Final Prep for Barber

Shiny new rear rotors with "we just rebuilt these gold guys" Brembo calipers!

With just one week to go for our next track weekend, NMS tackled just a little bit of work on the 350Z. On top of the following highlights, Brian was taking the car in to a shop for a real alignment, which of course we'd recommend for any car going on track, but especially when you've replaced some front suspension parts. 

New front rotor with much larger "we just rebuilt these gold guys" calipers.

Old front upper control arms. Maybe not the hardest bit of car work, but certainly not the easiest to get these things off. 

Also a front rotor and caliper, with new brake lines too!

Why, that looks like a new upper control arm! BAM!

SPOILER ALERT: NMS Targets Trip to Barber!

Here is a great example of an old, ripped, and no-good brake caliper piston outer seal. If only there was a way to rebuild calipers!

1: It's summer, and the hair is getting long, so it's time to go to the barber. 

No, wait, that's not right. 

2: It's summer, and time to visit the summer opera Barber of Seville!

Nah, that's not right either. 

3: OK, how about this...there are several musicals and operas with barbers in them! Besides The Barber of Seville, how about Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street? Oops, wait, he's the guy that sells meat pies made out of, uh, customers. We're not going to his shop!

4: Last try! In July, NMS will be driving on track at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama! 

Yeah, that sounds right!

In this case, both drivers will be taking turns with the NMS Nissan 350Z, driving with the NASA organization, and just working on their driving skills. Sure, we'd like to be considered the top two candidates to drive for the new Cadillac Formula 1 team in 2026, but for now we're keeping our options open. Like REALLY, WIDE, WIDE, OPEN. As in "Will drive for food" open!

If you're not familiar with the track at Barber, here's a short video of the highlights from last month's Indy Car race! I'm sure we'll be going way faster than those drivers!

    INDYCAR BARBER 2025 HIGHLIGHTS

Track prep equals new rotors, brake pads and brake fluid.

One bonus of going to Barber, is that we will also visit the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum. How does the largest motorcycle museum in the world sound to you? We'll visit and give a report! You can read about the museum on their webpage: 

    BARBER MUSEUM

Got old used front brake calipers? Rebuild them with new seals.

Anyway, back to driving, one of our assumptions is that it might be a little on the warm side, driving a hot vehicle in Alabama. In the summer. On hot pavement. Wearing a helmet. With no air conditioning. You know, it sounded like a good idea to make the car lighter when I removed the AC system last summer, so hopefully we'll live! No, I'm not putting it back in either!

Rear calipers get the refresh spa treatment too!

Our plan for beating the heat is to drink plenty of refreshing water, and to fire up our NEW Cool Shirt Driver Cooling System. What is a cool shirt? Is it really a shirt? Does it really keep you cool? How many dumb questions will there be before we get an explanation on this thing? Glad you asked!

The Cool Shirt (and other brands with different names) is basically a cooler filled with ice that melts and then gets pumped through a hose into your Cool Shirt. Basically a fish aquarium pump is sending that nice frigid water to keep you cool! The Cool Shirt is basically a t-shirt you wear next to your skin (and/or under a racing suit if you're wearing one) and the shirt is covered with tubes for the cold water. I've worn it a couple times, and I can guarantee you that on a hot summer day in places like South Carolina in a hot car, it feels pretty darn good!

Bottom line on this report is that we might not be fast, but we'll be COOL BABY!

What's New in the Garage?

Who says we don't know JACK?
I bought two orange jack stands because they didn't have red to match my other two. 
Sometimes you need 4 to jack up the entire car at once!

I'd like to answer "what's new in the garage" with "a new Corvette and a real Formula 1 racecar," but I'm sticking with the truth today! Other than hitting 100 degrees outside this week (Fahrenheit that is, duh!) we've been adding some more gear in the garage that should make a lot of jobs a bit easier. Sorry, no new cars this time.

Brian bought this engine support and it made the recent 350Z work way easier than pulling the engine all the way out! 

A lot of tools come in handy very frequently, and there are other tools that are specialized for one purpose. But, when you really need that special tool, it can save you a lot of pain, anguish, and extra time. The big red engine support (above) is one of those special tools that really made our oil pan replacement job much quicker and easier! Highly recommended if you need it. 

"I am your biggest fan."
Not the biggest, not the tallest, but it is the quietest. 

Another tool, a plain old electric FAN! Like I said, 100 degrees outside tends to heat things up inside when your garage is not air conditioned. There are a bazillion brands of fans, and I went for one from Shark that I saw in a review from Car and Driver that was their quietest, only about 50 decibels. This one has a plug in cord, and once it's charged it will run cordless for a while too! On the old Home Improvement show I know Tim (Tim the Tool Man Taylor) used Binford Tools, but I haven't seen them in my local stores...Here's the Car and Driver article link:    CAR AND DRIVER FANS

Milwaukee brings the power in a small powerful 3/8 stubby impact. 

Next up, we've added to the Milwaukee power tool arsenal with a very nice 3/8 drive stubby impact. Yes, Milwaukee tools are not cheap, but this thing has some mighty power for being so small. It was a special deal on line and came with two free M12 batteries, and man, those batteries aren't cheap either! It just about jumped out of my hand on the first bolt I took off with this little devil, it was so powerful. My mistake was not checking what speed I was on, since it has 3 speeds. PRO TIP: If you're just taking off a small 10mm bolt you do NOT need to be at full power!

One more thing about power tools. There are plenty of different brands available, so you might consider just going with one, maybe two of them. Since they have lots of tools that use the same battery/charger system, by limiting your brands you can avoid needing a bunch of storage for 6 brands of batteries and 6 brands of rechargers. OK, if you have a compressor and air system, go with the air tools. If you are just getting into power tools, try the one brand method. I've ended up with Milwaukee and Ryobi, with Ryobi being cheaper, and both of them available at The Home Depot. If you're a Lowe's store fan, nothing wrong with the brands like DeWalt that they have. 

Gear Wrench long, flex-head, ratcheting set from 8-19mm. 
I don't think you can ever have too many wrenches (or too much garlic!)

Another set of wrenches got into my tool inventory too. One of my classmates had a set of these in class, and they made some of our transmission jobs a lot easier. There are several companies that make these, and I went with the Gear Wrench folks. They are available at Home Depot, and that means that I could use my military 10% discount and save a few pennies. Long, ratcheting wrenches can reach where some wrenches won't go, and of course the ratcheting feature is always nice. Similar sets are available from Icon at Harbor Freight, or Mountain on line at Amazon, and plenty of other makers. We've got Gear Wrench tools at school, and they seem to get the job done, hold up well, and cost way less than the tool-truck brands too. 

Kimi Raikkonen approved floor pad.

This week also included an upgrade to some old carpet sample squares I was standing on by the tool box, and again, I went to Harbor Freight for a $9 set of floor pads to stand on. My feet said "thank you!" already!

MATCO clip tool, in groovy purple baby, YEAH!

One last item that has come in handy is a cool purple clip remover/trim tool from MATCO. Yeah, MATCO tools cost a bit, but I tend have really bad luck with all those little clips underneath cars that hold on those under-tray panels. The clips always seem to break, get lost, and sometimes you get cars in the shop that are missing some of them anyway. This tool feels very sturdy in your hand, and I've used it on the 350Z and the Cayman and it's very handy! It's much better than just using a screwdriver. 

Motor Week: Worthy Affordable Cars!

Just in case you didn't know, there's this show called Motor Week that's been on PBS TV for over 40 years! They do a TON of new car reviews, and other car related stories every week. They just did a feature they call "10 Most Worthy Affordable Cars Under $30,000." If they did a similar story 40 years ago it would have been "Under $10,000" but here we are. Here's the link to the story and video on YouTube: 

    MOTOR WEEK LINK 

We're big fans of the greatest and most expensive cars in the world too, but let's be realistic about this. Until we hit that big lottery payday, we're more interested in the affordable range of cars and trucks! While the cost of new cars has risen to nearly $50,000 in the USA, this list looks at cars to consider under $30,000. Guess what? We own a few of them! My wife's mom owns one. We used to own another on the list. 

                      

Ford Maverick and Honda Civic
Hint: The Maverick is the truck like non-blue one.

Cars we currently have, a relative owns, or we have owned in the past that are on Motor Week's list include the Ford Maverick, Honda Civic, Chevy Equinox, and the Toyota Camry. There is no doubt that the Camry and Civic are good buys, while the new Maverick truck has only been around since the 2022 year model. Based on my almost two years of Maverick driving, and over 20,000 miles it's a winner too. The one in the story is also a hybrid, like several others in their top 10. The Maverick gets 40+mpg in the city. 

Brian's Civic joined the NMS stable just this year, and he reports that it's a big winner too. Other makes in the story include Buick, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Nissan, and Subaru. If you're in the market for an affordable yet worthy car under $30, 000, check out the Motor Trend link above for a video and story. 

NMS to Drive for Cadillac F1 Team in 2026?

Note to Cadillac F1 Team: NMS knows how to get to VICTORY LANE, and since you still need two drivers for next year...WILL DRIVE FOR FOOD!

Besides the F1 movie being released this week, the NMS World Headquarters was the scene of a chaotic press conference this morning, when NMS Media announced that the team was in discussions with Cadillac to drive their Formula 1 cars in 2026. When asked to confirm the status of these talks, the team spokesperson said, "What? I can NOT confirm or deny at this time that the new Cadillac F1 team will need TWO drivers, but I will confirm that the NMS team HAS two drivers." 

When questioned for more information on what this pile of gibberish was supposed to mean, the NMS representative said, "Look, I'll make this easy for you. Has Cadillac announced their drivers yet? No, they have not. Does that mean that the NMS drivers are in the running. Yes, that's what that means, that's what I'm saying, that until they announce someone else IS driving, then our two guys have to be considered as in the running."

At this point the room exploded with everyone trying to ask more questions and get answers, but the NMS team only pointed out the free water fountain and stale crackers for the press and left the scene. Film at 11. 

F1 The Movie!

NMS visited the Austin F1 race in 2019. 
For 2025, how about an "F1" movie!!

I bet a LOT of people haven't been to a movie theater since the old Covid pandemic of 5 years ago. Hey, I don't blame you either! However, if you're a racing fan, you might want to head to a theater near you THIS WEEK, because the F1 movie is finally here! It opens nationwide THIS WEEK! What's this movie about? Glad you asked!

The story involves an older racer played by Brad Pitt, who is invited to join the F1 team owned by Javier Bardem (the actor, he doesn't really own a team as far as I know!) The team owner wants his old friend to partner the hotshot rookie driver, played by Damson Idris. That's the outline of the plot, the old guy, the young guy, competition, fast racing cars, world-wide action, and probably even a romantic interest. 

NMS drivers at an F1 race in Austin Texas.

Oh, and of special interest is that the production was shot on location, during actual F1 weekends and races, over the past two seasons. That means that when you see "drivers" Brad Pitt and Damson Idris suited up and standing on the grid, or in a race car, they're really in a race car and on the grid, in the team garage next to real F1 teams and drivers. Oh I'm sure there will be some computer magic involved, but a lot of the film was shot during the real deal F1 events. 

From what I know, if you're a total F1 fan and know everything about the sport, you'll see some minor liberties taken with racing and the rules, but in the end, it's a MOVIE, so get over it. Don't take my word for it, check out the official F1 trailer on YouTube: 

    F! TRAILER ON YOUTUBE

Finding a Leak

The under trays are off (in front of the car) so let's lift it up and check it out. 

In the five years I've owned a 2009 Porsche Cayman, it has needed a bit of power steering fluid every 4 months or so. Until this past weekend that is, when I backed out  of the garage and left a puddle of fluid on the driveway. This was my sign to take this seriously and diagnose the exact issue. Here we go!

Up on the lift. Just a guess, but this is much easier than laying on the driveway or garage floor. 

Thanks to the Internet, Google, YouTube and other web pages, it seems that these cars tend to have power steering failures in the fluid lines where a rubber section joins a metal section. Other than that, well, the dang power steering fluid pump  might be bad. I pretty much ruled out the steering rack up by the front wheels being the source of the leak, because any fluid on the ground was towards the back of the car. With a mid engine car, that's where the fluid goes into the reservoir and that's where the power steering pump is. 

Power Steering Fluid fill is the green cap. 

So, thanks to being able to get on a lift at school, I just had to remove the under trays on the bottom of the car, and then start some serious automotive Dr. Holmes detective work to figure out where the leak might be. Right about here you should be thinking that this guy should have looked into this sometime earlier, like before the leak got really bad, but here we are!

Right behind the two seats, with the carpet and aluminum covers out of the way, IT'S AN ENGINE! On the lower left is the belt tensioner, and the big round part with three bolts goes to the power steering pump. Just checking it out for now, will probably have to remove some of this to do the work later. 

Up on the lift, off with the underneath trays, and yes, there is a rather wet looking bunch of stuff in the rear of the car! As you might guess, the leak seemed to be centered underneath the pump where the pressure line and the return line start heading for the front of the car. At this point, it could have been the hoses or the pump, let's keep looking around. 

No signs of fluid leak in the middle of the car, move on to the front and under the engine. 

Up front, the steering rack and hoses looked dry, so no leaks there. Maybe I should mention that after seeing the big leak, I went on a drive anyway, based on not hearing that fun-filled SQUEEEAAAAAK sound when the steering fluid is low, and that the steering felt fine. Oh well. Back to the rear of the car. 

Looking up at the two power steering fluid lines going into the steering rack. No signs of leaks up here!

We looked around the pump as best we could (because, mid-engine car) and did NOT see any problems around the pump. Looking down below at the hoses, well, that's where the mess was, so this pretty much means I get to replace two hoses. Two long hoses. Two long hoses that go down from the middle, turn towards the front, then take a turn or two and snake around the suspension to get up to the steering rack. in other words, it's not a straight shot, so it should be interesting to get this job done. 

High pressure and return lines, no leaks here!

The lines go up and over some of the front suspension to get to the steering rack. Dry. And dry is good!

One of my instructors Bobby Griffin came over to see how it was going, and he suggested running the engine with it up on the lift, turning the steering wheel, and having us down below looking at the suspected area, just to 100% guarantee we had the right diagnosis. GENIUS! Once we did that, BAM, a big old bunch of the green power steering fluid came out, and we found a split in the line where a rubber part connects with a metal connector. Sure enough, 100%, guaranteed, you can take that diagnosis to the bank!

Oh, we found some fluid all over the place on the lines here below the pump. Just under the red flashlight, maybe you can see the crack in the line where the rubbery part (on the right) meets a metal connector. Apparently this is a common failure point. In this case, it's a 16 year old car, so go figure. 

Coming up next, somebody better start searching that old Internet to find prices and sources on the lines I need, and then taking out the old ones and putting in the new ones. How hard could that be?????????

350Z Racecar: More Updates!

The 350Z is on the lift, the silicone gasket material is setting up, and I'm on the couch for lunch!

We last left the 350Z in the middle of a brake caliper rebuild, with the knowledge that replacing the oil pan was coming up, as well as some suspension work. A new task we added was for the Cool Shirt cooler installation too, but since that isn't required to drive the car. We'll do that later, as long as it gets installed before driving in Alabama in another month.  

In the "Good News/Bad News" department, the good part is that the oil pan replacement is very easy and straightforward, as in: drain fluid-remove pan-install new pan-add new fluid-DONE! The bad part on a 350Z is all the parts you have to take off the car FIRST just to GET TO the oil pan. With our 2 choices being to either remove the engine, or to suspend the engine, we went with suspending the engine before the mandatory "remove the sub-frame just to get to the oil pan" work. Here we go, BUCKLE UP!

Thanks to Adam Powlas for the use of his garage, lift, tools, and knowledge. He's another 350Z driver too. 

We removed the hood and the tower brace so that we could install the upper engine support. 

The red engine support uses two chains around the motor mounts below to support the engine. That allows us to raise the car and remove the subframe from underneath. Thanks to Brian Nixon for buying this new tool (at a place that rhymes with HARBOR FREIGHT) so that we didn't have to just pull the engine out!

Since we're going to remove the oil pan, let's drain the oil. 

Here we've removed the sway bar and sub-frame so that we can now remove the lower oil pan (black) and the upper oil pan (aluminum.) Also loosened to get it out of the way is the steering rack. You could just remove it, but then you'd want to drain the power steering fluid too. 

The lower black oil pan is gone, which means next you can get to the bolts to remove the upper pan, because some of the bolts holding it in are up INSIDE the oil pan. I didn't design this, so don't blame me!

A couple of cool things here. You can see the oil pickup tube hanging down, and above that is a cover under the crankshaft. If you looked real close you could see around that cover and see some of the crankshaft assembly. 

The upper oil pan now needs new gasket silicone for installation. 

Lower oil pan awaiting gasket silicone. 

Brian grabs the caulk gun and gets into action!

We let the silicone set for an hour before installing the pan back on the car. For some of us, this step is known as "lunch time."

Looks like the upper pan is in place, and on the right you can see an engine mount, with the chain wrapped above it going up to the support. 

Lower pan gets the gasket treatment. 

Both pans installed, bolts loosely attached, and then will be torqued when the silicone is set. 

Sub assembly back in place and we're getting nearly done. 

Brian reports that the next day they filled the car with oil and things were all good. Stay tuned for more fun filled race car adventures on the blog. Thanks for reading. 

June Autocross Report

I'm not sure if the Michelin Man is related to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the M&Ms, or Casper the Friendly Ghost. You never see them all together, that's for sure!

On June 8th NMS-North returned to autocross action at our favorite South Carolina location, the Michelin Proving Grounds. Mostly I just like mentioning 14 ACRES OF TOTALLY FLAT GREAT CONDITION A1 PRIME TOP RANKED ASPHALT! 

NMS #4 at Michelin. Plenty of pavement for autocross. Wait a minute, here comes the rain!

With 42 drivers entered and a mix of Porsches and non-Porsches, the weather man said that it would be on the warm side and with a chance of rain! See, the good thing about driving events in South Carolina is that you KNOW it will be hot. Compared to driving in Iraq, I can imagine it's even HOTTER and NO CHANCE OF RAIN most of the year. At least that was my experience in over a year in Iraq, but then again I wasn't there to drive cars! As it turned out, it rained when we were going to start, but it didn't last too long, we delayed the start a bit, and then we started our 10 runs for the day. 

A big thumbs up for hitting cones today!

The day followed the normal pattern, two driving sessions, and two work sessions during the day. Typically the Porsche Club manages 5 runs in the mornings, and then a lunch break and 5 more runs in the afternoon. This format works pretty well, and keeps you either driving or working during every session all day. Some other clubs with a lot more competitors may run just 4 sessions all day, where you only drive once and then work once, with two more sessions where you don't have to do anything. For what it's worth, that's one way to do it, but the last event like that I did had me drive in the 2nd session and work the 4th session, which seemed weird since I was there all day and had a lot of down time. Oh well, I've seen a lot of ways to run events, and since I'm not in charge, who am I to complain!

Here's the run group with almost all Porsches. Row 1. 
3rd car back is a Honda Civic R. 

Porsches Row 2 in grid. Order is just random, go line up somewhere!

Instead of talking about my fastest driving, let's take a look at my SLOWEST run! This is a great example of what NOT to do, because in at least 3 spots of this video I approached a corner too fast. In the first one I braked too late and sailed past an apex, and kept going. The 2nd one is about 24 seconds in, and I brake too late and go into a cone (which adds a time penalty, so this run already won't be any good.) Then at the end of a long slalom, about 37 seconds into the video, I try to super-hero my way out of the slalom without slowing, and sure enough the car spins to the left and I slide into I don't know how many cones. After stopping (tick, tick, tick the clock keeps going) I cut out a part of the course and finished the run for practice. 

TOO FAST VIDEO!

That run was a Did Not Finish, so no time given. That's a good thing, because just the cone penalties would have made it very slow. Add on the stopping time, and it was maybe the slowest "run" of the day out of all the drivers. Oh well, let's chalk that one run down to experience gained that didn't cost much!

NMS #4 heads off row 3. 

I finished all my other runs, hit another cone or two, probably won my class, but we're still waiting on official results. I had fun and will go back and do it again! Thanks for reading! 

Porsches Row 4.