Christmas weight loss plan

Following on the successful Thanksgiving dieting plan, the Christmas dieting plan isnt as much of a weight loss, but involves more of a sticky and tedious mess. Driver side all scraped out, tomorrow will be passenger side and then we can get ready to send to cage work.

New Alternator

So at Road Atlanta, my battery light kept flickering while in the paddock. If I gave it gas, the light would go away. Wasn't sure what to make of it, but Max Fischer had similar issues. Except for Max, he was racing in an almost hour long race. He lost his ABS and locked up all four tires into a wall. Luckily the gravel trap slowed him down.

Not wanting to risk a similar fate, I opted to buy a new (reman) alternator. From googling this issue, it seems fairly common that the stock alternator fails.

Replacing the alternator was fairly straightforward. Hardest part was messing w/ all the shrouding and removing the stock fan. I left the fan off since I wont be needing it.

Road Atlanta TTB Shakedown

Make the trek down to Road Atlanta with NASA-SE for their annual "Santas Toy Run". I actually had to add in weight from my prior strip down. The car would not be competitive in TTA, so I decided to try to sneak into TTB with some creative rule manipulation. Had to weigh in at 3400#s, but it allowed my to stay in TTB with 2753518 Hoosier R6s.

My main goal of this weekend was to run a time of about 1:40 and get my Moton Street Sport DAs dialed in. The last event I was way too rushed and didnt get a chance to really spend time with the car. This time, I was able to make suspension changes and make notes. Alignment was off b/c of my prior TTB rules manipulation which required me to put the stock rear lower control arms back on. Front had way more camber and Im not exactly sure the toe was set perfect. Anyhow on Sat, I used a couple sessions on street tires just to mess with the shock's compression settings. Road Atlanta can be bouncy in a few places and once I felt the car was ok, I slapped on the Hoosiers.

In my old E36 M3 GTS3 racecar, I was turning 136s, so my goal of 140s for a pretty much stock E46 M3 with suspension was a decent one. My first try on Hoosiers netted me exactly that. My competition in TTB was VERY close though, with Rene Badia, Jr edging me by 1 sec. Joe I. in a Nissan Sentra was also close in a close 3rd by 6 tenths and Mary Shive not too much further off.

Sunday, after a couple sessions, I was 3rd in TTB. The Sentra had busted out a 139.0, and me and Rene were separated by 0.03 secs. So it was on, I looked at data and made a small change in the Motons which are GREAT! Really stepped it up also in a couple places I knew I could go faster. Clicked off a 138.4 which I thought was good enough to win. Then I look at the results to see Rene had topped me AND took down my old TTB record with a 137.2! Ah well, two 2nd place TTB finishes in a car Im really driving for the first time is not bad. Im happy.