When I got back to SFO on Thursday, I got in the E30, and drove down to bottom of the parking structure. Since I had lost my ticket (clownish move) I had to park in the 15 minute spot, and talk to “the guy.” The guy was efficient. He found my plate on the entrance camera, checked the timestamp, and we were done. Exit ticket issued. Sweet. Easy. Unusual.

Back to the e30, whistling a little Bill Champlin, and the car doesn’t start. Cranks away enthusiastically, but no payoff. I turn the car to the “run” position and strain to listen over the roar of passenger jet takeoff. No fuel pump noise. Damn.

I’m a little handy with cars (read: obsessed and stupid about taking them apart), so out comes the back seat. Tappy tap on fuel pump, no noise. Open the hood, tappy tap on the relays, no noise. Well, lots of noise from me muttering and swearing, but no fuel pump noise. Called AAA. Tow coming in 40 minutes. Nice.

Sitting and waiting is not for me.

I continue to fiddle around, and suddenly the car springs to life. Hurray! I am a hero. I leave the car running, and then go about canceling the tow, getting another new card to exit since the previous card has now expired (you have 20 minutes to leave the garage). Again, easy. Surprising.

I am on my way, feeling a little proud – almost smug – having repaired my car with nothing more than a phillips head screwdriver, some ingenuity, and a little percussive maintenance. Smug doesn’t last long when you have less than an eighth of a tank of gas, and a car that doesn’t like starting. Uh-oh.

I need gas. Badly. I stop at the Woodside Chevron (which I choose because of the nice slope to the lot, which will allow me to coast the car into a parking place if it won’t stop after filling up) and get 12.7 gallons of gas. In a 12 gallon tank. That’s low fuel.

Car cranks away again, but no joy. Damn it. having planned for this, I coast away from the pump, park, and start reading the Internet on the trusty iPhone, looking for fuel pump prices. No one has one locally… how much for overnight shipping? Man, the 3G is fast in Woodsi…

The car is rocked violently from side to side, and I look up to see a horse trailer filling my window. I have been backed into, WHILE PARKED, by a diesel Dodge, towing roughly 13 horses.

Argh.

The rear quarter is smashed, the rear bumper broken, just like my dreams and spirit, respectively.

There is only one solution. I must have a paintless guy remove the dent. I must get a new bumper. And, of course, the ol’ fuel Pump needs to replaced. Easy enough. But what will I drive in the meantime?

Again, there is only one solution. Rent a car. Maybe an altima, or some other Japanese sedan that will run no matter what, and prove to me just how reliable cars can be.

That’s what a reasonable person would do.

So I bought this (bad pics – from PO. I will take some good ones after the rain stops):

2003 540i M-Sport 6-speed. A car for old men. Like me.

290 HP and 326 Lb/ft of torque is a lot. So are six gears. I can’t stop smiling.

I bought a little red BMW. I had no idea it would lead to this. That BMW, a 1991 318is, should never have left my care. With the passage of time that car has become something of a legend to me, “The one that got away,” as they say.

Of late my pining became unbearable, and thanks to an incredibly fortunate series of events involving what amounts to an auto philanthropist from Arizona, a flatbed truck, and a handshake deal that harkens back to the days when a man’s word was his bond, I find myself in possession of the spiritual successor to my first BMW.

It’s Brilliantrot, it’s a 1991, and like the 318is of yore, it makes me smile every time I see it. It’s packing a little something extra though. Like two more doors, and two more cylinders. That adds up to a few more pounds of road-hugging weight, but after all these years, I too have packed on some extra doors and cylinders of my own, if you’ll pardon the stretched metaphor, and overlook the stretched pants.

And so the E30 has returned to me. Red and Brilliant.

If you can’t ever go home again, you can sure get damned close.

Just a quick update for posterity:

Brakes:

• Replaced front and rear rotors with Zimmerman (non-drilled) items
• Rebuilt front and rear calipers, and removed all traces of once-red paint
• Replaced PBR Deluxe pads with PBR Ultimates
• Bled brakes and replaced fluid with ATE Typ 200
• Replaced rotor and caliper bolts
• Replaced front wheel bearings (check the pic – they take a lot of torque!)

General:

• Changed oil (Mobil1 0W-40) and filter (OEM)
• Replaced rear and side///M-blems (rear was absent, sides were faded)
• Replaced hood switch to fix the over-eager alarm
• Replaced rear trunk struts
• Replaced weird Kragen-style rear view mirror with OEM auto-dimming “M oval” mirror
• Lubed door hinges, handles, and hardware
• Checked for code faults (looked very good) and cleared codes

Tires:

• Shod the stock Roadstars in Kumho Ecsta SPTs – 235/45/17 and 255/40/17

I love this car. It now stops at least as well as it goes, which means I can make it go a lot better before I stop. And it goes better than I do, which is a lot of fun.

What?

So far, the car is fantastic. Pretty well stock, with Bilstein HDs and some urethane bushings in the rear.

The previous owner painted the stock calipers red (Come on now – that’s just not okay). Reverting to stock black is the first order of business. While I am in there, I am going to replace the semi-warpy Zimmerman drilled rotors with OEM Brembo units, upgrade from PBR Deluxe pads to PBR Ulitmates for a little better fade resistance, replace the stock brake lines with new braided items, and rebuild the calipers with new bushings and seals.

Tires are the next items that needs to be addressed. Since the plan is to keep this as a street-only car, I am debating about what tires to put on. Knowing me, the “street-only” will last until the first track day or autocross of the season, so I will likely go with some maximum performace summer tires – the Hankook RS2 is a strong front-runner. Super cheap and super sticky. I have heard the sidewalls are soft, but I am willing to throw a set on to see whether that is indeed the case, and if so, if it bothers me.

Also high on the needs list: an M badge for the rear. Who takes those off?

The car ran cool, and cornered WAY flatter than the last time I was at Thill. That fact is doubly amazing considering that this time I ran on my V710s – which is essentially like cheating since they are so damned sticky. The car was inspiring.

I also ran a lap timer for the first time; by the end of the day I was pretty consistently in the 2:13:xx area, which makes me happy. I figure the car is tubby, but the tires almost make up for it, so the time seems pretty legit.

I shot some in car video during the time trial – note the extremely fast Evo that I nearly cut off when I got a point on my third lap. Also note the ridiculous line I was tryng through Turn 11. I have a tendency to early apex that turn, so I was making a concerted effort to wait longer than I needed to to try and change my ways. That is definitely NOT a line I actually thought would be faster.

Time Trial, NCRC, first 3 laps

You will also note the silence that is my car. All you hear is wind noise. Hard to shift. I plan to fix that soon…

I beleive I had the fastest time in my class (AAA) with a 58.050, and of course, as soon as I lent the car to a friend, he promptly showed me what it could REALLY do, and he got a 57.3xx. Thanks a lot Russ… (Actually, I was so impressed with his driving I invited him to be a co-driver for the season. So much for trying to win AAA!)

The in-car video action worked flawlessly, except that yours truly forgot to record my last (and fastest) run. Red mist clouded my brain and I couldn’t keep it together. Lame.

In any case, have a look!

Run five, BMW CCA Autocross at Marina – March 26, 2006

I need to lower the car to dial out some of the lean (see pics below) and attach my front sway bar to the struts rather than the control arms. After that, I need to settle in to the far-less-violent driving style that I think E36s require relative to E30s. My time behind the wheel of various E30s means I have grown used to really pitching the car around, and the extra weight of the E36 means that it doesn’t respond as well to that kind of behaivior; I could stand to chill out a bit and let the car settle. We will see.

Pics are all thanks to Mark Dadgar, BMW CCA GGC driving events coordinator and head cheese at www.justracing.com. You can see the car leaning a lot, and you can see the look on my face as I watch Russ drive the wheels off my car while I announce. I am stupefied. Heh.

The camera is a super tiny still camera, but it has a movie mode, and I thought it might work for in-car or on-bike footage. I just completed an around the block test drive with the clamp attached to the topmost “ear” of my cheap momo seat (just over my right shoulder) and I am totally impressed.

Check it! (Right-click and save as please!) My first avi file.

Check back regularly for serious autocross and track footage! Oh boy!

Note the custom seat brackets. I made them myself with my new welder. Thanks, Mom and Dad! Those are wire-feed welds, and I have to say, for my first project, they look pretty damned okay. I can’t wait to get more practice.

Light light light, and apparently these are four of the last twelve new Kosei K1 wheels in America. Old school. The pirctures are the same style wheels, but shod with 255/40/17 Toyo Proxes RA-1s. These pics were taken before I got to smashing the fenders with a small bar clamp and a jack handle. You can see that the tires have a small band of silver all around the outside where they were contacting the topmost edge of the bumper cover at the wheel well. A little tinsnip action took care of that, and I was able to run a whole day at Sears with no interference issues.

Thansk to Ramon LeFrancois for the use of the tires that day. What a blast! The car was killer on the track, and I probably drove as well as I ever have. Of course, that didn’t prevent Ramon himself from passing me, in the rain, in his ‘91 318is. Sigh. He is just plain quick.

Chris

So I passed it along to a friend. It has been a fun journey, but the M3 and the 328i need all my love right now.

It’s not you, it’s me.

Really. Well, it’s me and my desire for a big-ass van. Aw yeah.