I wonder how many blogs start with that title?
So I start this blog at the end of the 2007 season. It was a great year!
Although this is supposed to be about racing, obviously the highlight of the year was the birth of Alex back in January. You’d have thought that such a thing would have pretty much extinguished the racing flame for a couple of years at least, but Betsy and I agreed that we’d find a way to make it work. In order to make it happen, the plan was that I’d stay local, in other words, no more National racing. That means less travel and less time away. It makes it a lot easier for Betsy (and Alex) to join me at the track.
So I managed to make it out to the track for the 2nd round of the season, back in early May. My father was in town and that helped a lot. Unfortunately, we discovered that it was still just a tremendous amount of work for Betsy to have Alex there and it was really difficult for me to help with that. So, they didn’t make it out to any of the other races this season. And I skipped some of the practice and qualifying days just to have more time at home and less time away.
Still, what a great season! This is my 4th race car in 4 years, and so for the first time, next year will be the first time I’m in the same car for a 2nd season! The Z3 Coupe is easily the most fun car I’ve had, and the most reliable too. Imagine that — it’s got 100K miles on it and I had no DNFs. Can’t say the same about the brand-new cars I’ve had the last two seasons, both of which I sold with less than 2K miles on them. In those cars, I had transmission failures, clutch failures, a wiring harness fire, oil lines coming loose … quite frustrating. Only issue this year was my own error, forgetting to torque the lug nuts on one of the wheels. Probably cost me a win. Oh well.
The changes I made after that weekend were great! I had Erik and the boys over at Edge Motorworks install the headers I’d bought months earlier, along with a custom exhaust system. They also installed some underdrive pulleys, removed the cooling fans, and did some tuning on the dyno for 100-octane gas, and wow, what a gain! The car was noticeably quicker at Laguna Seca and had me wishing that I’d done it a lot earlier in the season. At least now I know that the track records I’d set at the other tracks should fall early in the year!
Over the winter, other than basic maintenance, I don’t have a lot planned. I will likely take the car back to Tony at TC Designs, who did the original cage and other fabrication, and have him do a little more. I want to put a good rigid cover over the battery in the hatch so that I can safely toss stuff back there. I want to have him fab up a dead pedal and re-do the floor cover we put under the driver’s feet. And then he can make some improvements to the trailer as well. For my own labor, I’ll be changing all the fluids, putting on new brake rotors, installing a protective screen in front of the radiator (now that the fan is gone), and I’ll try to neaten up all of the wires in the interior.
If I REALLY get my act together, I’ll try to find a golf cart so that we can more easily get around the pits. Part of the reason I have a 24′ trailer is so that I can do that. The fit will be very tight with the cabinets and the tire rack, but I’m pretty sure it’ll work. Hopefully conveniences like that will make it easier for Betsy and Alex to join me.
Anyway, I’ll try to update this blog as progress happens either on the car, on the club, on the tracks, or on the racing season. I hope you enjoy it!
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