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 in up are 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. 

Road Trip!

A road trip is all about what you do when you get there!

Like eating BBQ at Rays in Grayling Michigan!

School is out, I'm still retired, so we hit the road!

We drove a lot of miles from home in South Carolina to visit relatives in Michigan, then down to Cincinnati for a family graduation (and some Reds baseball!), and then back home. All in all, we had no car issues, and the 2023 Honda Accord Hybrid cranked out the miles and still got over 40mpg over hill and dale!

Along the way we drove over this cool covered bridge in Ohio. 

Sure, we had to buy gas. $3.99 in Michigan for regular. 

Trip wise, we enjoyed seeing lots of family, enjoyed some great food (yes, Skyline Chili on two occasions) and had fun seeing plenty of countryside. Oh, the baseball game included the Reds winning over the Guardians in the Battle for Ohio. One of my theories that no matter how many ball games you've seen, you generally see something new at each one. In this case, we saw two different runners get picked off of 2nd base, one for each team. This might be one of the rarest plays in baseball, I really don't know for sure, but to have it happen twice was crazy. Base running mistakes like this seem pretty dang embarrassing for professionals, but I guess it happens. 

Along the way we visited two different Buc-ee's stores, so that was crazy too. Nothing like 120 gas pumps and a ridiculous number of snacks and etc. in the store. We probably don't need to go back anytime soon. 

Pictures or it didn't happen. I think this is the one east of Knoxville on I-40. Earlier the same day we visited a Buc-ee's in Kentucky on I-77. 

Without boring you to death with the actual driving details, let's just say that there's still a lot of drivers out there that get a grade of "Needs Improvement" from me. Here's a few tips: 

Julie and I with our nephew Joel Nixon. 2LT Nixon is the one in the middle. 

1: OK, cool, you have a newer car with Daytime Running Lights. Yippee for you! Did you know that a lot of these systems ONLY run the front headlights? What I'm getting at is that as you're driving around with your DRL's on, if it's getting dark, or if it's night, or if you go into a tunnel like in West Virginia or North Carolina, or if it's raining cats and dogs, I CAN'T SEE YOU FROM BEHIND BECAUSE YOUR TAILLIGHTS ARE NOT ON! Please turn your lights on. 

Reds baseball behind 1st base. The Reds defeated the Guardians. 

2: Didja know that your car has turn signals? Didja know that you could use them to indicate a FUTURE lane change?  Based on my analysis of this issue, using your turn signals will COMMUNICATE to other drivers what you're about to do, and makes us all safer! Use your turn signals every time. 

Here we're entering the fun part of I-40 between Knoxville and Asheville NC. This was our first time since the hurricane last fall sent chunks of the Interstate into the Pigeon river and closed the road for months. Currently this stretch of I-40 is open, with one lane in each direction. It's a huge reconstruction job going on that will last a while. 

3: From my ancient driver's education training in high school (and yeah that was a LONG time ago, in the last century!) you should LOOK OUT FOR THE OTHER GUY! This lesson comes to mind thanks to a clueless SUV driver on the Interstate that jumped into my lane really close in front of me just in time for them to BRAKE HARD to avoid hitting the huge semi truck directly in front of me. I'm not sure what this person was doing, but it appeared that my existence and the existence of the 18-wheeler was unknown to them. Look out for the other guy. 

When in Asheville NC, we recommend the Sierra Nevada brewing company taproom. Great food, and as you might imagine, all their beers are nice, but don't drink and drive. 

I'd like to think that someday everyone will be a good driver on the road, so let's just shoot for these top 3 tips. Have a great day, let's be careful out there, and LOOK OUT FOR THE OTHER GUY!