Another Sunday. How did you do?

I have autocross like 5 Sundays out of the year, maybe 7 if I'm lucky. This year it's 4.

Had a verrrrrry wet hillclimb weekend. I think I'm still drying out. Found some leaks in my new race car though.

Now, I've got auto-x's for the next 4 weeks in a row now though. And a track day coming on Tuesday

Bobzilla wrote: Now, I've got auto-x's for the next 4 weeks in a row now though. And a track day coming on Tuesday

Still liking the FZ? Getting some decent rides in?

Huckleberry wrote:

Bobzilla wrote: Now, I've got auto-x's for the next 4 weeks in a row now though. And a track day coming on Tuesday

Still liking the FZ? Getting some decent rides in?

Weather has not be super cooperative for me and lots of work, but yes. Love the bike. I'm over 3k miles I've put on it since I purchased it.

I hung out in the AC and watched the thermometer cross 100 degrees.

This was my weekend to work. So, I spent the first 9 hrs of Sunday being awake, sleeping away the next 6 sleeping, only to finish it out back at work....

Go me.

SCCA Club Racing at Summit Point. "Wings and Things" group, ie. every kind of open wheel car and sports racer. I qualified well enough in the morning session - 1'14.2xx" - for pole in the qualifying race. I got a decent start but the car was handling really strange and was trying to loop in slower right corners. I was doing 18s mostly, which is 4 seconds off pace. The only reason I managed to hold on to first was that the race is only 10 laps. A couple more and I've have been reeled in. Taking a hard look at the car afterwards I realized a ride height change was causing the right front shock/pushrod rocker could bind against the chassis when the suspension unloads. This would do CRAZY things to the cross weights, so the appearance would be no left rear grip. Otherwise known as no grip in slow rights; I think the aero load in faster rights had the suspension compressed just enough to avoid the binding.

I raised the ride height until the binding was fixed and checked camber the best I could without a flat, level scale platen, and had no way to get accurate toe. Sports racers get set up to .1 degree and sub-1/16" increments of toe, so the scale platen, digital camber gauge and stringing frames aren't just nice, they're necessary. So back at home that night, lucky to live only an hour and twenty minutes from the track, I packed all that crap on and in the truck and planned to do a full setup in the morning.

Sunday AM, we arrived and found that the schedule has gone so well that we're running before the lunch break, so my setup time is down to perhaps 15 minutes, tops. So I set the toe on both ends and check camber on the not-flat paddock, but can safely assume if I see say, .9 deg L 1.7 deg R they'd be equal given a level surface at the correct -1.3 deg. So I best guessed the camber and lined up in grid.

My freak morning 14.2 was still good for pole and I won the drag race to T1. I pushed as hard as I could and gapped the 2nd place car until my mirrors were empty. I was trying get as much time in the meaningful places as I could while leaving a little on the table where it's higher risk, and fell into a nice rhythm, lapping in the 15s with one in the 14s.

Then after crossing the line on lap 8, I got in the brakes for turn 1, the rears locked, I spun, didn't get the clutch in instantly, as I'd just let it out for the 6-5 downshift, and stalled the car and wound the motor backwards.

On a motorcycle engine this will spin the starter about (actually, seriously) 20k rpm nearly instantly.

I was sitting in the middle of turn one aimed directly at my oncoming competitors, no starter, dead inthe water, waving my red gloves, having just blown a class and group lead of 10 seconds. I did nearly precisely this at the last MARRS race, giving away a class win. Making lemonade of this, I've realized I need to make longer droop limiters and shorter pushrods for the front suspension and go through the master cylinders and put on the new pads before the next round. And I really need to make sure I stomp the binders on the formation lap to verify brake bias.

I did the 70 lap mini invitational. Ninth place which is pretty good considering I had to pit on a yellow to fix a wiring issue, and all the visiting cars had 8 inch Hoosiers to my sevens. Then I drank a bunch of good canadian beer. Gooood night.

Refresh this thread. Local autocross today, finished 10th out of 70. Dude showed up in a Viper ACR to win but I was 1.4 seconds behind him

patgizz wrote: Car still broken

Still applies

No racing for me. i took a nap after church, went to a car show. Saw an AMC Gremlin monster truck. Good day.

Took an hour and a half ride up a nice twisty back country road. It was a ride, not a drive, because Kazoo Jr. is learning to drive a 5 speed. (Just got his permit, see this thread: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/awesome-dad-moment-today/121031/page1/)

It's not an autocross, but teaching the next generation to work a manual through a challenging road isn't a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I moved the entire contents of a house.

This was last Sunday, but I managed 15th in PAX on non RE71 tires!

Very rainy autocross at Cayuga Community College yesterday, like tidal wave wakes taller than cars and were knocking cones over. Far end of the lot is fresh-sealed pavement too, so no grip down there. We only had 13 cars show up, so we each got 20 runs in. Came in 11th out of 13 on PAX because C/SP.

In reply to NickD:

Oh, that sounds absolutely miserable.

For what it's worth, screw PAX! Our CSP "adjustment" is actually WORSE than BSP.

No races so Saturday went to a car show with a few friends, got judged in the rain, and won 2nd place in "other" because they didn't put me in "Mopar Compact Tuner". Sunday went to the Hot Wheels show at Hara Arena and spent some $ on cool stuff...

Saturday ran a rugged maniac race. First time 2,days shy of 46. Finished and loved it. I'll call that a win

Sunday finally got a chance to get under the truck to look for the fluid leak I saw on my gravel drive. Coolant coming from between the block and head. No sign of coolant in the oil or oil in the coolant. So not a disaster, but i'll still call that a loss.

Woke up this morning and my wife has bought me a roof rack for the e30 for my birthDay. And I woke up with a wife who would do that. And I woke up at 46! Definitely a win.

So all in all I will call it a great weekend!

I got my car safely to a performance shop about 2 hours away for a proper track alignment and corner balance, PSS9 tuning, and annual track inspection. I know- it's August. This is the first time I've had the car almost fully dialed in... well, since I've owned it. I cannot wait to get it out on track in its current iteration.

In reply to KyAllroad:

Yeah, especially irritating that i rained because despite this being the driest summer on record for the area, it has rained at 4 of our 6 events so far, and it also rained at a non-SCCA event I went to. And after the competition laps were done the sun came out and it somewhat dried up for the fun runs. I did get to drive some other cars though and got 4 people to try my car, which was hilarious, as I posted about here.

Ran at FedEx Field with a dire mid-to-late afternoon forecast. Got rained on just as the first car left the start line, but it dried out nicely for second and third morning heats (I ran the fifth heat). A brief shower dampened things during fourth heat (junior karts) but we already had dry pavement in man places when our heat got going. I went out for the first run with dry condition tire pressures and slid around quite a bit in the wet spots. Fixed that for the second run but when I was two or three cars from the start line the skies just OPENED, I mean biblical downpour. Positive note: the reset pressures worked a lot better. Unfortunately in that deluge there was no improvement over a half-wet-half-dry first run. After I finished they brought in the course workers and eventually the persistent lightning forced the balance of the day to be called off. I got second in class but we all only got one run in so that's a little hard to take.

Ran on Saturday with Capital Driving Club at Harry Grove in the Mustang. Getting back in the groove with the car after 4-5 years where it was in storage and I ran a Miata instead.

Issue: midrange power seems down, runs fine and power increases at upper RPM. Suspect the original 1997 plug wires/plugs/coils may be tired. Car only has 58k miles on it, but 19 years is a long calendar life for these parts. Also, I hear ignition whine in the radio. Going to start there. Could possibly be an IMRC (intake manifold runner control) issue. Hope not.

Resolved issue: brakes hadnt felt as good as I remembered. Solution:flush the 12 year old fluid you dumbass!

Meant to run video, even went out and bought a new micro-sd card for my camera, grabbed the wrong power cord for it. FAIL

Results: They arent up yet, but IIRC I was close to top 10 on a tiny lot with a street tire'd mustang, an older one at that. Now to run it at a larger lot.

Think I will keep at it with the mustang and consider a few small upgrades. Stick with the CAM-C path rather than STP. Although, most of the car fun budget is going to go to the bugeye resto for the immediate future. (panhard, steeda X2, underdrive pulleys, tuner?)

Auto cross is next weekend. Yesterday I did the front brakes on the Miata. Bedded them in last night, could smell it this morning still when I went out to get in the car.

Got the new high volume fuel pump installed in the RAV4.