HipMF

Update:
Family members were called in to say their goodbyes last night. He passed this morning at 10a. He was a head chef at a number of restaurants, most recently Lucilles BBQ in AZ. He was 49 and leaves behind his wife and 4 teenagers. 
 It's so easy to feel entitled to live long enough to see your kids grow up. 
 

Took a staycation since both of our trips to Canada had to be cancelled.... had some time to rip out the interior, installed new carpet and the seats.  Had to fab up some brackets to account for the uneven floor of the E21.
 Not perfect, but much better!   Lots of work left to do...
-Tim

So I had to take a trip into Idaho for work and drove the 128 there. I was about to head back home and was scrolling around the map on my phone, and this caught my eye. 
In my experience google likes to route through some random shit from time to time, so why did it not make this my primary route?! Turns out to be the windiest road in Idaho.



Turns out to be excellent condition pavement, massive drop-offs on the downhill side, and a ton of fun. Made a couple laps of it!
I haven't pushed that car too hard before, and I didn't really want to find the limit of it with the consequences that were present, but man that thing really maintains traction. 

 

Still couldn't be bothered to pull out of the garage or crop the photo so that the car takes up more that 1/3 of the frame...

My drinking is better than par regardless of the location. Haven't swung a club since maybe 2005, but I ain't afraid of looking dumb....

Procured a POS people-mover:

Couldn't decide what to do with the compact or what to replace it with, so I decided to buy another car to "fill the gap" between it and my next car so I don't have to drive the e21 everywhere... I can totally see myself dailying this POS for a couple years because I love it. I had a ton of anxiety about buying it because I was worried about all of the things that could go wrong, but as soon as i drove it, it made me laugh and it puts a smile on my face every time I get in it. I had forgotten how good it feels to drive one of these cars.
It's rusty, has a bad exhaust leak, the shifter has 3-4 inches of slop, drivers-side rear wheel bearing is bad, clutch engagement is weird (master cylinder?), brakes have some feels (not the good kind), along with innumerable cosmetic issues, but there's something about a dilapidated old e34 that just puts me in a good mood. Maybe it's nostalgia, but it's also impressive how something that's so old an improperly maintained can still run and drive as amazingly as an old e34. Maybe one of the last truly over-engineered BMWs?

Procured a POS people-mover:

Couldn't decide what to do with the compact or what to replace it with, so I decided to buy another car to "fill the gap" between it and my next car so I don't have to drive the e21 everywhere... I can totally see myself dailying this POS for a couple years because I love it. I had a ton of anxiety about buying it because I was worried about all of the things that could go wrong, but as soon as i drove it, it made me laugh and it puts a smile on my face every time I get in it. I had forgotten how good it feels to drive one of these cars.
It's rusty, has a bad exhaust leak, the shifter has 3-4 inches of slop, drivers-side rear wheel bearing is bad, clutch engagement is weird (master cylinder?), brakes have some feels (not the good kind), along with innumerable cosmetic issues, but there's something about a dilapidated old e34 that just puts me in a good mood. Maybe it's nostalgia, but it's also impressive how something that's so old an improperly maintained can still run and drive as amazingly as an old e34. Maybe one of the last truly over-engineered BMWs?

Procured a POS people-mover:

Couldn't decide what to do with the compact or what to replace it with, so I decided to buy another car to "fill the gap" between it and my next car so I don't have to drive the e21 everywhere... I can totally see myself dailying this POS for a couple years because I love it. I had a ton of anxiety about buying it because I was worried about all of the things that could go wrong, but as soon as i drove it, it made me laugh and it puts a smile on my face every time I get in it. I had forgotten how good it feels to drive one of these cars.
It's rusty, has a bad exhaust leak, the shifter has 3-4 inches of slop, drivers-side rear wheel bearing is bad, clutch engagement is weird (master cylinder?), brakes have some feels (not the good kind), along with innumerable cosmetic issues, but there's something about a dilapidated old e34 that just puts me in a good mood. Maybe it's nostalgia, but it's also impressive how something that's so old an improperly maintained can still run and drive as amazingly as an old e34. Maybe one of the last truly over-engineered BMWs?

M50 power. Slower than I remember. RPMs also seem to take an eternity to drop when shifting compared to the m42 with lightweight flywheel. Adds to the executiveness.

Procured a POS people-mover:

Couldn't decide what to do with the compact or what to replace it with, so I decided to buy another car to "fill the gap" between it and my next car so I don't have to drive the e21 everywhere... I can totally see myself dailying this POS for a couple years because I love it. I had a ton of anxiety about buying it because I was worried about all of the things that could go wrong, but as soon as i drove it, it made me laugh and it puts a smile on my face every time I get in it. I had forgotten how good it feels to drive one of these cars.
It's rusty, has a bad exhaust leak, the shifter has 3-4 inches of slop, drivers-side rear wheel bearing is bad, clutch engagement is weird (master cylinder?), brakes have some feels (not the good kind), along with innumerable cosmetic issues, but there's something about a dilapidated old e34 that just puts me in a good mood. Maybe it's nostalgia, but it's also impressive how something that's so old an improperly maintained can still run and drive as amazingly as an old e34. Maybe one of the last truly over-engineered BMWs?

Procured a POS people-mover:

Couldn't decide what to do with the compact or what to replace it with, so I decided to buy another car to "fill the gap" between it and my next car so I don't have to drive the e21 everywhere... I can totally see myself dailying this POS for a couple years because I love it. I had a ton of anxiety about buying it because I was worried about all of the things that could go wrong, but as soon as i drove it, it made me laugh and it puts a smile on my face every time I get in it. I had forgotten how good it feels to drive one of these cars.
It's rusty, has a bad exhaust leak, the shifter has 3-4 inches of slop, drivers-side rear wheel bearing is bad, clutch engagement is weird (master cylinder?), brakes have some feels (not the good kind), along with innumerable cosmetic issues, but there's something about a dilapidated old e34 that just puts me in a good mood. Maybe it's nostalgia, but it's also impressive how something that's so old an improperly maintained can still run and drive as amazingly as an old e34. Maybe one of the last truly over-engineered BMWs?

Procured a POS people-mover:

Couldn't decide what to do with the compact or what to replace it with, so I decided to buy another car to "fill the gap" between it and my next car so I don't have to drive the e21 everywhere... I can totally see myself dailying this POS for a couple years because I love it. I had a ton of anxiety about buying it because I was worried about all of the things that could go wrong, but as soon as i drove it, it made me laugh and it puts a smile on my face every time I get in it. I had forgotten how good it feels to drive one of these cars.
It's rusty, has a bad exhaust leak, the shifter has 3-4 inches of slop, drivers-side rear wheel bearing is bad, clutch engagement is weird (master cylinder?), brakes have some feels (not the good kind), along with innumerable cosmetic issues, but there's something about a dilapidated old e34 that just puts me in a good mood. Maybe it's nostalgia, but it's also impressive how something that's so old an improperly maintained can still run and drive as amazingly as an old e34. Maybe one of the last truly over-engineered BMWs?

Some shots from the June Sprints today. Lens was giving me errors all day, 50/50 chance I wouldn't be able to take a picture.
Canada Corner by Eric, on Flickr
Hurry Downs by Eric, on Flickr
Turn 6 by Eric, on Flickr
Carousel by Eric, on Flickr
Kettle Bottoms by Eric, on Flickr
Hurry Downs by Eric, on Flickr
Turn 6 by Eric, on Flickr
 
 

Hopefully this doesn't come off as me sounding like a dick...
The framing is excellent, but I would have been more aggressive with the crop. Lots of space around the edges that isn't doing much.

Gotta give props where they're due. 10 second quarters is fast with any car, especially with a manual. Nice work.

Some pictures from last night. Not completely satisfied with these, need to do some more playing around with night shooting, car angle, camera angle, etc. Going to be doing a lot more experimenting in this location though. Ton of different lighting levels and background options to work with, just didn't have a ton of time.
This lighting really tells all in terms of your paint quality. This thing needs a paint correction badly.

I guess I haven't been listening to the news enough recently, because I completely missed this one: https://www.wpr.org/george-floyd-protesters-block-beltline-madison-milwaukee-protesters-march-wauwatosa
That's just stupid and dangerous.

Finally a build update:
I cut the front of my car off, built a tube front, and then everything decided to snowball.

With the tube front done, I decided to do some wheel tubes to keep water/dirt out. I've always wanted to experiment with composites and saw this as an opportunity.
After modeling the entire tube front, I created the wheel tub in solidworks, 3d printed the molds, and created carbon fiber wheel tubs/liners. Also, a special resin was used and the passenger side tube was post heated allowing to withstands 500+ deg temperatures.
 

The tube front moved the position of the oil cooler, therefore a new ducting system had to be designed.

Made up some bumper brackets to adapt the factory crash bar.

Once everything critical was mocked up the bay was painted, finally assembly has started and is beginning to start to look like a car again. I still have to finish painting a few of the brackets and reclear all of the carbon pieces. I know I have missed a lot of small details, hopefully they make it here sooner than later. 

I biked downtown Madison today to check out the damage and see if people were still out protesting. There was still a good sized crowd hanging out in the state street corner of the square, maybe 60 to 80 people, and a lot of people like myself just out taking the tour. Every business on state street was boarded up and almost all of the wood now has graffiti or murals painted on it. Unlike what you might see online, 100% of the messages were behind the BLM movement. Probably not surprising, considering it's Madison, but I was surprise how much I was affected by it.
On my way back up state street, there was a young black guy, maybe 18 or 20 laying face-down with his hands behind is back in middle of the East Johnson intersection. Police were already there and were totally chill, just making sure he didn't get run over, but it's really hard to know what to do or how to feel when you're in a situation like that. He was obviously trying to force some kind of confrontation. I was going to just ride away, but I ended up turning around and coming back. By then there were a bunch of people in the street holding signs and taking pictures. There was a lot of that kind of thing happening, just people getting shots to post on social media like "look at me, I'm not racist". I ended up leaving again, but on my 2nd trip back through everything was back to normal like nothing even happened.
Anyway, that's just my experience, but I would recommend going there and checking it out, regardless of where "there" is. It's amazing how de-sensitized to things you can become just seeing them on a screen versus actually being there.

I bought the exact same one a couple years ago for the same reasons. Still charges things. Since it only has one job, that's a win in my book.

Nice work incorporating some of that new A-town "street art". I was like "who paid for all of this shit?" when I walked through there a couple weeks ago. Like they're trying to make Appleton into some cultural hub or something. Is mile-of-music even happening this year?

Floor to ceiling kidneys

Floor to ceiling kidneys