Washed the Helmet today. Its been in lots of rain and no bath for weeks sense the R53 is down. I forgot it is black. The paint looks bad Time for clay and wax. I know I need to do the coating.
It got down to winter temperatures here this week. There is a law that if you venture out of the Vancouver BC area in BC, winter tires are mandatory after October 1 so I went and got wheels and winter tires on our Countryman.
Winter temps!? Well that it! I was looking at doing a trip with a 35 hour layover there but no way if its already winter! Its 91 here today.
Overnight temperature in the Vancouver BC (Canada) area was around 2C or 39F. Recommend temps for winter tires is from 7C and down. Daytime temps still get up to around 12C here so your summer tires will still work if you stay in the Vancouver area. Could be worse. You could go further east, say to Calgary today and get this:
Nice winter shoes. What kind of rubber soles do they have? I'll wait another month & a half before Skooby gets the new winter shoes installed.
Took the Classic to Topeka to meet up with Mini friends from Oklahoma and Texas, tomorrow we go to Prather Racing and hit the dyno to see how many Shetland pony power we're making!
If you’re a few hp short on the dyno, maybe you could pick up a few here: https://www.landoflittlehorses.com/admission/ One county west of me.
A cheap made in China tire. Any winter tire certified for Canada/US has more silica in it, making it more effective in cold temperatures than any all-season tire. Also makes your summer tires and wheels last longer. My daily commuter car (aka beken) uses Nexen snowtires. They are made in S. Korea. They are just as good as any name brand snowtire, if not better than the Pirelli or Blizzaks that I've used in the past, for less than 1/2 the price. The caviat, of course, is that I drive safely for winter conditions without overly hooning it. Also, I go -1 on the wheel size. Actually -2 on (15" wheels) and narrower on beken.
Well not today but the last couple of weeks I had the car ripped apart. The transmission was starting to whirl/whine so I bought a bearing kit from England and dropped the transmission. While things were apart I also put in a new clutch, replaced the inner ball joints as the subframe was out and put on a new oil pan gasket. I also removed the oil filter housing and drilled a hole in it that I then tapped so that I could install an oil line for a remote pressure sensor.
Turned 130k on my R53 yesterday and have to take it to MAG. The brake calipers are not releasing well and the brakes squeal like the devil either when I go to stop and even worse when I back up...they put new OEM pads, rotors, and calipers on so they should be the ones to make the fix at no cost to me...right?
Around 1350-1450lbs My car (a very tired 1275) made 52.5 hp at the wheels and 61.5 torques. So about 60 hp at the crank. Dyno champ made 80 hp at the wheels, that car is really fast! He's done a lot of adding lightness, so his car is about 1150 lbs. Probably about 100hp at the crank, this is an engine I built so I'm pretty proud of it, it made almost exactly what we predicted it would. Owner is very happy - as he should be!
Had my tars rotilated. While it was on the lift l did a test fit of the new Raceseng license plate mount with GoPro mount. Works well I think. Probably won’t have to worry about my camera flying off into the woods on the Dragon. In the next week or so I’ll post a review of this and their new 3rd Gen Tug Hook with integral GoPro mount.
Wow 80HP and 1150 that power to weight ratio is close to a modern mini. but over 1000lb lighter. Those cars must be a blast. I wish I had bought the last one I looked at. What awesome little cars!
I took my car outside yesterday and parked it outside overnight. I had a fulll detail and coating of a Infinity M30s yesterday. I needed the garage to “bake” the coating to cure it under my special lights over night. Looks like next week I will be getting a pearl white Aston Martin DB9 Volante for a full detail and coating.
Got gas for the daily driver. Guess I haven't driven it daily this year - first fillip since late April. Drove it 240 miles since then and gas is $0.60 per gallon more expensive.
Used Gyeon Q2 prewash then the their Q2 trim on all the black exterior plastic today (except for thetwo front grills - does anyone do them?? For the time it would take to clean, apply, and wipe into all the nooks and crannies you might as well just buy a new part!).* Pretty easy to do the rest except the foam strip came off of its brick about 1/3 of the way into the application step, making itjust a little harder. Looks pretty nice now, and hopefully will stay that way for a while. * I'll bet Dave.0 has a method of doing this in less than half an hour "I could tell you how to do it, ... but then I'd have to kill you"