I drove down to socal on Thursday, to prepare for the photo shoot with Performance BMW. I took my car in to Muffler Time and had Ed replace the cat with a new smaller/lighter/better flowing unit. The sound is a bit louder, but not obnoxious. Performance seems better, but I think I will get it on the dyno this Friday to see if it actually made any difference. I was going to have this done when I had the headers hooked up, but they did not have the cat in stock. This time I called ahead and had them order it for me.

I then spent the rest of the day getting the car detailed. On Friday morning, I took of for Irwindale Speedway, which is where the photo shoot was. I had installed GC camber plates and had not raised the front to compensate for the thinner upper strut mount, so the front was really low. I was really careful to avoid going over larger bumps while the wheel was turned, though I did end up catching the wheel on the fender while pulling out of a gas station.

This was just before I got to the speedway. I was early, so I had time to roll the fender back in and touch up the chipped paint. You really could not even tell...

The photo shoot went really well. The Editor stated that they are shooting the car for the cover, though they will have to see how it works out when they lay it all out. He said the car should be out in the magazine in a fairly short amount of time, though it may take a bit longer if it does make the cover. He said he would let me know when we get closer to the time.

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After the photo shoot I went over to the UCLA area to hang out with my friend Rachel. Unfortunately the roads were quite bad, and I ended up hitting the tire on the fender several times. Since I only had my stock jack with me, I could not adjust the height. I have to lift both front wheels off the ground, since the sway bar will keep the wheel up (and spring under load) if I just lift one side. I will look into getting the fenders repaired, though I might consider getting the fenders flared a bit since they will need to be painted anyway. When I got back to Oxnard, I did raise the suspension back up. You can see that the car was so low that the tire was actually rubbing on the top of the fender liner.

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