TSD Rally 2

We have embarked on our second Time-Speed-Distance Rally. The intended route was from Duluth to Ely, MN. After a slightly rough start, Andy and I started to develop a communication system and my confidence in our car, a 2001 BMW 325xi is growing.

That allowed use to be within less than 10 thousandths of a minute on two of our stages. We were able to analyze our deficiencies on the other stages .

A rude message was echoed into our head: keep a full size spare.

While traveling to the next stage we were interrupted by a bit of an inconvenience:


That rock left us with a "did not finish" in the rally and 250 miles of driving on the donut spare.

The First TSD

TSD = Time, Speed, Distance.

Not a terribly enticing name for a "racing" event but a couple of weeks ago I participated in my first "Timed Rally."  The concept is fairly simple.  There is a fixed starting point, ending point, and a few fixed check-in points.  The goal is to maintain the suggested  average speed  across all points between the fixed points and the end points.  This does get tricky, however, as accuracy matters much more than it does in horseshoes.

When we started chatting with others participating in the rally, they claimed a "good" run was a score of 40 points over the course of the rally. When we, myself and my navigator Andy, realized what this meant we were pretty floored.   A point is awarded for every tenth of a second above or below the target time.  A rally lasts approximately six hours.  So that means, over six hours of driving, a car was able to time their arrival times with no more than 4 seconds of inaccuracy using nothing more than the car's odometer, speedometer, and a stopwatch.

This type of racing may seem anti-climatic.  For me, it is a bit.  There is quite a bit of math, quite a bit down time, and the speeds that need to be maintained are only a struggle because of the conditions provided by the road.  However, Andy and I are taking it all in as a part of a training program.

The goal is to run in September's Silver State Classic Challenge.  The race is run in Nevada on closed public roads.  The course is 90 miles long and the goal is to travel the course at a given average speed.  The minimum class speed is 95 MPH.  This means, over 90 miles, the goal is to average 95 MPH.  There are twists and turns across the 90 mile course and we'd like to run in one of the 100-110 MPH classes.  To do this we established a bit of a plan:

1.  Train our navigator/timing efforts.  This is why we were doing a "TSD Rally."  It helps develop a communication system, a vocabulary, and coping mechanisms for when things are going right or wrong.

2. Get the car ready.  The intent is to run with the M3.   The validity of this as a "good idea" may or may not pan out but it's my preference to run the car I've been tweaking for a year.  The car is still untested, undyno'd, and has never seen a rolling speed of greater than 80 MPH.  We may need to find some time on some private roads.   Or at least a dyno cell.

3. Get the logistics ready.  We are coming from Minnesota and will need to plan on transportation of ourselves, the car, and everything we need to support the car and ourselves.  This will probably be the most difficult part.

So, the boring part, learning to navigate is step one.  We did reasonably terrible at our last TSD and are hoping to do a few more in the coming months.

Updating the Shop

I've been constantly cleaning the garage since we moved into our house over three years ago.  It always seemed like I was doing pretty well, and then I'd actually try to do a project and the entire garage would fall to pieces.  That became much more literal a few weeks ago when my main storage shelf fell on me.  Many of the shelves fell through their frames and large car parts and all of my scrap metal, used for fabricating things, came down on me.  The bruises on my shins were the things of legend.  Legend and pain.

To tidy things up a bit, Jim and I had some whiskey, argued about optimal shelf design and then built a more appropriate replacement to the old fallen shelf.  We probably should've measured better but things generally went together just fine. Except the main pole, which is hung from the rafters, doesn't always touch the floor.

Clearly, the acrobatics were necessary.

Having built a shelf, I wanted something a bit more sustainable for storing my scrap metal bits. It just so happened my wife brought home a nice wooden crate. Which I then modified by adding a 2x6 floor and some cast steel casters.

Rolling box of metal sharps.  Reach in, feel around, it'll be a fun tetanus shot filled trip to Urgent Care.

I'm a computer geek by trade and was really excited to have the box. It was an old electronics shipping container for one of the more historically significant computing companies - Control Data Corp.

"Data Action Corp" was a pseudonym at the time.

This has allowed me to see floor space in the garage. I still have some things to sell and some items that I should just trash. (But how can I not have a wiring harness for a 1988 Lincoln Mark VII?)

The Bowels of Winter

A major portion of getting the car ready has been winterization.  This car lives in Minnesota.  Furthermore, it lives in an unheated garage in Minnesota.  Today's high was a balmy 15 degrees Fahrenheit.  I'm not really complaining about the heat but it did mandate the car get actual coolant in the lines.  During the build I solely put distilled water into the system and leaving it that way would probably necessitate installing new frost plugs in the spring.  So Jim helped flushed the system and we put in some fresh 50/50.

Explanation for People Who Don't Really Care about Cars
Every car has some form of engine cooling.  Engines generate heat and if too much is trapped inside, it will fail to really operate properly.  The most popular form of modern engine cooling is liquid cooling a.k.a. water cooling.  There are a few key components to this system:

• The engine, it actually generates the heat, and moves the car.  It also has a part on it called, "the Water Pump."  The water pump is important because it actually pulls cool water from the radiator into the engine.
• The radiator.  This is the part where all the water generally goes.  When the "low coolant" light comes on, you generally are putting water into this.

When the engine is turned off there is water left in the engine.  This good, this is how the system is intended to work.  However, when water gets below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Centigrade) it will change itself into ice.  This is problematic.  If a pop-can gets left in the freezer for a little too long you get a mess, the same thing happens with an engine, leave it with just water in the engine for too long and you get the same style mess.

Recognizing this potential problem, most engines have "freeze plugs" which will pop-out before the entire engine turns itself into the can of Coke someone really needed to have cold fast.  The real prevention mechanism is to add "antifreeze" or "coolant."  We put in Prestone's best green goo, mixed with some water, and so the car should now be very comfortable for the winter.

Catching up, Part 1

So, it's time to dust off the blog.

The car has been running since July and I've been so busy between work, family, and getting the car running that I let journaling about it degrade.  And by "busy with family," it's important to note our family did get bigger by one:

The car made small, incremental progress through March, April, May, and June.  I'd spend a few hours on different small projects trying to assemble the car.  Between the newborn, working, and trying to pretend to sleep a few hours at a time, that was all I could ever get done.  Then came Car Craft.

The Car Craft Summer Nationals has been a long running event at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.  Since high school, I've attended nearly every year for at least one day.  No matter the rat-trap, clapped-out, ill-running condition of my projects cars, I've always tried to drag them there.  The thrash for completion began.  Every night for a week, after putting the kids to bed I spent until 2 AM working on the car.  The unforgiving alarm clock would still ring four-and-a-half hours later.  I'd clock my eight hours at work, make dinner, put the kids down to bed, and head back out to the garage.  The Minnesota weather was cooperative by handing me record high temperatures and humidity.  My long time partner in crime, Jim came down Friday night.  We were able to get it nearly ready to start up but it didn't happen.  The wires were in the right places, the oil plumbed to the right holes but we were met with a bum starter and at one in the morning it was going to be difficult for us to get a new one.

My wife was graceful enough to give me the time to put in a near-24-hour push on Saturday.  She was even brave enough to help run the drill press and get her hands dirty after the kids went to bed.  Sunday morning, I fired up the car and headed to the Fairgrounds.

I met quite a few people who found the car interesting. One, Alex Bellus, a local beater-racer, and excellent photographer was kind enough to send me a well-shot picture of the car at Car Craft:

I'd like to extend a special thanks to Alex for sending me this picture and encourage you to visit his website.

The Waiting Episode 1 Part 2

After a significant amount of annoyance to my wife, friends, and strangers, I finally made some decisions about the car and am waiting for the results of those decisions to arrive.

The first major decision was made after spending hours, that I should have spent sleeping, pouring over a mountain of turbo specifications. I had a few selected and then finally took the advice of a friend and called a local shop that actually spent their entire day working on these types of problems. The shop did recommend one of the three turbos I had been considering and answered all of my questions in the disassociated but knowledgable way I've come to expect from a speed-shop answering a phone. They probably only make a sale once for ever ten to twenty callers, so they develop a significant apathy about calls that start with, "I'd like to talk to someone about..." Or they expect to give a recommendation and be immediately hassled over the price. As much as I do love to hassle a sales person, I do tend to feel bad for these guys. They are trying to make a living running a business that caters to a demographic that is notorious for using price as their only selection criteria. This particular shop gets it even worse as they tend to cater to vehicles driven by younger, less knowledgable, and even more financially strained drivers.

And the last bit is dealing with gauges. The little dials and instruments seen on a typical factory dash board is generally lying to driver. Auto manufacturers decided long ago that the average driver simply will not understand why the needles move so much on their oil pressure and water temperature indicators. There are other useful bits of information to know also. On a higher powered turbocharged car it is useful know the oil temperature, the fuel mixture, the exhaust gas temperature, and the amount of pressure being produced by the turbo. Part of the build goal for this car is to avoid decorating the interior like a carnival ride with lights and needles pointing everywhere. My hope was to allow people to sit in the car and find it to be unobtrusive, easy to drive, and brutally quick.

My initial thought was that I could find a nice looking gauge that integrated more than one of these read outs into a single display. The results of the research of that thought proved I was entirely correct -- if I was willing to spend $400 or more to get the proper setup. I decided to eschew with this and get a few repair parts for the gauges I already own. This will lead to a more carnival like atmosphere in the car but it will be a savings of over $300.

So now I wait, the turbo is schedule to ship from the manufacturer today and the gauge parts are scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

The Agony

This blog has never been shy about spending money on car parts. The title itself is wrapped in the concept that racing, cars, the "gear head hobby" costs money. In all fairness to the hobby, that money does purchase some really neat pieces of steel, plastic, and aluminum. Some of the parts I've bought through the years are a venerable showcase of the evolution of the capabilities of on-demand manufacturing and fabrication utilities.

Despite the cost I've kept quite a bit of pride in keeping my overall costs low by comparison. There exist more than one person that I have spoke with over the years with more investment in their project cars than they had in the down payment on their homes. It also does not help that I cannot stand to do anything that is popular. "Popular" in the gear head world tends to be projects which garner a lot of "me too" reactions. They also tend to be popular enough to inspire companies to offer kits. I am not performing an engine swap for which there is any kit, nor is there any guide, or anyone else with previous experience to help with a variety of conundrums found along the way. This means there will be parts that I try to put together that will not fit and need to be refit. Fundamentally, if I have a question I must answer it myself, no end of Google searches will provide me with a direct answer.

All of these things combined have left me with an overwhelmingly disabling complex. I simply cannot ever seem to get myself to spend money on higher cost items even if I need them to complete my project, include the purchase of a new turbocharger. The old turbo was fine for the Capri. It worked well for drag racing but this car is not setup to simply go drag racing and I wanted something that was a little smaller. After over a week of Google searches, posts on forums, and finally chatting with a local tuning shop I bought one.

Of course, now I'm questioning myself over and over again about the wisdom of the choice. The agony only amplifies itself because I won't know how well it works until the entire car is assembled and running. I need to actually have the car drivable before I can even check that my instincts and research are correct.