318ti and the Seattle National Tour

Subject: 318ti and the Seattle National Tour
From: CURTIS_EAMES@domain.elided
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 96 23:55:45 -0700
Item Subject: Text_1
     John Browne wrote some great commentary about the SCCA Seattle 
     National Tour. My wife Pam and I were the drivers of the 318ti in DSL 
     and DS. Pam placed 4th out of 8 in DSL and I ended up 7th of 13 in DS. 
     I was actually only 0.09 seconds out of 5th and 0.007 seconds out of 
     6th! It's amazing how close the numbers were out of 2 days of 
     competition. I easily would have had 5th place with my last run which 
     I had improved by 0.5 seconds, but a clipped cone in the slalom 
     prevented that. At least I had the satisfaction of a raw time (if I 
     hadn't coned) on Sunday's course of 61.0 which would have been 3rd 
     fastest for the class that day and only about 0.6 behind the class 
     leader. Having a limited-slip diff would have helped alot.
     
     Pam and I both felt like we were getting a handle on the car as we are 
     new to it this year and the car is nearly bone stock. All we have done 
     is added a Supersprint exhaust and BFG R1's. We haven't even touched 
     the as delivered factory alignment yet. We do have the Schnitzer rear 
     window and deck spoilers and 17x8 Kosei street wheels for visual 
     effects. We decided to check out the car's auto-x potential before 
     adding other performance stuff. Next on the list (SCCA stock class 
     legal mods) are adding the factory limited-slip (much needed at 
     Seattle) and probably Koni shocks.
     
     John, Pam and I live in Vancouver, WA,the other Vancouver. We were 
     impressed with how "flat" PeeKay was maneuvering through the course. It 
     was great to see and hear Carl Buckland's car after reading about all 
     of his mods. I was confused about why his car was CSP and yours was ASP 
     until Jeff Reitmeir clarified that PeeKay was a Lightweight. Tunnell's 
     are always fun to watch and I spent some time talking car setup with 
     Bob. I really appreciated his helpful comments and sharing of his 
     auto-xing BMW experiences.
     
     Overall great weekend of people, cars, and driving.
     
     Curtis Eames