Newbie- Help me make a horrible automotoive decision

[douglawrence42]

Well, I bought this:

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F132936445576

Don’t worry, the E39 is staying. I think this is my new autocross car. I test drove one yesterday. It’s a crappy little econo box that just screams (through an incredible exhaust) “I’m a race car! I’m a race car, it’s true!”. It’s ridiculous and I love it, and now have a much wider margin between hitting the gas and going to jail. Slow car fast.
I’m still going to enjoy the BMW, but putting any serious money into it right now just doesn’t make sense, so I’m hoping this ridiculous little car can hold my appetite for mods in check.


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[douglawrence42]

And it has finally arrived


And the girls love it
https://youtu.be/-dBGqge9TQE

What a ridiculous little car. So the variable valve timing German v8 hasn’t given me enough trouble, what about a marriage between the two pillars of reliability that are fiat and Chrysler? Next car is British.






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[douglawrence42]

Started a build thread on the fiat:
https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?sha...7&share_type=t

Took the 540 out today after a couple weeks in the little fiat. The 540 felt quiet and luxurious like never before (also big). I can’t believe I thought the shifter was notchy. Now I’m pretty sure I need shifter bushings. Will try to get the 540 some love here soon when the sunroof down weather finally arrives.


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[computiNATEor]

Started a build thread on the fiat:
https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?sha...7&share_type=t

Took the 540 out today after a couple weeks in the little fiat. The 540 felt quiet and luxurious like never before (also big). I can’t believe I thought the shifter was notchy. Now I’m pretty sure I need shifter bushings. Will try to get the 540 some love here soon when the sunroof down weather finally arrives.


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It's neat how a change in perspective really highlights the E39's strengths. I've been driving around in my old Camry while the M5's down, and it'll be so nice to climb back into my leather lined cruise missile.

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Started a build thread on the fiat:
https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?sha...7&share_type=t

Took the 540 out today after a couple weeks in the little fiat. The 540 felt quiet and luxurious like never before (also big). I can’t believe I thought the shifter was notchy. Now I’m pretty sure I need shifter bushings. Will try to get the 540 some love here soon when the sunroof down weather finally arrives.

Also, put that kiddo in a go-kart. She might have something there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[douglawrence42]

Nate-
Yes. When you get back in the M5 it will feel better than you remembered it. It’s kind of like getting the car new again every time you take a long break. And yes, need to find a kart opportunity for Baby Stig. Maybe move to Brazil?


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[computiNATEor]

Nate-
Yes. When you get back in the M5 it will feel better than you remembered it. It’s kind of like getting the car new again every time you take a long break. And yes, need to find a kart opportunity for Baby Stig. Maybe move to Brazil?


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The open wheel oval scene is strong in the midwest, and it's a time-honored pathway for lots of racers. Tony Stewart, Kasey Kahne, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Larson, and dozens of others. All of those guys had open wheel opportunities, too. Who knows? Anything is possible.

[douglawrence42]

I seriously will look into it. That child has already quoted Ricky Bobby multiple times. “I wanna go fast!”. I’m really disappointed that SCCA won’t allow ride alongs until 16! I’m already paying for my older girl to ride stupid horses. If were going broke on kids activities, karts seem a heck of a lot more interesting than horses.


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[lucas999]

And it has finally arrived

I read your previous comment: "It’s a crappy little econo box that just screams (through an incredible exhaust) 'I’m a race car! I’m a race car, it’s true!'. It’s ridiculous and I love it, and now have a much wider margin between hitting the gas and going to jail. Slow car fast."

As I slowly scrolled down, I first saw the 991 S on the trailer... and thought 'wow, this guy must have super high car standards, if he's calling a 991 a "crappy little econo box!"' Then, I continued scrolling, and saw the Abarth. And its true--I've heard a few in action, and they definitely are screamers.

[JimLev]

Same here, when I first saw the pic I though you were getting that Porsche.
One of the guys here in the BMWCCA that has a 98 540 just bought an Abarth cuz he got the doors blown off his 540 by an Abarth. How fast are those things??

[douglawrence42]

No, no Porsche for me. I think there was a corvette in front of me on the trailer as well, so between that and the Porsche, I definitely was not king of the trailer.
The Abarth is ~2350 lbs and comes stock with 160 hp. So it’s very quick for what it is. It should smoke a 540 on a tight autocross track, but no match in a straight line or a big track. However, 200 HP is cheaply achieved with plugs, coils, and a tune. The internets has examples up to 300 hp with bigger turbo, methanol injection and so on. I don’t think a fwd car this light can use more than ~240 hp. But something like that could give a 540 trouble straight up, or at least until it ran out of gearing ~100 mph.


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[douglawrence42]

I did some googling. Virginia has a dirt track go cart league that starts at age 5. So I have 2 years to figure out how to talk my wife into this. Meanwhile, I got the magnetic autocross numbers, and we are preparing for tomorrow’s race




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[computiNATEor]

I did some googling. Virginia has a dirt track go cart league that starts at age 5. So I have 2 years to figure out how to talk my wife into this. Meanwhile, I got the magnetic autocross numbers, and we are preparing for tomorrow’s race

Best of luck!

[JimLev]

Start off with one of those small battery powered toy cars right now, then when she outgrows it get a bigger faster one.
Keep upgrading and maybe your wife will see how much fun she is having.

[BimmrMeUpSnotty]

At around that age, I had a 50cc Honda MiniTrail. It created a monster..... ME!!! Go for it!!!

[riverdadd]

nice write up..... enjoyed reading

where in virginia is there an autocross running??

[BimmrMeUpSnotty]

Where in VA? Everywhere!!! Just Google autocross in VA. It’s all just starting up, up and down the state.

[douglawrence42]

nice write up..... enjoyed reading

where in virginia is there an autocross running??

Today I’m running in Salem with the Blue Ridge SCCA.


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[Marticus3]

Today I’m running in Salem with the Blue Ridge SCCA.


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Dang my wife and I stopped by after church and watched for an hour. I didn't see your fiat.. how'd you do?

We saw a session consisting of a couple crx, a couple civics, a yellow pontiac gto, 2 monte carlos, a weird white and red rear engined kart.. a corvette.. 2 mustangs...
It looked like I would've had fun and done poorly in the 5 series lol. On his 4th run the fast CRX looped it


Also which car are you taking to VIR? I'll track you down and introduce myself there.

[douglawrence42]

Dang my wife and I stopped by after church and watched for an hour. I didn't see your fiat.. how'd you do?


Also which car are you taking to VIR? I'll track you down and introduce myself there.

Sounds like you saw group 3. I was out chasing cones then. I was happy with my performance, and I had a blast. I took an engineers approach of “I don’t care how slow I am, I’m going to get my line right”. So 2 runs of just figuring out the course, and 2 tries going faster. Each time was better than the last, no DNF’s. Run 4 was 10 seconds better than run 1, and it was really only run 4 where I had enough confidence to push the car on some of the sections. That all leaves me in the bottom 2/3 of the novices, which is fine, I had a blast and I imagine I learned a lot more than a guy who DNF’d 3/4 runs and put in one better time.

I think the group you saw was pretty representative of how an e39 would do. So while a corvette looked big and cumbersome and too confined on an autocross course to use its power, the high power fat boys were my favorite to watch lean and scream and slide around the course.
I’ll be bringing the fiat to the VIR event, look forward to meeting you.

EDIT: One more thing I forgot to tell you. A guy running an Audi (trunk mounted battery similar to ours) ran into trouble at tech because they didn’t feel the battery was secure enough. He said the battery he had was undersized, so that may have been the issue. Regardless, might want to bring some straps in case you get questions

[Marticus3]

Sounds like a great Sunday , and the weather was awesome. If you guys were serving Guinness and corned beef I would've hung out all day! ����


Thanks for the heads up, I put extra straps on the list!

[douglawrence42]

I swear I’m not going to turn this into a fiat thread. We’ll have some massively over detailed posts of an idiot doing motor mounts soon. However, pics were posted of the SCCA event, and I wanted to share a few because of how cool they look. Now I have to fix my front bumper cover situation so I can get some pics like this of the E39!






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[douglawrence42]

Three of my former co-workers are bringing their old Formula SAE cars to the VIR event next weekend. Two of the cars are getting a lot of work in my next door neighbors shop. I took Baby Stig over. Seeing little race cars she naturally assumed they were being built for her.


She looks good in a Kart! Apparently I will be welding on this thing this afternoon, steering components. That’s a little bit of a pucker factor


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[Marticus3]

Haha that is cute!

I'm doing motor mounts in the e39 on Friday, my drivers side has separated.. Luckily it started clunking before I went to VIR!

[douglawrence42]

Had a great time at VIR with the BR SCCA. My first time on a real racetrack. It was so nice not to devote brain power to reading cones, I learned a lot more about driving today than at autocross.


This is supposedly the “small” course at VIR. So in addition to worries about whether my 540’s leaky power steering pump and sketchy front bumper cover would pass tech, I legitimately thought the Abarth would do better than the e39. Like most of my guesses, I was incorrect. Marticus3 was there with his 540, so it was very cool to see how mine might have done while driving my new toy. Of course driver skill is the most important mod, so comparisons are difficult. But I think we were equally clueless novices. Both our times got better each run and got consistent at the end, and he was consistently ~3-4 seconds ahead of me. If you consider skill equal (another questionable assumption!) this makes sense. I think the course was dominated by 2 big straights, whoever could power through the hardest won. So fastest of the day we’re big cars with big power. They were hitting 120 at the end of the straight where I was struggling to get 85. So if power from 30-100 is the key factor, the E39 does well. That all sounds great in my head, however I may just suck. Here I am struggling down the big straight:

https://youtu.be/COvGBFyi_m0

In other news, the red kart Baby Stig has claimed finished 8th out of 60 cars.


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[douglawrence42]

Time to give the big German girl some attention since the new, slim, Italian has been getting most of my time. Let’s do motor mounts!

Step 1: Get a career that involves fueling nuclear reactors.

After 5-10 years of handling glowing blue stuff at the end of 50 foot poles, you will be completely prepared to reach the 16mm nuts on top of the motor mounts from the top of the engine

Looks like it takes ~20 inches of extensions, but honestly it’s not to bad to reach



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