Day 29: negative cash flow

Hey, who jacked my wheels?!

It's been an expensive month for me.  Let me catalog a few of the items.

Christmas gifts for my honey V.  $XXX but worth it to keep her smiling!  Especially when I'm blowing all this other money on my cars and toys ...

The $20 app I mentioned before, Harry's Lap Timer Pro on the App Store for iOS.  Better than a dedicated lap timer with neat features like Google Maps integration, and video overlay functions.

I also threw another $3.99 at another app, Gas Manager for iOS.  It tracks your fuel mileage and consumption every time you go to fill up at the gas station, for multiple cars and lets you display the data in various charts and logs so you can nerd out on the statistics.  The app is free to download but after you've entered 10 fill ups you will have to buy the app to continue adding more.  I found myself using it and liking it so I went ahead and bought it.  What the heck, a holiday milk shake at Sonic costs more than $3.99 these days.

Some Subaru camber bolts for the suspension.  They allow some adjustment for more negative camber on the front tires, to improve cornering response.  These are pretty damn expensive at $7 each so $14 for a pair.

New racing brake pads and brake fluid upgrades for the BRZ.  Ended up being overkill since the track day I attended was wet and rainy so we were relatively easy on the brakes, but it will pay off the next time I go to the track on a dry day.  About $200.  As an added bonus, my brakes now squeal like a hoopty whenever I come to a stop.  But that's racing, buddy.  Function over style.

A Berk Technology racing catless front pipe, plus the cost of the install at a local muffler shop when we realized that we couldn't get the original part off without cutting off an impossibly tight nut.  About $320 with installation.  Hard to say if the sound has changed much but the power seems slightly improved.

Berk FP removes the secondary cat from the exhaust, improving flow and performance.

The guy didn't want any photos taken while he was installing the pipe, so here is a super secret spy shot.

Track day at Thunderhill.  $195.  I did get a free T-shirt out of it too!  Yay.

I also woke up one day and found the rear tire on my Lexus IS350 had gone flat.  My poor Lexus has sat idle at home on a spare.  I thought it was just a tire puncture and took it to a tire shop.  Turns out it was a bent and cracked rim not the tire. As it turns out this set of wheels is pretty rare now and no longer in production.    And I just found out that the wheel cannot be repaired.  So I'm stuck with 3 wheels that won't match with anything else I can get.  I guess I will go back to my original 18" wheels and have to buy another new set of tires for them.  Estimate that will cost me around $600.  Ugh.

Back to more happy things.  Got some new toys for my game room display shelves, these were mostly inexpensive but a few are hard-to-find collectibles.  About $50.

My new FIVE:AD spoiler arrived for my BRZ.  I have dropped it off to a paint & body shop to get it painted and hopefully will have it installed in the next week or so.  $300 + $165 paint & install.  That makes it about equivalent to the factory spoiler cost but I like the style of this one better.

I've been using the same racing helmet for around 12 years now, it's a replica of Jean Alesi's F1 Playstation helmet.  It was SA95 certified which means it meets 1995 standards of safety.  They come out with new standards every 5 years so the current standard is SA2010.  For track days and gokarting places they generally allow helmets from the past 2 cert periods.  So, it's time to retire the old helmet and spring for a new helmet.  I ordered a new Pyrotect full-face helmet but this time it's in a plain-looking gloss black finish.  No fancy F1 racer designs this time around.  That'll be another $300 from the bank account.
My old helmet will go on display in my game room, seems appropriate given that is where I play racing games like Gran Turismo on my PS3.

Hmmm have I spent all of my year-end bonus yet?