Vince's Stuff: Spring is here but not much car stuff going on

I'm writing from the waiting area in the emergency room as I accidentally crushed my fingertip working on the country house. The pain has died down with a couple of Tylenol, so I can comfortably type on my phone. I haven't posted in a while because car-wise, there hasn't been much going on. Even though it's Easter weekend, it doesn’t yet feel that Spring-like. It snowed last week and it's been close to zero degrees many nights. The barn door was still partially frozen so I sort of gave up on getting the M3 out of the barn. I'll try again next time we come to the country.

The Subaru is working fine, I just need to have the rear o2 sensor changed by a mechanic as I didn't have enough leverage to get it out on my own. It throws a code almost every time I drive it. I will throw on the summer tires now that I know I won't be driving the M3 in the coming weeks.

I had hoped the yellow Civic would be ready to try on track by now, but there have been a few small setbacks. I had to basically change the whole exhaust line and catalytic converter as it was a total mess under the car, full of bends and cracks and bad welds. The other issue is that JS can't remove the old brake hoses to install the braided ones, because it's all rusted solid. The suspension is on the car and the brakes should be done this weekend. The 40$ lip I bought for the front bumper seems to have successfully masked how broken the bumper cover was. I don't know if the car will be ready to try at the Calabogie school in 2 weeks. If it isn't, I'll take the STi.

Choo told me he can start on the black Civic in the next few days, which is encouraging.

So despite my best efforts, I don't have a usable track car at the beginning of the track season. If all goes well, I will be able to avoid this situation in the future if I can properly manage the two Civics.

I have started using the iRacing simulator to hopefully improve my track driving. The racing is exciting and I am leaning some new tracks. I don't practice a ton though, so I rarely finish better than mid pack. Still, it's quite stimulating.

One project that is moving forward: we made offers on two of the apartments we liked in Genoa and one of them was accepted. We will head back there in June to finalize the deal and set up the apartment, with the goal of putting it up for rent on AirBnB.

There are starting to be some cool cars on the road, but fewer than usual, probably due to the cool weather.