Blackhawk Farms 6-13-16

[i_love_cars]

So yesterday was the maiden voyage of the E30 at the track for me. I was running intermediate group. Several people who knew the car came up to me at the start of the day to introduce themselves and told me to take good care of the car  It was a very good day and I got to meet Boris who unfortunately started the day rough with an oil issue that kept him out of 2 sessions but luckily he got back in action for the second half of the day. 

I had a few minor issues but nothing major - biggest problem I had was that 3rd gear kept grinding when I tried to downshift. I deliberately try to shift slowly in the car because it's an older transmission and I'm well aware that it doesn't like to banged through gears like my 135. Basically the shifter is really sensitive because it's a stock, floppy, loose shitty e36 shifter and needs to be replaced. The gear oil looks good, no gold shavings so the synchros are fine I think - but I ordered a evo3 with DSSR shifter today. 

The car handles amazingly well. You can see in the photos going around turn 5 that it is pretty balanced. I didn't run any goPro footage because I was only driving 5/10 pace in order to get familiar with the car. The turn-in location, braking, gearing - everything is so drastically different than the 135i that you really need to slow down and figure out how to drive all over again. My first session was mostly trash. I can safely say that I was turning in way too late into 3, came in too hot twice to 6, and was not apexing properly on turn 7 and thus not tracking out enough. 

Second session I had the rust shook off and was getting better with the car and hit all the corners to start finding my groove. My final session of the day was doing probably 7/10 and carrying very good momentum. Nobody passed me on the last session, I passed 7 cars and caught up to the other half of the group by the end of 20 minutes. 

The day ended on a high note for me because I got clearance to run in the Advanced run group going forward with BMW CCA. I'm planning to run intermediate on the 27th with GPS Tracktime, and intermediate again on august 1 with cca, with some RA sprinkled in between. I hope to feel comfortable enough with the car to really push it at Road America for Oktoberfast weekend. 

Here are some photoez and stuff:

and here is me riding in a Factory 5 with an LS6. This thing was monstrously epic and dominated everything. Very fun to ride in:

[suspenceful]

Nice! More enjoyable to track than the 135i?

[i_love_cars]

suspenceful said:

Nice! More enjoyable to track than the 135i?

they are worlds apart, this car is infinitely more enjoyable on track than the 1er. The 1er is too heavy and scrubs tires, fades brakes, is too soft, and overheats with boost 50% of the time. 

Consider that a Stoptech trophy BBK for the 135 is like $6500 which is more than half of what I paid for the E30, and it becomes readily apparent that it's inefficient to track a 1er and try to make it take corners better. Even if you sunk a bunch of money into it, it'll never come close to handling the way the E30 does, if nothing else due to weight difference. Even a gutted 135i would weigh 400 pounds more than my e30. 

This car is on another level.

[merl]

Your car looked great out there !! It was a shakedown day for me as well and the car performed great until the end when I could not get fuel pressure and had to take the car home on the trailer

Overall --- Great day !!

[Boris3]

Both you guys looked good out there! I was instructing in novice and intermediate and remember watching the e30 powering through corners on three wheels with the inside front up in the air more than a few times.