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Old 04-09-2016, 08:13 AM   #6
John V
No more BMWs
 
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Carmudgeonly Ride: Ram, MS3, CX-5, RX-8
Location: Glenwood, MD
Posts: 14,753
I felt like I had a good season last year and made a lot of progress on the car, but ended up finishing the year frustrated. In 2014 I finished second (to Doug Rowse) at nationals, 0.017s back, not that I'll always remember that number or anything. After all the improvements in the 2014-2015 offseason I figured the car would be much better in 2015 and it was, but some unfortunate breakages cropped up at the wrong time and hurt my overall chances. I ended up putting a boneyard transmission and a new ACT clutch in it right before nationals because the original transmission let go at the Wilmington Pro. I broke in the clutch driving around paddock before the Pro finale. Going into Sunday I was a tenth out of the lead when this happened:



The output shaft on the differential, which had been machined for a small snap ring to retain it inside the LSD, sheared off on my first launch attempt on Sunday morning. That series of DNS's marked three years in a row of breakage at the Pro Finale, eliminating any chance of an overall win for Shelly or I. Fortunately, Mike Brausen is awesome and was able to weld that bolt onto the remainder of the stub, and Tom Bleh and Peter Florance were awesome in getting me a replacement stub so I could compete at Nationals. the car worked great and I ended up driving with Eric Campbell, who managed to finish second in the car, behind Doug Rowse. I, on the other hand, ran fast enough to finish second by thousandths (again) but coned out on day 1, so blah to that.

Talking with Eric throughout the two days of competition, he mentioned that the car made good power, the suspension worked really well over the bumpy Lincoln concrete (better than his car) but that the ultimate grip wasn't there compared to his car. He runs 315/30/18 A7s. I run 285/30/18 A7s. You see where this is going.



When I got home from Nationals I started taking measurements and marking where I could legally cut and bend metal under the SP ruleset. I ordered a set of Forgestars from Strano in 18x11 and claimed four 315 A7s from Nationals, and got to work making everything fit. The front and rear of this car had been flared using E46 M3 fenders (cut and welded in) but they had gotten pretty beat up over the years so I didn't have too many qualms about taking an angle grinder and body saw to them. Still, I made a lot of really gradual cuts so I didn't cut too much structure away. I had to cut quite a bit more after the picture below before everything fit.





Once I was confident that nothing would rub, giving everything about 1" of clearance at full lock and full compression I took the car up to the guys at Joefis and had them bend me some rivet-on flares. I kind of like the look but it's certainly not as pretty as Eric's car with the welded-on fenders.

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