The Hill.

It's here folks:

Noosa hill climb

I'll be going on the 10th. So anyone who can make it, I can give a lift from my place. Drop me a line!

Last year we had showers, but that didn't detract from the event significantly, plenty of historic and contemporary racing going on.

I'd say think of it as your local Goodwood festival of speed, but that might be overdoing it a bit. Mind you, as a bitumen drag up a hill it's pretty great, and there are plenty of vantage points.

Order of the day will be:

• Leave my place around 7:30am (unless it 's raining, see below).
• Take the following:
• A red cagoule so you look like a car nerd. (or something similar I suppose).
• Something to eat, there was a reasonable cafe, but it's at the bottom of the hill.
• A camera - you can walk the pits. Fast shutter/SLR for racing shots or you'll be disappointed.
• Maybe something to sit on - even a basic sheet or similar, it gets tiring standing all day.
• Racing finishes at 4pm, I'm planning on staying the distance unless it's raining (see below).

Oh no it's raining!
If it's raining I'll be watching the radar for an hour, if it's typical monsoon then no racing. If it's patchy showers then I'll be going. So leaving around 8:30.

This folks, is one of the better motoring events of the year in this region and has the capacity to be an excellent day's outing.

If you're driving, my advice is to head for Sunrise Road - it's at the top of the hill and generally speaking is easier to get into and out of (you can hook in from the Bruce easily enough).

Hope you can make it,
Andrew

E30 Sit Rep....

I think this sums up where I'm at right now:

Turns out there's quite a lot of parts in a car - I can see why folks end up with a half dismantled car parked under their house now. Like this in fact....

Amazingly the car would or at least should still drive! Commitment to breaking this one this weekend I think!

Of my white one?

• Rear light replaced - old one was cracked.
• Headlights replaced - were wobbly, the 'Ron' had new style.
• Air box replaced - was wobbly, the 'Ron' had a proper BMW one - good for now.
• Myriad of electrical and interior parts swapped out or fitted. My good one doesn't look like the above!

Work progresses, I'm heading towards investment time though, only big jobs left really...

League Fatigue

Hi Folks.
We're not exactly filling the grid on our Thursday nights, no matter, but it does mean the whole "let's have a championship" is thrown into a bit of disarray.

As such, unless there's an overwhelming response I'm going to ditch the points for this season - we'll consider regrouping for GT6 I think, possibly in the new year.

Oh no!

Oh wait...

I'll still be making a point of racing on a Thursday night, and when there's four or more racers online (not so much of late) then we'll look to meet the racing calendar's events. If it's three of us, well, we'll run what we brung on the night - as we have been - and have a jolly good thrash nevertheless.

Keep your class cars, including your GroupB racer - we'll still observe league rules in most of our races, lets face it the classes work and provide most entertaining racing!

It has all got a bit GroupB though - a few races and all cancel! Here's one of if not the last race of that class...

Epic racing I'm sure you'll agree.

I'll also keep posting to this blog - I like it as a resource for me and blogging what I'm doing with my Beemer - though I do need to sort image hosting.

Finally (and I wish I had camera evidence) I had the good fortune to race on RFactor at an industry conference, using these guys. Of course, I set fastest lap around Lakeside on my second lap - apparently to the surprise of the organiser, given it had been in heavy use for three days before I sat down there for a quick blast. Alas I wasn't eligible for the finale (Fix!), which was 3 laps around Bathurst in a V8 racer. Shame, I had a go after and was five seconds up on the winners time, 2:22 which I'm pleased enough with given the time I had on the set-up. Highlight of my conference I can tell you!

See you all on Thursday night(s) - I'm up for the racing of course*

Cheers
Andrew

* Except on the 31st, I'm away then!

Madness

I used to think Sprint Boat racing was probably the most extreme form of motor sport going, after all, a boats pretty hardcore if you need to stick a roll cage in it.  Here's a clip from a few years ago.

Today, I stumble across this race(well 2 actually) that put a pretty big smile on my face. These 600hp monsters with enormous suspension travel belt around the Toronto Indy Car Street circuit often on 3 and occasionally on 2 wheels  plus compulsory jumps around the track.  The action starts at 4.45, well worth watching even the 1st lap or 2...

Bits in the boot...

Unlike the 1994/5 Alfa Romeo Touring cars the bits in my boot aren't go faster things.
The story with them was that basically you had to have a BTCC car that matched the silhouette of the road car - so when you bought a 155 Alfa it came with some extra rear spoiler bits to raise it - in the boot.

These cars in fact:

Anyway, today, it seems that I've messed about and achieved very little other than getting to know my car and the 'Ron'. I do know that parking a car in the sun all day doesn't make it easier to crawl around.

So why 'the boot'?
Here:

Altogether too much high capacity red cable kicking about. That at least has been easy to remove. But, horrors... that little black box looks remarkably like some sort of immobiliser. Certainly it was/is wired to the battery. But then it gets weird. It also seems to be wired into the rear number plate light too.

I hope it's a remote central looking kit - which would be handy as mine still doesn't unlock on the key (I wonder, connected?). I also know I'm not game to go pulling wires out and see without being able to start the car  (remember no radiator so no running).

What have I achieved - well the dash in my car looks a lot tidier now, there's a stereo waiting to go in and generally the interior is around 90% sorted I'd say. I'll take a pic once I'm happy that it's good enough.

[edit] Finished fitting the stereo, complete with power aerial isolator switch - why? because I had a switch that's why. Here it is:

Not exciting to anyone but me who's had a two day fight to get this somewhere near where it is (fixing a few other things along the way of course).
What's left in the cabin?

• Throttle bushes - sat on my shelf.
• Gear Knob and boot - $80 from ebay, five minute fit (there, tempted fate).
• Plastic gutter guards etc - I have two of everything so not concerned...
• A set of 6x9 speakers for the shelf - all ready to go, wired and mounting points are in there.
• Fix the horn either by fixing the wooden monstrosity or buy a new steering wheel - xmas treat I think.

Once that quite minor list is done I'm going to be pretty happy with the interior being fit for purpose. I'd like to wire in a fan override and activity light simply because I don't want to cook my engine, but that's a future world thing.

Happy days.

Guess the track!

Oh yes...

Like you didn't know it already. But night racing too!

Back to roots

I've neglected the GT5'ness of this blog for a while, so here's a clip:

But that's OK, we've had a poor turnout of late to race nights. If we can't muster much this week we'll scrap points and just work our way through the season, it'll save me a load of time. Time which I can spend unbolting plastic trim. Oh yes.

I know kung-fu.

Well, I might as well, I now have it reasonably figured how the diff works on my car(s) and what I can do to resolve the issue I have.
What's the issue I have?

1. I have a manual car, with welded diff - not drivable.
2. I have an auto car with open diff - with crazy ratio.

Ready?

320i ratio for a manual car is something between 3.45:1 (rare) and 4.27:1, the ratio for an auto is 4.45:1

What does this mean, the number of turns the prop-shaft will do before a wheel completes a revolution.

So, basically if you're cruising at 100Kph in a standard manual (diff) and fitted an auto one, you'll be going slower, or rather revving higher to get to the same speed. I.e. lower ratio diff. Excellent.

Got it? It's all in the gearing. What's confusing is that the gearing is largely outside of the diff bit.

Here's an interesting video on how diffs work:

Fascinating I think you'll agree.

So what does this all mean (I'm losing track myself actually)?

Well, I've been looking at these online, ebay has them:

This would fix my welded diff, but for $500 (the same pretty much I spent on Ron Burgundy) I reckon I must have the parts.

Consider this video... it's how a diff gets welded up :

What you're seeing is a tiny little collection of gears with a huge mo-fo gear around the outside.
And here's the money shot - that little set of gears is the bit in the pic above, the $500 part.
And... the gearing/ratio is set by the big ring round the outside.
I can use the outside gear from my manual car, on the auto good diff.

With me?

Action time:

1. Pull off my locked diff.
2. Pull it apart, check that it's welded in the 'tiny bit'.
3. Pull that out.
4. Pull out the auto-diff.
5. Pull out it's 'tiny bit' that we know is open and works.
6. Affix manual gear ratio to the auto 'tiny-bit'.
7. Reassemble as the diff for my good car (that's not the auto, did you see the woosh comment below?)
8. Never mention diffs again.

One thing I have to consider, is what the ratio is for the manual car - if it's 4.1 that's OK. But I'd like to have lower ratio gearing.

Why? Well you're into GT5, shorten the final drive in transmission settings and see what it does to your car's acceleration.

The one massive caveat to all this is how the ratio is worked out. But, ebay has the outer rings too, so I can replace them if I have to!

So there it is, I can buy the parts to sort my world, pull apart two diffs and probably get there. And in any situation there are ways forward that aren't going to break the bank.

Wear on the diff in the manual is going to be a factor - it's been welded after all. So I may invest in the ratio above and have that onto the auto diff, and ditch the risk of the track trashed one. Sound thinking actually.

I need a beer.

[Update]
This page has had a massive update. Why?
Well, like a proper religious zealot I had it in my head that the ratio was the divisible number. I.e. the bigger the number the higher the final drive gearing. But it's not, it's simpler than that. It's just the number of turns of the prop shaft before the wheel makes one revolution.
And it's been hard to change my way of thinking, I had a belief system around it, a sound hypothesis and generally made everything work with my world view.
I can't stress how confronted I was when I did the only thing that I knew would convince me... that being on the removed diff I turned the prop-shaft and looked to see if the wheels would spin faster or slower.
Slower obviously.
And now, as an enlightened soul I can see it's obvious. The gears are small to big... fast to slow. Easy.

Lowering the tone

I came home to this stuck on the back of my 'new' car...

Harsh. But fair.

I can explain...

I think that this picture needs some justification...

Yes, yes it is another BMW E30 320i. And in this picture it looks half decent.

That'll be the half closest to the camera then.

$550 has bought me a spares car!

What's good about this car:

• It drives!
• Open, and working Diff.
• Rear disk hub (so we can replace that)
• Working radiator - funny haha story to follow.
• A myriad of little bits of plastic that I needed to buy.
• A clean/straight bonnet, albeit in redish fade sort of colour.

What's not good about this car:

• Auto box - and that means that it goes with a bit of a woosh. 
• Without actually wooshing. Gutless blob this car is sadly.
• Tan interior. Somewhere in there is almost certainly a medallion.
• Rust - quite a bit as it turns out. If I pass wind in the car I reckon it would punch a hole in the floor.
• No brakes, well, some, on one wheel. But that's OK, not like it goes fast enough to care.

But you want to know about the radiator...

Picture the scene. I've removed the fan, that was held in with a couple of cable ties - so time to refit.

Being me, I decided to 'ease' the drill through the bulkhead so I could put brackets in, and then blind rivet them in. A sound plan, and all was going well.

Until the last drill hole, in which I eased a bit too far. A trickle of kryptonite water and a dead car.

Damn.

In fact, if only I had a Dam, cos there's quite a lot of that green stuff everywhere. Even the roaches are steering clear of the floor in my garage at the moment...

But all is not bad. In doing this I've reworked the cooling pipes and figured out where the magic third cooling pipe goes (back to the previously defunct header tank, I had two).

And it get's better. Dona (as in Donor Car) has the gift of sensors and radiator so soon I'll be back to where I was a month ago. Yeay.

So, as the great JC would say, "Sit Rep"... now have two cars, or rather 2 2/3's of cars, so about 1 1/3 cars or something in the final analysis.

Anyone know anyone who wants the rusty shell of a BMW E30 in about a month's time? They'll need a crane...