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I bet Joe’s missing practice lap was given to me. I have an extra time that is not mine. The first time for me (61.135s) was not one of my laps. IIRC, Joe was a couple of cars ahead of me so I bet that is his missing time.
There is no way any plug kit would enable that tire to hold air again!
I like the old fashion kits that consisted of an extra tire mounted on a spare rim. I seem to recall that BMWs back in the olden days even had a space for them in the trunk.
Latest issue of Car and Driver did a summer tire comparo. They ran the top 10 summer tires on a dry and wet autox course. They used a 3-series for the tests.
On the dry course, the AD008 were fastest followed by the Hankook. I think the Dunlops were next.
[quote=”Louv” post=446]Alternately, you could put me into another car, and have me run the course.
Or, put a few other drivers in my ActiveE and see how they do.[/quote]
Either would be good and both would be better. We can do that next time we have fun runs.
We just need to make sure you can get home without having to spend any more time at your home-away-from-home (aka Walgreens). 😉
[quote=”Louv” post=441]
We should get a few more ActiveE’s out there to see if it’s me, or the tires, or the car. (my money is on the car… ;-)[/quote]It will be great to have a few other drivers with the ActiveE. We are watching the results carefully so we can adjust the base points for next season. We plugged in the ActiveE specs as best we could to get a base points number but I get the feeling the way we classify gas engine cars does not apply well to electric cars. We will only know for sure once we get a few pioneering electric car users out to the autox so we can compare to real world results. Thanks for the additional work. 😛
The control arms (wishbones, tierods, etc) are pretty easy. There are two per corner. In addition you will need different clips to route the brake sensors and also a new rod for auto-leveling headlights. I am sure all of that is documented in the DIY articles online. You are correct that they would likely not be covered under your warranty even though they are BMW parts. But they are also parts that I have never heard of failing so it should not be a problem.
I did the swaybars from a E92 M3. The front is easy to replace but not that much bigger than the stock 35/335 bar. The rear is a pain as you need to drop the subframe. About a 4 hour job start to finish for a qualified shop to do. Also, unless you have a LSD, I would not go with the larger 23mm M3 bar. It is too much bar for an open diff.
Feel free to find me at the next autox and I can give full details.
[quote=”macmacaman” post=252]For those of use running stock run-flats on E90’s, what tire would you recommend changing to? I am perfectly fine with going to non-run flats, but I have heard, apocryphally, that E90 suspensions are tuned for the stiffer run-flats. Is there someting intrinsic to the stock E90 wheels that will only accept run-flat tires?
I have 17k miles on my tires, well above the wear bars, but the BMW service techs are starting to harangue me about wear on the outer edge of the tires, suspecting misaligned camber. I actually think it is wear from 5 auto crosses and a couple of track days.[/quote]
The newer BMW non-M suspensions are tuned for the stiffer sidewall run flat tires. They do that by softening up the bushings on the control arms (wishbones and tie rods). Soon after I bought the car I changed from the stock 135i control arms to the M control arms. The ride got noticeably harsher. Then when the RFT were toast, I went to regular tires. The ride returned back to before I swapped out the original control arms. The difference was that the stiffer control arm bushings provided a better feel and less slop in cornering. You would be surprised how soft the stock bushings are to make up for the RFT.
You can use either RFT or regular tires. If you go with regular tires you should get a mobility kit like they have on the M cars (as they have regular tires and do not have a spare).
Active E and Mini-E. Nice.
Are they seriously thinking of autox? They better live close to Marina. 😉
