Desire thinks she is a pioneer pony express of late.


Desire said she like the scenery



and she was eager to risk death and destruction driving on country road without lane marking



she has been working extra diligently as she is sick and tired of sleeping in the driveway



she is dreaming of a new home with a view

 

Reminds me of the words in a Who song... I can see for miles and miles and miles and miiiiiillllllleeesss.... Oh Ya....

 

You might start looking over here in Eastern Wa where the sun shines and the miles and miles of country roads are pretty empty and great for bikes and sports cars.

 

Trust me. I have been entertaining the whole of Washington along the Columbia River, including Spokane. Spokane is a nice city but just too cold and far from the tracks that I'd like to drive. Our mutual friend is in Spokane and he travels far to get to ORP. I am sure he know you and your Mini's.

 

Easily one of most favorite threads on NAM...Thanks for keeping us all in the loop with your adventures !


.

 

Thanks.

Our intense property hunting in recent weeks has found a few prospects that we have seriously considering acquiring. We almost submitted one offer only to decide we were making too many compromises with respect to our checklist must haves. We pulled out of that one before we sign the agreement. We are now looking at this wooded property with more land that we would ever want, and we are moving forward with the purchase.


Desire like the super sized parking in small towns



the deers were checking out the stranger from the city that is Desire



we tested out the well to be sure there is plenty of water to wash Desire's dirty butt

 

We would not expecting or thinking far ahead that with a big acreage the equipment that would be required to maintain it. Desire is thrill to meet her stall mate for slumber parties.



And the garage has 10 feet ceiling for a decent two-pole lift.

 

And I see a snow blower and snow plow...
Did you ask if those get used a lot?

Those trees look like they are spaced well enough to set up some nice dirt track rally courses...

 

You are very observant. Indeed there is a very lightly used snow blower in addition to the snow plow attachment for the Kubota. I agree to purchase the entire Kubota bundle which include many accessory attachments implements that are not in the photo. Essentially we are taking over the management of said ranch and many pieces of "farm equipment" with a bundled price that I cannot refuse. Desire would no doubt have a seat on the managing board of directors. I am looking forward to play with the Kubota.

From what I was told they don't get that much snow, unlike your neck of woods, except occasional snow storms that can dump a couple of feet may be once or twice a year.

Probably not a dirt track rally course for cars unless they are Kei. I think inevitably I will get a trail bike and learn the trail riding skills. I didn't want to buy his Honda ATV as it has eons of hours on it. I looked at a couple of horse ranches and they are more conducive for building a dirt track on. Desire would likely wrap around one of the trees with one on this lot.

 

Yes, we get a bit of snow here and more in the lands around and to the west of us. That looks to be a nice find, with tractor included, no less.

 

Thank you so much for this entire thread. Love the build.

I do have a question, do you use locktite on the rotor/hat bolts or just safety wire. I have a Wilwood kit just waiting to be installed and I am not liking the idea of the red loctite. First track day is 6/25 at PIR so taking my time on my install.

Scott

 

I used locktite you can safety wire too, I use the red permanent stuff, it wont back out and I can still impact them off and can change one trackside if I have to

I only get 6 trackdays out of my rotors, safety wire would be a lot of work!

 

I used red locktite and it works well that I see no reason to go to safety wires. I have changed rotors once and know they didn't work loose. Congratulation on your first track day. I buy my track days 10 at a time. It is like bulk purchase of amusement park fun ride tickets.

 

I used to locktite mine. The red (permanent stuff) should be heated to something like 600 deg to loosen it. I carry a small Butane torch to do this so I could take them apart in the field. Then I switched to Grade 8 bolts after the heads from 3 of the Torx bolts provided by Wilwood broke off during use. Then I quit using locktite. I just torque them to the Wilwood spec (25 - 30 ft-lbs, if I remember correctly) and check them every once and a while... Have not had any one of the bolts loosen during use after doing this for several years now. Ok, not saying anyone else should do this...

 

my rotors get over 600 degrees as indicated via heat sensitive color changing paint, all I've needed to do is impact them to get them off.

Interesting you dont use any, I've had a wheel stud loosen up and those are similar torque but they are messed with all the time

 

The rotors where the pads are located will get to well over 600 deg. However, I think you will find that the rotor area next to the hat and the hat itself where the bolts are stays less than 600. I usually find the blue line on the rotors from the rotor face heat is further out than that area. That is what I am using for that judgement. The blue occurs around that temperature or a little above if I remember right. Either way, I have found that the locktite was still pretty tenacious without the torch heat. Although, this was disassembly with hand tools; I never did try an impact wrench.

I can believe that wheel studs could come loose over time, given the beating they take. I think that changing to a real bolts helps with them staying tight on the rotors. Not sure why Wilwood went to the Torx bolts, except that they limit the amount of torque you can put on them. I once mistakenly over torqued them and bent the Torx wrench...

 

Not my first track day by any means.......
Just finally upgraded the brakes on my 04 MCS.
My concern is having to torch off the bolts when changing rotor rings. But I do like the idea of upgrading the bolts.

Thanks

 

I figured it would be the same as it's not a big area, I'll paint it to check

 

I figured you must have meant first day of the year.

I am aware of the temperature limitation of the red locktite. I know I more than pushing the thermal limit of the rotor rings. However I suspect the locktite see significantly lower temperature due to the limited thermal conductivity of the rotor mounting tabs and that the rotor hat is aluminium which further mitigates the temperature seen by the fasteners and the thread locker.

 

Meanwhile back in the ranch we are preparing for the new season. There is a bullload of things to take care off, and one major task is to install paint protection film onto the Exige. The deadbeat dealer quoted me an ungodly sum for the job. I had them give me the quote because I was unable to find one online. Fortunately from my experience with installing one on the GT4 I knew most likely if I just ask the same vendor they should be able to locate a cutting pattern for it, despite there are only 16 of this model year in North America.

She found me this pattern a while back before I took possession of the car. The price of the complete kit was reasonable but I found the cut suboptimal. I let it simmer while waiting for the car to arrive.



this is the first pattern that my supplier found


Now that I have the car I am ready to order the kit. I thought I will ask one more time if she can do another search. Sure enough she found 2 more. One challenge of locating the right pattern is this specific car is named differently here in North America versus Europe, or the rest of the world. It takes some informed inference to determine if a cut pattern is the right one or not. I have a good idea that anything for the Exige III spanning 2013 to 2016 should work.

Of the two new patterns they found they presented this additional pattern as the second option. Clearly for me the second pattern is more refined, except it might be more difficult to install. I went ahead of order the second pattern.

this is the second pattern the supplier found upon my question if there is a better pattern over the first one

 

I bought grade 8 bolts from Fastenal. They carry uncoated bolts, which is what I wanted for track use and for use with the locktite. In my job in my former life I got to see the problems with coatings coming loose and jamming up the threads when trying to loosen a bolt. I figured with the locktite on there, it might actually pull the coating off a bolt to help jam things up. I really don’t have any solid facts on all of this, but sometimes less is better and, for the track, a coating isn’t necessary. That said, I also used to drive the MINI in the winter and I would change out the rotors and bolts to a winter/salt set. The bolts for that were yellow zinc coated bolts from Fastenal.

This is something I would really like to hear about, as my comment above was somewhat of a speculation...

Oh, would you let us know what size wheels you are using when you do the paint check? I found my brakes run hotter with the 15” vs 17” wheels. So, knowing that would help with the understanding of what is going on there.

 

You really are a glutton for punishment! I know you have done this before, but this looks even more complicated. Kudos to you for doing this a second time...

 

I might have gone with this:
https://www.dipyourcar.com/collections/vehicle-kits/products/nebula-yellow-car-kit?variant=43041365839

 

or this other alternative for your track car protection. gets expensive if you wrap and unwrap it after one or a few track days though.

https://www.xpel.com/shop/paint-prot...-film/tracwrap

 

I had forgotten about that one. I know someone who does that with his Corvette. He just does the front and somewhere on the sides. Only takes him a few minutes each event. His car still is looking good after a number of years of doing this. His car is yellow, like your Lotus. I know of another guy with a Porsche GT3 RSR who had it wrapped - flat pumpkin orange... I can see that coming in my rear view mirror a 1/4 mile away...