November 26th, 2006

Yesterday was a big day for the WM3. The 18" MR7's shes worn for the past 5 years are now sold and gone. Come springtime, she'll have a different set of lighter 17's that will hopefully be good for a couple 10ths in the quarter mile. Hopefully she'll get to the mid-14's before coming off the road for a few years. I've reached a bit of a turning point where I need a more practical car to drive and can't afford to insure two cars while only driving one. The WM3 will go into storage before the summer for an indefinite period of time. Hopefully I'll be able to use that time to fix up all the little things that I've never been able to find the time for while needing to keep her on the road.

September 20th, 2006

It's been quite some time since I've updated this page but life has been extremely busy lately. My most exciting news is that I've finally made it into the 14s! On August 26th I made three consecutive passes all with 14.8 ET's. My best ET was 14.853 @ 92.51 mph and my best trap speed was a 14.887 @ 93.25 mph. It certainly took me long enough, but I finally pulled it off. I can only wonder what I'd be doing if I didn't have anchors for wheels.

March 28th, 2006

It's finally nice enough out that I could get the car washed, put the summer wheels on, and get some pics of how the exhaust looks. The shop took some undercar pics when they put it on but I haven't got them yet. I'll post them when they show up. In the meantime, here you can see how it looks to others on the road. Nearly stock... but not quite.

March 9th, 2006

The big news is that I've finally got an exhaust system!!! Of course, I don't have any pics yet so that will have to wait. I think I achieved my goal of maximizing the flow while keeping the volume to a minimum. I'm running 2.5" pipe from a Pacesetter 4-1 header through a Magnaflow high-flow cat, a 14" resonator, and then through an 18" muffler and out through a single tip at the back. At idle and when cruising, it doesn't sound much different than stock. You can tell it's there, but it's not loud enough to be a distraction. When you give it more gas though, it definitely let's the world know it's there. Not so loud that people think you've got no mufflers, but definitely loud enough to turn heads.

And now for some pictures. On another note, over the past few days, I've been playing around with the wiring again and having some great debate on j-body.org about the cooling fan circuit and electronics in general. I think I've learned more in the past 3 days about electronic components and circuits than I have in the previous 28 years or so. Considering that I'm pretty sure I took a unit on this stuff in University, that's really not saying much for my ability to retain information.

So the end result is that I've wired up a cooling fan bypass switch so I can now switch the fan on and off without the ECU throwing any codes. Once I've tested it for a couple weeks to ensure all is well, I'll have the schematics and full instructions posted on my HowTo Pages.

There is a simple way to do this, which involves just bypassing the stock relay, and then there's the more elegant way, which I think I've got all figured out.

Here's some pics of the switch.

March 1st, 2006

A late happy New Year to everyone! Not much has happened with respect to the car over the past few months. It's got a few new scrapes on it from the winter which will have to be patched up in the spring and I've got my new exhaust system all sourced out. This coming race season should finally put me into the 14's. Finally. If it doesn't, then people might just start blaming the driver.

On another note, I've found out over the past few days that a favour I did last year for RSM Racing essentially turned into them stealing parts from me. You can read about it here: https://www.j-body.org/forums/read.php?f=40&i=104808&t=104808

I strongly caution anyone from ever dealing with them. If reading that thread and the horror stories they've created isn't enough, then at least don't type your credit card into their non-secure website. Just one more example of the care they show for their patrons.

November 13th, 2005

Ever since putting the gauges in, I'd left the dash mostly apart since I had plans to finally install the interior trunk switch I'd pulled out of a wrecked Malibu (I think) quite some time ago. I finally got to putting it in on Saturday and it's a good thing I did. Crossing the border yesterday to visit some of our Precizion friends, I swear they must have been sure we were drug dealers or something! We had to wait about an hour and a half heading into the States and ended up with the car pulled into a garage and 4 US border guards going over every inch of it! I can only imagine how it would have gone if the dash was missing half it's bolts, screws, and trim pieces.

So for the switch... I put some red mylar inside it to give it a red glow instead of the white it had. I chose the location based on what was in my 1990 Z24. I always liked having the switch in the glovebox since it wasn't openly visible like it is in the 02-05 j-bodies and if I leave the doors open at a show, I can still lock the glovebox to secure the trunk. What I wasn't counting on, however, was the steel subframe behind that section of the dash. Since I couldn't see behind that section, even with the top dash off and the air ducts removed, I figured I'd take the risk of cutting through a wiring harness or something and just go to town with a dremel. As soon as I got through the plastic though, the dremel grabbed onto the steel subframe and I think I may have bent it. What should have been a fairly simple install ended up a whole lot more complicated, but in the end it turned out exactly how I wanted it. It's a small mod, but I think some of you will appreciate how convenient it will be to have.

For the wiring details, I took the 12V always-on and the dash lighting connections right from the head unit wiring harness. Orange is always-on and grey is dash lighting. I ran the 12V right to the wire leading to the trunk popper solenoid and put a diode between my connection and the wire running back to the BCM. I also put a 15 amp in-line fuse on that wire after blowing a 3 amp and then a 10 amp fuse by hitting the button. Now all is working properly.

Finally, I've got the winter tires mounted and installed now. Here are the first pics of the WM3 in winter mode with the refinished Konig Tantrums (17x8) and the 225/45/17 Bridgestone Blizzak WS50's.

October 2nd, 2005

The gauges are mostly installed now so here's some pics of how they look and a few general pics I took just because the car was nice and clean.

September 9th, 2005

Once again, it's been a fair amount of time since the last update here and there's quite a bit to be said. Since the last update, there's been my first camping trip with Michelle and some good friends of ours, the GMSC Bash in Indianapolis, and the first of what looks to be many future Precizion bashes, held in Tonawanda, NY. All were great times and I've put a couple appropriate pics here to remember them by. I'll have to get the few I've got from Indiana up sometime soon as I didn't actually take my own camera there so I've had to rely on the ones I've grabbed from others.

As far as the car goes, she took 2nd place in the Wild Sunfire category at the GMSC Bash, which was far better than I'd hoped. I hadn't placed in any category at the two JBO Bashes I'd been to and was expecting the same this time around. The win was certainly a pleasant surprise!

She still has yet to break that 14 second barrier in the 1320. The weather just doesn't seem to want to cooperate. Every time I go out, I seem to get weather well over 30 degrees. My best time is now 15.039 @ 90.32 mph. She got up on the dyno at the Precizion Bash and put down 176 hp to the wheels. It's not quite as much as I'd hoped, but just about what I was expecting. That should give me right around 200 hp at the crank, which is about par for the course right now.

Also, in the past couple months I've got my winter wheels refinished so they're ready to be used. There's a few pics here of the test fit. I had them done in gunmetal as a sort of experiment. If the car looks good riding on them, I just may go with a dark colour for the summer wheels as well. The winter wheels are 17" x 8" Konig Tantrums. I'll be buying tires for them before the snow falls.

Finally, I picked up a Lotec A-pillar gauge pod and ordered up some new gauges to put in it. The gauges aren't here yet, but as soon as they arrive I'll try to get some pics up. It'll be nice to have a bit more feedback on what's going on under the hood. So here's the pics...

July 2nd, 2005

I should apologize for not providing any updates but there really hasn't been much to report. I took 'er to the track on what had to be the absolute worst day of the year for racing so I'm sure she's got much more in her than she showed. It was well over 30 degrees and over 89% humidity. The general consensus was that most cars were running well over half a second slower than normal because of the conditions. So that's the excuse. The best she ran was 15.114 @ 91.68 mph. I was able to regularly beat Brew's RSX-S though, who was running pretty regular 15.4's, despite having a few more mods over last year. Last year he ran 15.1's, for comparison's sake. I know my 14's are just waiting for me. I won't be doing any more modifications until I've run them with the current setup. Hopefully the weather cooperates next weekend at the GMSC Bash in Indianapolis.

Meanwhile, special thanks goes out to Jason Fournie for giving me the new carbon fibre emblem for the front bumper. It suits the car perfectly and is a nice replacement for the cracked stock badge. Here's a few pics, in which you can also see my wife's lovely legs.

April 28th, 2005

I got the computer reprogrammed on Monday morning and she really hauls right through 1st through 3rd! I love the feeling and I love the sound! I just can't wait to get 'er to the track to see what she's capable of.

April 23rd, 2005

Well she's all back in one piece now, though a little crippled since we didn't make our deadline for being able to take the car to have the VCM reprogrammed. I'll be bringing it in on Monday now to have that done. In the meantime... she runs and looks pretty.

The whole install took around 10 hours, including a lunch break. I'm really not sure why it took so long since we didn't really run into any serious snags. We were missing a page from the manual which somehow wasn't included. It wasn't lost as the page numbers, printed front and back, went from 5 to 7. Page 6 simply wasn't there. Long since forgotten French skills came into play though as we managed to work our way through the equivilent instructions in French, which were there along with the Spanish.

Special thanks go out to Bruce, Aaron, CT, Chuck, Lisa, Khal, Ken, and to Craig without whom it would never have been finished and certainly without the little extra bit in the pics. As usual, the Precizion crew never fails to bend over backwards to lend a helping hand when a fellow member needs it!

April 22nd, 2005

Tomorrow's the big day! We're going to start the work at 9 am sharp and hopefully have it done in time to take it to the dealer to have the VCM reflashed. I'll post up plenty of pics sometime next week. Right now I'm totally stoked and probably won't get much sleep tonight.

March 31st, 2005

Yesterday my newest toy finally showed up. Now it's time to start planning the installation. I'm just itching to dig in!! Here's a really bad pic. I'll try to put a better one up later.

In the meantime, I think I might have the spring binding issues worked out with the coilover top hats. I've created some urethane pieces which insert into the strut mounts and prevent some of the movement allowed by the stock parts. It's been a long and frustrating process so hopefully this solution works in the long term. It's been in testing for more than a week now and I've just put the first prototypes into another car and it seems to be doing the trick there too. Fingers are crossed!