Ownership Verified: Multi-Motorsport / Daily Driver B13 SE-R (and B14 SE-R DD / Ice Racer)


What a kickass way to cap off a long day, tearing up the ice on Berry Pond! I even met a new friend, a stranger who came out on the ice to watch my shenanigans before offering to do some filming and finally doing some laps with me around the track. I also expect him to drop by a RallyCross soon!
 
Raven is a little disassembled at the moment, but she totally begged me to put her wheels back on so she can pose with all of trophies and hardware we won together in the past year! What an awesome little car. More to come!

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Finally got the first Prothane solid Polyurethane motor mount installed on Raven! Had to air-chisel the inner metal ring out before pressing the Prothane in with a hydraulic press. Few more to go! These solid mounts will provide a lot of benefits, including helping to preserve the car's fragile transaxle.

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Man, I still can't get over the fact that I have a garage now. Bring the radio downstairs, crank it up and get to work. Oil change, borrowing Raven's battery tray / hold-downs and fire extinguisher and giving Jade a good looking over to make sure I'm good to head to New York for a weekend of AMEC Ice Racing. This will be the one kind of racing that I do with the B14 as I'll be either selling it or parting it out in the spring.

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There was NO battery tray to speak of, the battery has just been sitting on the "frame rail" and "secured" by a bungee cord. AMEC would not like that!
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B13 Update

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Got back home from work early and decided to tackle the next motor mount. Something seemed odd, and indeed it was! What a bizarre failure point on the motor mount bracket - I attribute this to the shock of beating on the car's notoriously weak stock motor mounts for so long. Got to wonder how long it was like that. Guess I'll have to order a whole new bracket!

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Meanwhile, with the B14 SE-R...

A few shots from the BMWCCA Ice Race this past weekend. Hopefully doing another one this coming Sunday!

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Another brisk day on the ice! This time with BMWCCA, a time-trial competition on Newfound Lake. Conditions were very slick and the courses a little slower than usual (~45mph) today, but the fun factor can't be beat for just $25. Hopefully doing another one next Sunday! Yet another excellent Grassroots-level motorsport where you can Scandi-flick, slide and left-foot-brake to your heart's content.
 
Is that a C5 Z06 under the cover?

Good eye! It's a regular convertible, but a C5 nonetheless. It belongs to my "landlord" and I rent the lovely apartment above the garage here. After wrenching outdoors for my whole life, having garage space to work on my car is amazing!
 
My little project-hangup will soon be sorted as my replacement motor mount arrived! Shame I couldn't get it without the stock insert and save myself some time! It may be prudent for me to eventually order a second one, along with a second polyurethane insert so I can have one "on deck" in case this new one eventually fails. Once this one is installed, I will have one more "difficult mount", the rear one, as I have to drop the crossmember. I'm starting to think that I'll leave the interior intact for now and run the car in Prepared FWD at a NER RallyCross next month as it's going to be at my favorite RX site of the year!

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Meanwhile, I was doing other racing-type stuff this weekend with my winter beater:

What a weekend! It all started up in Dalton NH yesterday morning for a "Test-N-Tune" event at Team O'Neil Rally School. Going to this event was an extremely good choice as it was an absolute ball, especially during the morning portions with pristine ice and snow. Despite having a completely shot limited-slip differential along with smelling like burning oil / antifreeze and in general being a turd, I put in some of the fastest times of the day based on the results shown to me. In the afternoon, the weather turned to rain and turned the entire place into a sloppy mess, so I had fun entertaining ride-alongs with ridiculously sideways action. Took a convoy of cars through wacky weather displaying all twelve seasons of New England back down to Tilton for dinner at the Tilt'N Diner. Hosted a few friends overnight and then it was off to the BMWCCA Ice Race!

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Brian Kuehl had offered to let me drive his sweet Civic, mechanical LSD and super-quick steering and all, in exchange for mounting up my Hakka7 wheels on his trusty steed for the day. All seemed to be setting up to be a fantastic day, but a mix of Mother Nature-related issues and perhaps some errors on the Organizers' part meant the event did not go to plan. The really fun previous course could not be used due to ice integrity, and we ended up with literally an "Ice Autocross" with no snowbanks on a very underwhelming near-oval course. The entire event became so slow and tedious that we decided to swap the tires back over and call it a day. However, that car is so damn awesome. Hopefully we can make our plan work better at an event next year! All and all, it was a fantastic weekend.

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Yay! Another solid polyurethane motor mount installed - one more "difficult" one (need to drop the crossmember) and one easy one and the car will be ready for a lot more abuse. These mounts are much better than the notoriously weak stock mounts, completely eliminating engine / transaxle movement and wheel-hop, and helping prevent transaxle damage. A lot of effort, but worth it!

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Crossmember is dropped! As I suspected, the stock mount insert is toast. The new Prothane insert will be much better! After that, it's just the front dogbone mount and the car will be completely converted to Prothane mounts.

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Those pictures also show my new-to-me Gravel Rally tires, my first set ever! Silverstone Rallye S-505s, can't wait to test them out when the conditions are right for them!
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[video=youtube;enxt1RO3P-U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enxt1RO3P-U[/video]

She lives! It's nice to see that the vibrations actually aren't too bad from the solid motor mounts, and even better to see zero engine / drivetrain movement! Doing some final adjustments and it will be time to drop back down onto the ground and get ready to drive, and ready to race again!
 
[video=youtube;RQCn2QkeR-U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQCn2QkeR-U&hd=1[/video]

Back on solid ground! Nothing much more satisfying than taking the car you've been working on all winter, driving it straight out of the garage on an hour-long drive with zero issues or drama of any kind. Although having a valid AAA card nestled in my wallet definitely took any stress out of the ordeal. The Prothane motor mounts are surprisingly liveable, of course there are extra vibrations but not nearly as bad as I expected.

Looking forward to some more driving in the daylight tomorrow and making whatever adjustments I need to for the car to be ready to return to racing via RallyCross next weekend! The car is legal for Prepared FWD right now but I'm going to just run Modified FWD anyway and see how close I can get to the dedicated MF guys. Psyched!

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Final preparations for Raven's return to racing this weekend. Infusion of Redline MT-90 gear oil and satisfying test-drive with silky-smooth shifting. Installed the skid plate and fire extinguisher, and test-fitted the Gravel tires for kicks. Looks good - I could get used to the look (and presumably the performance) of the Gravel tires! Getting more and more psyched for this weekend.

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Saturday's race day was AWESOME! Gravel tires have completely transformed my view of loose-surface racing - Raven is nimble enough as it has been with snow tires, these Gravel tires are a whole different level of grip and control. The Modified FWD RallyCross class in my SCCA Region is extremely large and competitive (usually between 12-20 drivers, 14 at this one), and attracts the best drivers in the region.

I went into this day just to have some fun and get used to the Gravel tires in a Prepared FWD-legal and otherwise stock car with Prothane motor mounts. At the first half of the day, I was surprised to find myself in 4th place out of 14! Satisfied with that, I gave some rides and experimented more in the second half and dropped down to 7th for the day. But, MF is such a closely-contested class that the difference between the 4th-7th places was a matter of under two seconds for the whole day. I still managed to beat a heavily-modified version of my own B13 SE-R. What a blast!

I'll continue playing with these tires as I figure out when I want to pull the interior and start working on the roll cage. I may get myself to try another Hillclimb before that point, along with doing some more Autocross with NER and FSCC. This will mean purchasing either some Falken Azenis or Dunlop Direzza Star Specs!

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