My Car is Fixed!

[octothorpe]

For those that don't know, I race my daily driver (I also used to race a vintage Jaguar MkII, but I sold it about 2 years ago –and regretted it e'er since). Racing puts some serious stress on your car, and within the last couple of months, my front axles developed a horrible clicking noise whenever I turned the wheel, and applied the accelerator. I *also* needed to adjust the camber of my wheels, as they were seriously out of whack, since the new springs have settled.

Well, all of that got fixed this morning. New axles, A-arms, and camber kit, with poly bushings!. Life is so much better. I can't wait to abuse the new kit on the twisties!

Comments

You Go, Girl!

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

But are you a demon on wheels?

Re: You Go, Girl!

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

Well, my non-track speed record is going from Stamford to Boston in 93 minutes. We were going *very* fast at 4am. It was all for a car show, and we stayed at the Bostonian.

I miss the Gothmobile (my old black BMW).

Re: You Go, Girl!

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Oh you dangerous Englishmen, racing up and down streets where decent people drive. Who do you think you are, Simon Templar?

Re: You Go, Girl!

[piratechan.livejournal.com]

um. dude.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, the dreaded clicking noises eh??? Were your CV joints needing replacing (along with everything else?). ;-)

My front end is so original it's not funny and the car has over 178K on it. :-(

And now with no work after getting home to the dreaded phone call it just means I live with car as is and hope nothing major breaks. :-(

[ricksf.livejournal.com]

Ah, you bring back such memories...

I was semi-addicted to BMW car club driver's schools and autocrosses when I had my M3. Painful as hell replacing tires at $250 each. But it was so much fun!

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

And what happened to it?

[ricksf.livejournal.com]

The 95 M3 was leased (what they didn't know, didn't hurt them), I had an accident and lost that lovin' feeling and sold it.

But the real reason was that the damn thing couldn't pass a service ramp without pulling in. After 4 years, it got old, very old.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

wait.. you sold the leased car??

Don't they get upset when you do that??

[ricksf.livejournal.com]

It was all part of my 'master plan' to take advantage of the theoretically high book value of the car. I bought it from BMW and promptly turned around and put it up for sale. The high Bluebook turned out to be more smoke than substance. I ended up just about breaking even.

To be honest, the car looked great, ran decently most of the time, but I find that I don't miss it.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

What make of car?

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

Well, it began life as a Honda Accord, but since then, the only thing that's stock is the leather interior. I even had a Japanese Prelude engine put into it (it's faster and more torquey than the US version =) )

Complete and total re-do of the suspension: Koni Yellows (struts), Eibach springs (also lowers the car by about 1.75", hence the need for the camber kit), 17" aluminium rims (OZ Racing), and currently Kumho rubber. Quite sticky, and cheap to replace, along with strut bars, and poly-bushings replacing the rubber bushings. As far as engine stuff... the basics (aside from the totally new engine) AEM Cold air intake, 4-2-1 header, Thermal cat-back exhaust. I had an AEM engine management chip piggybacked, but the internal chip works well enough once you "train" it (kill the battery, then let it reset idle.)

All because sometimes you need to pick up milk... quickly. That and Hondas are easy to mod yourself.