Another Sunday, another autocross event. After replacing my differential bushings and the broken bolt from last month’s event, then also replacing a bent rear control arm and frozen camber bolt/bushing, I had the car aligned on Friday and raced on Sunday. It went well.
I requested 0 toe in the front, and -2.0° camber and 0.25° total toe in on the rear. Here’s my before and after:
Obviously it was a nightmare before, having messed with the camber shims up front and replaced rear suspension pieces. Also the last alignment place gave me toe out in the rear when I asked for toe in. That was not good.
So on Saturday I jacked the car up to finalize a couple nagging issues – one was evening out the camber up front. I added an extra shim on the right side to theoretically even camber side to side. Then I pulled the left rear wheel to stop the terrible scraping and scratching noises coming from what I assumed was the dust shield scraping on the rotor. That was definitely happening, but also the brake pad retaining clip was completely missing. Luckily O’Reilly’s had those in stock for easy replacement and some forceful bending of the dust shield moved it away from the rotor.
I also gave the rotors a quick cleaning with some brake cleaner and a microfiber towel. With that, it was ready for Sunday.
The Iowa Events Center has a relatively small parking lot as far as autocross venues go, so the course was tight and fairly simple. This was a good thing for me, as I could spend more time figuring out where to go and more time figuring out how to go. After five runs in the 47 second range, I cracked off a 46.8. After figuring out a couple of the corners and reminding myself that slower corner entry means I hit the right line and get a faster corner exit, I knocked out a 45.7, then backed it up with a 45.8 (though I did catch a cone on that one). Actually, the final run was on track to be even quicker than the previous, but I tried to rotate the car mid-corner with a dab of throttle, but ended up making it push, totally flubbing the corner and losing the 3 to 4 tenths lead I had on my previous lap.
That was good enough to take top in my class, top Prepared time, fastest BMW, and 8th raw time overall. Obviously my PAX standing was garbage (30/50) as XP has a horrendous PAX, the worst of any production-based car. The video above shows the cones I wiggled during that fast run, fortunately neither moved too far from its home and I was in the clear.
The one issue that reared its head was oil starvation – under hard braking, my oil pressure tended to drop below 15psi. Between the clean rotors, sticky tires, and increased confidence I’m much harder on the brakes than I have been in the past, and it looks like the oil is making its way out of the rear of the pan where the pickup lives. Time to figure something out there, as 10psi of oil is no good when I’m back on the gas trying to pull out of the corner.
Next week I get to break the Blizzaks out of their summer hibernation and try a little RallyCross!