#TBT Out in the Wild, Wild West

This started as a Throwback Thursday post on Facebook, but as is often the case with me, once I start writing I just can't seem to stop. Maybe I'm compensating for still not being able to talk with humans with my raw throat, but I digress (as I usually do).

Back in the late 70's (or could be early 80's), Rick Sands and I spent a month doing a Climbing tour of the American West. We did big mountain and alpine climbing in the Cascades & Tetons and rock climbing at climbing hot-spots ranging from small and obscure like Sinks Canyon in Wyoming, to big name areas like Leavenworth in Washington and the Needles in South Dakota. This tale concerns the time we visited Devil's Tower in Southeast Wyoming.

Devils Tower from outside the park

Devils Tower is a 1200 foot high rock structure rising incongruously from the flat prairies of eastern Wyoming. It's main claim to fame - at least to normal people, not climbers - was that it was featured in Steven Spielberg's famous movie Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. It was a pivotal plot element and featured in the climax of the movie. One of the characters even builds a replica of it at the dining table out of mashed potatoes.

Plains Indian lore are that some girls went out to play and giant bears saw them and pursued them. The girls ran onto a rock and prayed to the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit grew the rock and transported the girls high into the air. The pissed off giant bears raked the sides of the rock with their claws giving Devils Tower it's present day appearance.

A less colorful theory by scientists is that a long time ago, this was the site of a large volcano. Magma from eruptions cooled and plugged the neck of the volcano. Over eons, the rest of the volcano eroded, leaving the harder plug in place. I kinda like the Indians version myself.

Devil's Tower - Durrance Rount in the center

Rick & I spent several days climbing various routes. The first route we climbed was the classic Durrance Route (5.7) which leads to the summit. You do some 4th class (un-roped) pitches to get to the bottom of the technical difficulties.

Better pic of the Durrance Route - It starts at the bottom
of the leaning tower.and ascends cracks to the top  (pic from Wikipedia)

Six or Seven pitches lead to the summit. One of the fun pitches was high up on the route there was a jump of a gap about 5 feet wide from one small rock to another. The bottom of gap was about 700 feet straight down. Not technically hard, but psychologically intimidating.  The summit was an amazing place. It's a slightly sloping flat area of about 2 acres covered in grass and flowers. Due to the vertical sizes of the tower, it felt like being on a small slice of prairie floating thousands of feet above the surroundings.

Since dark was approaching we hurriedly prepared to leave. A couple of  double rope rappels, with the last by headlamps, found us safe on the ground.

Another view of rock structure. Most of the climbing is cracks
between the extruded columns.

Feeling flushed with victory, Rick & I decided real food was in order. We have been living on camp food for several weeks at that point. We headed out into the night to find some.

After a half hour drive through the sparse countryside, we spotted a bar with a glowing 'pizza' sign with all the beer logos. Pizza and beer! Sounds good to me.

We entered the bar and immediately realized that it was probably a mistake. It was a dark and smokey place filled with cowboys, ranchers and shitkickers. All conversations came to a halt, and all eyes turned to us. Being we were a jewboy from New York and skinny hippie kid, this started to feel like a scene from Deliverance.

Hunger (not intelligence) won out and we made our way to the bar. "Help ya son" growled the bartender. "Yeah, we'd like a pizza and some beer."

"Ain't got no pizza."

"But your sign say Pizza?"

A hard-eye stare followed with "I said we ain't got no pizza" with the implied "for the likes of you sissy faggot boys".

Rick & I looked at each other, and one of us said, "You know, camp food sounds pretty good right now ..." and we headed back to our white-gas stove and P&B sandwiches.

A friendlier local resident

The Curse of Mosport

I haven't updated the blog in a bit. I've been busy with Family health issues pretty much the entire month of July, but I have several posts that were in a draft stage that needed finishing off, and this is one of them.

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Fresh from Watkins Glen, ready for the trip North.

I've been back from Mosport about a week now, but I'm still depressed. The car is slumbering unloved in the trailer, and the trailer hasn't been opened since I shoved it into its parking spot in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

So maybe this report will be cathartic (or not).

Now let me start off by saying. I love Mosport the track. It is definitely one of my favorite places in the world to go drive a car fast. An old Euro style racetrack, a former host of Formula 1 races back in the 60's and 70's, it has a wonderful layout. Sweeping fast curves, turns over blind hill crests, pucker-inducing off-camber downhill turns, lots of places to bite you if you do it wrong - but when you do a lap right, it's a joyous experience.

Mosport is now officially Canadian Tire Motorsports Park (CTMP),
but will always be known as 'Mosport' to racing fans.

It's set in rolling farmland and forests about an hour east of Toronto in Ontario province. I was last there 2 years ago with a round of 944 Cup. Since then the track had been bought by a group of investors, among them Ron Fellows aka the Mayor of Mosport, a famous Canadian sports car racer. They have spent several millions of dollars upgrading the facility and I was very interested in seeing the changes.


While I love Mosport, that passion is unrequited. It does not love me back. I feel like that geeky guy in high school or that shy wallflower girl, always hopeful, always showing up at the gate some evening, thinking that, this time it will be different, this time the uber cool Mosport will ask 'me' to dance. What can I say, I'm a hopeless romantic.


When I was there last with 944 Cup I had a great set of races with all the Canadian guys. No problems, no issues, just me, the car and the track and some fun racing with some fast drivers. Of course that was an anomaly in my Mosport experiences. But I was hopeful that all of my previous bad experiences were in a 911 and maybe, just maybe, my stealth black 944 went unrecognized by the racing gods.  (I told you I was an optimist.)

My own personal black cloud, which followed me all the way
from PA, setting in over the paddock Thursday evening

The trip up was horrid, and if I believed in omens, a predictor of the weekend. Within 15 minutes of leaving home, the skies turned dark and the clouds opened up in a torrential downpour. For the next hour, I traveled between 20-30 mph with my 4 way flashers on as sheets of rain flooded the road. The weather forecast was for intense rain storms that were predicted to sweep across the bottom of Pennsylvania and into New Jersey. Once I turned northward on I-81 I expected to move out of the storms and have a trouble free tow to Canada.

Silly me. The next 8 hours was more of the same as the storm cell seemed attached by a wire to my rear bumper. Maximum speeds were only 55 mph through all the tractor trailer sprays. The skies didn't clear until I crossed the border at Thousand Islands. The next 2 and 1/2 hours to the track were clear and dry, but shorty after I rolled into the paddock, the black clouds were rolling back in. Halfway setting up camp the rains came back and I fell asleep listening to the rain on the roof of the trailer.

Home for the weekend

Van showing up just in time to get wet from my rainclouds
You're welcome Van!

Friday morning dawned perfect. Blue skies, temps in 70's, just perfect racing weather. This was the Canadian Vintage Grand Prix weekend. A big spectator event loaded with lots of vintage racing machinery. 944 Cup was the featured marque this weekend. We were celebrating the original Rothmans 944 Challenge Cup series, the first single Porsche marque series. Race stars of the 70's and 80's competed all year long in identical 944's. Drivers like Ron Fellows, Scott Goodyear, Paul Tracy and others took part. Several of those racers were back during the weekend.

Some original Rothman 944's raced with us.

A nice 70's Lotus Cortina race car

Some open wheelers

Friday was practice, qualifying, and racing, with another 4 races on Saturday and Sunday. This should be an awesome weekend.

A gaggle of Alfa's across the way....
or should that be a 'rusting of Alfa's' ...

I lined up for the early morning practice session and we were released on to the track. I took the first lap slow as there have been some changes done to the track since I last been there. The vast grassy field on the outside of famous turn 2 - which has eaten many a race car over the years - was now paved. The turn was still fast and scary, but a mistake hopefully won't have the same disastrous consequences. Van, behind me in his orange Jagermeister car was running in 2 run groups that weekend, and having already had a session, was quickly up to speed and passed me.

Alright, outlap done, the track is still the same, just better. Time to get into the groove. I build up speed on the main straight and dive into turn 1. Some light braking before up and over the crest into the blind fast, downhill (and off camber in the middle) turn 2. Oh yeah! what a rush this track is. Into turn 3 and then full tilt under the Tire bridge - making sure I'm not too far to the right as it will suck you off the track as it goes off camber and downhill.  Down the hill and brake going uphill into Moss Corner, the double turn 5 complex, and back out on to the rear Andretti straight running up through the gears. Yeah baby, me likey! Sweeping through the last set of turns and back onto the main straight. Car's feeling good.

That lap was a 1:47. Now I know I won't be challenging most of the guys as this is their local track. But the last time I was here I got into the 1:42-43's and I'm hoping this weekend to knock a couple of seconds off of that. If I can dip in the 39's I'd be tickled pink.

So around for another lap, practice makes perfect - or more accurately, Perfect Practice make Perfect.

Coming out of Moss corner the tranny, normally loud with the solid rear mount, sounds a bit louder. What's that? The car feels like it's not accelerating. I try downshifting. Gears shift fine, motor's working, but something definitely not working. No power to the wheels. At the end of the straightaway I coast off the track into the paved runnoff area and up against the wall. Putting the car into 1st gear doesn't move it. The gear box is gone.

This is probably the time to tell you that this is the gear box that failed at the Nationals 2 years ago. A new case, another ring and pinon gear and a new short 5th from Germany and a year in the shop and I finally had it back in my garage. Since it also has my trick Guards LSD I really wanted it back in the car. The weekend before I spent 12 hours swapping the old one out for this one. With 2 people it can be done in several hours, but working by myself took quite a bit longer. A couple laps around my development though the gears to validate the install and it was rolled into the trailer.

So lets recap. I sunk a year of waiting for the gearbox rebuild, complete with a several thousand dollar bill; 12 hours of my time to install; 11 hours of the worst tow I've ever done. Only to get 3 laps on the trap. The spare tranny is back in Pennsylvania. No 3 days of racing on one of the worlds best tracks. No racing at the event that I've been looking forward for 6 or more months. My future holds another 11 hour tow back home once I got the dead car back into the trailer. Shop fees wasted. Race fees wasted. Diesel fuel bill wasted. Vacation time wasted. I would have been better off to pile a couple of thousand dollars in my barbeque at home and light it. I was gutted. The Mosport curse has struck again.

I'm sure I'll race again. The hook has been sunk in too deeply, there's no 12 step program for racers. But it's time for a break.

'Traitor Tranny' upper left, 'Ole Faithful' on right

One good thing did come out of this. The duty-free shop at the border had one of my fav beers, Sleeman Fine Porter, only available in Canada. So I bought a couple of cases. When I got home, they were removed and placed into the garage and the trailer doors locked, the car not to be disturbed for a while. But the beer ... that was a different story.

Thanks to Bill Comat for introducing me to Sleeman's

Trailer update

It's raining outside now, the end of a 3 day weekend, but at least it isn't 35 degrees anymore. Starting on Friday we got up into the mid to upper 50's for the first time in months, and it was just in time too. It wasn't a play weekend for me, too much work to do to get ready for race season. Its only 6 weeks away and the clock's ticking.

But here Sunday evening, I think I've finally come out the other side, at least for the trailer rehab. Since the last post, I've been painfully removing all the floor tiles. That wasn't so bad, the bad was once pried up, they left behind a gooey mess.

You can see the tile glue left behind on the plywood

Since then I've mounted all the plywood walls. painted them, cut the trim from a sheet of thin plywood, mounted and painted most of the trim, painted the wheel boxes, and spent hours upon hours scraping up the tile adhesive.

About 2/3 done. The foreground floor is milky looking. That all
leftover glue.

The only thing to do with this is pour on some thick adhesive remover, let it sit for an hour or two, and laboriously scrape the vile mixture off. This was sheer torture for my knees and back and I could only do 2 hour stints at night during the work week. It didn't help that it was 29 degrees outside. Even with my space heater going in the trailer, the cold minimized the effectiveness of the remover.

 The pleasant arrival of warmer weather this weekend helped matters. By Saturday evening, I had all the glue up and the floor washed and cleaned.

Sunday afternoon saw the application of the epoxy flooring well underway. This is a 2 part epoxy from Lowes, used mainly for garage floors but can also be used on wood. I picked a nice dark gray.

Application in progress

The process was to mix the 2 parts in a bucket, stirring with an electric drill for 3 minutes and then the clock was ticking. It had to be applied in the next 3-5 minutes otherwise it would start to harden in the bucket. Luckily the weather was cloudy today and cooler than yesterday which extended the application period.

Once mixed, you pour a line of material and take a squeegee on a pole and squeegee it across the floor to get a nice even thickness. Next take the roller and roll the floor 90 degrees from the squeequee application. Let it setup for 10 minutes and then re-roller. Now you can broadcast the paint flakes into the air. I also added silica as an anti-slip material.

Front done

Close-up of the flake pattern. I used red, white and blue.

View of the finished floor. Those aren't defects in the middle, but
the holes for in-floor tie-downs.

Done. Much nicer than those chewed up checkered tiles. Also did the tailgate.

And about 5 minutes after I finished the last bits, it started raining. Perfect timing. I closed the trailer up and backed it into it's normal spot where it will sit for the next day or two curing.

Still plenty on my to-do list for the trailer. Lots of hours still ahead, but getting the floor done was the biggest item on the list. But for now, I need to drink some beer* and finish up Season 2 of the Game of Thrones. The rest can wait a bit.

* Evolution Rise Up Stout

Show me the Numbers!

Continuing the theme of late blogging here's some more '02 work done earlier this month.

AEM A/F Ratio analog gauge powering up

Not having convenient access to a chassis dyno anymore - they all seem to go out of business - I want some hard data on tuning my car. The car has a pair of big DCOE 45 Weber carbs and running the numbers all my jets, chokes and venturis are probably in the ballpark. And the car is seemingly running well, but how do you really know without numbers or a baseline? Tuning Webers can be an art but I already have a day job and too many hobbies, I don't need an apprenticeship taking several years. I'd rather be driving, racing or drinking beer.

Being a typical American with a short attention span, I want a quicker way to motoring bliss. So I bought an AEM Air/Fuel ratio gauge to help me dial in the motor. They make a nice analog version which complements my vintage style VDO gauges so it doesn't look too out of place. With this I can fiddle with timing, jets and throttle applications and get the numbers. As while your seat of the pants will lie to you, the numbers don't.

I swapped out my existing clock and shuffled the other gauges around. When I'm driving the bimmer I don't really care what time it is. I'm keeping the Oil Pressure and Temps, and the Voltmeter.

First step is wiring it up.

Gauges rat's nest of wiring

And in a nice gesture to my future senility and/or the next owner, I tagged the wires with their function.

Meanwhile, I took the header to my local muffler shop - Midway Muffler in Elsmere. They work on my racecar exhaust system and are good guys. For $20 they welded a bung to the header for the O2 sensor.

Unfortunately, all the work I did earlier in the year to the header - de-rusting it, painting it with satin black high temp paint - came to naught. Every time I start the car I have to endure a couple of minutes of smoke coming from the headers as they cook off the paint. Plus they are beginning to rust again.

But as usual, I have a plan. They'll be taking a journey down to Crazy Coatings in Middletown, where they'll get bead blasted, and ceramic coated. I'm expecting it to be $250 or less. Take That Rust! Going No Mercy on your ass. Pics when done.

It's Alive!

When last seen, the Bimmer has the motor in place and all the wiring and hoses connected. The last thing to do was finish up the clutch bits. While it seemed to go reasonably well, there was a snag at the end. The clutch fork which the clutch slave cylinder pushes, causing the lever to push the clutch plate just didn't feel right to me. I fiddled and farted with it and was reluctantly coming to the decision that I would have to pull the tranny to find out what was wrong. One step forward, and 2 back. *sigh*

Slave cylinder (round bit on left) and the clutch fork (black lever going into the tranny on right)

A lot of forum reading and poring over poor quality transmission diagrams - it is a 40 year old car after all - and I thought I would give it one last shot. Though a combo of flexible mirrors and precariously perched lights I found the spring lever for the fork had come loose and was out of alignment causing my issue. A bit of fiddly blind work had it back in place and with a bleed of the system, I had a working clutch.

Time to work on the 944 and go racing for the next month or two.

And now I'm back. 

So for the month of November I've been trying to get the 2002 motor running. It got pulled way back in January for the repaint. The motor was cleaned up and painted, new rod bearings installed, new water pump, new exhaust studs, new hoses, new starter, new gaskets everywhere while waiting for the paint shop to return the car. By April I had the car back from the shop and began the 6 month process of putting it all back together again. With some breaks for 944 Cup racing, the car was mostly done and ready to get back on the street again. 

If it would only start ...

With suspension and wheels, it can be pushed around at least.

Did the usual checks. A running motor needs 3 things: air, fuel and spark, hopefully all delivered at the right time. Timing light showed I had spark. Full fuel bowls showed I was getting fuel. And air wasn't a problem, so what? Timing?

I pulled the valve cover and manually rotated the crank until the rockers were aligned correctly and I was sure I had TDC on cylinder #1. I made sure the distributor was pointing in the correct location and not 180 degrees out of phase. The timing may not be spot on, but it should be close enough to start. Hmmm.....

Eventually the path of deduction led to the Weber carbs. I had all the correct ingredients, but nothing was cooking. Gas was making it into the carbs, but was it making it out into the intake? A trip to Pep Boys and a can of starter fluid - kids ask your parents - answered that question. A couple of squirts down the carb throats and with a turn of the key, the engine fired up. It didn't sound healthy, but in truth, a diet of starter fluid isn't what it was tuned for. So it's the carbs.

Off with the carbs. Time to dig into them.

A long time ago, actually in February, I 'rebuilt' the Webers.

In all its greasy, clogged glory.

And as cleaned up

What this meant was clean the outside and repaint, clean all the jets, replace all the gaskets. Kinda like a topend rebuild. Now it was time to get down and intimate with those Italian beauties.

This time I took out all the jets and flushed all the passages with carb cleaning making sure everything flowed where it should. Put it back together and back onto the car. BTW, when I say those 4 little words - back on the car - you should hear in your head 'another 30 minutes of work' - as they came off and on numerous times over the last several weeks. Just sayin'.

So back on the car, a couple of squirts of starter fluid, the turn of the key and Vroom!!!! it's working! Hey wait a minute, it's idling at 4000 rpm. Shit, turn it off! That can't be good for a brand new motor.

So for the next week, time was spent working the high idle problem. Turn the car on, and it would immediately go to 4-4500 rpm. I checked for vacuum leaks and more with no luck. Finally in the middle of one session, the motor screaming at 4500 rpm it just immediately died. Crap! What now? That's electrical, I know the sound of a fuel starved motor. Yup, no spark anymore. Back to square one. That led to several nights of electrical debugging, which was solved by fixing a loose wire on the ignition switch. Damn old cars.

With that fixed, I was back to the 4000 rpm idle motor. More reading, more thinking and Its got to be the throttle plates. Webers back off the car, more cleaning, hey the accelerator pump is stuck, hmm that could be keeping the throttle plate open. Fixed that and 'back on the car'. But before this, I marked the throttle lever and carb body with a red paint dot so I know when the throttle plates are really closed.

And wouldn't you know it. The throttle linkage that connected the dual carbs was out of alignment so when all snugged down, one carb's throttle was open instead of closed shut. Some close personal time with a vise and hammer "adjusted" the linkage so both were closed when they should be. And this is the result of that fine tuning.

Oh yeah, still more work ahead, but that's a major turning point. It's time to celebrate with a beer or two. I just bought some Samuel Smith's Chocolate Stouts and look! they're right here in the garage cooler. How convenient.

More bimmer progress

I had a good series of races at NJMP last weekend and will get to them in another post shortly. But first some 2002 updates. I've been toiling away in the garage, making good progress. I'm thinking this is the 2nd phase of my '02 ownership. The first was the mechanical reliability phase. I spent the first couple of years just fixing all the little piddly stuff the previous owners ignored or neglected or just screwed up. Eventually I reached a point where the car was reliable and fun to drive. Things like turn signals, heat, etc just worked. That brought me to the 2nd phase where I'm at now: Serious Cosmetic and Mechanical Restoration. I'd say I'm about 85% complete now. Most of the interior is done. I've been working from the back forward and I'm just about ready to start in the motor compartment. The 3rd phase will be suspension replacement and tuning. That will probably take place this winter when my credit cards aren't so tender to the touch.

So lets go show what I've been up to.

The trunk area is done. gas tank connected, rear trim installed, rear "roundie" lights installed and wired. New trunk gasket glued and installed. Trunk panels cleaned and scrubbed.

Next has been the installation of the stainless steel belt-line trim that I was part of the group buy from BMW2002FAQ.com. It took almost 6 months from order to delivery but it's finally here. With the paint job putting the old tired, and dented trim back on was a non-starter. I didn't replace all the trim, that would be several thousands dollars if you can find it, but kept the decent pieces. When painting I had the lower knee trim deleted, so I decided to just replace the belt-line & rocker panel trim and front grilles.

Stainless steel trunk trim installed

new rocker trim in place.

Even though I got rid of the trunk spoiler, I'm keeping the fender flares. I haven't decided on whether to install the front air dam or not. I'm leaning to leaving it off. We'll see.

Fender Flare - original BMW part for the Turbo

Flares installed - New sealing gaskets from Ireland Racing, and stainless
steel install kit from Walloth and Nesch in Germany

As I head toward the front of the car I did a little prep work on some hood hardware.

As removed, old and tired and corroded.

After a trip to the plating station

Installed the door seals. These were a pain in the ass. There's a tiny grooved slot you need to work the seal into otherwise it won't seal correctly. And you can only do about 4-6 inches at a time. You goop up the door and the seal with trim adhesive, wait 10 mins for both to get tacky and then try to fit it all together in the groove and not smear the goop over everything. If your successful, clamp it and go away and wait for it to dry. Then do the next 4 inches. On a good night I might get 12-18 inches done. Luckily I had bought the drivers side seal about a year ago as they are over $200 apiece now and have been on backorder forever.

inch by inch, ....

My old rocker panel trim piece was seriously screwed up so I ended up throwing it away and driving the car without it. That let a nice stream of air in at speed since the door wasn't sealed - made it noisy also. Not so bad in the summer heat, but sucked when it was 35 degrees out. I had Steve at BluntTech send me two new trim strips.

New interior rocker trim

Ok, other than doing something about my dirty headliner I've arrived at the front. First order of business is to drop the subframe because eventually the motor and tranny will be bolted to in and lifted back into the car. But we have some work to do first (of course).

Naked subframe - rated R for rusty.

I unbolted the calipers and hung them from the car, unbolted the shock towers, undid the 6 bolts holding the subframe and lifted the car up into the air leaving the subframe perched on the jack.

Remember Phase III is the Suspension Rehab/Tune and that's scheduled for this winter so I'm not going to go hog wild here. The goal is to clean stuff up I can and get the running gear back into the car and working again. It's been down for 8 months now and I'd like to have it back on the road this fall.

So the plan is to unbolt bits and pieces, knock off the rust, a little paint, a little POR15, reassemble, attach the motor and tranny and stuff. There's still a lot of work ahead without wandering down a sideroad.

Closer view of the subframe, steering box, struts, etc.
Not great, but not too bad either.

Now the struts, that's another story.

Yuck.

I know, I know. I said no scope creep, but I just can't re-bolt those struts back on the car. Just can't do it. Off to the Restoration Chamber!

After some serious wire brushing

Applying lipstick to the pig - aka Rustoleum Safety Red

Okay, they cleaned up nice.

The inserts and springs will have to wait until this winter after I decide what to do with the suspension. I thinking about an Ireland Stage 1 or 2 kit. But at least it will look nice until then.

Now that it's back on the lift, I'll be spending some quality time inside the engine compartment - some paint touchups, re-wrapping the wiring, cleaning up some paint over-spray, etc.

Hopefully my careful labeling of the master fuse panel will pay off as I reconnect everything.

Plenty more work to come but it's all good. My beer fridge is calling my name, telling me it has an Otter Creek Black IPA and a Stovepipe Porter as well.