Ah, the Mustang. It's hard to explain why I have such a strong emotional attachment to a big, dumb lump of a machine. Car people just KNOW, so I don't have to explain it to them. To the rest of you, especially to the ones who wonder why I can't part with such an environment-rending car, well, I got nothing.

I'm driving the Lotus 4th of July weekend in a two day event with Hooked on Driving. The last time I was in Michigan, I made a spur of the moment offer to let fellow SCCer Thom drive the Mustang at the event, if he'd cover his airfare and track time. To my mild surprise and great pleasure, he accepted.

The upshot of this was that I needed to get the 'Stang battle ready. I'd been limping around on the street with brake and steering gremlins, which was fine, but I knew there was no way that the car was trackable. Since there was no way I'd track it with the Lotus available and since it was good enough for the street, I had no motivation to fix it. I spent a little time hemming and hawing, trying to find a local Mustang tuner to look at it - one that had no connection to Apex Motorsports - and finally just took it to Dietsch Werks.

• Front and rear brake job (including freeing a frozen caliper on the driver's rear)
  
• Fluids
  
• Alignment, steering rack adjustments (the alignment was comically bad)
  
• Corner Balance
  
• Full tech inspection
  
• 4pt. harnesses

Oh man, what a difference. It actually TURNS IN now, as opposed to slopping from one direction to another. It STOPS and, bonus, WITHOUT wanting to fly off the road to the right.

To celebrate (and also because the GTi is throwing codes) I took it on a road trip to Belden, CA for Gemini. Nominally about a four hour drive, I got caught in traffic on the way out and took nearly four hours just to clear Sacramento. I did better on the way back, doing it in a hair under four. The car actually felt good, aside from the punishing the clutch gave my left knee in the heavy traffic. It was even fun and - dare I say it - predictable when I attacked a few corners out in the twisties, though I didn't push it at all.



I'm driving it to LA tomorrow, for a two week work trip.