Preparing “Way Fast Whitey” for Rites O’ Spring + Making a Catera Shine!

It’s sunny, it’s warm, it’s another gorgeous Friday! Here a couple of the projects we tackled this week:
1. Exterior Detail on a Cadillac Catera (It belongs to Kyle, one of our great e30 owning customers:))

2. Getting the 1987 325is track ready (We know “Way Fast Whitey” is a complete rip-off name….plus the car isn’t “way fast”….but we like it!)

I don’t do much detailing these days, but every now and again I get talked into breaking out the wheel for some compounding. I actually enjoy it from time-to-time. I worked at a detail shop in Muncie during my Ball State days, so I’ve paid my dues with a buffer.

Black cars are always a challenge, and this Catera was no exception. It polished up real nice, but the biggest improvement was probably in the headlights. I wet-sanded them with 1,200, followed by 2,000 grit sand papers, then polished them with a small pneumatic buffer. I think Kyle and I were both quite pleased with the results.

Reggie wipes away any dust that may have settled with a microfiber cloth.

Sean’s track car got a little gift…

A 5-panel sport mirror!  Now he’ll have a much wider angle of view out at Putnam Park in a few weeks for the Hoosier Chapter BMW CCA Rites O’ Spring!

We’re still waiting on seat brackets for his “Racetech” seat, and some proper brake ducting. Once we get all of that, we’ll finish his track prep.

On a final note, the cylinder head for the 2002 was delivered! It is actually a 1.8l head from a 320i, but it has been worked over by the guys at Metric Mechanic. It’s a second hand head that was part of a full MM engine that was built several years ago. I’m really just starting to educate myself on the M10, and I can already see that this head has a larger combustion chamber than the popular e12 head.  I’m not sure where compression would end up if I just bolted this on to my stock ’02 bottom end, so I’ll be researching and making some decisions in the coming weeks. Here are some shots of the interesting custom work done by Metric Mechanic: