As some of you have seen, I went ice racing yesterday! Lots of fun was had, along with many many spins. I finished a solid mid-pack amongst the 10 stock RWD cars, and I only killed one cone! To be honest, it was super fun and I'm thrilled simply to not be DFL, broken down or at the bottom of the lake.

Enough of all of these words n stuff, let's have some pics, OPPO!

This golf (yes, it's actually a golf under that fiberglass scirocco-ish hat) was the fastest thing out there by miles. I wonder why... oh right.

This Buick Regal was an absolute monster out there, throwing up a massive cloud of ice behind its meaty rear end.

This civic was the only car that truly had a bad day. He completed one blazing fast lap and then munched a bunch of valves due to suspected oil starvation. Poor guy!

This Comanche is hiding a secret... can you spot it?

Here's some bits of cone trapped under the ice near the start line from the last event two weeks ago.

Amongst the modified, non-studded cars, this RAV4 was one of the leaders. He's hiding a Celica motor under there, and was really sending it!

Just before starting our runs. And yes, that's an LC500 up there. It's beautiful.

The only shots I got of my car out there from a friend on shore. There was a professional photographer out there, hopefully he got some better shots of my several 360s. I also did a 720 and drove out of it on my first lap. It was stupid fun.
Just missed that cone!

Here's a shot of my buddy Josh during one of his turns at the helm of my car. He managed to place third in our class and I'm not jealous at all!

That's a wrap for now. If you want to learn more about Ice Runs, head over to the Saginaw Valley SCCA website, and I hope to see you out there!

Big boi being relative here, but with the other two cars in our household being a 3 series and a Buick Encore, the C6 with its 6.2L LS3 counts as a big boi indeed, and what a good boy it is! I forgot how much I absolutely adore the burbles and pops of its exhaust.

Unfortunately, my car insurance requires a 5 day waiting period before they'll allow me to put collision coverage back on it. It's going to be a hard wait until Friday to drive it again. Anyways, stopped by the park on the (careful) drive home to nab a couple pics!

I forget which Oppo was wondering about this, but yes, a full size large (and maybe XL?) 29er will fit into the trunk of a C6. As will my xbike. Corvette all the things! Bike all the things!

And of course I had to stop for a sunset pic on the way home.

Tonight I cooked the best burger I’ve ever had. I’m normally not a big burger guy, but this sucker was perfection. Big shout out to my cast iron frying pan and to HelloFresh for the goods and recipe!

Now it’s off to my couch to pass out from the meatsweats.

I scored these sweet puffy camp shoes at my local REI last week. This would otherwise be a rather boring and completely not noteworthy except for the reason for the return on the tag.

HAH! Sorry guy, your loss is my gain!

MrsMTB has apparently been planning this little surprise for me for quite awhile. She asked me to take yesterday off work so we could drive to "Ann Arbor" for something fun.

"Ann Arbor" turned out to be Michigan Speedway, and something fun was the "extreme experience" (no, I won't accept their dumb branding practice of eliminating the "E"s. Misspelling words for the sake of branding is dumb.)

Basically, this is a track experience for anybody from beginners to people who know what they're doing but want to get a bit of seat time in a car they don't own. They provide a short classroom session, instructors, and lead-follow laps in your choice of 6-8 sports cars.

My wife had apparently asked my buddies which car I'd like to go with, and they chose the 911 GT3 RS for me. When I first saw a Huracán doing some safety check laps I was thinking I might want to swap to get some V10 in my life, but then the GT3 went around and my worries were squashed. That thing is LOUD! Easily the loudest car there by far. (The Huracán was next on the list, the rest of the fleet were leagues behind.)

I did a few laps sitting shotgun in the Charger Hellcat lead car to get the lay of the land before joining the line for my turn in the Porsche, and I'm glad I did. We got "3" laps... I put that in air quotes, because they count your time entering and leaving pit lane as part of your third lap, so you only get two shots at the straight. I'd count that as 2.5, but tomato, potato I guess.

When I got behind the wheel, it was immediately clear how focused the car is. The racing bucket doesn't recline at all, and to be honest the seating position was a bit too stiff and upright for me, especially with a helmet. But I got used to it pretty quick. All the cars there are autos, so I didn't have to learn a new clutch. And I have to admit, PDK was incredible. It was exactly as aggressive as my right foot told it to be, with it dropping gears into the power band the instant my foot stabbed the throttle. The acceleration was great, the braking and turn it was even better, but by far the best was the noise!

After my two-and-a-half short laps, I was definitely thirsty for more. This car has definitely worked its way onto my bucket list.

My overall impressions of the event were pretty positive, but damn was it expensive. I was a bit turned off by how many opportunities they had to work more money out of you. Want a photo of you in the car (that's already printed out on a rack as you exit) ? That'll be $20. Want to unlock the onboard video that they took on a USB while you were driving? That's another $60. More laps? Several hundred.

Considering they're providing the cars, all the consumables and wear items, I guess the price isn't too bad. I just wish I had gotten more than a couple minutes of seat time! If you have a car that's capable of surviving a track day, that's definitely a better value at $200-500/day with probably four or five 20 minute sessions full of lapping. It's definitely a great way to get some full-throttle time behind the wheel of your favorite supercars though, just not cheap!

After three separate times of ripping out my trunk lining, and trying two different radio modules... I'VE MENDED IT!

A quick backgrounder for those who missed my previous post:
Many, many moons ago my radio began cutting out intermittently. It wasn't a pressing problem in the sense that it often came back quickly. An irritation at best.

Fast forward to later this past summer and it began cutting out entirely. Usually, I could pull the fuse and put it back and I would get the radio back again for awhile. It seemed to be confined to just the FM radio and AUX was unaffected. But after a dozen or two times of going through this dance, the whole thing cut out entirely. This was mildly annoying, but as headphones and bluetooth speakers existed, I put up with it.

This pretty much sums up my experience at the time.

Then, sometime around November, the radio began making an absolutely demonic screeching noise whenever it was 'on'... and I say 'on' in the sense that no sound would come out but if I pushed the power button, it would stop. But sometimes it would come back on its own... like I said, demonic. So, this time, I pulled the fuse permanently, continuing to exist with my bluetooth speaker and the irritation that electronics bring to driving older and high mileage cars.

The final straw for me came just before Christmas when the long-non-functioning pre-wired bluetooth module decided it would like nothing more than to beep at me, loudly and intermittently, followed by VERY LOUD prompts to "speak the name," "speak the number," and "system off" that I could not turn off or reduce the volume of. GREAT. This action inspired the following two reactions from me: first was to send me off to the fusebox again to pull yet more fuses, and the second was to fill me with a resolve to finally solve the damn thing.

I'd deduced from some extensive googling that the likely culprit was the BM53 radio control module located in the trunk next to the amp, but I was having a hard time sourcing a part. eBay had options of course, but very few of them were both reasonably priced and came with any sort of guarantee of functionality. I resolved to find one at a local junkyard, but after visiting a few pick-n-pulls I realized that not many BMWs of this era came equipped with the up-level radio that had the BM53 module and the ones that did must've been quick targets for opportunistic business-minded scrappers because every single car in the yards I visited lacked the part. I did grab an amplifier from the trunk of a similar era coupe as mine just to be sure that wasn't the issue.

While my junkyard excursions were mostly fruitless, and the amp wasn't my issue as suspected, I did get to familiarize myself with the process of removing the trunk trim on these cars before I worked on my own. To be honest, if you're even slightly skittish about screwing up your car, this is a great way to practice something before trying it when it counts.

At this point, it was back off to eBay to try my luck at finding a functioning BM53 module without breaking the bank. I knew that BMW and Becker had made these modules from the late 90s through 2006, slowly adding more functionality to the radios over the years. The early cars were kind of basic, and things like station and song ID, and more importantly for me, AUX input were added in the later models. Knowing this, I wanted to be sure I got a unit from a newer car, so I looked at the various eBay listings and pictures trying to find one that had a date code in the 2003-2006 range. I settled on a listing that looked promising:

As far as I could tell, this little alpha-numeric was likely a date code for the week and year of manufacture. Alas, when the part arrived at my doorstep after New Years', the one I received was quite different, being manufactured in the 40th week of 2001 rather than the 7th of 2003 as the photo in the listing states. (the one my car came with had a date stamp of 12/03) Still... better to try it and see what happens right?

A couple hours and a small amount of swearing later, I had a working radio but no AUX input. Worryingly, my weird and annoyingly loud bluetooth beeps and instructions continued on as they had before, so I had to pull the radio fuses again and carryon with my portable speaker setup until I could try a newer radio module. However, all was not lost! I had confirmed my theory that it was indeed the BM53 unit, but the hands-free phone prompts were weird. I was very excited to have a working FM radio again, even if I couldn't plug my phone in just yet, but the hands-free instructions were so annoying I couldn't use it. I did a bit more googling there and came across some hands-free instructions which reminded me that BMW had decided it was a good idea to put the hands-free speech button behind the cupholders and BELOW the folding armrest, which I always keep down. This gave me a new theory: in my car, this area under the armrest had become a depository for stacks and stacks of those blue fiber masks I get at work, and I just stockpiled more and more of them there each time I was given one, to the point where it was possible my arm resting on the armrest could be compressing the stack of masks to the point of pushing down and holding that very button.

So I tried removing the pile of covid-crap and replaced my radio fuses yet again, and the glorious, glorious sounds of FM radio once again massaged my ears! Another mystery solved.

At this point, it was back to eBay and try to find a newer part so I could get my AUX input back and truly have my radio functioning as well as BMW intended in 2004. I ended up finding a listing with an actual tag detailing the make, model, and year of vehicle it was from: a 2005 330i sedan. Not my year, not my bodystyle, but slightly newer, so it should work. Parts cannon: reloaded.

A few days later, with unexpectedly rapid shipping, I swapped the parts out this morning and it works! I also swapped back my original amplifier back into the car, as that wasn't the issue. Everything functions perfectly, just as good as it ever did... well, except for the broken / burned out pixels on the display and the SatNav that only works 5% of the time, but who gives a crap about any of that, my radio works again!

I actually have functioning audio! I'm over the moon!

TL;DR: Keep a sharp eye on your eBay listing details, and persistence pays off!

We had a near-biblical amount of rain here in Metro Detroit on Friday night. I woke up around 1am to the sound of rain hitting our windows so hard I thought they might break. Luckily everything was closed up tight, so I tried to go back to bed.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, it was to a text from my wife saying that though she had made it to work at 5am, she had passed 67 (no, seriously, 67!) stalled or abandoned cars on her way into work. She drives to work around 4:30am and typically takes the highway for about 70% of the journey. She said there was no flooding present, but obviously there had been some significant rains causing it overnight, probably around peak get-home-from-the-bar time.

In addition to that, she said she witnessed multiple people driving the wrong way, or just straight up walking (walking!) on the highway. Trying to either get their cars back up and running again, or just wandering around wondering what to do.

Sounds like a wild night! So, I flip on the news. Turns out, there's still some pretty widespread flooding. Naturally, I hit the road on my bike to see what's what.

I met up with a friend who lives on the east side and we rode around following the major interstates that slice through downtown, wandering from one overpass to the next just surveying the carnage. The sheer amount of stalled vehicles is just alarming. During the 10-minute period we were camped out over I-75, we actually witnessed the state police, or some contractor removing a late-model Taurus with a large digger with a fork-lift attachment.

Then, not 5 minutes later, a bunch of semis thought it would be a good idea to try and drive through. They started to make it, so naturally a bunch of pickups and SUVs thought they'd try it as well. We witnessed three CUV's (Equinox-sized) drive through but hydrolock themselves and stall on the other side. Luckily, most people seemed to decide that was a bad idea and started turning around.

Here's your friendly reminder that you shouldn't drive through massive puddles!

We kept riding from there, picking up I-94 along Midtown near the M-10 freeway, and started seeing some genuine carnage. Thus began a roughly two hour journey of us hopping from one overpass to the next, each time seeing worse destruction than the one before.

We finally ended up on one stretch of I-94 with a moderate sized lake at least 1/4 mile long. There were so many truckers stranded in it I lost count. Several of them were still hanging out in there cabs, and had probably been there since 1am. It was deep enough that it was above windshield height on some of the semis, and there were definitely submerged cars in there that we couldn't see.

We also saw state police divers along this stretch, undoubtedly checking submerged cars to be sure no one was trapped inside. The water here was getting seriously deep, we could tell from a nearby overpass it was likely above 10' in depth.

At this point we were getting exhausted and sunburned despite the overcast clouds, and honestly a little depressed at all the destruction. We were both remarkably lucky to have not been caught out driving in this weather, and we both made out with only some mild flooding in our basements (which we still had yet to deal with).

So, just a friendly reminder, and I can't believe I have to say this again, but DON'T DRIVE YOUR SHIT THROUGH WATER! Here's a lovely 944 that we saw out sightseeing for your time

I need to flush the fluid in my car as well, I don't have a power bleeder though, just a little bottle to use the pump-the-pedal method. That would probably be a worthy investment.

@Nicky-Chagrin-Janitor-of-SHIELD

@EssExTee Bleach exists for a reason!

@Vondon302 I’m slightly alarmed by the lack of lug nuts on the top wheels…

Saw this oddity in a bike ride last week:

That’s all!

Although it’d probably be ruinous financially, my choices are:

DD the Rangie
Overland the FJ
There are too many JKs for me to care about burning that one.

@davesaddiction the noises on the first five seconds of that video give me some good feels. I would like more of this from a sports EV personally!

@CarsOfFortLangley That's amazing... I'm assuming just a video editing trick rather than a hack on the car? I know Teslas used to be able to emit all kinds of noises before NHTSA got involved.

@orneryduck Yeah, I'm pretty against fake noises for the sake of it. I get the regulation that EVs should make some external noise to alert pedestrians at low speeds, but I found a lot of the fake noises to be just odd gimmicks when I test drove a Mach-E for example.

I think your livewire example is more along the lines of what I'm looking for. Some sort of engineered noise that speaks to performance and generates a gut reaction in drivers and passers by.

@HammerheadFistpunch Just realized I should have summarized the question in the first post- thanks for the heads up. I edited the post above to reflect that. THANKS!