No sugar coating needed. I am going straight to the points on why I should be selected for the 2008 GRM UTCC. If you like my work, please vote for me on 2008 GRM UTCC. Your vote is much appreciated. :-)

1. Unlike other modified BMW owners, I actually work on my car. I don't mean taking a wrench and tightening nuts. But I actually modify/customize/fabricate parts for the car. The only "machine" I have is a bench drill. Everything else I have are hand tools.

2. I am not a mechanic by profession. Yes I have a regular day job like everybody else and it has nothing to do with cars. If you really want to know, my day job requires me to design patentable algorithms for predicting online users' behavior. My co-workers do not care for 5W30 or 15W50.

3. I do not have the luxury of a hydraulic lift or expensive engine hauling tools in my dinky garage. Lighting is poor but somehow I manage to maintain a decent and reliable track car. I have one jack and two jack stands. That's all I need to work under the car.

4. I actually put together my own projects and designed most of the equipment. Yes, that means I buy my own sensors, build my own circuits and log my own data for analysis. Why? Because I love to learn new things and tackle new challenges.

5. If 10 pple want to have a data logging system in their track car, 9 of them might decide to buy something off-the-shelves, install and get gone with it. Me? I am the one who built my own system. Check MDACs below.

6. Just because a track car that has a 10-foot wing, and passes emissions with tons of decals cannot proclaim itself as street legal unless it is driven as-is to CostCo for groceries, driven as-is to Ruth's Chris in Beverly Hills for a dinner with the spouse, and gives a ride as-is to friend to LAX with his luggages in the back seat or trunk. My car is TRUELY street legal with all 3 conditions satisfied and still passes emissions with front license plate (removed on track due to AMB location).

7.This car is not towed to and from the track. I have to swap to R-comps at the track. It has a weld-in roll bar (NASA legal) along with the OEM stereo and A/C. There is no reason why I should give up music and comfort on my way to the track.

8. The absence of decals on my car does not imply that it's not a track car. Driving on the streets of LA with decals is just asking for trouble. Yes, I have to leave my front license plate (removed on track due to AMB location) on just so the police officers will not pull me over. And no, my windows are not tinted. That means I can be seen digging my nose if the itch arises. So watch out, I might flip a booger.

9. Last but not least, I am an engineering geek wearing glasses with red/blue/green pens in my short sleeved left pocket. Yes, I do carry a calculator around and I still get my hands dirty working on my car.

Thank you for reading...and now, a bit of my track history....

I started tracking the car in April of 2002. Since then I have attended a number of BMW CCA driving events, independent events and now officially competing in NASA So Cal TTD #69. My car is certified according to the NASA time trial rules.

I have a background in Mechanical Engineering hence I treat every modification very seriously. At the end of the day, the modification has to work with supported theory and empirical data. Countless weekends and weekday nights are spent on various prototypes that I designed and implemented. Some of them work and some don't. For designs that didn't work, I treat those as valuable lessons to be learned and attempt to work on a better and more efficient design.

Why a geeky car? In my opinion, the joys of modifying my car is not to constantly look for horsepower performance. The subtleties of modifying for the better involves looking at implicit parameters, such as optimizing flow under the car, through the oil cooler, the angle of the splitter, the flow in the forced induced plumping right down to the driver's accessibility in the cabin and comfort.

What makes this track car unique? Most of the projects and parts put together are NOT off the shelves. Most of them are fabricated from materials from local hardware stores and companies that carry specialty equipments (eg Pitot tubes and sensors).

Gadget A.

I have put together a system to measure underhood pressure. The idea is to reduce pressure under the engine hood. As air rushes through the front of the car, it enters into the engine bay, thus creating positive pressure. In order to reduce positive pressure, a special deflector is installed. I have also installed a static pressure sensor to measure the effects of using the deflector.

Check out the graph pertaining the underhood pressure measurement:

Among my other geeky gadgets, I have a Pitot tube installed as well. The original intention was to investigate bumper pressure points and design a splitter for the car with the data. the first version was naively located in front of the bumper as shown. It gathers data but not the data I was exactly hoping for.

The Pitot tube has now been relocated to the top of the engine hood as shown in the previous picture with the air deflector.

Gadget B.

One other project I have put together is my steering wheel

The steering wheel is a regular Sparco wheel with BMW paddle shifters attached. A plate is fabricated to hold all the switches and buttons. One of the buttons is to activate a pump to feed drinking water to the driver. The driver can also adjust the flow rate of the water via a control on the steering wheel. The rest of the buttons interact with my MDAC system (discussed below). In other words, I have full control of my gadgets when I drive on the track.

Gadget C.

Those pple who track their cars in summer will ultimately be facing the heat issue. Thus resorting to a radiator or thermostat upgrade.

It came about after an exhaustive search to look for a motorsports thermostat. The thermostat in E36s and E46 M3s is a separate entity from the rest of the thermostat housing. On the E46 non-M models however, the thermostat is integrated into the housing. Moreover, the thermostat is now electronically controlled. This is program known as MAP Characteristic Cooling under the BMW technical doctrines. The concept behind this is to reduce emissions. The thermostat can be opened or closed depending on the various parameters that the program is coded for.

For my application, I have decided to override this thermostat. Instead of scouting for a ETCC (or WTCC) E46 thermostat housing, I successfully controlled the E46 OEM thermostat. Now I can open the thermostat at the desired temperature. For a track/race condition, I can program it to open at 55C to 60C with my MDAC( see below). But for daily street driving, I can program it to open as per normal, ie 85C to 88C.

Sorry no pictures for this gadget...patent processing/pending.

Gadget D.

One of the gadgets I have is called MDACs (pronounced as M-Dacs). It stands for Monitoring, Data Acquisition Control System. The basic idea is to monitor, datalog and control devices all at the same time.

MDACs includes a fully programmable/touchable panel display and a control box with digital and analog inputs. The display is not your regular Sony or Panasonic LCDs. It is built to withstand the toughest industrial chemicals. MDACs also has a alarm history feature that can log which sensors have hit the pre-set upper or lower limits.

The sensors involved, but not limited to, in this current project are:

* triple-axis accelerometer (longitudinal, lateral, pitch, roll, vertical-g for suspension tuning),
* gyroscope for yaw-rate.
* heart rate sensor [installing soon]
* 2 EGT sensors
* oil temperature
* transmission fluid temperature
* boost
* RPM
* 4 I/R t/c to monitor temperatures of tires or brakes rotors.
* ECT, IAT, ignition timing, STFT and LTFT 1 and 2, load and TP from the factory sensors.
* Pressure sensors at pre-supercharger, pre-intercooler and post-intercooler (pre-intake manifold).

Gadget E.

The lesser known gadget is the Helmet Gear and Shift Indicator. Since this is a steptronic BMW, after several track sessions, I finally decided to design something different. Taking the eyes off the track just to look down at the gear indicator in the cluster can be awkward during hot lapping, especially when the digit is not that large and bright to begin with. So the solution is either to build a circuit with a 4" high single digit LED (much like what he WRC rally cars used on their dash), or a mini LED that can be attached to the helmet within the peripheral vision of the right or left eye. During the design phase, I have decided to include three shift lights (green, yellow, red) as well.

This device was officially tested on April 15, 2005 at Buttonwillow. Though a great success, I decided that the mini LED can be a little bigger and brighter. Also, I went with a two shift lights setup instead of three to reduce peripheral distractions.

A special bracket has been fabricated to hold the device.

This gadget is currently in the midst of being upgraded.

INTERIOR
NASA spec roll bar welded.
MOMO FIA approved START seat for driver.
Sabelt 6-pt camlock belt.
MOMO RS2GT street seat for passenger (still uses OEM seat belt).
Steering wheel button activated drinking system.
G2X GPS system, functions accessible via steering wheel buttons.
Customized paddle-shifting mechanism.
Voltphreaks Nano Battery (4.5lbs).

PERFORMANCE
ASA TM-12 Intercooled centrifugal supercharger system, 6.5psi.
Engine oil cooler (externally water sprayed cooling via PID loop control)
Secondary transmission oil cooler (externally water sprayed cooling via PID loop control).
Customized oil vapor filtration system.
Customized brake duct cooling.
Customized oil cooler/intercooler sprayer, controlled by MDACs, PID control system.
Eisenmann sports exhaust.

BRAKES
StopTech ST-40 caliper.
Cobalt Spec-VR pads.
StopTech SS braid brake lines.
Motul RBF 600.

SUSPENSION
Treehouse racing control arm brackets + bushings.
PowerFlex urethane trailing arm bushings.
Customized coilovers.
Racing dynamics anti-sway bars.

WHEELS/TIRES
Nitto NT-01, Toyo RA-1, 235/40/17
Kosei 17 X 8.5.