Pepper White

It's amazing how a little fresh paint will part the clouds of doubt and brighten every ones outlook, particularly with a race car on a time schedule. The car is painted "Pepper White", that's an old BMC Mini color that was brought back with the with the new Mini.

Now the mountain of parts can be bolted, screwed and welded on to produce a finished product. It will be a close call as to having the car ready for Chihuahua, but it won't be for lack of effort. It may be for lack of an engine if those parts don't show up this week, that's been a sore spot, and a lot of work to be done there.

The brakes are finished along with the front suspension. The shocks for the rear need to be resized, but that's an easy fix. The petal box is in along with the brake lines.

There's 15 days until the car needs to be on a trailer for Mexico, everyone involved is on task, it remains to be seen if there is enough time.

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Standing Still

If you are standing still you can hear the clock ticking for the countdown to have a car ready for the Chihuahua Express. Unfortunately, it's looking like things aren't going to progress fast enough to be prepared for that race. The up side is, the roll cage is finished along with the dash and mounting the fuel cell, which means the car is now off to the body and paint shop. Once that's done, the stack of parts can be assembled and things will start to advance more rapidly.

The seats are here along with most of the safety gear and communications. There was a problem with the coil-over suspension, it came for a completely different type car, but that's been remedied. All the brake parts are sitting in boxes, waiting. The transmission and differential are all set to be put in, but the motor is another story. The head has been sent out to the experts to be worked on and it's ready. But the pistons are another week away, and that means the block can't be worked on until they're here. No pistons= no block= no motor. The math is unfriendly, but there's thirty days until the convoy leaves El Paso, let's see what happens.

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Moving Forward

The projects aim is to build two cars for the 2009 La Carrera Panamericana race and to have one of them ready for the 2009 Chihuahua Express race in March. For that to happen, a lot of things are going to have to move forward...quickly. The red car has been to the body shop to have the fenders and nose panel replaced, and will now sit while the green car advances in the fabrication process.

The fuel cell has been set into place, and some brazing done to the body to fill holes where trim was attached and rust had settled. The inside of the car has been taken down to bare metal, and most of the mechanicals

have been removed except for the wheels to keep it mobile. The present job involves building a roll cage. This has become one of the most important requirements to let a car through technical inspection, after an accident in

2006 critically injured a co driver without an adequate one. Once the roll cage is finished, a dashboard will be fashioned and then the car is ready to paint.

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One Plus One Equals Two Two Thousand Two's

Two cars will be built because we have two interested party's. One is Rick, he's done the race before, he wants to promote his BMW repair business, he also wants to involve the people who work for him and to include his family. The other is Frank, and he simply wants to go racing, he's done it in many forms before, and now the Carrera is his intention.

So now we need something to start with and Frank was first to find two available candidates. One had been locked away in a shipping container for a decade or more and the other set rusting nearby in the same backyard. Both of these cars came at the right price, free, that made the decision easy to take a closer look at them.

While Rick owns a shop, and sees a lot cars come through, 2002's aren't as commonplace as they once were, so the next one came from an ad on Craigslist. The pictures advertised what looked to be a solid choice, except they never showed the front left fender. Sure enough, that was bent along with the frame, but for $500 it was worth seeing if it could be straightened. In short order two more appeared. One being an orange lovely, dragged out of a garden in Sebastopol, and traded for an oil change. The other, a very clean 1976 square taillight, big bumper model. Too nice to cut up, and when sold, it's worth its weight in racing parts.

The job of evaluating the last four and reducing to a final two was fairly easy. The '67 beige 1600 yard find had too much rust to be rebuild and made reliable. It's headed for the scrap bin. The 1973 gray primered car, while a good prospect, but with the bent frame, will be held in reserve. That leaves us with the green 1969 container find, and the orange '72, as the best prospects. This pair is over 35 years old and have some dents and corrosion that needs to be repaired and thats the next step.

Both of these will now be stripped down to the bare minimum inside and out, scraped and sanded, have some excess metal removed, and bodywork done.

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The BMW 2002

A short history will tell you that BMW or Bavarian Motor Works is an old company, dating back to 1916. Originally a manufacture of aircraft engines, they were forced to stop production after WW1 and shifted to motorcycles by 1923. In the 30's they began again to build aircraft engines for Germany's Luftwaffe. In the long run, that didn't work out, so by 1959 they were on the brink of bankruptcy. The gas shortage of the late 50's revived the company with the building of the Italian designed Isetta or the " Bubble Car". In the early 60's BMW started to produce what was known as the "New Class" starting with the 1500. This was the start of

the company's comeback into the automobile market. The 1500 ultimately led to the development of the 1600, 1800, 2000 and 2002. The 2002 was produced between 1968 and 1976 and was probably the most important model in BMW's history. It's designation stands for 2 liter engine and 2 doors, hence 2002. The 2-door sedan redefined the image of BMW. It combined powerful engine and agile handling with solid German build quality and practical 4-person accommodation into a reasonably priced package.

It actually started life in 1966 in the form of 1600-2 (2 doors). It was derived from the contemporary 1600 sedan, with rear doors deleted and wheelbase shortened by 50 mm to make it lighter and more agile for handling. Its 1.6-litre sohc engine produced 85 horsepower and enabled the 2100 lb little car to outperform many contemporary sports cars. Its all independent suspensions (with MacPherson struts up front and semi-trailing arm at the rear) and front disc brakes were not found in any cars at the same price level, providing great handling. On the other hand, 1600-2 provided all the practicalities of a sedan - a properly-sized rear seats, excellent visibility (thanks to large windows and slim pillars) and a big trunk.The 1600-2 received many appreciations from the press and the market. Sales exceeded BMW's expectation and production volume ramped up quickly to meet demand. But this was only the beginning. Next year, BMW introduced 1600ti, a hotter version of 1600-2. It used higher compression ratio and twin-choke Solex carburetors to raised the output to 105 hp.

Because the 1600ti engine could not pass Federal emission regulations, it was not offered in the US. With the huge potential of that market in mind, BMW developed a 2.0-litre engine for the car. Big engine in a small car, it became the mighty 2002. About 80,000 were produced for the US, in total about 425,000 were produced world wide. The cars built from the years 1968 to 1973 had the round tail lights, while the cars built from 1974 to 1976 had bigger bumpers, and square tail lights. Various state of tune were available: the regular 2002 had a single carburetor to produce 100 hp, the 2002ti got 120 hp through twin-carburetors and lastly, a mechanical fuel injection and higher compression ratio helped 2002tii to squeeze out 130 hp. In the latter form, it could top 118 mph and did 0-60 mph in 8.2 seconds.

So this short history of the "The Ultimate Driving Machine" now takes us to finding one or two for the La Carrera Panamericana.

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Once Upon a Time....

Once upon a time.... there was a small, independent BMW repair shop in Santa Rosa California named North Bay Bavarian. The owner, who we'll call Rick, had raced and done well in the 2007 La Carrera Panamericana

driving a Chevrolet. That was all well and good, but he wished that he would be allowed to to use a BMW because this was his car, he was familiar with them and it would help promote business. The rule of the race said any car built after 1965 would be denied. Of course BMW made cars in 1965, but they just weren't right for a race like this. Then suddenly, like magic, the rules changed. It was told that a special class had been created that would allow cars made up to 1972! Rick thought "Why that means I could build and race a BMW 2002 and everything would be perfect". So that's what he did, and he won the race and everyone lived happily ever after.....

WHOA WHOA WHOA..... wait a second, something's not right here, we've gotten ahead of ourselves. Let's back up a bit... this is 2008, and that means the 2009 race hasn't happened yet. And that means that the car is still on the drawing board. So let's have a reality check. Everything up to the rule change is about right, but now there's a car to be built, or is it cars?

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