Turner Motorsport at the 24hours of Daytona: Rolex Grand-Am Racing

Today starts the Rolex 24 hours at Daytona Beach, Fl. Turner Motorsports is running an M3 in the GT class to be driven by Bill Auberlen, Boris Said, Matt Plumb and Paul Dalla Lana. The green flag will drop at 12:30p local time, 3:30p EST. Thursday night the TMS team finished P1 in practice. I'll be following the race and pulling for the Turner Motorsport #94.

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Update: Well it's all over, and for the crew of the TMS #94, there was joy, dispair, strength, and determiation.

After having led the GT class for about 6 hours, the TMS M3's gearbox blew up, there was a hole straight through were 5th gear should have been. After spending 3 hours in the garages, replacing almost the whole transaxle, swapping out the brakes and power steering, and after rumours began to circulate they were out of the race, the #94 roared back onto the track with a vengance, with Boris Said taking the BMW from P27 to P17 in GT class where it finished the race and took home some points.

The Turner Motorsport team never gave up hope and gave us fans some exciting drama. Good luck to TMS for the rest of the Grand-Am road Racing Season.
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Update: ~ 24:00:59:000 - It's all over, the #94 ends in 17th with 564 laps completed. The overall winner is TMS driver Joey Hand.

Update: ~ 20:12:50:000 - With Boris Said taking the M3 through it's 454th lap, the car now sits in P17, where it is roughly 38 laps behind P16.

Update: ~ 10:45:11:185 - The #94 M3 is back in the race being driven by Boris Said! The car has a mountain to climb.

Update: ~ 09:08:11:325 - With over 2 hours of lost time, being 75 laps down, and parts for repairs being hard to find, rumours are circulating that TMS is out of the race. No official comment confirms this yet.

Update: ~ 07:06:21:121 - While being driven by Matt Plumb, the gearbox blew up! The #94 dropped to 16th and went to the garages for repairs.

Update: ~ 01:12:36:085 - The #94 is in P1 with B

CD Woes and Touch-Ups

Chose to spend the day with the Bimmer. Here's what went down:
* Full wash, wax, windex, rain-x, vaccuum, leather conditioning, dusting, and air freshening.
* I scraped off all the previous owner's registration year stickers, sanded it down, and applied my 2011 sticker.
* Fixed my license plate holder and frame so that is does not rattle when closing the luggage compartment.
* Finally got round to putting the chrome caps on the TMS license plate frame.
* Replaced 2 blown brake lights.
* Cleaned my TMS pedals.
* Topped off the oil with a quart of BMW 5W-30.
* Removed the previous owner's ///M steering wheel emblem and put back in the original BMW emblem.
* Topped off the air in the tyres.
* I attempted, and failed miserably, to fix my CD player. It's had a CD stuck in there for the last week and a half. I got the CD out, unfortunatley I also have some pretty important looking left-over parts.... needless to say, the CD mode is non-operational. Just going to have to rough it with AUX for a while.

Let there be light...

My glove box was missing the rechargeable flashlight when I bought the Bimmer, not being one to stand having things incomplete, I replaced it immediately. Not sure if I'll ever use it, but it's nice to have just in case. Cost was less than $10 form Ebay.

No Smoking Please...

As I was driving around today I decided I didn't like where my Scanguage II was placed. In it's former location, it was actually blocking the Bimmer's computer display, making it useless to me. Wanting this functionality back, I proceeded to moved the Scanguage II to an alternate location - the ashtray. Being that I'm a non smoker (going on 3 years now), this was the perfect location, and just the right size. the display is almost the same illuminated red that the BMW comes equipped with, giving it a nice OEM feel.

Flappy Fabric

Something that's been bugging me since I bought the car has been the fabric peeling off the driver's side C-Pillar. It's always flapping around when the windows are down and is just plain unsightly. Today I had some spare time so bought some fabric adhesive and got to work. Needs a little touch up here and there, but it came out quite nicely.

New Rains

Well, this week brought the first rains my car has seen since it became mine, and I unfortunately found out that my windshield wipers were no good! I ordered Bosch Icon Wipers, amazing little things, makes the glass crystal clear. The downside is I can't re-use my wind spoiler for the wiper arm. The good folks at Turner Motorsport also shipped me an ///M carbon fibre guage cluster. It was a pain to install but the look is worth it!

Junk In The Trunk

I ordered some BMW OEM parts that just arrived.

I finally got that cargo net to stop the groceries flying around in the back.

The in-trunk toolbox was missing a few peices so I completed the set by ordering the Spark Plug Wrench and Spark Plug Wrench Pin.

I also ordered an AUX input jack for the factory system, no more radio adverts or cd flipping, and I can finally get Pandora back into the car.

Post-Installation Photo

Well I've finished installing the pedals, the shift knob, the euro centre console and the aFe filter. What a difference the pedals and knob make! The filter adds a throatier intake sound as well. Also in this photo is the Scanguage II above the steering wheel.

24 Hours at Spa-Francorchamps This Weekend

This coming weekend, Team BMW Motorsport will contest the third 24-hour race of the year in Spa-Francorchamps. 2010 marks the 63rd staging of the classic in the Ardennes. BMW will be racing in the GTN class with two BMW M3 GT2 cars. Jörg Müller, Pedro Lamy and Uwe Alzen will alternate at the wheel of car number 78. The second GT sports car (number 79) will be driven by Dirk Werner, Dirk Müller and Dirk Adorf.

Golf Tee Mod

Today I performed the fabled "Golf Tee Mod" on the Bimmer. Google it if you really want to know what it is, it's far too ghetto to explain on here and remain respectable. But, wow!, what a difference it makes in the sound.