Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Car Madness

In addition to the computer work which has been taking my nights, I've gotten my BMW back on the road and that has led to a flurry of little fix-it jobs. The major one was fixing the brakes. The calipers were dodgy and the driver's side front was dragging to the point that it had warped the rotor and gouged it pretty well (also the resultant heat had cooked the grease in the wheel bearing). I had hoped to have all the pieces in place to get it fixed before the BayArea02 Swap & Show but alas, it didn't happen. I went down anyway (it was in Palo Alto) and saw lots of shiny cars, and met a few nice people.
The parts finally came, and since the beginning of the month I've:
-replaced the discs, calipers, wheel bearings in the front.
-reinstalled the stereo/speakers & Center console
-Installed oil-pressure/temp gauges
-Oil change
-Trunk seal
-Refurbished the tail-reflectors, lenses and replaced the seals
-Refurbished the gauges (fuel gauge still not working, must be sender), fixed the turn signal dash light.
-Installed a driver's seat from a E30 M3
-Tune the FI by ear to get it running better (my ex-mechanic tuned it, and in the process destroyed it's drivability, and made it run far too lean, thus hot). It still needs some tuning, but I will take it to a place here in Petaluma and see what they can do for it.

I want to get it into good running shape (reliable, fast, good mileage) for some driving events coming up: California Melee; the Alpine 500 (which I missed just barely this year. Damn!)

Also I just want to do some general road-trip fun (LA, sierras, etc..) as this is the year I will take my first ever paid vacation. Yay!

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