Whether it’s your first season on the track or you are a seasoned track veteran our 2022 DE Schedule is ready and we hope to see you there!
If you are a first timer or want a refresher, we suggest your attending Ground School :
General Info and DE Days are found here:
2022 DE General Info and Updates
For more info and questions please contact: Stan Corbett, NER Track Chair at [email protected]
I first started driving when I was 13, traveling cross country in my mother’s most disliked car ever: a flat 6-cylinder, rear engine Corvair station wagon. We were on a two-lane road in Nevada heading home to Colorado and my mom was bored with driving in an endless straight line, so she pulled over and told me to drive. Seemed logical to me. It was an exciting experience, especially with semi-trucks passing in the opposite direction at 60+ miles per hour and only a few feet away. All I remember her saying was “go faster, faster, faster.”
Living in western Colorado, I could get my first driver’s license at age 14, but it was limited to operating a motorcycle. I figured this was to benefit parents by eliminating the need to chauffeur kids over long distances, but what a gift to us! It gave us independence, freedom, and adventure! Needless to say, every boy who could got a motorcycle; the local pack of 14- to 16-year-old motorcyclists experienced a great deal of excitement, including many crashes. Our house was at the end of a paved road going out of Grand Junction which turned into a Jeep trail across the desert leading to the then remote, rugged Book Cliffs. Having motorcycles allowed us to spend a lot of time exploring the wilderness and doing what we wanted without parental oversight.
On my 16th birthday I went to the police department to take the automobile driver’s test. My birthday was in early January during a blizzard, but I was determined to get my second license for driving cars legally as soon as possible. I was driving my mother’s beloved Triumph TR-3, which was an especially rare vehicle in western Colorado. The policeman who joined me in the car had seen it, loved the way it looked, and was thrilled to ride in it. He was so thrilled that he made me drive for an hour and a half, on both town and rural roads, through the snow, on standard street tires that didn’t have much traction.
When he finally returned to the police station, he told me a required part of the test was to parallel park in front of the station. I pointed out that a snowplow had created a large berm along the parking spaces; nevertheless, I was directed to parallel park. The policeman cheerfully completed the paperwork and handed me my driving permit. He then tried to open the little passenger door to get out, but found it pressed against the snow so he asked me to pull out of the parking space so he could get out. Of course, the car was stuck, and the tires would only spin. He then had to slide open the little plastic side curtain and yell to a couple of cops that were exiting the police station to push us out of the parking space, which they did. They then gave my testing officer a lot of light-hearted grief and laughed as they told me to drive home as fast as I could before the snow got even deeper!
TR-3 note: It was my mother’s daily driver to carry my two younger brothers and me. As the oldest son, I got the passenger seat and my two younger brothers sat on top of the fuel tank behind the seats. My mother drove up to 6 passengers in the little car (2 in the passenger seat, 2 on the fuel tank behind the seats, and 2 sitting on the trunk), and did get stopped by the police. But when they saw it was not a teenager driving, they let her continue!
-Jeff Johnson
Most of my teen years were spent in Tanzania from 1963 to 1966, from age 14 to 18. As with all teens, these were transformational years for me, and what a great place to spend them. Tanzania had just gained independence. Actually, it was Tanganyika when we moved there; Zanzibar rebelled against their Arab rulers in 1964 and subsequently merged with Tanganyika and was renamed Tanzania.
My family moved there from Denmark because my father had taken a job with the Danish foreign aid agency, which was building a high school in Kibaha, about 25 miles from the capital, Dar-es-Salaam, in cooperation with Sweden, Norway, and Finland. The first year we lived in the Central Highlands in Iringa at a boarding school built by the British, called St. Michael’s and St. George’s School when we arrived, but quickly renamed Mkwawa High School after a chief who in the very late 1800s rebelled against their German colonialists. The rebellion failed, mainly because the magic potion, water, failed to protect the warriors against German bullets, and poor Mkwawa’s skull was kept in Berlin until it very recently was returned to his homeland. The school entirely transformed over the next two years from being extremely British: almost exclusively white students and teachers, and teachers wearing gowns and mortarboards daily, to still an almost exclusively white teacher body, but the student body being almost exclusively native Tanzanian.
At the end of the first two years, the rest of my family moved to Kibaha, 300 miles away. But I stayed on for a term as a boarder because the Scandinavian-built school in Kibaha wasn’t ready to accept students. Kids either really enjoy boarding school or hate it. I loved it. My younger brother went to a different boarding school in Nairobi, Kenya, and hated it. The only thing I wasn’t happy with was that as a white person and the son of a former teacher, the staff went to great lengths to not show any favoritism towards me, on the contrary.
Well, I digress and better start writing about cars. While I was a boarder in Iringa, I turned 16, the age at which I could get my driver’s license. I was able to talk the headmaster’s wife into letting me drive her car, a VW Beetle, around the school grounds, with a big L sign on it. After a couple of weeks, my birthday came up, and since I was now confident in my driving skills, all done at 20 to 30 MPH, to make an appointment for my driving test on my actual birthday. For some reason, the headmaster’s wife’s Beetle wasn’t available, so I had to borrow another teacher’s car, fortunately also a Beetle. Driving tests were conducted by the police, and after I paid the fee, 5 shillings, approximately 80 cents in the US, a cop joined me in the passenger seat, had me drive around the block, and then parallel park. I passed!
To my surprise, the paperwork given to me authorized me to operate any land-based vehicle with wheels, including motorcycles, cars, trucks, and buses. I chose to have the actual license issued for motorcycles and cars. Much to my later regret, but because the truck and bus license required a picture, which I didn’t have. I could, however, use the original paperwork to upgrade my license later, which I didn’t, to my even greater regret.
My parents were blissfully unaware of my shenanigans, and when the term ended and I rejoined my family in Kibaha, I showed my license to them and asked if I could borrow the family car. To my huge surprise, my dad pulled out the keys, handed them to me, and said, “here!”
That 80 cent license got me a Danish driver’s license for almost nothing, and that, in turn, got me a US driver’s license for almost nothing! I did, however, have to take the written test, which the Danes hadn’t required.
The pictures are of my family taking a lunch break under a Baobab tree on one of our many vacation trips (I am the tallest kid), and of the lowest grade of road that we encountered!
I challenge all of you to write a better story about getting your driver’s license. To accept the challenge, write it up in a Word document and send it to [email protected]!
-Anker Berg Sonne
With the Mustang a no-go for the series we want to race in (American Endurance Racing and Champ Car), the Jamaican Bakin’ team bought an E36 BMW M3 race car as a replacement. The car was a successful BMW Club racer that was built out with the correct aftermarket parts. We took it out to the last Thompson member day for a trial, and it worked great – easy to drive, ran fine, good to go, nothing needed before next season, right? Well, no. Of course, there are a few things that need to be done – perhaps a day or two of work?
Let’s start with the obvious. To run successfully, we need to be able to go 90 minutes between stops. The stock fuel tank holds 17 gallons (perhaps 16 useful before it starves on corners) – not quite enough. So a pony tank will need to be installed in the spare tire wheel well. With a fuel pump to pump from the pony to the stock tank. With wiring, switches, etc. And while we are at it, we might as well replace the fuel lines, just to be safe. But with a pony tank in the trunk area, we now need to fabricate a firewall to separate that from the driver compartment.
We also need to move over the endurance racing stuff from the Mustang to the new ride. The cool-suit system and the telemetry system (don’t forget the antenna mounting) require some brackets to be fabricated and a fuse box added to deal with the additional electrical demands. Oh, and since we are messing with wires, we might as well take out some of the unnecessary original wiring and clean that up. Oh, and don’t forget the rain light (noting that AER mandates one type and Champ Car requires a different one.) Or the flagging system device and its wiring.
We were all reasonably comfortable doing short stints when we had the car at Thompson, but for long stints, the seating position wasn’t great for all of us. So we need a new seat which will require fabricating new brackets for the slider and the back brace. (Poor Chip is the one with the machine shop and thus gets more than his share of assignments.) And the steering wheel angle and location suited the previous owner but not us, so a little work to move the wheel down and away from the driver. Piece of cake! Plus, the mirror is too far back and needs to be moved.
The belts that came with the car are OK and have another year left, but the ones in the Mustang are better, so let’s swap those out. And, yes, there is a center net, but we don’t like the way it is fastened, so that will require some work. And the door net is a bit weird, so it will require some attention. While we are at it, for safety sake, let’s replace the original interior door handles with cables that are easier to find and pull in an emergency. Finally, on the safety side, the fire system is out of date and needs to be refreshed.
Oh, yeah. As an endurance car, we need to add a differential cooler (which needs to be powered plus a temperature sensor added – see wiring comments above), and it needs a NACA duct to draw in air. The easy solution is to replace the rear windows with Lexan and put in the duct – it lightens the car too! – and we need another duct to bring in cool air for the cool system anyway! And don’t forget that we need to do something to defrost the windshield since we might be doing long stints in bad weather.
While the car came to us as described, there were a couple of small problems. There was a crack in the windshield and a battery tie-down that would not get past an AER tech (but apparently got past BMW club racing). But, hey, we need a lighter battery anyway, so Chip has one more thing to fabricate. And there is a slight tear in the left ball joint boot. Now that we think about that, maybe there is a suspension upgrade that would require new front control arms anyway – we’ll look into that. And the clutch works fine but takes up very close to the floor. It would be more aesthetic with a higher catch point. And anyway, we should flush the system. Never mind, let’s just preemptively replace the clutch slave cylinder – it’s probably pretty old.
Let’s move on to the wear parts that could fail. Might as well do those now rather than just stockpile parts and wait for something bad to happen at a race! (Since I’m a lousy wrench, I get assigned to source the parts – made harder by my lack of knowledge, age of the car, and uncertainty of which are stock and which race aftermarket.) I’m looking at your bearings and half shafts! And perhaps the solid motor and transmission mounts are too stiff for the wear and tear of endurance racing? Let’s research and debate whether to go with OEM or poly. OK, poly it is.
OK, now we are almost ready to go racing. My final job (note the skill involved) is to remove the old number panels, work hours with acetone to get all the glue off, and then put on the shiny new “420” number panels and Jamaican Bakin’ Racing decals. Vroom. Vroom. Let’s hope we are ready.
P.S. One nice benefit of working on the E36 is that we have been reaching out to old NER friend Mark Schnoerr for advice. He and Sigrid send their regards from Texas.
-Bill Seymour