Gone very far to the Dark Side

6 minute(s) of a 189 minute read

Yeah but it did not fly. Some hall monitor type spotted the shifter & said thats not BMW OEM.

I said it was a special super M optional item. Even showed him my BMW-M performance driving school hat. He had the nerve not to believe me. What happened to trust among sportsmen? So I guess I will have to settle flogging their cars. Only thing wrong with that is my release form says I can't kill nanny.

4-15-2021

No passengers. True story with passenger. At the Performance Center Delivery school you can bring a guest who also gets to drive. My daughter, as competitive as her old man, & I have swapped being in the guest seat as we both bought cars. She was the guest when I got the 440MPPSK. On a road course timed run I have had her beat every time but some have been very close Payback sucks. I shut down the all the nannies to get a slight edge & put the car in the dirt ass first. She only cut a few nannies & made a perfect run. Have kept my big mouth shut ever since.

Maybe redemption will come when she get her Pig Snout M4 6MT convertible. That or further humiliation.

4-18-2021

I think (HOPE) she will let me put an aftermarket grill on it. They are starting to be shown around in Germany. Will see how it goes.

This one is the pick of the litter so far.

4-27-2021

Got a chance to flog the 2021 Pig Nose M440 on the 23rd. This car watered down from the M4 will do 0-60 in under 4 seconds. With dash info showed it pulling about 1G through the turns & makes a really nice noise with the flaps open.

Was a fun morning with 3 sets of 3 laps each in the 2021 M440. Good technical course & was easy to see who has done this before. Nice exhaust rapp & some good tire squealing from the fast drivers. Unfortunately the runs were not timed. Was competitive as I could generally close up on the car in-front & pull-away from the car behind. Said generally because some of the guys were quicker. Think if it was timed I was around 5th out of 30 in my group. They had 3 separate tracks running with 3 cars on the course at the same time. Our pit had 6 cars all 440's

The car has a piggy nose but is an outstanding driver & expect it would give my Z4 a run for its money despite its bulk. Is bigger & heavier than my 440 was but handles like a much smaller car. The organizers helped out a bit by putting a red cone at all the apexes so it was a lot easier to set up for the turns.

This was good because it was a long course & we did not get a chance to walk it.

6-20-2021

After 3 month stand down for leg repair finished installing the transmission today. Mostly a lot of small stuff left to do.

6-22-2021

Transmission cradle & driveshaft armor base in. I did a heavy duty driveshaft hoop as the drive shaft sits right at my right hip. Would beat the crap out of me if it failed. Main section of the drive shaft is less than 1 foot long. Tiles are 1'X1'. Brainiac can't find two mounting bolts so installed my transmission location pins as place keepers till a ACE hardware store visit. Intend to finish the drive train tomorrow with the drive shaft & starter install.

6-23-2021

Have seen pictures of one of the guys on the FFR forum that had a universal fail under load. For those that don't know the FFR car body is a non structural vinyl ester composite shell. The frame is steel & all the interior panels are aluminum alloy. The broken drive shaft bent the tunnel frame & ripped up the alloy paneling & part of the seat. Driver lucked out with some scrapes & bruises.

A bunch of us got together for a group buy & had a fabricator make up hoops that could be installed without pulling the shaft. On a periodic bases the fabricator makes a limited run of the hoops. A few other suppliers have gotten on nboard but believe the original ones are the strongest & easiest to install.

Will take a closeup when the shaft is in.

These are pretty good shots of my Metco unit. Mounts to existing bolt openings in the transmission cradle & vibration insulator.

Still need to final torque & mark the bolts for easy inspection.

6-27-2021

One of the sites I follow is Throttle House. They just did a FFR Cobra review test. Scared the voice right out of one of the guys

Encouraged to move my butt & get the thing back on the road.