heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[Obioban]

Trade off with the front handle is you lose the ability to mount a fire extinguisher under the front of the seat-- if you care.

[Bry5on]

We gonna walk down to .. electric avenue .. and then we’ll make you sliders.

I’m just here waiting for Heinz to come around

[George Hill]

Any body got a set of manual sliders to weight? I can weight some electric ones for comparison.

[Bry5on]

It’s literally the location where weight matters the least too. I’m betting less than half a pound difference.

</peer pressure>

[George Hill]

Instead of the channel locks, use a ratcheting 8mm box end wrench on the allen socket. ***I assume its an 8mm, if its 7mm, then switch to 7mm wrench, etc

It’s literally the location where weight matters the least too. I’m betting less than half a pound difference.

Agreed, would be nice to have the actual data too.

[Obioban]

The real cost of power is speed of back seat access.

[heinzboehmer]

I'm pretty sure I can package a fire extinguisher and the slider handle, there's a ton it space under there. I'll mess around with the CAD later to make sure.

And I'm immune to your peer pressure, Bryson. It really is just a preference thing, I like having the manual sliders. E82 has manual seats too and I've had no desire to change that.

One bonus that comes from being stubborn is that if I can package everything for the manual sliders, it should work for the electric ones as well.

[dhoke1]

Really nice work

[Obioban]

I'm pretty sure I can package a fire extinguisher and the slider handle, there's a ton it space under there. I'll mess around with the CAD later to make sure.

I don't know how standard the bottle size is, but mine is basically the exact same length as the space between the slides.

[Obioban]

... iphone really exposed for the wrong area of that picture, but the statement stands :P

[heinzboehmer]

I don't know how standard the bottle size is, but mine is basically the exact same length as the space between the slides.

Hmmmm, I think I can still squeeze a handle in there. Keep in mind the handle is going to be made out of bent sheet metal, so I really only need a space that's ~5mm wide for it to sneak through.

Might look at different fire extinguisher sizes to make my life easy though.

[heinzboehmer]

No seat updates, been busy with life, but I did manage to squeeze a track day in yesterday.

Drove the new Thunderhill surface and it was a blast. Almost entirely the same, but some corners are different enough that the old lines no longer worked. Nice way to keep things interesting.

Was also kinda hot and it was super nice to have a digital readout of coolant temp in the gauge cluster. Glad I spent the time developing that feature.

I did quickly realize that, even though I previously discovered that you could display up to three sig figs in the low OBC by overflowing the BCD nibbles, I never implemented the functionality. All displayed values were being capped to two sig figs (which is technically how BMW intended this to be used, but that's no fun).

This two sig fig limitation meant that all coolant temps between 100 and 149 C would display as 100 C. Not a huge deal since I could always look at Gauge.S for the more precise value if I saw 100 on the low OBC, but definitely annoying. Fix was easy, though:



Tested it by sweeping through numbers on Gauge.S, but I think I'm going to need to do some more validation before I fully trust this. Not because I think the logic is incorrect, but moreso because I fooled myself once already . I tend to start shifting at 6k when I see coolant temp reach 100 C, so want to make sure this is fully accurate.

Repo updated and all that in case anyone is following along at home.

[heinzboehmer]

Oh! I forgot to talk about tires!

Had a brand new set of RE-71RZs on there and they are sooo good. Everything I liked about a new (note that "new" is load bearing in this argument) set of the old RSs, but they actually last!

Ended up doing a total of 2 hours on track and they still look and drive brand new. They survived 30 min sessions in the high 80s without any issues.

It's hard to comment on how fast they are, since the track surface was also new, but they absolutely felt fast. Going to Laguna in a month or so, which should be a much better comparison.

[Obioban]

Interesting.

I've been sticking with the NT01s entirely because they last and last and last and last, but... at this point, I'm pretty sure they're over a decade old technology.

[heinzboehmer]

Interesting.

I've been sticking with the NT01s entirely because they last and last and last and last, but... at this point, I'm pretty sure they're over a decade old technology.

Keep in mind I've only used them for one track day, but I think they're worth checking out. Looks like they're a bit cheaper than the NT01s too, which is kinda surprising.

The previous RE-71RSs were fast, but they didn't last long at all. The middle tread section wore like crazy and the rest of the tire fell off and lost grip after about 15 min on track.

I'm curious to see if this pattern reemerges as the tires go through more heat cycles. So far so good though.