I got a new garage (and house as well)!

I know this is only cursorily related to cars, but a new house, means a new garage, means a shop to work on my cars, FINALLY!!!

After not having a real garage since October of 2005 I will finally be back in a house, that I own, with a big old garageskie that will allow me to have all night mechanic sessions without a care in the world, yes!

Here are some videos and pictures of it, pre-me-taking-ownership;

Garage Video

Video of the House

Picture Album of the House

Helmet beautification & the best rental car I have ever had!

So I decided to spiffy up my helmet a little.  Not like it matters right now as I keep missing great track days because my car is still out of commission!  (that story to come later, I just don’t have it in me to write it all down right now)

Now on to the best rental car I have ever had.  I can’t believe I am about to say this, to admit that I actually like this car, but……  I do, I have to say, its sorted, the gearbox is pretty good (for an auto), the feel of the steering is great, the brakes are very communicative, and the chassis itself feels good.  The seats really grip you, and the inside feels like a cockpit, nice low seat, high dash, thick steering wheel, and its pretty easy to light up the tires and do a little sideways slidey slide even with a measly 215HP….  and this…. is the car;

I really can’t believe I like this car so much, I have even been thinking “So, could I own one of these, or would I just be too embaressed?”.  Its a rental, and it has Sirius satellite radio, Microsoft Synch which hooked up via bluetooth to my iphone in about 2 minutes, and the ONLY 3 things I have to say as negatives are; 

• There is this pervasive blue LED lighting everywhere in the interior that is a bit annoying, it comes from the cup holders, so i always think I just got a text message if my phone happens to be sitting there. 
• Secondly, it really could use a manual gearbox, then this car would be incredible fun! 
• Lastly the tires are woefully woeful.  They are these little bicycle tire 215’s in the front and 235’s in the rear that are too tall and too much designed for all year driving whilst mounted to a wood paneled station wagon.  That’s 8.46” wide compared to 10” wide on the REAL Mustang (GT500).
• Oh yeah, one last thing, the entire tach flashes red when you hit the redline, kind of cool actually.

Here are some more pics your viewing pleasure.

10 cars I REALLY want to own.

So I have been doing some thinking lately, about cars (I know, go figure), and have been thinking that it is not completely outside the realm of possibility for me to own a small collection of cars sometime in the next few (10?) years.

So I started to think about the cars I really want to own, and to come up with realistic rational affordable (by me) cars.  of course I want a Koeniggsegg, or a Ford GT, or a Pagani Zonda, but those simply aren’t realistic for me.  So here are the cars that i really want, in a loose order of how much I love them, and all of these are realistically obtainable if I work my ass off, spend more time investing, and focus on the prize (i.e. a kick ass car collection).

1. BMW E30 M3 with E36 I6 motor swap.  ~$30,000 if done right.
I basically want it to look like this.  Preferably in Silver, though Metallic Grey or white with the ///M stripes would work for me as well.   The M3 I want is a no-no in purists eyes, as I want to retrofit an e36 M3 motor into it, actually, I want an S50 top end (which has OBD1 and if I can find a Euro spec top end 6 individual throttle bodies), and a S52 3.2 block.  Even the US spec motors can make about 300HP at the crank with the right application of the modding brush.  Basically its a 2800 pound, 300HP car that handles like an e30, looks as beautiful as an e30, but doesn’t have the high strung s14 motor that they usually come with. 

2. Audi urQuattro.  Maybe ~20,000 for one that doesn’t suck??

I honestly don’t know much about these cars, other than they are beautiful!  They made them from 1980 – 1991, though I think in the US we only got them from 82-84.  The one with the vents in the hood is a newer one with a DOHC, and I think you can tune these to about 300HP.  But I am SURE upkeep on a ur is nonsense expensive, but that seems to be par for the course with awesome enthusiast cars. 

3. Alpha Romeo Alphetta GTV6.  I havent a clue, maybe $15,000?

Again, don’t care much what color, I just love the lines.  I know they made them from 1980-1987 and once again, must be an upkeep nightmare.  Italian, sporty, from the 80’s.

4. Opel GT. $10,000?  $15,000?  More?  Who knows! This one I would definitely want in a dark color, and just look at those lines, someone once said it was the German Corvette of the time, and they were so right!  (Actually it came out a couple of years before the Stingray, see the resemblance?)  They are small, nimble, woefully underpowered (from what I can tell on paper, as the BIG 1.9L motor made 102HP), and look amazing.  But were made from 1968-1973, so these are clearly not modern sophisticated reliable cars, but again i draw your eye to the lines, pure sex.

5. Factory Five Type 65 Coupe.  $30,000 - $50,000 (build vs. buy)

Again, look at the lines, holy crap I love cars that look like this. The Opel GT is similar, the Ferrari 250 GTO is sooooo similar (this car is pretty clearly based on the design of the 250 GTO IMO), and this is the poor mans version.  If I was ever going to build a kit car this would probably be it.  There are so many options with this car, what running to gear to use, what rear end, what transmission, what gearing, which motor to put in it (you have to use 1 of 3 Ford old school motors in it though).  I am no lover of Ford, and no lover of carbeurators (I can’t even spell it right!), but even so, this car is just awesome, its like a Cobra, but has a roof and that badass oval flat butt.  Colors would ideally NOT be blue with white stripes (boring for this car), but instead silver with burgundy stripes, or the inverse of that.   mmmmmmm

6. Triumph GT6.  Again no clue as to $$$ value, maybe $15,000?

There were 3 versions of this car, the Mark I, Mark II, and Mark 3.  I personally think I like the Mark II the best (the picture shown above).  Again, my love for the hatchback continues, damn that’s a sweet looking car.  Its the only car I ever want to own in British Racing Green.  I generally LOATHE that color, but on this thing it just looks right.  Now again, this car is ancient (1969-1970), and British, so I wouldn’t expect it to be be reliable, or fast (as a matter of fact it can go to 60mph in about 12 seconds!). 

I doubt I will ever actually own one, as I tend to like cars that aren’t slower than my parents Scion XB, but sheesh, imagine if you had the time/skill to swap in a BMW 1.8L motor from the e30 318is / e38 318.  140+ HP high revving, or better yet a Hyabusa motorcycle motor, now THAT would be a car worth having!

7. Ferrari 308GTB.  ~$35,000 for one in decent shape.
This has always been my favorite Ferrari (well favorite of the affordable Ferraris).  Just look at those lines.  I would rather have an earlier one, like 1980-1982 with the carb motor, as it makes about 255HP vs. the 308GTBi which was given Fuel Injection and extra emissions equipment for America which lowered the HP to something in the 215 range.  Either way, some day I will own one of these, even if they make Fiat’s and Triupmhs seems like reliable daily drivers!

8. Lotus 2007 Exige S.  $40,000
If there is one thing I am an expert on (besides ///M Coupes) its modern Elise/Exiges.  After owning my Elise, I am pretty sure I want an Exige S.  2007 please, as that’s the “sweet spot” year.  It is the first year of the Supercharged Exige, it has the best price point, came with the Intercooler (which was deleted for the 2008 year except in the Exige S 240 model), and come standard with the equivalent of the Sport Pack, but maybe only 6 of them don’t have the Touring Pack :(.  Meaning; track pack=Harness Bar, Bilstein Coilovers, touring pack=Leather Seats, extra sound deadening, power windows.  They ALL come with the Sports pack wheels and suspension (unless spec’d with the Track Pack).  You can track them out of the box, and are probably the MOST trackable car in stock form you can buy, but for another $1000 you pretty much cover al your bases and have a fully streetable, and incredibly capable track car in 1!

9. BMW ///M Coupe.  $20,000-$35,000 depending upon year.
 
So this is the car I feel I have the most knowledge in.  The venerable Z3 M Coupe.  Made from 1999-2002.  The only difference being in 2001 they gave it the S54 powerplant instead of the S52.  Same displacement, but 315Hp vs. 240.  Torque went from 240 to about 285.  This motor can make a little more HP with a chip, as it raises the 7600rpm rev limit back up to the 8000 the motor has in the e46 M3.  If I ever get another M Coupe it will most likely be a fairly track-centric ride.  Stripped interior, custom roll bar, better seats are a must (the stock ones are quite heavy and extremely uncomfortable to me), and there is about $5000 of other mods and fixes one needs to do to transform a 2001-2002 M Coupe into an EVO killer. 

The ONLY 2 things I don’t like about M coupes are this; 1) The subframe weld-seperation issue, you have to find one that hasn’t suffered damage yet and get that subframe reinforced before it DOES happen, and 2) 3.1 turns lock-to-lock on the steering and that too-big steering wheel can make it feel like you are driving the BMW equivalent of a a VW Van.  A smaller Momo steering wheel is required, too bad there isn’t a quick easy swap in to replace the steering rack and get a quicker ratio.  Oh yeah, every single one seems to have that stupid useless pop-up moon roof, and for a proper track car it would be better to yank it out, have a piece welded in place and then a new headliner put in.  That’s probably $3000 of labor right there though.

 

OK, so I only came up with 9 cars, but you will notice some universal traits amongst my dream garage (as I said earlier, this isn’t my “I just won the lottery” dream garage, but a semi-realistic array of cars I strive to someday own).  So back to these similar traits.  None of these cars has more than 2 doors, all but one are either hatchback or fastback design, most are from the 80’s (thats the craziest thing to me, didn’t the 80’s suck for cool cars?), and only 2 of them are mid-engined.

So here is the tally for the 24 hours of lemons weekend.

So here is the tally. 3 days traveling, working, fixing, (drinking), driving. 10 hours spent replacing head gaskets. 6 laps driven. Yep, you got that right, I drove a grand total of 6 laps this weekend, and only 3 during the race before the car pooped out on me. Plus I stayed in 4th gear, and was nursing the car so as to keep it from dying... [frus.tra.tion - NOUN - See prior sentence]

All in all a pretty lackluster weekend. I never really got to learn the track, in my 3 practice laps and 3 race laps. A whole lot of work and lost sleep for a whole little bit of driving.

Brakes, who needs brakes?!? - Take III

So, this week, Tuesday night my brakes fail. As in caput, adios, ciao, brake to floor = nada.

In a nutshell, I was at a stop light, the brake pedal went to the floor with little or no resistance. I limped my way to a friends house a mile away with the last 3% of braking and judicious use of the handbrake. (p.s. This is why cars with foot actuated parking brakes suck, had I been in a G35 I would have been stuck).

Over the course of the next hour or so more fluid leaks out (gravity works after all) and the brakes are finite. Zilch. Zip. Nothing there, just a soft floppy pedal.

As it turns out the brake fluid was coming out of the right rear brake line where it connected to caliper. It might be that the copper crush washers were squished too much (check out the link to the pics below, you decide), maybe its because there was flashing/uneven surface left over on the caliper from the powder coating, or who knows, maybe the line is somehow magically bad and is leaking fluid through its sidewall.

I dropped the car off at another shop, one that specializes in Vipers and race cars, so hopefully they have the competence to fix it.



A Gallery of Brake Failure Pictures!

The Never Ending Debacle – Take II

So, one would think it would be easy to get work done a car like an Audi.  This isn’t a 1962 Fiat, or a 2009 TVR, or a custom built 1963 Cobra with a 2004 BMW 5L V8 motor.  Its a frickin 2006 Audi S4 Wagon, there a a bazillion of these Audis in the world, and there are countless shops dedicated to working solely on Audis and VW’s.  So why or why am I having such a hard time getting my car fixed!!??

To make a very long and dreadfully frustrating story short, here is a quick recap.

• Short Shifter attempt #1
• Reverse = Goes in smoothly, works well.
• 1st Gear = Also goes in nicely and works.
• Position = Too far back, 1st gear is where neutral used to be!
• Short Shifter Attempt #2
• Reverse = A “little” bit out of alignment, sometimes hard to get in reverse.
• 1st Gear = Goes in nicely and works.
• Position = Perfect, shifter is positioned right where it needs to be.
• Short Shifter attempt #3
• Reverse = Goes in awesome, works perfect.
• 1st Gear = Horrible, you need to wiggle to the right to get in 1st or 3nd gear every time.
• Position = Perfect.
• Short Shifter attempt #4
• We will see if they can get it right on the 4th try!

As to the braking debacle (which is the REAL debacle, the Short Shifter is insignificant compared to the brake hassle).

1. I bring the car in.
2. They remove the calipers (all 4 corners) and bring them to the powder coating place.
3. The Powder Coating place takes 2.5 days to get them done, charges $50 more than their quote, drops one of the calipers, stays late to recoat it, then recoats it slightly off color, and very badly.  The “drop” resulted in a chunk of coating missing from the rear, the respray results in 3 dime-size bubbles on the front which pop when you rub them with your finger.
4. The powder coating owner is mostly clueless, but nice, and says he will make it right, but this is Thursday, and they arent open on the weekend or Friday, so “maybe” we could have them back by EOB Monday night.  I tell him forget it, I am done, and don’t want to be without my car for another 5 days (resulting in a $35 / day rental POS car).
5. I instruct the guys at the shop to put them on the car the way they are and I’ll just have to spend a bunch of time fixing it myself (which was the entire point of taking the car to a shop to do what I am fully capable of doing, and probably capable of doing better than they can, because I give a rats ass).
6. I go to pick up the car when they say it will be ready at 5pm after they have had my car for 4 days (thankfully I decided against having them do the wheels for me as well, or else I might have been without a car for 3 weeks!).  I stay till 8pm with the guy while he tries to get it all buttoned up.
7. When I dropped the car off the brakes WITH STOCK LINES, STOCK PADS, STOCK FLUID were a 7/10.  Not great, but not horrible.
8. He bleeds the brakes, drives the car and says “Hey, check it out and see what you think”.  Its a 1.5/10.  The ONLY brakes I have ever felt this bad were Rob’s when I bled the master cylinder dry and there was air stuck in the system we could not bleed out.
9. So he bleeds em again, another liter or 2 of fluid, now they are a 3/10, and I head home because clearly he cant get them any better.
10. I drive the car all weekend with brakes that are the spongiest softest worst feeling brakes I have ever felt.  A 1973 mustang II with a massive brake leak and no left rear drum couldn’t feel this spongy.
11. I bring the car in Monday (today) to have them fix it once and for all, its a 2 hour job.  I stay there for 4 hours, they bleed the brakes again multiple times, and now they are a 3/10.  I give up, and leave, they say they will talk to their Brembo rep and possibly the owner to see if anyone has any ideas.  Yeah I do, learn how to work on cars.  I mean you only do Audis and VW’s, what happens if a customer comes to you with a super spongy brake pedal, you charge him 8 hours of labor to not fix it?  If you call Bill Arnold about bimmers and tell him you bled the brakes 5 times and its still spongy, in 4 seconds he’ll tell you what you need to do.  “There is air in the ABS unit, go to a dealership, have them use the special device which electronically opens the ABS reservoir, and then bleed, all will be well.”
12. To add insult to injury, the clear coat on the rear calipers is crackling, everywhere.  I opted for a 2 stage color, silver + clear.  When asked what the difference was he stated “One is 1 stage and one is 2 stage”.  “Yeah I gathered that from the names 1-stage and 2-stage, but what’s the difference, is one more susceptible to heat than the other.”   Well obviously we have our answer to that one, don’t we.  I mean the guy is new to powder coating, so I can’t blame him, he has only been doing it for 40 years and inherited the business from his dad and is the only job he has ever had.  So clearly he shouldn’t have known that 2-Stage powder coating jobs will end up with cracked clear coat when you put them on calipers.
13. One thing I am excited about is my first track day.  Well if I ever get the car to a point where it can actually do a track day that is.  I cant wait for after my first session when I come back into the pits and the powder coating is just sloughing off of the calipers because they got so hot.  THATS GONNA BE AWESOME. YAY.
14. Oh yeah, on a side note, they told me to my face “The rep from Stoptech told us over the phone that stainless lines will result in a spongy brake pedal feel”.  I understand the engineering behind stainless lines, they arent stainless at all.  They are actually teflon tubing, often shrouded with some flexible PVC conduit, and then finally covered in stainless braid simply for protection from rubbing as well as bursting.  Teflon does not give, it works fine, or it bursts, its not like rubber that flexes and stretches and buldges.  The ONLY reason to replace your lines is for stiffer pedal feel, there is no other reason to bother.

So as it stands now my course of action is;

1. Bring the car back to this shop and hope they magically figure out how to fix the super spongy brakes.  Chance of Success = 25%
2. Bring the car to a different place, maybe one that has a master mechanic that can figure this shit out.  Cost = $100+, Chance of Success = 70%
3. Since I dont know if it is air in the line or something wrong with my calipers I need to either buy new calipers on all 4 corners, or maybe a BBK kit for the front and new calipers for the rear and then see if it is still a problem.  If it is, then I know its air in the line/system somehow and I will then be out about 20 hours of labor/time and about $2000 worth of parts, awesome huh?

A whole lot of parts being put on my Avant over the next 3 days!

WOO HOO!

• AWE Exhaust (Non Resonated)
• REVO Technik tune
• Stoptech Stainless Lines
• Porterfield R4S Pads f+r
• ECS Slotted Zinc Plated Rotors Front and Rear
• JHM Short Shifter
• Calipers are getting powder coated silver
• New Seals are being put into calipers
• I already replaced all the wheel bolts with Stock AUDI bolts and some anti-seize

Then when I get this back I need to bring it back to Audi, because there is still a creaking coming from the suspension on the car, so maybe its NOT a wheel bearing, or perhaps its another wheel bearing. I MUST get an extended warranty, this bringing the car back for free is really awesome. Oh yeah, my right headlight has shown an error on my dash of "Right Dipped Headlight" twice, but they could reproduce it, well last week it was winking in and out and flickering for 5 minutes one night, so that needs to be looked at again as well.

I just bought an RS4 grill, and need your input about the fog lights..

So, I just got a great deal on an RS4 grill, this one to be exact;


Now this is a super stylin brushed aluminum ring with semi-gloss/satin black mesh. It came with a filler plate thats for a front license plate (ughh), so I am going to be purchasing this all black filler plate;

Now where I need your help is what to do about the Fog light inlets. Basically the stock look is pretty cool, but it doesnt have any of that honeycomb RS4 style to it. There isn't a direct RS4 drop in kit, you have to buy the RS4 kit and then modify/glue it in to make it work (which is not that big of a deal to me to be honest).

So I really have 3 options;

1) I can leave it alone, and I think that would look decent. [simplest]
2) I can fit the Rs4 fog light surrounds in and remove the stock S4 inlets altogether [a bit of work]
3) I can do a combo of the 2, if I go this way I would most likely just buy some black metal mesh honeycomb and simply attachg it to the back of the inlet. [a bit of work]

Option #1 (Keep in mind I wont have that grill)
Option 2 (This is pretty much exactly what my car would look like)

Option #3 (I kind of like this one the best, its cheaper than Option 2, but probaly more work, need to source the mesh, paint it, cut it, and then somehow fit it in)

I just placed an order wth Motodyne...

What do you think?

The avant is registered, and.. my friends must have LOTS of free time!

The Avant is registered, and I am up at 1:15am posting this. Been working on my house loan application all night. This has been a very productive week for me. I have utterly demolished my massive stack of bills and TO-DOs that have been sitting on my desk at home. You see, I just bought a new car, and being that I am utterly in love with cars I can't help but spend all my time working on it, buying stuff for it, researching options for mods for it, dreaming about what to do with it (i.e. what track days to go to, what suspension to install, which brakes to buy, etc, eccetera, essetera.).

But, I feel like I am neglecting the REALLY important stuff (i.e. my future, a house, my savings, my 401k, my health insurance, my bills, selling my buddies truck he loaned me for 9 months, you get the drift) to daydream about my 4 Rings porn (that would be my Audi S4 Avant to you car noobs).

So, tomorow I will send in my loan application (which should be easy, but only if you have filed all your bills for the past 6 months instead of just piling them up in a nice tidy "to be dealt with later" stack), this week I will list my buddies truck, get the last 2 bits of bill crud done, then fill out some more paperwork to transfer an old 401k into a different plan, and finally call my real estate agent to start the process of finding a house.

I have mixed emotions about house shopping. One on the one hand I am excited to finally be in my own place again, with a garage, and room enough for all my belongings, but I am also dreading the dogged determination that one is required to have to REALLY find the right house for the right price and to make it happen. ugggghhhh....

Anyway, sorry for the life interlude. Oh one more thing. If you go and check out Le Supar Goobar's blog and you will see that he clearly has too much free time on his hands. just loko at those posts. informative, thoughtful, thought provoking, well written, and clearly something you actually WANT to read and in the case of his music post go and listen to each and every one of the youtube's he posts up. I wish I had that kind of time, I am thinking its time someone was given more house chores or something!

Ok, for real, back to the car. To make a long story short, one must get an out of state car smogged upon first entrance into CA without fail, no matter what the DMV website misleads you to believe. I just re-read it, and if I follow the links a different way I can see now that you DO need a smog. Well one thing I learned is that my 2006 Audi uses the CAN system for the OBD port, and that means the smog machine wont read through the OBD port, which is a pain in the ass, because it is DAMN hard to find any place else to clamp a reader to so you can grab the RPMs of the motor.

Long story short = I have the plate I want 4RINGS4 coming in 90 days, and my fees were just shy of $2k. Brutal, Oregon is looking more attractive, no?

On another car related note. I am bringing my car into Eurocode tuning (yes the place that dicked me around, will post about that later) on Monday, and have ordered the following parts;

• ECS Slotted Zinc Plated OEM 1 piece Rotors front and rear
• Porterfield R4S brake pads, front and rear
• Stainless lines
• JHM SHort Shifter
• AWE Exhaust (sitting in my living room looking sexy)
• Caliper rebuild / Seal kits for all 4 corners
• New Spring Retention Clips for front calipers
• 20 new shiny Lug Bolts