File under "things I wish I had known three years ago":¹

See all those black plastic trim pieces? The ones that go all the way around my car, and are annoying as hell if you try to wax it, because they are in the way on every panel and tape doesn't stick to them and they're black so they show every tiny bit of wax you get on them by accident? Yeah, those all pop off if you pull on them.

 

¹A list which contains some whoppers, by the way.

14 Jun 2009 11:08 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments

As I may or may not have ever mentioned, I missed the entire 2008 track season. I didn't really plan it that way; in fact I emailed Ramon the Mechanic in April asking about some stuff I wanted to have done. But then this and that came up, and Erin and Bryce bought my old car (making it more inconvenient to leave my other one at the mechanic) and I never got around to it.

Anyway, the events are just getting started for this year, so I signed up for Bonni's Miata club day at Thunderhill on April 3. About the same time, my car started to sound different. Different pretty much never means anything good, and I wanted to have everything looked at again before I went back to the track, so I started trying to get in to see Ramon the Mechanic.

It took a week to get a response, which isn't usually the case. In the meantime I went to change the oil last Sunday, and with the hood open even I could find the problem, which is in the picture here. The supercharger belt has slipped halfway off the pulley to the inside, where it grinds against the blower, which means that it is being slowly shredded into the tiny particles of rubber and metal that are now covering half the engine compartment. The blower pulley is also crooked, which is either the cause, or an effect.

Having tried and failed to figure out the belt tensioner, I finally got it to the mechanic this morning. So far he has told me that it's going to require pulling the supercharger off ($600) to find out what's wrong with it. Sucks, but if it can be put back together for a couple thousand dollars, I don't really have anything to complain about, considering that it's a ten year old car and this is the first repair bill since I bought it two years ago. I'm more annoyed that there's almost no chance I will have it back by next Friday.

25 Mar 2009 23:52 PT - persistent link - trackback - 2 comments

Just a week after my first outing to the track, I went back for the two day GGCBMWCCA driving school. (That would be the Golden Gate Chapter of the Bayerische Motor Works Car Club of America, if that somehow wasn't obvious.) It was at Thunderhill, again, so I drove back up and stayed in the same Super 8 Motel with Adam and Matt.

The mechanics of the track event were all very much the same as the previous week, but the attitude was completely different, which manifested in a thousand little ways. First of all, you had to pay for a BMW approved mechanic to inspect your car before you got there. Self-inspection was not allowed. Then, at registration, you handed over your helmet to be inspected for the proper government safety stickers. Matt's helmet was rejected because its rating sticker came from a year before¹ the minimum accepted date, and this was done without any joke or apology of any kind, because this was clearly Very Serious Business. Oh, and Matt had to wait 20 minutes for this privilege, because he was told to go to the back of the line and wait until all the instructors had finished with registration. So, we were off to a rocky start.

Once we separated to begin our actual Instruction, the day was organized around a strictly enforced caste system of four run groups. Unlike with Bonni, you may not self-select into the skill level you think you are. The Chief Instructors have decided for you, based on the secret notes that they have kept from your previous BMW Driving School attendance. Yes, really. And you must display your rank using the provided four inch vinyl letter, which goes on the drivers side window, behind or beneath the provided vinyl numbers. There is none of this nonsense with the making of numbers from painter's tape, like you have seen in my pictures.

At the first drivers' meeting, Matt immediately took issue with the fact that the Chief Instructors do not speak of "the drivers in the A group," but rather, "the As." He considered that emblematic of a bad way of looking at the world, which is a subtle point, but spot on.

Next, at my first Classroom Session for Ds, I was astonished to hear that they were putting 42 cars on the track in my group. Last time, Bonni was apologizing for the crowding with 25, saying she didn't want to run that many but didn't think she had enough to justify creating another group. But it was ok for BMW to put 42 of us out there, because who cares, we were only Ds. We're a necessary evil: a meal ticket that subsidizes the track day for the people that matter.

So even though I was already feeling put out, once I actually got to the car and met my new instructor Tony, I had a decent time on this first day. He didn't approve of the line I was driving from last week, and spent most of the morning telling me how I should change it all around, but I had been warned to expect this. Once we were done with that, I felt like I wanted to try to get faster, but I couldn't do it because I was always stuck behind a dozen cars. Tony gave me lots of useful direction, and enough positive feedback to keep me engaged and trying, even if he wasn't quite as effusive as Chris from the week before. Plus, he is a real life race car driver, and generally laid back and cool to hang around.

At lunch, we waited about 45 minutes to buy a sandwich from the Thunderhill Grill. Lunch was not included for your $500, and students were again made to wait until after the instructors had all ordered. You can just assume that was a recurring theme, and I'll stop calling it out each time it happened. I'm a little surprised that "the As" didn't eat before "the Bs," and so on down the line.

Nonetheless, at the end of the day, Tony said I had taken off about 20 seconds, which, if true, is a pretty hefty improvement. I was even thinking about asking if I might be promoted to the C group, since I hoped there would be less traffic to fight with. I don't know why I thought this was important, except that I had been taught to not want to be "a D." As it turned out, I would get over it soon enough.

° ° °

Sunday morning, I was assigned to a new instructor, Patrick. (By the way, you are not allowed to request who you want, and they get very offended if you try.) Now, Patrick is also a laid back guy and cool to hang around with, but I did not take very well to his style of instruction. Basically, he waited for me to ask for help with specific things, and if I didn't ask then he pretty much left me alone. I could see this being the ideal instructor, if I were an advanced student (perhaps "an A"), who wanted to focus on some specific task without being constantly distracted. But I am only a D, which means I don't know what to ask for, because I don't know anything.

So it was in about the second session when I said that I wanted to learn where to shift, just to say something. Patrick immediately did as I asked, and gave me three or four shift points that I got comfortable with: 3rd at the entry to 2, 4th at the exit of 6, 3rd at the entry to 9, 4th-back-to-3rd on the short straight between 9 and 10 (I skipped this one a lot), and 4th on the back straight. Then, after a couple more laps, he gave me one more: 3rd on the entry to 14/15, the tight 180 degree corner between the two straightaways.

This was a turn that I had been struggling with all day, mostly because I didn't want to take it anywhere near as tight as the racers do. But I had been concentrating on it and getting closer to the line they wanted, I think, and when Patrick said to shift to 3rd, I did.

And put the throttle at the same place I had had it in 4th.

And instantly spun the car all the way around.

At least I did not panic, which I can prove because I didn't stall—I had the clutch in well before the car was rolling backwards down the track. But now I was backwards in the middle of the track, between 14 and 15, which did I mention is a completely blind corner because of a little hill. So I got to have fairly close encounters with the yellow Lotus and grey 3-series that were entering that blind corner at high speed right behind me. This scared everybody pretty good, I dare say. After these two cars, the corner workers had reacted, and the yellow flags had cleared enough room for me to get turned right way around again. I got the black flag (standard procedure when you spin out or go off track) and I went mighty slow on my last lap before I had to come in for a talking-to. Actually, I think that at the time of the event, I might have been the least shaken up of the several people involved. It's less scary if you aren't afraid to die, I guess.

But, not scared doesn't mean not discouraged, and the fact is that I was done for the day. Patrick did tell me a few times to forget about it, put it behind me, it wasn't a big deal, and such, but it was too little too late. If you have ever talked to me for five minutes, you probably know that self-confidence is not one of my strong points. I was there trying something new, I suspected I was not good at it, the event was structured so as to constantly suggest that I sucked, and I made a big mistake that confirmed it. Every instinct I possess was telling me to go home and never come back. If I hadn't felt like I needed to get my money's worth, I might not have showed up for my last couple of sessions at all.

That's how, at the end of Sunday, I was actually quite a bit slower than I had been at the beginning. When I dropped off Patrick for the last time, I asked if I had made any progress on anything that day. I suspect the truthful answer was "no," and again I had to ask, because he didn't volunteer much otherwise. He said a vague yes, but had nothing specific to point to, and I remain unconvinced. My friends were long gone, because not being Ds, they got to leave earlier in less traffic. So I drove back to the near-empty paddock, put my stuff back in the trunk, and drove the four hours home.

° ° °

I had time to think about a lot of things, on that drive home and since. As far as that whole weekend goes, I looked at it in a lot of ways, and I have to admit that I really didn't have much fun. If any. I don't blame my instructors. They were competent and professional, in the same way as the guy that cleans your teeth at the dentist's office. He will be polite enough, but he isn't there to make conversation, and nobody is going to pretend that cleaning your teeth is how he wants to spend his Saturday. But unlike the teeth cleaning, there is no intrinsic value in my going to drive on the track. It serves no purpose other than for me to have fun. And I didn't.

Now I'd bet that at least some of the BMW organizers would say that they don't intend their school to be fun; they intend it to be school. Fine. But I still have to ask: why? Let's assume for a second that I'm never going to be a professional race car driver. Then if it's not fun to drive around as a lowly D, why should I keep working at it just to someday be a lowly C? Will that be fun? If so, how many unpleasant days is it worth to get there?

Is there nothing better I could have done with $1000 and one entire weekend?

I talked to Matt and Adam both to find out why they do this, and their reasons don't affect me. I am not very competitive, and I just don't have the Disney "I must never give up" personality trait. There may be something in this for me yet, but I'll have to figure that out for myself. For now I am signed up for one more autocross on Saturday, and nothing else. And I'm going to bed now rather than think about that bold faced question any more.

---

¹ The Snell rating criteria for helmets change every couple of years, ostensibly because of the breakneck pace of the technological advances in helmet design. But the standards are driven by the helmet manufacturers, and it is widely held that the only real purpose for constant revisions is to force everybody to buy another $500 helmet every two years. I am inclined to believe it, because that would be completely in line with the spirit of the BMWCCA Driving School, and they are so far the only people that I have seen that care which year your sticker is from.

---

Updated 18 Sep 2007 (original post 14 Sep 2007 03:50 PDT). Several people (see comments) have responded to tell me that Snell helmet ratings are revised every five years (not two), for good reasons. Ok. Also, the reason that the instructors don't have to wait in the lunch line is that they might have a student in the session right before lunch, and the session right after. Ok.

I tell you this because it's fair to acknowledge that people disagree with me, and most readers won't ever see the comments. But I stand by my account as written. Even if there were a good reason for everything that I perceived as elitism and condescension, an image problem is still a problem.

18 Sep 2007 00:39 PT - persistent link - trackback - 10 comments

I know, more car stuff. Mostly this is all I wanted to say:

On the left is what an autocross course looks like in theory. On the right is what it looks like in practice: a lot of cones.

I had a decent time this trip. I remembered to drive with traction control off, which will theoretically make me faster some day, but for now it makes it feel like the course is made of ice. I don't know what the deal was, but I felt like I didn't have nearly as much grip as last time. Other people said the same thing; maybe it was just that this course was so narrow, so there was no room to slide. Or it might be that I get more skittish each time I spin the car out, and eventually I'll be afraid to drive to the gas station.

Three runs in, I found a way to enjoy myself a lot more, which is that I threw away all my time slips without reading them, and I turned up the music until I couldn't hear the announcer announcing them. This new game suits me better.

If you are still having trouble imagining what autocross is exactly, maybe you can watch this little video I made of Adam's fastest run:

autox-laz-20070915.avi - 15M, mpeg4/mp3, AVI

16 Sep 2007 20:47 PT - persistent link - trackback - 2 comments

On August 16, a Thursday night, after Soo warned me not to let the big kids bully me, I drove the three hours to Willows, CA, for my first fast driving experience at Thunderhill. This first trip out was with TEAM Racing, also known as "Bonnie's group," since it's nearly a one woman operation.

Thunderhill is a track designed for teaching, so it's about as safe as racetracks come, with lots of dirt runoff room and not many immovable objects to hit. They claim that its 3 miles and 15 turns contain examples of every kind of corner you will ever see. Turn 1 is fast and decreasing radius, 2 is a constant radius NASCAR corner, 3 is off camber, and so on. There are two crazy turns that apex right at the top of a blind hill (5 and 9).

The reason you drive up the night before the event is that you have to be at the track at about 7am, before a mandatory 8am meeting where they tell you the track rules, which are the same every time. This part is just like paintball, and it sucks. The flags were explained and a series of well worn jokes were delivered by an old guy named "Turbo," who looks for all the world like he might be living in one of the rental garages alongside the track. (I told you it was like paintball.)

Bonnie operates three run groups with 20 minute sessions¹, and for the non-beginner groups, an instructor is optional. As a beginner, I was assigned a British guy in his 50s named Chris, and was inwardly relieved that I hadn't been assigned his son, who looked like he was about 17².

After another class about rules and safety, my group's first track session was a lead-follow, meaning that Chris drove his Porsche and I was supposed to follow as closely as I could. And they mean really close, like 10 feet or so from the bumper. 25 students plus 25 instructors meant that there were 50 cars on the track during this session, all going extremely slow—about 70mph at the flag stand. Instantaneous speed at the flag stand came to be the metric that I used to observe progress, since there are no other objective measurements like lap times.

The next two sessions were driven with the instructor, meaning that Chris rode in my car and shouted a steady stream of instructions and comments that started out with very basic things such as "more gas" and "brake BRAKE BRAAAKE" (this usually accompanied by a frantic grab at the armrest, door handle, or something), and gradually metamorphosed through higher level directions about how this turn-in was a little too early and that one a little too late, to a final state that was almost all "better" and "good" and even the occasional "excellent". I was getting faster, from about 90mph at the flag stand in the first session to fighting the traction control at 100mph in the second. I was turning harder, until I was making the tires scream all the way through 2 and 3, 10 and 11, 14 and 15, sometimes even 9.

In between my own sessions, I got rides in Adam's very similar M3 and Matt's Lotus Elise. The most fun of the day must have been the insane 120mph open-passing ride in Chris's turbo Porsche 997.

Chris's last instructions were to "go have fun" and "keep doing what you're doing," so that's what I did for the last two sessions, which I drove by myself. I had worked up to full throttle in a few places, at least in 4th gear where there is little torque, and was getting closer to using all of the brakes. I found that I can slow from 110 to 60mph in maybe two seconds, in a controlled fashion, as long as you are ready to feel like your stomach is going to come out through your mouth and go through the windshield. By the end of the day I was passing the flag stand at just under 115, and that only because I always chickened out and lifted off the gas at about 110 even though it wasn't time to brake yet.

So, I had fun, I went fast, I did not scare anybody very much, and I did not make any big mistakes, run off into the dirt, or spin the car around. All of which were unlike the BMW car club driving school, which I would attend one week later…

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¹ A "run group" is a set of people that are believed to be at a similar skill level, and you are only allowed on to the track during a session that belongs to your run group. Different groups have different passing rules and so on.

² I have no doubt that he was a good driver and qualified in every way to be an instructor, I only doubt my own ability to take direction from a 17-year-old without distracting ego issues.

06 Sep 2007 02:26 PT - persistent link - trackback - 1 comment

Sunday morning I got up at 6am and drove to Marina for a BMW car club autocross. It is the middle of the season for them, but it's the first one ever as far as I'm concerned.

[Since the three people that read this won't know, autocross is a game where people meet at a huge empty parking lot, and set up a temporary obstacle course out of traffic cones and chalk lines. Then you drive your car through it as fast as you can, competing with the other cars in your "class." Different car clubs run different series of these, which are more or less serious. The BMW club series is all very carefully tracked and points are assigned throughout the season and printed in their little magazine. It's still not like there are millions of dollars in celebrity endorsements at stake.]

So, my run group was third, meaning I worked the course for the first group (this means standing at some turn and putting cones back when somebody knocks them down), and waited around for three hours while the second group ran. I had about 11 runs total, and Adam was there to ride along with me for the first five or six of them. It helps quite a lot to ride with somebody that knows what they are doing, because sometimes you aren't even going to know which way you are supposed to turn, when all you see is a parking lot full of randomly assorted cones.

The outcome, of course, was that I suck horribly. It doesn't bother me that I was so bad at first, because to expect otherwise would be a violation of the snowflake principle, but it was incredibly frustrating to make almost zero progress in the next 10 tries. My first run, where I was very deliberately not trying to go fast, but only stay on the course, was 48 seconds and change. And my fastest run all day, one of the unscored "fun runs" at the end, was barely under 45 seconds–less than 10% faster. Bear in mind that the fastest guys were running about 36 seconds. Adam's first time on the course was 39s. Sucky sucky suck.

Part of the problem is that my car turns out to be pretty hard to drive for autocross. It's very touchy to avoid overpowering it through every corner (and autocross is all corners), so I was understeering like a crazy man through every run. I got Adam to drive it for the fun runs, and it understeered all over everywhere on him too (see his report for a more credible description).

Another mistake was driving the whole day with traction control. Adam noticed this a few seconds after he started to drive. Traction control means that the computer cuts the power if it thinks your wheels are going to slip, which is good when it stops you from spinning out on the freeway, but it slows you down. Obviously I'm not fast enough for that to really matter now, but if we assume that I am eventually going to want to turn it off, I might as well spend my scarce practice time learning to drive without it. I turned it off for one of my last fun runs, just to see what would happen, and what happened was that I spun the car all the way around in short order. I think this would have been avoided if I had not just spent 10 runs learning to drive with it on.

On the bright side, I think my having gone and sucked has encouraged Chrisi and Gary, who are almost ready to sign up for September. So although I'm barely a user, I'm already a pusher. Considering how much of the day you spend waiting around, it is definitely more fun with more of your friends.

Photos are by Mary Pozzi.

09 Aug 2007 00:22 PT - persistent link - trackback - 1 comment

SERVICE IMPACT POSTMORTEM
Underpanel failure, 20 May 2007
Primary responding SRE: mikeyd
Prepared by: mikeyd

SUMMARY

Insufficient reinforcement across leading edge of JTD aluminum underpanel caused it to tear loose at highway speeds. Leading edge grinding into pavement quickly led to catastrophic failure, resulting in total destruction of the underpanel and a short but dangerous trip interruption.

TIMELINE

All times approximate, in PDT.

12:12, US 101N at CA84/Marsh Rd: Sudden noise and vibration alert driver and passenger to initial panel detachment.

12:15 Car stopped on narrow shoulder of US101 between traffic and sound wall. Inspection finds panel loose in center, but still fully attached at all screws, and panel does not touch pavement when at rest. mikeyd decides to try to remove car from freeway before attempting panel removal.

12:21 Car back in motion at about 40mph, panel again scrapes ground under wind stress. Less than 1min later, total collapse of panel is indicated by suddenly increased noise and vibration, sparks, and impaired steering.

12:25 Again stopped on freeway shoulder, panel is found torn into two pieces, with larger piece crushed under forward engine brace. Escalation to tow truck/AAA is considered (sooyeonk) but argued unnecessary (mikeyd). After jacking the car from front passenger lift point, the remaining fasteners are removed using factory tool kit and panel breaks loose.

12:50 Panel removed, visual inspection finds no obvious damage to belts, radiator, or tires. Car returned to service.

14:50 SRE monitors tire and oil pressure for 2h before declaring resolution.

IMMEDIATE CAUSE

Insufficient attachment at front center of aluminum panel caused it to flex under strong wind (vehicle speed of ~80mph + wind gusts of 30mph) and break free of containing bumper lip. Sustained wind overload then pressed leading edge of panel into pavement, shortly leading to catastrophic failure.

CONTRIBUTING FACTORS

Panel purchased used, without mounting instructions. Either the missing documentation does not call for drilling extra attachment points, or the previous owner also had it installed incorrectly.

Panel installation did not undergo production launch review due to unavailability of key engineer (laz).

Initial judgement to attempt to drive car off freeway with panel loose was poor. At first stop (12:15), panel was in salvageable condition. At second stop (12:25), panel was clearly destroyed (see photograph).

USERS AFFECTED

2: me and Soo. Travel to Daly City delayed by ~25m. Effects on passing traffic on 101N not monitored, but did not appear to be serious.

FINANCIAL IMPACT

Total loss of underpanel, $100. Bumper and mating plastic components damaged but still usable ($350).

ACTIONS

Renew recently expired AAA membership.

Evaluate whether to install a third panel. If doing so, drill and attach several points well in excess of manufacturer's specifications.

27 May 2007 02:10 PT - persistent link - trackback - 3 comments

The first order of business with the new car (an E36 M3 with the HK "premium" sound option) was to replace the speakers. I would have wanted to do this sooner or later, no doubt, but it needed to be sooner because I got the car with a blown drivers-side tweeter, or midrange; I'm not sure which, but it sounded like crap.

Being a total beginner with this car, I went looking for instructions on the internets. First stop, crutchfield, lists this car as "requires custom drilling or mounting, contact us for information." Bad sign. That means the factory speakers are weird sizes or otherwise complicated. Which was obvious enough, given that there are tweeters and tiny midrange speakers mounted in the door panels.

(Aside: This is a problem I have noticed with other cars as well. If you have the basic, plain radio, then you can probably easily replace the crap factory speakers with nice easy standard-sized aftermarket speakers which will be far better. Whereas the manufacturer's "premium" system will still be crap, but it will make upgrading miserable because it will have all kinds of non-standard components to it.)

So, knowing now that there would be no straightforward replacement speakers, I looked some more and found this description by somebody that outfitted a similar 1999 M3, although he was smart enough not to get the HK option. It is a good writeup, but way more hard core than I wanted, with subwoofer boxes in the trunk and component amps and all that fancy stuff. I didn't want to spend that much, plus half my trunk is already taken up by a Dinan strut brace. I don't need more crap in it.

Looking some more, I found a company called Bavarian Soundwerks that sells a kit they call the "stage 1 audio upgrade." They promise perfect plug and play replacements for all the factory speakers, no cutting, no drilling. I gave in and ordered the kit after Adam tipped me off to a discount code they (BSW) posted on bimmerforums.com.

The package came on Friday and I started the installation late on Sunday, which I knew was not wise, but it was the soonest I could get to it. And I couldn't wait another week, I need my Stage 1 Audio now!

Replacing the door panel tweeters and midranges

I started with the door panels, thinking (wrongly) that this would be the hardest part. The included instructions showed me the 3 T20 Torx bolts to remove (one behind the "Airbag" plastic insert, and two behind the pull handle). You'll want a plain Torx screwdriver for this; the openings are narrow and awkward which made it hard to use the ratchet I tried at first. Next you push the plastic frame around the interior handle towards the front of the car, which will cause it to pop loose so you can take it off.

At this point, nothing is holding the door panel on except those little plastic clips that you have seen if you have ever taken the door panel off of any car. I used the BSW door panel tool kit to pry the panel off at this point, but there is nothing magic about their tools; you could have done the same with any number of prying implements. A plastic tool might be good since you will be less likely to scratch something if you slip. Without too much trouble, I got the door panels off:

It will be pretty obvious how to get the factory speaker housings out of the door now; they are held in by a plastic retaining ring in the back which is just like the drain in a sink, if you have ever had the joy of replacing those. You will then find that you have to unscientifically scrape and pry the factory tweeters out of their plastic containers, since they are glued in:

Following the BSW instructions, you're just going to slather your new tweeters with hot glue and stick them back in, so there's nothing magic about this part either. Any tweeter you want will probably work about as well, as long as it is about 1 inch in diameter or less.

The door mounted midrange speakers are a little more tidy. The factory speakers were held in by a plastic clip that you are going to have to pry and cajole out. The BSW-branded replacements (not Rainbow Audio like the others) don't reuse the plastic clip, but at least they are a fairly precise fit. You won't be trying to fill up large gaps with glue like you did with the tweeters.

Plugging the door back together, we hit the first snag in the directions. According to BSW the tweeter connector should have yellow/black and yellow/brown wires. There is just such a connector, but it doesn't fit the one they attached to the new tweeter. More precisely, it fits, but if you plug it in that way, the pins are not aligned right and it doesn't work. I had to reverse the tweeter and midrange connectors, after which everything fit perfectly. It seems to work, so I'm going to assume it doesn't matter.

Putting the door back together was straightforward. I was nervous about taking apart a door with an airbag in it, but I didn't have to touch it. Incidentally, I left the window up on the first door because I thought it might matter, but it doesn't. You might as well roll it down so that you don't have extra glass in your way.

So far, so good. Now for the kick panels.

Replacing the passenger side kick panel woofer

In the outside wall of each footwell, you will see there is a 5.25" round speaker. It doesn't look like they should be hard to get to, but it turns out that you have to take off the dash underpanel to free the kick panel, which isn't exactly fun to pull out either. The instructions do their best, but there isn't much help for them to give; there are only a couple of screws and one plastic fastener to loosen (which are obvious), and after that the panels are what they call "friction fit." Meaning, you pull and pry and bend and pound them until they go sort of where you want.

The passenger side underpanel isn't terribly hard to break free, once you realize that you have to bend it more than you'd like. I found that my alarm brain was taped to the underside of this panel, so I had to tear it off. Now you can count on a solid 30 minutes or more of struggling to get the kick panel off. As somebody described it in a forum post that I found, "the kick panels have to be moved a fair distance and they come off fighting all the way." I eventually found that mine had to be slid (by which I mean pried, because they don't want to move at all) towards the back of the car, which is the opposite of what some people online said. Maybe there are different variations. Once I found that the panel was (somewhat) free to slide towards the back, it was off in a few more minutes of pulling and swearing.

You'll now have access to the speaker, which is held in by hex-head bolts. BSW said these were 8mm, but mine were smaller, maybe 3/16. Having popped the speaker out, I was annoyed to find that the factory terminal connectors are not compatible with the new Rainbow speakers, which come with set screws. So you have to clip them off and strip the wires. This isn't a big deal, but I wouldn't call this part "plug and play" exactly. Fortunately Adam suggested crimping on some little spade plugs here, which was surely a lot easier than trying to fasten the bare wires to the new speaker while lying upside down under the dashboard.

Putting the kick panel and underpanel back together was about as much fun as getting them off, except that this time you have to be kind of accurate in your blind shoving. There are a couple of prongy things you have to fit through holes in the panel, and the heating vents (which were not aligned very well to begin with, on mine)...you'll see.

Replacing the driver's side kick panel woofer

During this stage I burned the remaining daylight hours, so I was now going by flashlight (which is why there are no pictures). But I thought I was almost done, so I went on to the driver's side. I got these panels off with slightly less fuss, got the speaker replaced, and stopped to eat supper.

When I came back, it was cold and I wanted to be done with it, so I jammed the underpanel into the dashboard and immediately cracked it down the right side. Fortunately it's not too bad, just a couple inches and not visible unless you're in the process of smashing the panel in or out. But I remembered my Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and stopped here for the night, since I was clearly not in the necessary frame of mind and if I kept going I was only going to force things until I made what he calls The Big Mistake. At least I hadn't broken anything serious or expensive at this point.

Sure enough, starting over the next day, I got the underpanel back in without a lot of trouble. This one is a lot more complicated to get right than the passenger side, because of the pedals and hood release and OBD connector being in the way. Again, I looked online for tricks to make it easy, and found none, and now having done it, I have none to give. You just have this piece of plastic and you can see where it needs to go and you can see that it isn't going to go there without a lot of force being applied somehow to something. Have fun.

Oh, and it turned out that waiting for daylight didn't really matter much, since it is still dark under the dashboard anyway.

Finally, the rear deck speakers

I left the rear deck for last since I expected it to be the easiest, and at least I was right this time. The deck grilles pop right off with your fingers, exposing some more of the ugly foam fiberglass-feeling stuff:

It's kind of a pain to get these screws out because you have no clearance under the back window, so you'll want a stubby little Philips screwdriver. Popping the 6x9 Rainbow replacements in was easy enough, once I figured out that I needed to push them in with one hand while looking down through the back window with a flashlight in the other hand (or else you can't see through the window tint). This was just as far as I could reach, so if you are shorter than me (5'9"), you will want to do this with two people. Also, you definitely want to use the sharp, steep-thread screws that BSW provided, because they need to tap the plastic some.

So that was it, except for a tiny piece of plastic that I busted off the grille and dropped into the speaker (my advice here is, don't do that).

The Thrilling Conclusion

Now that I'm tooling around town with my Stage 1 Audio Upgrade, I'd have to agree that my tunes are dramatically improved. (Of course, one or more of my original speakers was blown out, so it's hard to say how much of a difference I would have heard if that were not the case.) It's also worth noting that I think the BSW kit caused a net loss of weight, because the factory Harmon/Kardon speakers were very heavy. These Rainbow tweeters are rather too bright for my tastes, but you can always dull it down using the tone controls.

If you're thinking of doing this too, and you like the Rainbow speakers, then by all means just buy the BSW kit. I don't think you'll be able to do much better without also spending a lot more money, considering that you need at least a set of component tweeters and woofers for the front, and some kind of 6x9 coaxial two-way set for the rear deck. Nobody else under the sun seems to be able to replace your 2.5" midranges in the doors. If you can live without those (or buy them a la carte from BSW), then probably any old tweeters and 5.25" rounds would do for the front. The back will be more of a hack job because of the weird housings, but those are easy to access, so just pop one out and see whether you can make it fit.

Finally, with better definition coming from my speakers, the factory head unit is sounding a little wimpy. I will probably go ahead and replace that too, someday. I guess that will be Stage 2.

Total time: ~5 hours of very unskilled labor

Total cost: $467.95 ($499 speaker kit, $19.95 door panel tools, -$50 discount code from bimmerforums)

Tools: Torx T20 screwdriver, socket wrench, various flat and Philips screwdrivers, hot glue gun

17 Apr 2007 02:26 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments

see also: Exotic car month

So after thinking about it for a month, I bought the BMW M3. I took it to the man for the smog check, where I was a little relieved that it passed with no trouble at all. (There's no reason it wouldn't, but with all the engine modifications, who knows.) Then I took it to the other man and paid more taxes and fees, including the last 6 months of overdue registration since the previous owner had not renewed it, which was annoying.

While I was at these places, it was confirmed that I am now in the cool car club. The guy who did the smog was very pleased with all the engine work and performance parts that he got to enumerate on the smog inspection, and hung around for a while afterwards talking about how supercharged this is better than turbo-ed that, and how much used M3s cost, and how many meals his wife and baby would have to miss for him to buy one, and so on. Then the same thing happened with the guy at the DMV when he saw what I was registering, and we talked for a while about how much his 5-series is worth (a lot), and how many meals he could buy for his wife and baby if he sold it, and so on. It was kind of like after I cut my hair off and found out I was now in the no hair club, in which random guys will strike up conversations about the benefits of hairlessness and hair cutting techniques and such.

Anyway, I left the DMV with what I can hope is a completely normal and proper registration card (a feat that took six years for the last car). And today in the mail I received my first one of these:

Being in the cool car club, my car will need to have its own web page, because that's one of the responsibilities that comes with membership. So I took pictures in my driveway, which will have to do until I have bad-ass action shots from the track, or at least autocross:

I won't be able to list all the modifications from stock because I'm sure there is stuff I don't know about yet, but here is some of the important stuff: Dinan supercharger, free flow exhaust, and stage 3 suspension kit (shocks, springs, struts, anti-roll bars, and camber plates). BBS 18 inch wheels fitted at 225/40/R18 in the front and 245/35/R18 in the rear. AP Racing brake kit. In this configuration the car should make about 340hp, for 0-60 in 4.7 seconds, and a top speed of about 157mph. I haven't tested any of these things myself, yet.

In other news, if you want to buy a low miles, compulsively maintained 2001 Nissan Sentra, I know where you can get one...

10 Apr 2007 01:23 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments