Check out the awesome Christmas present I got from Christoph! It's a model of our 1990 BMW 325is, decked out in its Targa livery, from when together we won the Grand Touring category at Targa Newfoundland 2009. He had the decals reproduced from photos of the car shot by Gordon Sleigh. Photo by Gordon Sleigh. How cool is this!?! Stories and in-car videos from that 2
Forum: Community Forum

QuoteBob in EverettThat "toy" has quite a range. No wonder people are concerned about privacy issues with government owned drones. The "toy" is fairly expensive with a limited range, tiny carrying capacity, and short flight duration. It's quite noisy, and is lit up with red and green lights. There's no way it's ever going to sneak up unnoticed on anybody.
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I have a DJI Phantom. It's so stable it practically flies itself. Shot this video yesterday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBy4Yrzw4jY
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QuoteArcheo-peteriX Why do you punish yourself like that? It's like banging your head on the wall, it feels great when you stop. Most of the time it actually is a huge adrenaline rush and fun. Sometimes though it's not fun. Either way, it always beats sitting in the office. QuoteI wonder if you wouldn't have taken first place had the fire not cost you some time? We
Forum: Community Forum

Canadian Rally Championship - Rallye Baie des Chaleurs - 2WD Teaser video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn55233-5oU
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This was a very tough two-day event. It rained most of the first day. Very muddy, very slippery, and foggy later that night. The windows kept fogging up so Martin had the blower fan and heat on full blast trying to keep the windshield clear. That, combined with the usual gasoline fumes and exhaust fumes inside the car, not to mention the rough roads, soon had me feeling nauseous again. Not
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QuoteFlyboy Please can someone tell me exactly where this resistor block sits, and how does one get to it? What model year is your car? On my old '86 325 the resistor block was mounted from inside, under the dash, just above the heater valve pipes. On my '90 325i the resistor block clips in to the bottom of the blower fan, accessible through the panel at the back of engine on the fire
Forum: Technical Forum

Our stories and in-car videos of every stage are posted in the SpecialStage forum: http://www.specialstage.com/forums/showthread.php?48257 It was a very tough and challenging rally. The roads were crazy icy. We were still in pretty good shape until this monster 50 km long stage. All sorts of things went wrong for us. It took us 1 hour and 12 minutes to get through this one stage! I cut
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Highlights of the overall finishers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdsW0SkrCS0 And some 2wd love. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8wozdFxPi0
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After the huge dump of snow that we got last night, I had to get up a little earlier this morning to shovel out the driveway. Mission accomplished, and all sweaty from the hard work, I moved the car back into the newly cleaned driveway and intended to go back into the house to have a shower before heading off to the office. Except, I discovered I had locked myself out of the house! On th
Forum: Community Forum

Rather than re-post them all here, our Tall Pines stories and videos can be found in the Motorsport Club of Ottawa forum at this link: http://www.mco.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14845
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Best of the Season to you all.
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Quotealanrw I have taken one apart, it has a metal dome that makes contact with a circuit board when you press the button down. It is supposed to pop back up when released. I bet yours is permanently deformed. All the buttons on my OBC click the same way when pushed. The timer function works too. Click the 'timer' button to select that function, then the 'set' button to star
Forum: Technical Forum

Quotealanrw Ferd. are you the original owner of the car? Nope, I'm at least the 3rd owner.
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteBob in Everett suppose I could remove the two bulbs in the panel. It appears that one flashes and then the other stays on. I guess I will have to check that without the cover on it. QuoteDave_G Unfortunately you will find when you open it up that the SRS bulb is permanently soldered directly to the circuit board -- it's not removable! That got me wondering. With the airbag removed in
Forum: Technical Forum

The OBC in my previous 86 325 didn't have that "feature", but my 1990 325is has been like that since I got it. Same thing, the red LED on the timer button is always on.
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteBob in Everett Another reason to disconnect the battery is to be sure that power is not applied to the SRS system by turning on the key before the system is completely assembled. I talked to another BMW mechanic and he said that he would have not disconnected the battery either. Just would have been careful to not turn the key on until the system was reassembled. I'm not sure about th
Forum: Technical Forum

Before buying a new flasher, you'll need to pull the old one anyway so might as well open it up and take a closer look at it. It could be the relay contacts have built up a burnt layer and simply need to be cleaned up a bit. Or, it might be cracked solder joints that just need to be re-flowed. This is what my flasher relay looked like when I opened it up. The relay clicking op
Forum: Technical Forum

The Parrot AR.Drone. That does look like an affordable way to get started. And it's just strong enough to lift a GoPro camera too. Except I don't have an iPhone. I use a BlackBerry. The one used for the rally coverage is a very expensive commercial unit requiring two people to fly it -- one for flight control, the other steering the camera. But all sorts of amazing things are po
Forum: Community Forum

Here is some very cool heli-cam footage,shot from a radio-controlled octo-copter. Martin & I are at 0:52. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ii8fPTzLR0 This is what the flying camera rig looks like:
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Recap and Highlights. Stories to come... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoFBSSTGhvY
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Before opening up the airflow meter sensor, read this article. http://www.the944.com/afm.htm
Forum: Technical Forum

That is Bill Caswell's car. http://ca.jalopnik.com/5497042/how-a-500-craigslist-car-beat-400k-rally-racers http://www.mycarportal.net/2012/01/bill-caswells-rally-bmw-mechanics-by-jeremy-cliff/ More images of Bill in action: http://tinyurl.com/bcwokbv
Forum: Car Talk

"Senna" is a powerfully emotional movie. There's no denying that Senna was gifted. But I wasn't a fan. I think there was quite an anti-Prost, compared to pro-Senna, bias shown in this movie. There's very little doubt at all that Prost deliberately turned into the corner early to slam the door on Senna's banzai dive down the inside into the chicane at Suzuka in
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We just had our driveway re-paved. Guess this means it's finally time to fix the leaky rear seal on my transmission that's been dripping oil for ever in the old driveway. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO3Zct6qZJM
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On second thought, I wouldn't use the jumper on the O2 sensor heater. I was wondering, if it's powered directly from the fuel pump relay anyway, why the need for a separate relay for the O2 heater? Again, the ground end of the relay coil is routed through the Motronic Unit, so there is a logic circuit controlling when that relay closes or opens. Bypassing it with a jumper means the
Forum: Technical Forum

There ya go. Rick's idea is the best solution. Swap the O2 sensor relay in place of the fuel pump relay. The O2 sensor relay is only for pre-heating the sensor. It's not required otherwise and shouldn't affect any computer settings. But if you're worried about it, then you can use the jumper wire from pin-30 to pin-87 in the O2 relay socket instead. Pin-30 in the O2 se
Forum: Technical Forum

Unless you have leaky injectors, there's no reason you couldn't have the fuel pump running all the time. The fuel pressure regulator maintains the required pressure within the injector fuel rail, and any excess fuel is recirculated back to the tank. With the pump running full time, the fuel just goes around in a circle back to the tank. That said, it's a safety issue in that p
Forum: Technical Forum

The wheels were laying flat. I held the can mostly upright. The Wurth can just had no pressure to begin with and went flat almost immediately. With the cheap can, that I bought after, I managed 4 coats on each rim and there was still enough pressure in the can to clear the nozzle with the can held upside-down.
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The tape wouldn't stick to the rubber tires, or bend nicely in a circle, so I used overlapping one-inch strips jammed between the rim and tire bead. Once I had a complete circle around the rim, I used more tape to stick newspaper to the existing tape circle. That worked nicely to avoid getting any silver paint onto the tires themselves. But when I started spraying the paint on, I'd
Forum: Community Forum