Add less to make it more.

Now that the car can move under its own power and I have had some time to explore it I have realized a few things.

 Weight. 

 This car is much heavier than needs be - take the sound deadening. By spending an afternoon removing everything behind the driver (it is surprisingly intuitive to remove parts from the inside of this car) I was able to shed 151 lbs. This was enough to bring the car until 3000 lbs weight as measured by a truck scale (same scaled was used before/after) 

 The biggest shock however was the sound deadening. 60 lbs! It took two garbage bags to contain it all, and I didn't even take out the tar paper like stuff that is glued down! This was just removable mats! 

 Grip.

  It has it.  This car is capable of holding on far past where I can. I desperately need a seat and a proper belt because as it is I am pressed against the door on right turns, and I can't even take lefts violently because I'll end up half wedged between the two seats. The Ventus RS-3 tires are mind-bogglingly good for the price, and have ever been wearing very well. I am shocked these are not an R-Compound tire. They don't have the most solid turn in response but I suspect that is more related to mounting these "225" (they're actually much larger) sections on a 7 inch wide wheel, and having them round the edges a bit. If I could put these on a 9 Inch wheel I suspect the car would feel many times better on turn in. 

 Automatics suck.

 I can't take this automatic shit. How do people do this? I am getting more anxious for those manual parts to materialize. I finally found a source for some of them, so hopefully it happens soon!

 Depreciation is the friend of the working class racer

 This car sold for 31,327$ (US) when new, in 1992. With inflation that is just under 49,000$ for this car.

 I bought it for less than the tax that was paid when it was new.

  Reliability

 I spend most of my time pushing this cars limits. So far, all it has done is suggested gently that I replace a few light bulbs and perhaps figure out why it's a bit rich sometimes. 

 

Dave coleman was right

 I'll be blunt here:
 I like things that don't belong.
I like cars that are here because for one shining moment, a car company had some sort of frenzy wash over them and cause them to spit out a car that no one really needs. Cars like the Mazda 323 GTX. Who really needed an AWD, Turbo 1.8L Mazda GLC? nobody did. What about the turbo celica? Yes, the 5th generation Celica certainly needed an infusion of engine to compliment the styling and sporting pretention, but why turn it into a leather clad luxury cruiser that was so heavy it almost landed right back where it started before the steroids? Passion, thats why. They wanted to go racing. They wanted to win hearts and minds. They wanted to sell cars to people that want to slide them into a bush at 3 am on a backroad, push it out of the ditch and then do it again.

  I like cars that shouldn't exist and were made for idiots with bad ideas about how to spend their free time.

   I can promise you without even gracing the google with a search to make sure this prediction is right that if you go to the first big Mazda GTX/Celica All-trac/Etc forum you can find, you will end up with a die hard group of suckers passionate hobbyists trying to develop go fast parts out of someones garage and a history of "mass produced" parts that started as a budget experiment 5 years ago. Even with the DSM world, where there is a nice mix of professional and backyard parts developers there is always a sense that the parts exist a bit more for passion than they do for business.

Do you think these guys thought "Hey Walt, lets build a Mazda 323 world record speed car, we can get the parts from pep boys!"

So I hope all that helps explain my next statement.

    BMW owners are getting fucked.

So are Audi, Porsche, Lexus, Infinity, Mercedes, Jaguar and every other "up scale" brand owner.
It has been extremely annoying getting into the "BMW world" because for the first time I'm dealing with a car where there is a clear and solid curtain drawn between the owners/enthusiasts and the hard working souls that make the parts that make the car better, faster, stronger and more enjoyable. With my previous cars, they were either so obscure (What do you mean a "turbo AWD" celica?) or so budget minded (New DSM Turbo; 400$!)  that most of the solutions for go-fast fun started right in the communities because they had to. No company looked at the masses of Celica All-tracs being sold (all 5000 of them...) and thought "Someone needs to engineer an exhaust system that will last for 20 years, be quieter than stock and not rattle to much at idle!". No, rather they looked right past the cars that didn't quite belong.  So when you did buy an upgrade you understood what makes it superior and why it exists; you know the reason it is better than the original design and why its worth your hard earned dollars.

 In the BMW world, for better or for worse, there are professionals with giant warehouses and millions of dollars worth of stock. Businesses that have been around for enough time that they aren't really expected to justify anything, be it cost or design choices, and for the most part this is probably a good thing because they actually know what they are doing. I'm used to going to one vendor for suspension, one for clutches, one for engine parts, and for everything else buying universal performance parts and hoping they fit (or making them)

 Now however I could literally turn my car into a competition club racer with one phone call to Turner Motorsports and a huge amount of lucre leaving my pocketbook.

 This leads me to the biggest thing that is starting to get to me. BMW parts really are more expensive for no tangible reason. Some of them I can understand. I know BMW builds some of the worlds finest engines so naturally I would expect that replacement parts specifically for the engine internals would have to maintain this high level of quality, which means expense. That's fine. The fact is, replacement parts from the manufacturer or the high quality aftermarket vendors are actually quite reasonable. Yes they are a bit more, but the quality of these parts actually seems to go up in proportion to the value, so my complaint is not with "BMW parts"
In fact, I can even understand why suspension components are a bit more money because it isn't an easy feat to improve on a car that starts life with world-destroying handling as a design goal.

BMW Upgraded parts: Forged from pure Ridiculouslyexpensivium

   No dear reader what pisses me off to no end is why on EARTH a clutch for my 450 HP 4g63-powered AWD car was less than 500$ and a clutch to simply replace the stock one on an e36 is 1300$ from the same vendor. There is no possible way the clutch meant to tolerate 8000 rpm of 20 psi all wheel drive insanity is that much cheaper to make than a clutch designed to handle the earth shattering the 5000 RPM 189 HP two-wheel drive fury of a BMW 325is. (which actually weighs less in stock trim than a first generation AWD DSM does)

 I have been over-focusing on this fact instead of just accepting it, and I keep trying to find the reason this is acceptable. This problem that exists for not just BMW owners but Porsche, Lexus, Infinity, and other "up market" brands that aren't nearly as exclusive as they're marketed to be. After all, they will sell these cars to anyone who can pay... so who are they fooling?

 The fact is the fault is with us (well, not me) the owners. We pay to much for this stuff that costs this much for no other reason than the original car cost more than average, so by nature all parts for it must have that same halo cast over them. The original car cost this much because it was made to the highest standards to be superior to every other offering from every other manufacturer. It was painstakingly researched and tested. It was refined, broken and then refined again. I don't think small parts vendors go to this length, and even the few that do don't justify the 2-3 times multiplication of the same parts for other cars. It's enough to make a guy want to call it a day and buy a Nissan.

So, in closing. BMW owners are idiots with to much money and they are ruining my budget for this project.

(This has all been an extremely elaborate way of saying I haven't updated much because I'm poor and I have to spend my money slowly and wisely)