You were just really close to...
You were just really close to...
Oh yeah, good catch. I saw white helmet but didn't catch the fact that the helmet is full face.
Or that, you know, there are two numbers on the door.
Anyway, if that is Evan then that means that was Saturday, and I KNOW that I checked tire pressures before Sunday and they were 33/33/34/32 with 34/32 being left/right rear. So debeading on Sunday's much rougher whamariffic course (multiple times catching air from hitting ruts sideways, felt like being the ball in a Bally's) means that the tire must have simply taken a hard hit instead of losing air first.
All that said, I do have an idea for an anti dirt intrusion protector. Not sure if it would be legal since it may count as a hubcap.
cghstang wrote: It's not dead yet! Next shot in the series...
For the record, I heard funny noises but the car felt OK, so I was watching the corner workers for a red flag, because I was thinking "if it is a debead they will flag me, if they don't flag then the rearend broke again or something". I stopped when I took another right corner and looped it, then got the heck away from the course so the event could continue without more reruns needed.
If Will shows up we are all screwed.
Still need to figure out how to get my car there and get registered...
Kris said he's just gonna put his interior in and cruise around the course at 20mph and win PR instead, since nobody is entered in that class....
btw, if any of you are going to NEDivs (3 hours from Hebron), you get $25 off registration if you register by the 31st.
What a weekend!
It was great to finally meet and hang out with some of you GRM peeps. OVR did a great job running the event and the site was very good.
As others have mentioned, it was a rough weekend for my car (and my face!). Overall, I still had a blast.
Just to recap the "went wrongs":
After arriving, the car would go crazy lean and stumble/no power under load, especially in the cooler/damp air of the morning. Saturday morning AFM adjustment got it running well enough to do ok for the morning session, but didn't really get back to where it should be till the afternoon.
When checking out why on the short drive over from the hotel saturday morning, I discovered that an upper coolant hose had been rubbed by the mechanical fan creating a pinhole leak. duct tape helped seal it up well enough for a weekend. was mostly concerned that I wasn't sure what moved to create the contact.
exhaust elbow off the turbo downipe would get knocked out of the band clamp creating running problems since it's upstream of the o2. easy enough to wack back in for a few more runs till it happens again.
ended up losing what amounted to the "cat-back" on the last run of the morning. no biggy, easy to put back on and moar louder/fasterer.
I was one of the first cars out in the afternoon and was now running well. Times were better or even with those at the top of the leaderboard. Picked up a co-driver in Chris (cghstang) after Evan's car had problems and had to miss the afternoon. This meant we were paying close attention to how hot the car was getting, which was good since it started to get hotter than I've ever seen it (3/4 on an e30 gauge). popped the hood to discover the fan was contacting and stopping the radiator shroud. @#$@#$!@#
hurriedly check over the engine, including mounts, but in the rush I didn't notice the mount anchor stud misalignment, since the rubber doughnut looked fine from outside. turns out they were both sheared clean off but I didn't know that yet. I decided to try to just pull off the shroud to let the fan work and finish the afternoon runs. In my haste, I was pulling hard on a clip w/ a flatblade when it slipped and came back at me. It basically stabbed in right in the crease of nose/cheek. I was VERY lucky it didn't go up the nostril or in my eye. As it was, if the skin didn't naturally want to stay closed, I would have needed to go for stitches. That was game-over for most of the rest of saturday.
I sat out working to calm down and let the wound start to close and stop bleeding. Felt pretty bad about missing out on work, but I think I picked up (3) cones total between the saturday morning and sunday morning sessions, so I don't think I was that missed since most people were running really clean.
We got the car up on ramps and started poking around to discover that at least the passenger side motor mount was toast. sheared clean off at the top. start asking around to see if anyone has a spare of a similar mount we could make work. interestingly enough, it looked like 2nd gen rx7 mounts would bolt right in, but they didn't have a spare. We ran 5 minutes down the road to an advance to see if they had anything in stock that might work. half hour of poking around and no good leads, so we head back. About now we noticed that the driver side one also completely failed. I think the passenger side died a while ago do to turbo exhaust heat and the drivers side just finally let go completely. Josh was very gracious in letting me have his spare condor speed shop urethane m42 mount to cut in half to fab two m20 mounts. That worked surprisingly well, but don't rely on the blade from an advance auto hack saw, it sucks ass. So now everything is mostly back together and we head back to the hotel for showers and sleep.
Arrive back to the site Sunday AM and start pulling out the few items I locked inside it for safekeeping overnight. My passenger door central locking doesn't always work, and I managed to forget and lock my keys in the car in the ignition. !#$@#$%@#@#$ (again) Got to the point where everyone was trying different ways to get in, including appropriate tools one of the other competitors had in his work truck. I ended up making a lasso out of some wire and looping it over the drivers side interior lock to get in.
Finally, lets run! Wait, what? where's the power?!? noooooo! :( Same crap as early on Saturday, only this time I was pretty much out of adjustment to make it rich enough to run under load. Basically limped it around for most runs just get time on the dirt, even if slow as heck. Was so frustrating. After time to reflect, I think the culprits are likely a failed/failing throttle position switch or failing fuel pump(s). Either could be cause of the lack of fuel under non-vac conditions.
Again, Josh was super gracious to let me drive his rally car home and tow mine on his trailer. I just wish I would have realized that the seat in his car had a slider and the regular belts sooner than 2/3rds of the way home! Wasn't that bad to drive that long, otherwise. My car is actually at his place now still, since I won't have time to get it till this weekend. He even changed the wheels and washed it. Just in time for a branch to fall on it and scuff the paint. Dah!
On a positive note, I do have three great take-aways from the weekend. First, the DC crew are an awesome bunch. Hanging with Josh, Nick and the Golden brothers feels like chilling with old friends. Again, I also can't thank Josh enough for helping through all the crap that did go wrong. Second, when the car was running well in the early afternoon, I learned that I have the potential to hang with some really good drivers. Running times that matched up with those guys told me that, and I know it wasn't just the car since Chris was running similar times in my car as well. Since it's only my third event, that was a huge validation for me. Lastly, I love this. Even through the crap, I really had a great time over the course of the weekend.
Here's hoping to see some of you guys at the NE div here in a few weeks!
bluej wrote: Basically limped it around for most runs just get time on the dirt, even if slow as heck. Was so frustrating.
Since I forgot to go forth and meet all the out-of-towner's, were you the 2 tone BMW that sputtered and coughed the last few runs? If so, you were the person I saved by red flagging Brian when they sent him out after you WAY too soon. He would have caught you in 2.3 seconds! 
Yes, thanks for that. Odd that they did that. By then it was pretty obvious I was running really slow.
EvanB wrote: If Will shows up we are all screwed.
Quoted for truth. Fortunately for all of us, he won't be in my car again 
So we might possibly have a chance. (Will schooled everyone in MR's inaugural Championship. Jon O. was so awestruck that he would forget to announce things while he was on course. We shan't speak of what happened in 2013 except that somehow I managed to be faster than him, barely, thanks to Subaru being better than VW at AWD)
Given the way last weekend turned out, I feel that I've made great strides as a driver thanks to some things I learned while riding/driving with Miles. I could possibly have won if I started out on good tires and didn't debead.
I will be starting out on good tires in Nebraska.
Knurled wrote:EvanB wrote: If Will shows up we are all screwed.Quoted for truth. Fortunately for all of us, he won't be in my car again
True, you were about to be close to taking the lead when that happened. But several people possibly could have won if not for unfortunate things (You with de-bead, Evan with 4 cones in one run + car breaking, Chris TWO cars breaking down, me spinning out on my first run stupidly). Come to think of it, most of the cars in MR were leading the class at one point or another throughout the weekend (though not me). Not surprisingly, the guy who actually did win was the guy who didn't break, de-bead, didn't screw up in any significant way, and drove generally fast on all his runs.
Funny, just like it usually happens in stage rally.....consistency and car reliability are key. Which is why we're not just autocrossers on dirt 
When the times come out would be interesting to drop everyone's single worst run and see how it would have turned out without Evan's cone run, my spin, or your de-bead.
You guys definitely have more fun-looking photos than I do though. My clean style isn't very entertaining to watch, lol.
irish44j wrote: Come to think of it, most of the cars in MR were leading the class at one point or another throughout the weekend (though not me).
That's... not what happened in 2012. One person took the lead and sort of ran away from everyone else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6T5kwM4dgQ
When the times come out would be interesting to drop everyone's single worst run and see how it would have turned out without Evan's cone run, my spin, or your de-bead.
Which is the way we score regionally... although, I know that my times post-debead were still waaay off the pace because I looped it when my lizardbrain was still expecting grip where there was none anymore. At least one of the runs was an 89 when you guys were running down into the 79s. Not sure about others' worst times.
Knurled wrote:irish44j wrote: Come to think of it, most of the cars in MR were leading the class at one point or another throughout the weekend (though not me).That's... not what happened in 2012. One person took the lead and sort of ran away from everyone else. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6T5kwM4dgQWhen the times come out would be interesting to drop everyone's single worst run and see how it would have turned out without Evan's cone run, my spin, or your de-bead.Which is the way we score regionally... although, I know that my times post-debead were still waaay off the pace because I looped it when my lizardbrain was still expecting grip where there was none anymore. At least one of the runs was an 89 when you guys were running down into the 79s. Not sure about others' worst times.
Interesting that you guys drop the worst run. I haven't been to any east coast events where they did that. I would have won this event and my last two regional events if that was the case, so I would be all for it. 
I always seem to have one really bad run that kills me. One bad run cost me last year's regional championship as well. That's the breaks though.....
My worst time this weekend was the first one, obviously. Looking back on the video, the entire spin cost me approximately 13 seconds from when it started to when I got going again after reversing to stay on course. So I guess it was a pretty fast run otherwise, since you beat me by like 1 second without spinning (since you were clearly NOT being stupid on the wet grass like I was!). Figures.
This is what happens if you drop the worst run of each heat (our regional rules).
HICKEY, JOSH 1,164.36
SCHMIDT, KEVIN 1,170.57
DRYMALSKI, NICK 1,173.92
REMNER, PETE 1,185.71
ARTHUR, EVAN 1,196.46
LAMONTAGUE, PATRICK 1,264.94
SENNETT, JOSHUA 1,328.56
are the times posted?
EvanB wrote: This is what happens if you drop the worst run of each heat (our regional rules). HICKEY, JOSH 1,164.36 SCHMIDT, KEVIN 1,170.57 DRYMALSKI, NICK 1,173.92 REMNER, PETE 1,185.71 ARTHUR, EVAN 1,196.46 LAMONTAGUE, PATRICK 1,264.94 SENNETT, JOSHUA 1,328.56
Chris would have undoubtedly been up at/near the top if he had stayed two days as well. Sucks that he couldn't.
No, I just have the spreadsheet on my computer since I was in charge of timing.
I take that back, they are up.
http://ovr-scca.org/uploads/rx_results/2014/06_cls_2014-08-23.htm
EvanB wrote: No, I just have the spreadsheet on my computer since I was in charge of timing.
ah, of course.
and for anyone who wants to see what stupid driving with a total lack of any recovery effort look like, here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZQJAHczTiU&feature=youtu.be
EvanB wrote: I take that back, they are up. http://ovr-scca.org/uploads/rx_results/2014/06_cls_2014-08-23.htm
what's up with the spreadsheet? The whole right side is berkeleyed up like it was on the computer on-site. Would like to see my last few runs in particular to see where Kevin got me.
Damn, Kevin crushed everyone in the afternoon on Saturday by like 2 seconds per run. wow.
It's something in the HTML formatting that mucks it all up. If you "select all" and then "copy"/"paste" into Excel, it's readable.
After looking at those results and reviewing the various pictures, I think I need to consider that my rear struts might need some attention. While it's nice not putting any wear on the rear tires since they're always just flying through the air a couple feet over the course, I might have a little more control if they made contact once in a while...
Ah, but you did get that epic full-air picture that I can only dream of!
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