off, when I got to Wal Mart, and parked, there was steam coming from under the hood!

I thought "this is new", and popped the hood to explore. I thought that I had properly tightened all the hose clamps when doing the repairs the previouse night, so I started wiggling hoses, and found that the coolant hose from the plastic manifold attached to the block had come free, so I went into the Wal Mart and bought a screwdriver to loosen the clamp, and re-install it, but found that the nipple that the hose was attached to had broken off inside the hose!

Great. Now I'm stranded at Wal Mart, five miles from the hotel, my truck, trailer, and tools, with a broken dealer-only part! Luckily I was able to get my buddy Erich on the cell, and he sent another buddy of ours up to bring me back to my truck. Thanks Moses! So, hooked up the trailer and went to retreive my crippled car. As it was now getting dark, I decided to wait until the morning to start the tear-down, and parts hunt, so we all went to our favorite mexican restaurant and consumed tasty margarita's for the evening!

The next morning we went to the track, and while everyone else was getting ready for their track sessions, I was trying to locate a new coolant manifold. Finally I located one at a dealer in North Carolina, and jumped back in the truck for the 40 minute drive to Crown BMW. I got the part, and got back to the track where I started the tear down, of the intake manifold assembly. The weather decided to not cooperate, and I was forced to make the repair in the pouring rain! I finally got everything together, topped off the coolant, and started the car. It seemed to be good! Maybee I would be able to catch the last session of the day, and run all my sessions the next day as well! All was not lost!

So, not wanting to cause any issues on track, I decided to tack the car on a nice long test drive prior to my on-track session, and really give the car hell. If the repair was going to fail, I was determined to make it fail off-track. I drove the piss out of the car for about an hour, and decided that everything was good, so I headed back to VIR. Just as I got back to the main gate, the darn manifold let go again! AAAAARRRRGH!

Upon inspection, I found that I had pinched the o-ring on the manifold flange, and it was now split! Needless to say, I spent two days at VIR with a busted car, and didn't even get to go on track! I was sooooooooo bummed!

Oh well, there's always next month!

Never hurts to have a Porsche on hand...

Like today when I realized that I was missing two very important & very "dealer only" hoses to complete the replacement of all my vacuum hoses that have been causing my engine woes! Once again, a quick call to the dealership verified parts in stock, but they were going to be closing in 24 minutes!

I gotta admit, I kinda like the little red 944 that whisked me to the dealer with minutes to spare. I'm not going to say how fast I was driving to get there on time, but suffice it to say that If I had been caught, I'd certainly be spending the night at Fairfax County's finest Inn!

So the car is fixed (until the next time), and I'm heading off to bed so I can get up early & wake my neighbors up at 7am loading the car onto the trailer, and gear into the truck for the 4 1/2 hour drive to the Sleep Inn in Danville, VA where I'll be meeting up with the rest of the crazy people from the Audi Club. I've never done a track "weekend" on a Monday / Tuesday, so this should be fun!

In between tracks at the moment...

As is normally the case, the "NOT///MPOWER" 318is has presented me with another problem to fix before the next track weekend. The 'check engine' light comes on when lifting off the throttle, and the engine runs really rich, and hunts for a steady idle. If the engine is put under load, the light goes off & it runs normally for the most part, but modulating the throttle is difficult. The first 1/2" of accelerator pedal travel results in no acceleration, then suddenly it's on, and the car accelerates.

This makes maintenance throttle through turns quite difficult. I've got 9 days until I'm back at VIR (this time with the Audi Club), but am confident that I can track down, and fix the problem before then.

Quote of the day (Hillarious!)

Re: NASCAR...

"If I wanted to watch pretty colors go around in circles all day, I would flush "Skittles" down my toilet!" -unknown