Friend Focus

NMS South is not the most spacious work space but we make due!

Friend of the team, Phillip was due for some work on his Focus this past week. You might remember we got this little blue car really dirty at rally cross about a year ago down in Georgia in this article.  Phillip's been a huge help in getting the Miata together over the last 2 years so I'm always glad to replay the help.

Bench pressing a small car or replacing parking brake cables. You decide.

The front driver side wheel bearing was starting to go bad, so that needed replacing.  While we were at it, there were a number of other parts that needed to be serviced.  Heck, while we've got the car in the air, let's swap out those rear drum brakes for new disc brakes and upgrade rotors, pads, and add stainless steel lines.  Ready....go:

The donor Focus ST.

Step one was to get the car up on jack stands at NMS South, remove the wheels and loosen a bunch of bolts.  From here we could remove the hubs and uprights along with the axles (new ones were being added to freshen up the CV joints). After almost 10 years of life, the Focus axles didn't want to separate from the hubs and uprights even after some really big hammers, 20 tons of force, and one really hot torch.  Junk yard road trip!

Big hammers come in handy at the junk yard.

Up in Greenville we found the Focus ST that had already donated the rear disc brakes that we were going to install on Phillip's car and now we needed it to give us it's front uprights.  Enter more hammers and two hours of wrenching.

The "new" uprights. These connect up all of the suspension components and hold the wheel bearings and hub.

Once back to Columbia, we cleaned up the parts and got back to reassembly of the front suspension. One thing Phillip and I absolutely agree on is that rear wheel drive cars are much easier. The new slotted rotors look great and with the Porterfield brake pads, this blue oval should be stopping on a silver circle.

Old and busted. The drum brakes are ready for scrap.

The rear drum conversion was relatively simple.  Remove the brake lines, four bolts remove the drum brakes, add a bracket to hold the caliper, mount the rotor, add the caliper, re-attach brake lines.  We noticed the drum brakes weren't adjusted properly and were wearing unevenly, so the increase in performance with this upgrade should be significant. The discs should provide a slight increase in braking capability, better heat resistance and are much easier to service.

New hotness. 

Independence from Boring Magazines!

 Happy Independence Day USA from  NMS! Today we're celebrating all things American, which means baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet according to the Chevrolet people! Besides talking about cars, taking photos of cars, and driving cars, NMS sometimes just watches videos of cars or reads about cars. Today is one of those days, so here's a quick look at some of the car magazines cluttering up the NMS garage right now. 

Grassroots Motorsports is one of our favorites, always chock-full of autocross, track, tire reviews, car builds, etc. If it rolls on wheels, it's in Grassroots!

Via Corsa is the newest magazine, and it is quickly becoming a favorite. Their focus is not only on cars, but on the places you can go with your car. This cover story about taking delivery of a BMW at the BMW Welt (World) in Munich sounds like just the thing I'd love to do some day. 

Motor Trend is just about as all-American as it gets. The cover story kind of tells you that, this time they review the latest 4 cylinder Camaro VS. 4 cylinder Mustang. You can count on lots of new car reviews and news of cars coming in the future. They tend to repeat the Camaro/Mustang or BMW/EveryoneElse type of story, but it's a great story!

Automobile is amazingly similar to Motor Trend, it's published by the same folks and hits my mailbox on the same day every month too! Kind of gives me at least one day of the month to look forward to the mail! The 25 new models article was nice!

From the Hemmings folks that publish several other magazines, Sports and Exotics sticks with the cool older cars, as you can see with this cover story on the BMW 2002 and Alfa Romeo GTV. 

F1 Racing is a British magazine, so to me that means that the words are in English and not American! Seriously, very little problem with translating, and each issue has plenty of F1 racing news. The only complaint I have is that since it's printed overseas, they must deliver it to the US on a very slow moving ship, since the latest issue at book stores is typically a month late. Still, the best F1 magazine I've found in the US, so fun to read. 

4th of July Weekend Racing Roundup

On Sunday July 3rd the Formula 1 racing season continues from Austria, home of "The Sound of Music", so I'm sure the hills there will be alive with the sound of 22 cars racing around the Spielberg circuit. For more info on this event, we recommend reading the Haas F1 team website at this link: Haas F1  Just in case you've lost track, we're still rooting for the American F1 team of Haas, and you will be able to watch the race at 8am Eastern time Sunday morning on CNBC TV.

Closer to home, the NASCAR Sprint Cup returns to Daytona on Saturday July 2nd, with the Coca-Cola 400 starting at 7:45pm on NBCSN TV. You can check out the entire season's schedule at this website: NASCAR SCHEDULE

Even closer to home (for NMS anyway) than that, the Red Bull Global RallyCross is racing in North Carolina this weekend, with races both Saturday and Sunday, 5pm on NBC both days.  You can find out all about that here: Red Bull GRC Schedule   If that's not enough crazy action from 600hp small cars on dirt, then just wait for the end of July when they'll be racing up at Washington DC!

If you are an Indycar fan, and enjoyed last weekend's road course at Road America in Wisconsin, I'm sorry but they aren't racing this weekend. You'll just have to wait for next weekend when Indycar returns on Saturday July 10th in Iowa, 5pm on NBCSN TV: Indycar Schedule

One last tip, check out the TV listings on line from Racer magazine at this link: Racer TV  In addition to F1, NASCAR, Indycar, and RB GRC listed above, you'll also find information on the Formula E race, Trans Am, and other race series too.

Here at NMS, we're powering down a bit this weekend also, so no autocross events this weekend, and then we'll be back in action soon with events in South Carolina, Virginia, and in the next few days we'll be announcing a new venue for Rally Cross in Midway SC, so that will be fun to go auto crossing on dirt!