mid-ohio memorial day weekend

#21

When you race with CR your car has to pass their safety regs at Tech. That means right side and window nets have to be dated within 2 yrs, and you have to have a fire suppression system, not just a fire extinguisher duct taped to a cage bar.

You’ll also need their decals on your car. These come in your license kit. If you don’t have them, tell the organizers in advance and they can bring them. Or, many of the CR guys get the decals made themselves in diecut vinyl. If you contact one of the various decal suppliers mentioned at bf.c they’ll have the art work. I think that there’s only 4 decals required now:
Tire Rack window banner
BMWCCA CR (2)
BimmerWorld (2)
VAC (2)

#22

From Harvey Rogers:

We would need to do an annual on the car which is no problem to do on Friday at track. Between the stewards, a couple of the instructors and myself we have enough people to accomplish that.
No camping is allowed though if you park outside the gate at either entrance it is OK there.
Unfortunatley that rule has not changed on dogs.There have been a couple that have been there and stayed inside and nobody said anything but officially no.
Hope this helps. Hope to see you there.

#23

so we are a week away and i only see 3 SE30 racers signed up for the race. Fish, Al and I. Ranger? Tower?

#24

I’ll be there but I’m not racing.

#25

oh come on… you got all friday to learn the track!

#26

Re. “oh come on”. As we all know a chick can change her mine 3-4X on some issue even tho the variables associated with the decision haven’t changed in the slightest.

I’m not a chick.

Subject change. I talked to Al and he’s out. Bummer.

#27

err ok… you lost me at variables… bummer about al.

#28

Magagnoli #007 and I will be there, but likely only running Chin on Monday. (I am replying on his behalf, he is out of the country)

Bring your rain gear, we are going to rained on.

From Patrick:

Guys,There is a good number attending this event.

To make things go smoothly I need the following for tech:
1.) event tech form filled out with dates and signed
2.) log book needs to be filled out and signed
3.) helmet and hans

#29

Just rolled in from 5 days at Mid-O. Was really a great event. 3 days with BMWCCA and 2 days with Chin Motorsports. Fred Switzer & Jason Tower were paddocked up for both events. Rich Bratton and Kish paddocked up with us for the BMW weekend. I had a hangover every morning.

Also there were Scott Barton and Anthony Mag, neither of whom I’d ever hung out with before.

I had some engine problems (shocker) but worked thru most of them. Engine was missing at high rpm at WOT. High rpm and partial throttle was ok. Mid rpm and WOT was ok. Only the combo of high rpm and WOT was bad. I replaced everything that was ignition related. A smart guy looked at my plugs and said that purple discoloration was a sign of pre-ignition so I drained my gas out and tried 110 octane race gas. I racked my brain trying to come up with a theory where only the combo of WOT and high rpm caused the missing. And not every time either, occasionally the symptom would not occur.

The problem turned out to be alternator grounding. I think. The bolt under the alternator was a little loose and that allowed the alternator to shift forward and back a little bit. Not such that the belt would loosen mind you, but just enough to allow the alternator to shift forward and back. I tightened that up and the symptoms got better by 80%. Sadly, not 100%. I never was able to get the engine to run really well at high rpm.

I started the two events on worn tires but wasn’t quite able to cord them before hanging it up on the 5th afternoon. I thought sure I’d be able to cord them. Guess I wasn’t driving as hard as I thought. God knows I was sliding ALL OVER the place.

Mid-O is lots of fun. It had been a while since I’d gone to a new track. Mid-O has some turns that require balls, some twisties that require precision and rhythm, and a fair amount of run-off room. The only bummer about the place is no camping.

Mid-O is a 14hr drive for me, assuming one consumes an hour with 3 stops for gas and coffee. I left yesterday around 4PM and got to a rest stop at the SC/NC border at 0100. Caught some racktime and headed out again at 0500. Trailer got a flat in Columbus so that cost me some time, and then rolled into the house this morning about 10.

This was my first time towing over mountains. I learned that descents can be a little tricky.

My flat was the 3rd one for me and my trailer. Anyone ever think about putting a tire pressure monitoring system on their trailer wheels? I’d hate to lose 2 trailer tires because of a single flat that went unnoticed until it’s buddy failed under the additional strain. The last time I got a flat I could tell that the trailer wasn’t handling quite right, but it was subtle enough that I didn’t stop to check it out. This time I couldn’t tell at all, a passerby alerted me to the problem.

#30

[quote=“Ranger” post=57289]The only bummer about the place is no camping.
[/quote]

That depends on the organization. NASA rents 24hr security so the gates stay open all weekend and they allow camping then. I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to camp at Nationals.

#31

My dad has a system on his motorcycle trailer he tows behind his motorhome. It’s basically transponders that screw on to the valve stems and a monitor in the vehicle. They take a special tool to remove them so nobody can walk up and steal them.

#32

Scott,

Interesting thought about tire pressure monitoring for the trailer. We have a big boat and a 2 car trailer. After having 2 flats/blowouts in one year, I started stopping every two hours to check tire pressures while towing. Have not had a problem since. Definitely not fun changing a trailer tire on the shoulder.
Ed

#33

[quote=“Ranger” post=57289]I started the two events on worn tires but wasn’t quite able to cord them before hanging it up on the 5th afternoon. I thought sure I’d be able to cord them. Guess I wasn’t driving as hard as I thought. God knows I was sliding ALL OVER the place.[/quote]My experience at MidO is that the place is really easy on tires. Given the scarcity of RA1s, I am hoping that holds true for Nationals this year!!

Glad you guys had a good time. September should be fun!

#34

fun trip, although it started out a little rough. last wed al taylor dropped off some parts at my place and noticed that both of my front shock lock caps were totally unscrewed, as i have never assembled or taken apart a front strut assembly i was blissfully unaware of this fact. this led to the discovery that the RF shock was completely blown, which might explain why the front end felt so bouncy at the last cmp race. so instead of loading the car on the trailer i ended up (unnecessarily it turns out) removing both front struts and rebuilding them with new bilsteins and GC camber plates which thankfully i had ordered the previous week. finished up at 0300, slept for three hours, then hit the road.

fri am i unloaded the car from the trailer and discovered that the camber on both fronts was way off (too much RF, not enough LF, and i couldn’t correct it on either side), plus i still had to replace the rear shocks. so instead of driving on fri i spent most of the day redoing wed night’s work, fortunately i ended up with alignment values that more or less made sense and was able to drive without incident the remaining four days (which was more than enough by the way).

only kish and fish raced with bmwcca, the rest of us were just dinking around. scott barton from NJ was there with his “red baron” e30 lemons car and he drove the living shit out of it, i got some video but it doesn’t do justice to the flogging he put that poor car through. it may have been an ugly 318 but with a strong m42 pushing 2200lb and 225mm tires he was able to keep up with the rest of us. anthony m. only drove his car mon/tue with chin but he was kind enough to wait for me a couple of time, only to disappear into the distance after a couple of laps.

already looking forward to nationals in sept!

#35

Awesome weekend! My car ran great and I drove good enough… Thanks to Scott and Jason for sharing a room and special thanks to Kish for actually racing. It kind of sucked that we had 6 Spec E30 racers and cars at the track but only two of us actually raced. Regardless, there were plenty of other BMWs, near Spec E30 speed, to contend with. There were also other really fast cars that lapped me four times in the hour long race on Sunday.

This was my second weekend at Mid Ohio and I have to say it’s a wonderful track. The track seems to reward being very smooth and over driving the car doesn’t result in fast lap times. After I figured this out on Saturday, my lap times started dropping and I shaved ~1.5 seconds off my previous best from April.

BMW CCA labeled the one hour race on Sunday an “enduro” and required each driver to make a 5 minute pit stop. I probably didn’t need to fuel, but figured I might as well. Fred Switzer worked the fuel can and I stood by armed with a fire extinguisher in case Seymore (the car) or Fred burst into flames. No issues, and I was promplty out of the pits in exactly five minutes.

On Saturday evening we received a touch of rain, but it didn’t seem to wash the rubber off the track. By early afternoon on Sunday, the track had rubbered up very nicely and grip levels were very high. I was amazed how much speed I could carry and how early I could get on the throttle going through the key hole. It was hot out, but the track was really fast!!! My better lap times were in the mid 47s with my best at 1:47.17; this was good enough for a class win (of two Spec E30s) and a 20th place overall finish of 36.

#36

was fun racing with you fish! too bad we couldn’t get more SE30s to join in. I’m hoping for a big turnout for O’fest at Barber. See ya there!

#37

It was good to see everybody and especially great to meet Ranger, Jason, and Fred! I’m looking forward to you guys re-joining us for Nationals!