The 111 Shift

Prep for Season #4

2012-02-08T22:00:00.007-05:00

As always, the first step is to find out when the races are, so I built a google calendar to hold them all. You can see it here.

Mechanical Prep:

Replace the aging and loosening U joint in the steering. It's no where near dangerous, but the play is dissatisfying in a car that is so tight everywhere else. The looseness lets it wander just a bit over bumps and with camber changes on the highway. It also probably makes my steering input more abrupt while racing.
Bolt check
Oil Change
Check Toe on front wheels.
Check corner balance (need to borrow scales)
Check/set camber on all wheels (need tool)

Brakes, and tires should be all set till mid season. This year the emphasis will be on set-up, and getting the most out of what I have. I've done all the easy/cheap modifications for the most part, and so now I need to optimize what I have before I consider spending big $ on an LSD, clutch and flywheel.

I'll be doing the U-Bolt install on my own, so I'll post what I did for that in the next article.

Season Wrap Up

2011-10-31T14:24:00.116-04:00

The sun has set on my third season of racing...

So after getting back into the game, the season has now drawn to a close in only a month's time and the big winter wait is upon us. Nothing to do but look back on the season and plan for the next. So How did I do? The best answer to that question is "I improved". I definitely got faster. Technically I placed exactly the same as I did last year, Second place for the season. The Blue CRX still beats me, but this year I beat some real competitors.

The difference is last year, I more or less out attended all of my competitors except one. In 2010 There were several people who beat me head-to head, but I earned more points by showing up to more races. This year only one competitor who was faster fell behind on attendance. This year I can legitimately say I was the second fastest car, and probably the third fastest driver in the class. It's also gratifying that the class is the 5th most popular out of 35 classes. Also, one of the cars that I beat (and not just once) is a seriously modified car; A miata with a full custom suspension, and a 2.0L stroker, turbo charged engine. Also, I made second place decisively despite being 3 events short of a full season.

Here are the final standings...

Don Kuehl (Blue Supercharged CRX)	(8 events)	60 points
Gus Heck (Black N/A Lotus Elise)	(6 events)	35 points
Brian Kuehl (Blue Supercharged CRX)	(2 events)	18 points
Matt Neiman (Blue Turbo/Stroked Miata)	(4 events)	17 points
Chris Raposo (1994 Miata)	(3 events)	11 points
Bill Sallie(Blue Corvette with engine swap)	(3 events)	9 points
Gregory Walter(Blue/White turbo Miata)	(2 events)	9 points
Camron Bosnic (Flamed Turbo 240SX)	(2 events)	9 points
Gerard Mauvis (2003 Porsche 911C4S)	(1 event)	6 points
Bryan Mancuso (Red, stock MR2)	(1 events)	4 points
Gavin Williams(1978 Nissan 280z)	(1 event)	3 points
Bill Brundige (Blue Turbo/Stroked Miata)	(1 event)	2 points
Andrew Leonas (White '91 Turbo RX-7)	(1 event)	2 points

Other YOY stats:

Number of competitors in the class 12 (up from 11)
Number of days raced by all other competitors 29 (vs 28)
Races attended 6 (down from 9)
Final season pax rank 53, (up from 65)
Pax points earned 450.28 (up from 442.86)

The number of competitors racing in the class was similar, although last year's winner went off to college, and only raced in our class twice this year (and twice in the Pro class). Given that, one could argue that the level of competition went down a bit, but not a whole lot since it was only one competitor.

Pax Points are based on the best 5 races, and are across all drivers in all classes, so improvement there is a good solid measure. Last year I attended 9 races and got to drop my 4 worst results, and I only could drop one this year, If I'd made all 9 races that one might have improved a bit more.

Back on Course

2011-09-25T15:17:00.000-04:00

August was a non-racing month for me. Too much going on. Buying a house, moving, Hurricanes, and stuff. I also found a minor maintenance issue on the car (torn caliper slide bolt boot). I missed 2 events, so my chances in the season standings are pretty slim now, but the good/bad news is that the top driver decided to graduate to Pro class. So the standings when I returned looked like this after event 5 & 6:

Don Kuehl (Blue Supercharged CRX)	(4 events)	39 points
Brian Kuehl (Blue Supercharged CRX)	(2 events)	18 points
Gus Heck (Black N/A Lotus Elise)	(3 events)	11 points
Matt Neiman (Blue Turbo/Stroked Miata)	(3 events)	11 points
Camron Bosnic (Flamed Turbo 240SX)	(2 events)	9 points
Bill Sallie(Blue Corvette with engine swap)	(3 event)	9 points
Gerard Mauvis (2003 Porsche 911C4S)	(1 event)	6 points
Chris Raposo (1994 Miata)	(1 event)	3 points

So the good news there, is that Matt didn't make it to the New Hampshire race, and we are now tied. Brian who is probably the fastest driver, has moved on to pro class. Then comes Event 7. Beautiful day, and an awesome course, which was a re-hash of some course elements that were used at Nationals. I had a good day, and took home my second ever second place trophy. Still waiting for a first, but beating the CRX is a tough nut to crack.

Don Kuehl (Blue Supercharged CRX)	(5 events)	48 points
Brian Kuehl (Blue Supercharged CRX)	(2 events)	18 points
Gus Heck (Black N/A Lotus Elise)	(4 events)	17 points
Matt Neiman (Blue Turbo/Stroked Miata)	(3 events)	11 points
Camron Bosnic (Flamed Turbo 240SX)	(2 events)	9 points
Bill Sallie(Blue Corvette with engine swap)	(3 event)	9 points
Gerard Mauvis (2003 Porsche 911C4S)	(1 event)	6 points
Chris Raposo (1994 Miata)	(2 event)	7 points
Gregory Walter (Blue/White Turbo Miata)	(1 event)	3 points
Bill Brundige (Blue Turbo/Stroked Miata)	(1 event)	2 points
Andrew Leonas (White '91 Turbo RX-7)	(1 event)	2 points

Faster, but not closer

2011-08-05T01:31:00.000-04:00

The new shocks were great fun. The car seems much more stable and I felt much more confident with it not leaning as much. I also noticed that the tires squeal more easily (possibly because I'm going faster), and when they do begin to release it's not as sudden.

I ran the sway bar in it's lowest setting, and the Nitrons on the dealer recommended starting point of 10 clicks from full stiff. The car seemed pretty neutral, neither particularly pushy or particularly tail happy. My times were the best I've ever had.

Unfortunately, my competition had a good day as well. Brian drove so fast that he would have been mid-pack in the Pro class. Although I went faster, I'm sure there are places I could still fine-tune. But I'll have to wait a bit, since this month I need to concentrate on buying a house and moving. Come September I'll race again, and hopefully I'll get a chance to fine-tune myself and the car. In the mean-time the class leader will likely run-away with the season, but that's life. In any case here's the standings after the last event.

Don Kuehl (Blue Supercharged CRX)	(4 events)	30 points
Brian Kuehl (Blue Supercharged CRX)	(2 events)	18 points
Gus Heck (Black N/A Lotus Elise)	(3 events)	11 points
Camron Bosnic (Flamed Turbo 240SX)	(2 events)	9 points
Bill Sallie(Blue Corvette with engine swap)	(3 event)	9 points
Matt Neiman (Blue Turbo/Stroked Miata)	(2 event)	7 points
Bill Brundige (Blue Turbo/Stroked Miata)	(1 event)	2 points

Nitrons - 650Nm of fun

2011-07-16T01:01:00.000-04:00

The issue with the left front riding low turned out to be a broken left front coil-over. Given that I busted the stock one once already, I figured an upgrade was mandated and by luck I found a set of used Nitron single adjustables with 650Nm rear, 525 front springs. That's approximately twice the spring of the stock Bildstiens.

So what happens when you double the spring rate on a sports car? Well after a couple of drives to work I would say the answer is you get noticeable improvements in everything except comfort, and handling over bumps. The ride over bumps is definitely stiffer overall, though the little stuff doesn't get the car jiggling around quite as much, possibly because the dampers are better.

However, body roll is now almost non-existant. The car is much more sure feeling on good pavement. The acceleration is sharper too. When you step on the gas pedal there are only 3 things that can happen:

The car can tilt. Nose up rear down, you see this in the extreme with dragsters that actually lift the nose of the car.
The tires can slip. Also common in dragsters and drifters, and teenagers who mistakenly think that sliding the rear tires around has something to do with going fast.
The car can move forward. Well duh, of course this is the one we really want.

Since the springs are stiffer you get less of #1 and more of #2 and #3. So the car accelerates faster, but it's a bit easier to break traction if your not careful.

Also the stiffer springs increase the tendency of the car to unweight the tires after hitting a bump, and so the inconveniently placed manhole cover at the exit from my work tends to cause the tires to chirp when I leave. It didn't do that before the change. Similarly, the car sometimes has a feeling of slightly walking sideways when turning across a bumpy surface. I had previously noticed this when I added the stiffer sway bar, and it's increased.

I also noticed that the jerkiness and bumps can make the shifter a bit more reluctant to go into gear, so I'll have to keep an eye on that. Don't want to blow shifts. That can be expensive.

Basically the car now expresses an even greater preference for smooth pavement. When you feed it what it likes, the driving is very tasty indeed.

Top 10 !!

2011-07-02T13:42:00.000-04:00

The results from last sunday are in, and based on fastest time of the day, I was the 10th fastest car out of 104 cars. That's top 10% in raw times! I completely blew away one of my SCCA rivals (the turbo 2.0L stroked miata with the fully custom suspension) I've never come close to that before. Unfortunately it looks like something broke or wore out on the way home however, as my left front is now riding low and something feels loose and the car wanders pulls a little bit one way or the other when I go over bumps. The last run of the day was actually my fastest time, by 0.15, but I had one cone.

Hard to compare this to an SCCA result however since the crowd is different, and the car classes don't match at all.

So next comes the repair investigation... The initial suspects are a binding shock, or a A-Arm bushing that's worn out.

Of course...

2011-06-29T11:32:00.000-04:00

When you are most interested in the results, of course that's when things go wrong. Today I received this in my inbox...

Good morning all!

Sorry for yet another mass mailing, but I felt a sense of duty to inform you of the whereabouts of the event 3 results from Sunday. As you know, our illustrious timing guru Scott usually has the results out the evening of the event. For this event, that did not happen, obviously. The reason for this is that the timing results file got corrupted, and it's been a very manual process that Scott has been undertaking.

Luckily, we have the file that is readable, but not processable via the normal Access channels. We also have paper back-up that we always make during the event (in case any of you who had that job assigned in the past, thinking it was a useless position - this is the exact reasoning for that job).

We're working on a couple different solutions, and there will be results, but the ETA could be anywhere from this evening through a week or more. Scott's the go-to guy for this (though we are reaching out to assist), but he has a more important priority now of an overdue and very pregnant wife (Congrats, Scott!!!). If this hasn't affected the results posting, it likely will.

Anyway, just wanted to catch everybody up to speed, apologize, and say that all is not lost.. results will be posted, it is just a matter of time.

Thanks in advance for your patience!

Pins and Needles

2011-06-28T10:20:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday I ran with the Boston BMWCCA. They don't do on-site results/awards, but I asked folks in the tent what they thought the fastest time of the day was. I was shocked to hear that it was possibly only less than 2 seconds faster than me. That's a lot closer than ever before... If it is real. Pardon me while I go refresh their on-line results page... Again...

Urewarded Success

2011-06-14T21:02:00.000-04:00

The June 12 event was a success for sure. I ran faster than any previous event except one and I consider that one event to be a fluke, due to a conflicting national level competition drawing off top competitors. Last Sunday, I was in the top 50% of PAX standings, but even that is not really reflective of the improvement in my driving. It was a tough day weather-wise. The first 3 runs of the day were on wet pavement. The afternoon runs were dry, but there were only 3 of them, so in many ways the morning only helped with learning the layout of the course, the driving feel changed completely in the afternoon. I had to actively forget the way I drove it in the morning. The weather was also cold and in the 50's with a good breeze. In other words, stone cold tires at the start of every run.

Events with conditions like this have typically been bad for me, and previously I wound up 10-20% off my pace because I couldn't work out the kinks in my driving and figure out the course in only limited runs. Also days with cold tires have been generally bad for me. My car is light, and the tires just don't build up enough heat in cold weather to make the sticky rubber work like it should.

However, this past Sunday, I overcame these factors and put in my second best performance ever. I adjusted to the changing conditions reasonably, and each afternoon run was faster than the previous. As you may recall, I am also driving a car that is not on par with the kind of power and equipment allowed in my racing class, so I also track numbers relating to the stock class, into which my car almost, but doesn't quite fit. Certainly I don't have any significant advantages over a properly prepared stock class car, even if the rules won't let me in. Using the stock class adjustment, my time would have been in the top 40% of PAX standings.

But it gets better! My official best time for the day was 51.388 seconds. That was my second to last run, but my final run was much faster at 49.753 seconds. Unfortunately, I nicked a cone and got a 2 second penalty, so officially it only counts as 51.753. If I had missed the cone, it probably would have only slowed me by a tenth or so, and my PAX time would have been in the top 35%, or with the stock factor, the top 25%.

Me?!?! driving better than 75% of NER SCCA drivers? Unheard of!! But alas it didn't actually happen, so you won't hear of it just yet. Not for a couple more inches...

Also, this event marked the first time when I had a real chance to beat Russ, who drives the green Elise in stock class. That stat however must be taken with a grain of salt Russ hit one or more cones on all 3 afternoon runs. However, if you pit my +1 run against his best +1 run, I'm within a half second of his time. That's beginning to almost look competitive.

Here's my graphs, including a line for "what if I missed that $#!@& cone"...

So with all this success surely I gained some position in the season standings, right?

Nope. Even though I was only 3.6% slower than the fastest car in the class I was 4th of 5 drivers. First gets 9 points, second 6 points, third 4 points and fourth only gets me 3 points. It's a tough competitive class this year. That's actually a good thing. When I do find success I won't feel like it's a paper victory, and the competition is part of the fun. If I hadn't hit that cone I would have been less than .2 seconds behind first, and taken second. I'm certainly in the hunt.

Points standings look like this:

Don Kuehl (Blue Supercharged CRX)	(3 events)	24 points
Brian Kuehl (Blue Supercharged CRX)	(1 events)	9 points
Camron Bosnic (Flamed Turbo 240SX)	(2 events)	9 points
Bill Sallie(Blue Corvette with engine swap)	(2 event)	8 points
Gus Heck (Black N/A Lotus Elise)	(2 events)	7 points
Matt Neiman (Blue Turbo/Stroked Miata)	(1 event)	4 points

Good practice

2011-06-04T15:17:00.003-04:00

Over a month between SCCA races and what to do? Run with other clubs of course!

On May 14, I ran with the New England SVT Mustang/Cobra club. This club caters to muscle cars, in an area where muscle cars are just not as common as other areas of the country. Since they can't rely on Mustangs, and Factory 5 Cobras to fill out the ranks, other cars are welcome to race with them as well. They are a friendly, easy going bunch which is good for the enjoyment, but perhaps carries over into safety a bit too much.

My performance in the SVT event was pretty decent. I was running pretty fast, and I'm pleased to say that even with some fairly high speed elements on the course, I stayed agressive and on the second run of the afternoon (6th of the day) I put in a blistering performance. I had almost no major regrets about how I handled any of the elements. It was smooth, and clean and I had no cones through the entire run. But...

As I set up for my final blast to the finish I noticed that there was a spun out porsche that had gone out of the stop box and into the grass. It was about to pull back into the finish area.

STOP

I came to a full stop about 10 feet from the finish (and probably 50 ft from the porsche). After 10-15 seconds the porsche exited the stop box and I proceded across the finish line. My time was only 9 seconds slower than my best time of the day despite the full stop and wait. I'm sure I would have gained AT LEAST a second on my fastest scratch time. I know for a fact that I drove several sections substantially faster than any other run that day. I did ok on the turn around, didn't hesitate on the cone that caused so many people to go off course, took the second big corner in awesome form. I was fast through the slaloms, and on the gas early for the bigest straightest area. I slowed down less than any time before exiting that fast area, and still put myself in good position for the finish. Things just clicked on that run. Perhaps it was 103.6? perhaps even less?.

In another "Arggh, ALMOST" type moment, I also had a run that was 1.9 seconds faster but + 1 cone. The cone was at the finish, and there was no good reason to hit it, I just gave it gas a little too soon and based the cone on the way by. That run would have been a 104.6, or maybe I gained a 10th, hitting the cone, so say 104.7?

Perhaps the best part was when timing told the starter "Give him some extra space, he's a fast one." Nice to be called fast :). I also beat Barb Seger, although she wasn't on race tires, so it doesn't really count. In terms of numbers I was the 22nd fastest car out of 60. Imagining that I had not clipped the cone I would have been 14th fastest car, or if I not had to stop for the porsche, and my guess at the time is accurate I would have been 12th, or maybe 11th. So the top 20 out of 60 is clearly within reach, and the top 10 is probably still a bit tough to find.

On May 28, I ran with the renegade Miata club. In past events this is a club that I have tended to be somewhere between 20th and 30th fastest car out of about 65 cars. The course was tight and challenging, but the day was warm, and if there's one thing that old worn out hoosiers prefer, it's a warmer day. I ran fast, and consistently fast. One of the nice things about this event and the previous event was that my fastest official time was not a fluke. However in both events there was also a much faster time that got away. On the score sheet it says I had an 80.404 and my second best was 80.912.

The dirty secret however is that 80.912 was actually 78.912 + a 2 second penalty for hitting a cone. Just a little care and I probably could have finished with a 79.0 or so. That would have made me the 12th fastest car. As it was, I was the 16th fastest car, which is still a good improvement. However, it is worth noting that Renegade Miata doesn't attract quite as many high power cars, and their courses are more suited to small light cars. On the flip side they attract some very good miata drivers that don't go to the other clubs. Even so, I should do better there than SCCA or SVT.

All and all, I'm beginning to feel like there may come a day soon, when I stop hitting the cone at the finish, or a mystery cone on course, and take another step forward in the level of my driving. Once I do that, I will begin the hunt for fractions of a second. To date, I still hunt whole seconds.

And all of the above is on tires with 150+ runs. Based on the expressions of ghastly surprise when I told people how old the tires are and some durometer readings, I decided to mount the new set. Not a lot of excuses for next weekend now. Be interesting to see how i do on new tires. It's entirely possible that it will change enough about the car that I may have some adjusting to do. One interesting question is whether or not the tire pressures will need to change, I've been running 19 front, 21 rear (cold pressure). With my current setup, this leaves me relatively neutral. Only racing well tell us the answer.

A Slow Start

2011-05-06T00:26:00.002-04:00

How slow? 0.001 seconds slow. Perhaps if I had just sucked in my breath at the finish I would have found the smidgen of additional forward speed I needed to place second at the second points event. Unfortunately, I am in dire need of the points already. This was my first points of the season. I had been sick and unable to race the for the first event of the season. So after the first two events, SSM looks like this:

Don Kuehl	(2 events)	18 points
Camron Bosnic	(2 events)	9 points
Bill Sallie	(1 event)	6 points
Gus Heck	(1 event)	4 points

That's right, I'm in last place. However, in the broader picture vs my past performance this event was apparently my 4th or 5th fastest ever (depending on the stat you choose), and significantly faster than the non-points practice event. Another good thing is I had 3 times within .3 seconds of my fastest, so it wasn't really a fluke. So I was a lot faster in this race than the last time I ran which is good.

One thing that was a problem in this race, was the changing temps through the day messing with the tire pressures (Russ noticed it too). The last run of the morning and the first two run of the afternoon were mostly a waste because the pressures had gone off and I didn't realize it immediately. The car was pushing and then suddenly catching on the bumps making consistent cornering very difficult. Also the Hoosiers are getting old now with over 150 runs on them, so I'm at an increasing disadvantage there too. I have 2 practice events coming up (SVT club and Renegade Miata) so I will beat up the tires there and probably run stickers for the next points event.

One thing I can say is that it seems that I have managed to regain my speed from last year and it's time to forge ahead. It's pretty clear from the SS Pax statistic, that I'm more or less at the 50% mark as far as driving skill goes. Middle of the pack to start Year #3. The goal is to get myself into the top third by the end of the year. Top quartile is a stretch goal, since more than half of the drivers at that level are in double-digit years of experience. Top third is as much as I can expect realistically. This is also mathematically pretty... top 1/n where n is the years of experience.

Season Prep 2011

2011-03-25T10:45:00.005-04:00

The season is about to begin. The car is out of the garage (then back in and out again on the rumor of snow). The following improvements have been made:

I got Charlie-X to re-flash my ECU adding +8 hp, lowering the cam change over. The big lag followed by a kick in the butt is gone, and power uptake is much smoother. My butt-dyno seems to think there might be a bit more power, but that of course is non-scientific. What is clear is that the power delivery is a lot smoother.
I flipped the Race tires so that the less worn insides are now on the outside.
I added a Fujita F5 Cold Air Intake. This probably has negligible power benefits, but is 2lbs lighter, and I can see when the air filter gets dirty. The stock air box requires jack stands just to peek at the air filter. This one I can see through the side vent.

As you can see below, I may be gaining as much from a clean air filter as from chipping the car!

Arm Chair Nats

2011-02-18T18:46:00.006-05:00

So what can an autocrosser do when the snow's still melting and racing's not possible? Arm chair racing. One of my favorite forms of arm chair racing is messing with statistical comparisons analyzing my past results. It's of course true that "past results do not guarantee future success", but they can be entertaining. This time I'm entertaining myself by trying to determine if my car is a good car for racing in the SSM class.

The last race of the season, I co-drove the car with an 18 year veteran racer. He is a top competitor at our regional races often placing in the top 5 or 10 out of 100+ drivers. He's driven my car twice, the second time at the New England Region Solo season finale (the event where the Stirling Moss season championship is held). This means that he has had a chance to get used to the car and his times might begin to represent what my car is capable of in the hands of a good driver. In other words, it's an opportunity to measure how my car might do on the national level (if I got better at driving it).

While it's easy to compare times within a single event, comparisons between events are not so easy. Every race has a different course. 55 seconds might be blazing fast on one, and dog slow on another. In order to make a comparison one needs to figure out what the relative length/speed of the two courses was.

Our region is possessed of 30+ people who went to the 2010 SCCA Solo II National Championships, 18 of whom raced the same cars at the season finale. To convert my times and Brian's times to the equivalent times at the National Championship, I calculated the ratio of National Time to Finale time for all 18 drivers, and averaged them. It turns out that the times people put up (over 2 days) at nationals average 2.42 times longer than their times at the finale.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?hl=en&hl=en&key=0AivjhuPkzmJ2dHZncEcwdVFXQmlyTGo3WTZnbDJablE&output=html

Brian would have come in 16th out of 26, 10 seconds from first and 5 from a trophy. I would have come in 24th. However there's a lot of variation in the numbers so I calculated a confidence interval and it turns out that we can only say that there is a 95% chance that Brian would have placed between 4th and 23. In other words there's not much chance of his coming in first or last, but claiming an exact placement is simply beyond the capabilities of this analysis. The conclusion is "somewhere in the middle".

It's also worth noting that there are some not to exotic mods that could be done to improve my car by somewhere around 6-7 seconds (on a 120 second 2 day 2 course time such as nationals). Here's the list in the order I think they should be fixed (which also happens to be ascending price order).

FIX: At the finale, the rear pads were not bedded in and not mating properly with the rotor surface (+1-2 seconds?)
Chip the car +8hp and lower cam change (+1 sec?)
Stiffer springs and adjustable Race shocks (+2 seconds?)
Install Limited Slip Differential (+2 sec?)

With that done, and a 6-7 second boost Brian would be somewhere between 6th and 8th at nationals. It would be conceivable to trophy at nationals in my car without spending a fortune on it. Winning... well that probably requires a serious effort to maximize the power output from the car. Stroke the engine, reduce the tire diameter, lower the ride height, change the transmission, race clutch, lightweight flywheel, port/polish the engine, new valves, dyno custom tune (multiple times), header, de-cat, race gas... etc.

Can that small fortune gain 3 -4 seconds of time and put the car in range of winning at the national level... maybe. But the car would not even be close to street legal anymore. So all that stuff will not come any time soon. Particularly not before the car is paid off! :)

The state of the Tune

2011-02-01T00:34:00.007-05:00

A while back I mentioned mods. Yup, I've made some. The emphasis has been weight savings. Sheding 10lbs is equivalent to gaining 1hp on a car like this, so my car now performs at ~12 hp better than the stock curb weight. The Lotus is now 6% lighter than the stock curb weight when I race it. In addition, the sway bar and the tires are very important turning mods. The free-flow exhaust may also add a couple hp, but this is esentially unknown.

Given the 190bhp that this car makes, I am now at 9.8lbs/hp. For reference my (entirely stock) Mazda 3 is a peppy little hatch back with 23lbs/hp, and A Ferrari F430 has 6.6 pounds/hp.

What does the future hold? I have a Fujita F5 Cold Air intake ready to be added. This weighs only 2lbs so it should allow me to cut a few more pounds from a relatively high and rearward position. I'd probably get the best benefit out of a shock improvement, but that's pretty expensive. About $2500 Cheaper and probably next best is a chip-tune for the car. That would add 8hp and move the cam change over down by about 500 rpm. I would be down to 9.4 lbs/hp. One worry about adding power however is it may also make my open differential that much more obvious of a problem. The AC delete is free and probably sheds 10-15 lbs. I dont use it anyway, so I may do that if I can get the right drive belt.

However there is one mod that stands out above all others. Mostly, I need to tighten up the Nut behind the wheel! A driver with 18 years of experience recently proved that he could drive my car more than 3.5 seconds faster than me on a 60 sec course. The car is still faster than I am.

NER SCCA 2nd place in SSM class for 2010 season

2011-01-31T23:26:00.004-05:00

You are probably wondering why I didn't write this post sooner. After all 2nd place isn't so bad, and it's in a fairly competitive SCCA region. SSM's a pretty cool class we had a couple of turbo Miatas, my Lotus Elise, a crazy 340 hp CRX, an RX-7 Turbo, a Nissan 240 that trophied at nationals and even a Dodge Viper! Sounds great hunh?

But the field wasn't quite as interesting as it sounds... First off the faster of the two drivers in the CRX ran away with first place... He had it locked up by midseason. More than double the points of anyone else in the class. Yes I did say the CRX won the class. Believe me when I say it's a crazy overpowered super setup CRX :).

Ok but what about all those hot cars?? Well the Viper was driven by complete novices. They never came back. Possibly people with 6L V10 cars are put off when a bunch of folks with 1.8L four bangers make them look like they are standing still. Vipers can be very good, but autocross is 85% driver no matter what car you're in and it was their first time.

The 240 on the other hand put down some VERY fast times, but only ran once. A couple of very experienced drivers were bumming a drive due to corded tires on their regular ride or something. The 240 got 3rd place at nationals. It is a very very fast car. Otherwise the car I chased the previous year spent all it's time in SM.

One of the Miatas was also a single showing. It's painted to look just like a little Doge Viper. It was faster than the viper was (and it too has a 1.8L 4cyl engine), but it didn't show up again either. Something about vipers?

The RX-7 is a car make that wins SSM at the national level. Unfortunately the one running in SSM at NER is not a 1993 RX-7, so it's not really the right build. It's an older generation. In addition to that, it had serious engine issues. It was trailing the field for the first 4 races, and then the car died and never came back the rest of the year.

So that leaves me, the CRX's second driver, and the other Turbo Miata. At the end of the year after event #7 I was trailing slightly in the standings, but there were many scenarios where I could get second or third place. All I had to do was win once, or get second twice with the right luck and I was good. It was looking exciting and I was motivated. I got to race #8 and learned that the CRX was out for the year. It had had transmission issues in Race 7, which turned out to be a dead transmission with no budget to replace for the last 2 races. I also learned that the Turbo Miata blew up it's transmission at a non NER event the weekend before. Between that

and the CRX's busted axle earlier in the year, and spotty early season attendance by the miata, I became a shoe in for second.

I got second place by virtue of attendance and not breaking my car. It's a very real way to win. Not the inspiring epic win I had envisioned. But keeping the car on the track and racing is a very important part of racing. This is true in wheel to wheel where drivers must not crash, and it's true in time trials where people can overstretch the limits of their machine. Both of my competitors did the latter. They put tons of HP through stock transmissions. The result is actually not that surprising. The CRX may be back next year, and this time it will probably have a better transmission. From what I hear the Miata is getting a whole new engine in addition to a new transmission.

I really did earn 2nd place. There's nothing fake about it. However, I really hope that next year I'll be able to brag about more than my attendance and my conservative but reliable build.

Moving Up in the Pack

2010-07-21T10:12:00.009-04:00

Sorry folks, wrote this several months ago but forgot to publish it... I am now due for a season wrap up (which will contain tales of the season points race, car modifications, weather factors and lessons learned). I'll let this entertain you while I put that together :) If you want a sneak peak of that, you can of course check out my graphs...

The latest SCCA event on 7/18 was yet another high water mark. Even though I didn't beat either the Turbo Miata or the CRX, I was close enough to make it look possible this time. Everyone in the class ran well, and the stats speak for themselves. I was over the 60th percentile in the PAX standings, a full 12% higher than ever before. If one uses the Super Stock PAX that is more appropriate for the actual level of modifications to my car, I broke into the 70th percentile. As a SS car, I would have out PAXed everyone in SSM. Relative to Russ, my raw time was only 4.3% slower, and he was 15th in PAX standings overall, just shy of the 90th percentile.

The day started and ended well. The first run had me in second place in SSM with Brian only 0.7 sec faster. The next couple runs got away from me a bit (one had a spin) and predictably the other competitors moved up and passed me. In the afternoon I had one spin to start, then a run that shaved 0.3 sec off my best. This left me in position to give it my all. I just concentrated on driving it all harder and closer to the edge, and somehow didn't loose control. The result? I shaved a whopping 1.7 seconds off my time. I was still in 4th, but up with the pack instead of trailing.

The conclusion? I had plateaued again. My improvements in my ability to control the car had allowed me to get comfortable again. Need to push out of my comfort zone. I did a fair job of this in the second half of the next event too. I finished with the 24th best raw time (up from 29th after the morning runs) at the 7/31 Renegade Miata event. There were over 60 people at that event, but this is not directly comparable, of course there are about 25 miata of all levels of prep, and basically all the cars have fenders (no formula cars or carts). But there are definately lots of well prepared cars there, so the conversion is entirely unclear being in the front half of the pack is good.

Oh, and then there's the mods I just did... (next post) :)

Midseason Summary

2010-07-09T18:59:00.003-04:00

Ok so I've been a bit delinquent. But given that I have an official follower and a couple people have admitted to lurking here, I should possibly resume posting. The last post was about cold weather and tires. The good news is that my tires were undamaged. Now the season is half over, so lets go for a summary.

I did the NER school and the Evo School this year, both were very helpful. One of the most helpful bits was learning about trail breaking from Grant R . at the NER school. Secondly, I felt a bit better after the EVO school in that the second day in the Challenge school, I was mostly able to hang with people who were far more experienced. It was clear however that I had some consistency issues. My instructor however is a national level competitor in my class and she did say that my car seemed to have potential to be competitive with proper driving and modifications.

Competition wise, We've now had 4 SCCA events and my results are:

4th of 5 on 4/11/2010 (47% SS pax)
4th of 6 on 4/25/2010 (47% SS pax)
3rd of 3 on 5/2/2010 (64% SS pax)
2nd of 5 on 6/6/2010 (46% SS pax) - Trophy

So I'm solidly in the middle of the pack when one uses a pax that is reasonable for the actual level of preparation for my car. The 64% pax is an anomaly probably due to the fact the event was at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and drew a different crowd. The 2nd place finish in the last event is facilitated by the fact that the Blue CRX sheared an axle the day before and Brian was competing in an RX-8 he never drove before. He made it close and forced me to have a good last run which shows that he's really quite a good driver.

In other entertainment, I've been daydreaming about working the car into a state where it could be competitive. Right now, it's simply outgunned by the 340hp 8lbs/hp CRX with the 275 front tires and full suspension etc. I don't have to go crazy to become competitive, but for fun I started a thread on the SCCA forums about the ballast rules for my class and how they make it ridiculously hard to apply forced induction without bumping up to XP class. The resulting thread basically convinced me that it might be fun to try to build up a lightweight contender instead.

I certainly don't have the money right now, but I may have some fun phantom building it on paper, and figuring out what order to do stuff in to move that direction. There are some basic things that need to be done before one even thinks about working over the engine/transmission and changing the wheels as mentioned in that thread. More speed can be gained for less expense, but it would be kinda fun to know how many $$ I am from the dream lightweight normally aspirated lotus SSM Autocross setup.

I'll post some thoughts on my upgrade path a future post.

Yokohama A048 & cold weather

2010-03-19T21:23:00.006-04:00

Recently I've been dealing with a relatively technical issue surrounding my street tires, and their temperature requirements. Last spring when I deemed the factory original Yokohama AD07 tires to be nigh unto bald, and definitely unsafe in wet weather, I decided to replace them. A number of factors played into my decision. I definitely wanted to have a high performance tire, anything else seems a travesty on a lotus. I also was still thinking that I might still do some track days at NHIS and wanted something that would perform well there. I also wanted something that had at least minimal tread since I definitely planned to take it out on the road, not just racing.

In the end I decided to go with the "other stock tire." My vehicle has the lotus factory sport springs and dampers, installed after delivery, so the wheels and tires were not from the sport pack. The sport pack comes with a higher performance Yokohama A048 tire, which is basically a race compound tire setup with enough tread and durability to survive on the street. They definitely were not the cheapest option, but clearly would support me in a high performance driving situation. Basically, the decision was to run A048's on the street/track days, finish out the Kumho V710's and then buy Hoosier A6 tires for Autocross.

Through the summer I had no complaints. I never did go back to NHMS for a track day, but none the less had no regrets. The A048's give good grip on the road and their wide block tread gives the car an exotic look. One of the things I discovered upon purchase was that there was a sticker on the tire that warned "do not operate or store below 14 degrees F." That was a bit of a shock, but I have no plans to let the car out where it could get salt coated, or suffer an ice-induced skid. The latter was the fate of my Father's 1969 Lotus Elan. The elan traveled with the family for over 30 years in an state where it was always "going to be repaired" but never quite got there. I never saw it move except when pushed. I've promised myself that I won't repeat that mistake. I might make another, but driving my Lotus in ice and snow I will do my best to avoid.

The this past fall the Lotus was involved in a minor accident. Nothing serious, not even the hint of a possibility of anything other than cosmetic damage, but repair required removal and repainting. The removal uncovered additional cracking in the fiberglass, and eventually what I had anticipated to be a patch fill and paint turned out to be an entire clam replacement (covered in full by insurance thankfully. Hooray for Safety Insurance and my agents at Eastern Insurance!). None of this particularly bothered me since I had taken the car for repair with the intent of putting it directly in storage for the winter thereafter.

The problem however arises from the storage requirements for the tires. I had expected to have the car back in time to switch to the old stock tires, which I retained on the stock rims to be my "storage tires." The auto-body shop claimed they kept the car indoors all winter, and I believe them, but I saw the building when I went to check on it, and it appears to be unheated. I gave them my "storage tires" but I didn't think of it until after there were several single digit lows in our area this winter, so now I don't know how cold my tires got. To make matters worse when I looked over the tires, they seemed to have small horizontal marks on the flat rolling surface of the tread that might be cracks that I had heard referenced (but not described in any way) on the internet.

Since replacing the tires is a thosand dollar prospect, I spent hours trolling the Lotustalk forums, and the internet in general and found very little information on how to know IF your tires were suffering the effects of being over-chilled. I finally did what I should have from the start, and called the manufacturer. They referred me to Track Side Performance, I left a message, and one of their folks called me back. Here's what I learned:

If the tires have gotten too cold and cracking does occur it will be cracking in the side-wall/shoulder. Usually the tread face will not show a problem. The cracking will generally show up in the first few miles of driving the car, so the issue may not be visible until the tires are driven. He listed several things that are clearly cause for concern:

Any cracking that appears to expose lower layers of the tire
Any cracking over a half inch long
Any cracking in the inner side-wall or near the bead
Any cracking that runs along the circumference of the tire. This type of cracking changes the way the tire flexes, will get worse with time and can lead to failure.

If cracks are small and only running vertically the tires may still be OK. You can contact them and sent them pictures if there is doubt, and it is definitely not in any way guaranteed whatever you happen to deem as a small crack is at all safe. However, one thing he did point out is that marks on the flat tread surface that I was seeing are unlikely to be related to this problem, and some shops use dollies to move cars around and those sometimes create small marks running across the tread. Please Please Please remember this information is not to be considered authoritative, but based on a single phone conversation, and if you have any doubts get a professional involved. The fact that the crack is less than 1/2 inch and in the shoulder of the tire does not mean it's safe, it means that it might or might not be unsafe. In other words, if you have big or badly placed cracks don't waste your time investigating further, junk the tires. If they are small, and in the shoulder it might be worth further investigation.

We also discussed the changes to the tire rubber when it gets cold, and he said that getting the tire really cold had a similar effect as getting it really hot (heat cycling), both tend to harden the rubber, and permanently reduce grip. That's nicely consistent with the description of cracking that shows up after a little driving has flexed the cold-hardened rubber, so his descriptions seem to be internally consistent and I feel like I probably have found trustworthy advice at last.

So what's the verdict? Well, the marks I saw examining the tires in my basement probably aren't the problem so THAT is good. But I need to put on the A048's take them for a (SHORT!) drive and see if the cracking appears. I'll do that tomorrow...

Wrap up and Rev Up

2010-02-27T20:42:00.009-05:00

So somewhere around the middle of the summer my life got busy :). I didn't really maintain this blog for the latter third of the season. Oh well... Blogger claims I don't have followers anyway. So what happened in the second half of the season? Well, right after the last post I ran in an event with the BMW car club, and got a result that seems to be my best of the season... Then things sorta drifted down hill from there. The next SCCA event was Dry and fun and felt good, but my times slipped just a little. I think this is not so much of a difference in my skill as a difference in the courses. The BMW course had LOTS of slaloms and that's probably my best element.

Then there came the second half of the summer... Events went from one every 1-3 weeks to one every month or more. Add in the addition of a new romantic interest starting in July, and I didn't really put time into finding alternate non SCCA events. So the first issue is that my seat time went down. Secondly, I made changes to the car... New Tires. Starting in September I ran Hooseier A6 tires. My Kumho V710's had well over 100 runs on them, plus whatever the previous owner had put on them. I'm sure they were cooked, but probably it would have been better in the short term to go for a new set of V710's, but the general wisdom seems to be that the A6's are the tire to have.

But what's past is past. This season I look forward to

A repaired front and rear clam with now pristine body work and faster paint

Carefully taping my car to prevent cone marks like I should have done last year.

Analyzing my runs with MaxQData's Quantum

Getting an Alignment that is more autocross focused.

Working out the pressures for my Hoosiers

Perhaps a front splitter to add downforce and protection from cones

Perhaps the adjustable front sway bar from BlackWatchRacing

Definately working hard to make sure I get on the gas early coming out of turns!! (I suspect that I still wait until I'm almost done turning to gas it at least some of the time...)

Oh yeah, and I need to figure out which events to run!

The big question is to NEDIV or not to NEDIV. I'm leaning towards not given the distance, Decal Requirements and my generally busy schedule, but part of me really really wants to too :).

Disclaimer: The calendar below is UNOFFICIAL! I'm using it for myself, but you should rely on the website of the organization running the event for the final word on when/where events will be. As of this posting both the SCCA schedule and the BMWCCA schedule are not final either and might change

Battle Scars

2009-07-12T21:53:00.006-04:00

Ok so I'm late in reporting this, but hey... Do I get paid for this? ;) (and also as far as I can tell, nobody reads this either)

So how did the 7/12/09 event go? Oddly but in the end it turns out I still managed to post an improvement. This event came on the heals of a fabulous run with the Renegade Miata Club. The RMC club event was the first time I felt like I was running *in* the pack, and some people with decent cars and more than a couple events of experience were envying my times. I was within 10% of the FTD...

This time featured a couple of new experiences. Wiley Co-Drove with me because his original co-driver's car ate it's own clutch early in the day. Co-driving theoretically gives a better chance at good times because the tires are warmer. It also demands that one pay closer attention to the grid. There is less time between runs, and for my part I kinda felt a bit rushed in comparison to solo driving.

Also in this event, I suffered the first incident of damage to the car directly related to the sport. The front clam is now slightly cracked and the plastic grating on the front left was destroyed by cones. It's not clear which driver inflicted the damage. Wiley claimed he had mowed down a cone directly when he came back from his second run. This caused me to recall what Russ had said about cracking his front clam and that caused me to look. But the run before I had blown straight through a wall of cones when I completely over-drove the Chicago box. I was too vexed to remember to check for damage after my run. Either incident could have been the source of the damage (estimated at $750 to fix).

Finally the day was plagued with timing problems, and we only got 5 runs. Of my five runs I had 2 DNF's due to spinning, and 2 runs that had 3 and 4 cones. Only one clean run. I wound up feeling like I had left a LOT of time out there and ended the day feeling quite down.

But as I mentioned, the numbers turned out good. My one good run actually represented a minor improvement over my "faboulous" RMC day. So while the day was rough on an emotional/ego basis as it happened, only one good run is needed to save the day. I can look back now on the problems and view them as battle scars, part of the cost of learning.

Running with Renegades

2009-06-28T15:46:00.008-04:00

Thus far I've been primarily doing SCCA Autocross events. Their season is slowing down. There are only 3 more events in their season, and only one per month. One of my concerns had been that with that long of a break, perhaps I would get rusty. So I started looking around for other autocross events. The BMW club had one today, but they fill up instantaneously... and registration was closed. However Renegade Miata Club had one for Saturday (yesterday). After an email confirmed that there were some open spots, I packed up my trailer and headed off to Devens.

Their events run somewhat differenlty. They seem to take an additional hour to hour and a half to get going. The course they set up is longer and takes longer to set up. We only got 1 course walk as opposed to the 3 or 4 possible at an SCCA event. However with fewer participants we managed to get in 6 runs a piece on a course twice as long. The net effect was that the event was more track time but less of an organized framework to facilitate competition. My oppinion is that these events are good fun, practice and training, but won't really satisfy those who need a competitive fix unless they happen to own a Miata.

The course was a lot of fun. My first time through, I realized that I really wasn't used to driving an autocross that long. The adrenaline quivers were getting to me a bit at the end of the run... but in subsequent runs my stamina improved so it wasn't really a problem... The course was very fun, and included some interesting elements I hadn't seen before at SCCA events.

There was the chicago-box on a corner which drove some folks nuts (but I figured it out on the course walk due to my Evolotion school training! Woot!). There was also an element that was a series of gates that created a what can only be called as a squiggle in the line you had to drive.... and the visual effect was a veritable sea of cones. There was also a series of 3 tubes that were paralell to the runway, but in fact were just a visual distraction. if you got set up ahead of time and pointed your car right, you actually could drive a straight line through them. This in itself was also a trick because the speed put on in that straight had to be carefully controlled to make the turn at the end and get into the subsequent slalom properly.

On my first run, I was a bit tentative due to the single course walk, and I caught a cone somewhere along the way. On my second run, I started much faster, but true to my recent form, this quickly led me to overdrive a subsequent element, and I had to work real hard, almost stopping to make sure I ran over a cone rather than go off course on the entry to the first slalom. Amazingly, I recovered and got back into the slalom well after that and the rest of the run was reasonable, but that mistake cost me a couple seconds and a cone at least. My third run was awesome... it was clearly going to be a freak run where I completely out did myself... except I spun on the very last offset... Even with the spin, I beat my time from the first run... crap crap crap! My best run of the morning was the second one at 130.941 +1 cone. I was near the middle of th 32 drivers in the first heat.

The first afternoon run was relatively sane, except I once again screwed up the entrance to the first slalom, and didn't drive the chicago box particularly well. I also took the turn comming off the cross way too slow and I got way behind on the offsets at the end of the course. The sea of cones and several elements went well, but the time was a disappointing 133.185, and yet again... +1 cone.

The second afternoon run was better. The only things I screwed up were the offsetts, but I managed to be at least a little bit late on every single one of them. When I drove by the scoring tent, they called my time as 130.669... clean. I was psyched. But when I looked at the board a few minutes later... +1 cone... *sigh* a late cone call... Other drivers had been improving their times I was now in danger of falling into the bottom third of the heat.

One more run. I knew that every run had had at least one major mistake in it, and a cone. Eliminating either one would be a huge improvement. Both would be ideal. I ran over the course in my head. I reminded my self over and over again... "clean, controled, but don't let up" I remembered the NER novice/intermediate school and how I spun at the end of a very good run, after pshching myself up at the beginning. I remembered the May 30 event where I backed off too much because I spun at the end of morning runs. I reminded myself of my repeated problems entering the first slalom, I reminded myself to aim at the outside of the offset and cut in. I reminded myself that the second to last offset is tighter than the one before it, I reminded myself to gun it out of the back slalom into the decreasing radius sweeper, but not to over-do it so I could set up for the offset that followed. I reminded myself to relax and drive the course... At the starting line I just worked on staying calm, and remembering to shift.

For the first time since the EVO school where we got 20 runs at the same course, I managed a run with no major errors. I got into the slalom well, I remembered *not* to congratulate myself (which often leads to a scre up on the next element). I exited the slalom under control and did the offsets correctly and dove into the sea of cones, giving it up just at the end to prepare for the chicago box. I got wide left did the best pass through chicago box I had all day, and dove right into the offset slalom with just a tiny mental note that that went well. I exited the offset slalom and mashed the accelerator into the turn off the crossway, but just a tap of the brakes to stay in control before I turned into the sweeper and then light to no throttle through the next turn and into the offsets... perhaps I could have gone faster, but I wasn't really slow either, and I drove the offsets correctly, which allowed me to get on the acellerator into the big sweeper in the back... That got me into the optional slalom at speeds somewhat higher than I intended and I had to back off, but I managed to get off the accellerator slowly and not send myself into a spin. At the exit I managed to tap the brakes just briefly and get the car inside the cone of the next gate... I took the next sweeper too wide, probably driving too much distance, but I let the speed come off a bit and got set up properly for the 3 tube straightaway on the home stretch, where I got full on the acellerator again, but let off in time to get set up properly for the first offset. I cut in nicely and remembered that the next one was sharp, and that I really didn't want to repeat the previous spin. I probably laid off a little too much but I kept it under control and got set up for the last offset correctly. I dove through the final offset and gunned it to the finish. I couldn't recal any cones, and my mistakes were all minor.... It had to be a good run if only I really was clean. That was the crux... I waited as I passed the anouncer and he called out

"129.092.... .... .... CLEAN!"

That was my best time, it was clean and I had shaved over 3.5 seconds off my best time. I was giddy the entire rest of the event. I was in such a good mood that I didn't care if anyone beat my time, or about competition with anyone... I had beat myself. I had conquered the mess I was making of the course and put in a respectable run. My best event so far without question.

One of the difficulties of running with a new club is that all my statistics to measure how well I did are relative to how the SCCA runs events. The class designations and the number and types of competitors is completely different. At SCCA events there are generally 10 formula cars or so... (2 A mod, 2-3 B mod 2-3 Fmod, and randomly something else modified...) There were none at this event. The top machines at this event were probably ASP or Super-Stock level cars. Probably the top vehicle was the Porsche Gt3 RS ... But the best yardstick I could find was Mikhael El-Bayeh who won SSM last week with a time of 62.206 and a pax ranking of 35/93.

Other competitors present at both events included Ben Wagstaff and Mark Monnar, and Oleg Rekutin.

Mikhael's time in this event was 125.471, so we can figure that if he drove at a similar level (who knows... either day might have been a bad or good day, but it's all I've got), the course was 2.02 times longer than the last SCCA event based on his times. The same calculation for the other three drivers leads to 1.99 and 1.88 and 1.96 for an average of 1.96. So this course was almost twice as long as the last one. Based on that, I can imagine that my time divided by 1.96 is a reasonable interpretation of how my times compare to my previous SCCA event, and so I plugged the result into the previous event to examine how well I did.

The result is I finally made it into the middle of the pack! My raw time was equivalent to the 47th percentile and the SS pax, which probably best represents my relative skill best of any stat was 53rd percentile... My first above average result. Obviously there's still room for improvement, and I've discovered Recently that Russ's Hoosiers put about 3 inches more in total tire rubber on the track (tire width), so when I switch to Hoosiers I expect to get traction boost from that if nothing else... Shaving the next few seconds off will be much harder. But my time was equivalent to a 3rd place SSM finish in the previous event, and off the second place mark by 3 tenths of a second yet again. If I can improve my consistency and keep putting in solid runs, there is a good chance that I might clean up enough of the little mistakes and pick up some hardware before the end of the year... ...if.

Somewhere in the Middle

2009-06-23T14:26:00.014-04:00

The event previous to this one was a good day. I blew up my statistics doubling everything and just generally showing a tremendous improvement over the all my preceding events. I knew it would be hard to match that one... not that I was all that fast in the grand scheme of things last event, but the road of life is never that smooth.

Enter the next bump. It rained. The last rainy event on 5/17 was pretty discouraging for me. I had just gone to 3 full days of driving school in the previous 8 days. Recent seat time was coming out my ears, and I *really* was itching to prove that the not inconsiderable effort and cost had been worth it. I didn't think I was going to win anything by far, but I had dreams of moving from the lands south of the bottom 10% PAX to somewhere north of the bottom 25% PAX it seemed like a reasonable goal for my 3rd event ever (2 events and 3 days of school!).

Unfortunately, all my seat time up until 5/17 had been in dry weather, and it rained cats and dogs in the morning before runs, then dried up over the course of the day. I spent the entire day just trying to figure out if my car still had wheels or sleigh runners... or wheels again. I knew rain was part of the sport, I knew it was something important to learn, but I really didn't want to learn it just then.

This Sunday I was coming off an excellent success. On my 5th event (June 7) I blew the previous goal out of the water, laying down a time that would have been 35% if my car were in a class similar to it's actual preparation, and 39% in raw times. I even hit 25% in my official SSM PAX (for which I consider 80% to be the max that is practically achievable without serious modifications). This time I was ready to learn something new.

From a learning perspective, I was actually glad it rained. From the perspective of Father's day I wasn't so happy about it, but luckily my parents are troopers, and they came and had a good time dispite the rain. I knew I was going to have trouble with the rain. I had only 2 runs on actual wet pavement, and those were more than a month distant. My hope was to learn as fast as I could and land my statistics (which are all relative to other folks times) somewhere in between my previous awesome event, and all the others that preceeded it in less glorious fashion.

My SSM factor stat simply got trashed. Mikhael El-Bayeh drove his CRX (777 ssm) into the top 25% of raw times... Something not seen in SSM yet this year. Additionally the Kuehl brothers have left novice and joined the main ranks. I knew it would happen sooner or later given the times they were putting up, so not only did I wind up at the bottom, I wound up at the bottom of 6 cars. Oh well. I knew the field was weak last time anyway.

My Russ Factor didn't do so well and probably should have been trashed even worse, but Russ also had a bit of an off day (judging from the sound he made when he saw his pax standings). But he has a *lot* more experience than I, so I was not at all surprised to loose lots of ground to him.

However relative to the overall field I did (barely) meet my goal if I exclude the dirty run from 2 events ago... I may take that line off the stats chart now anyway it's not really 100% real. The one silver lining is that I'm pretty sure I could have put up a much better time if the rain had just held another 10 minutes and left the final run as damp rather than soaked. The second to last run I ran 4 seconds slower than my best time... AFTER spinning out on the first turn. I know I had definately figured out the second half of the course. Except for one cone my final run would have been my best, but that cone probably did help my time since I ran it over going a little wider on a turn than I should have, and that did give me a better run at the straight. That run is encouraging beacause it was wetter than my best run.... I think I might have learned a little bit about rain.

Finally Some Success

2009-06-17T12:35:00.006-04:00

The test and tune was awesome. I felt like I really had learned some things about my car, and the next day was Points Event #4. The previous event had been somewhat of a disappointment, because despite the good weather, and all my days of driver school, my times were almost as bad as the first day I ever drove an event. I did feel like I had gone faster, but my faster run was dirty. This event was my 5th ever, and it would be hard to remain up beat if I had another day like the last one.

This day started off MUCH better than the previous event. I got there on time. I got my wheels on and numbers taped before the course opened. I got in 4 course walks instead of just one. I felt a lot better about my knowledge of the course and my mood was much more relaxed after the drivers meeting. I didn't have to scramble to get to my work assignment either.

My work assignment was a mixed blessing. I did the Audit Sheets and ran the control radio. The plus side is you don't have to walk all the way out to some far corner of the course to get there, and you don't have to spend 90+ minutes baking in the sun, shaging cones and trying to stay hydrated. The down side is you don't get to watch people on course. The other down side is it can be a bit stressful.... The first heat however went relatively smoothly. More about that stress thing later.

My first run was a 65.843. It was a time that seemed to be about as good as my best time at the last event, or maybe only a slight improvement. Not something to cheer about, but a nice safety net... The next run was dirty and slower. I had a brain fart and forgot to accelerate at one point. The third run... I did hit the accelerator, but then messed up the breaking point on the next turn and spun... I was still sitting in my safety net time. But hopefully there would be 3 or 4 more runs in the afternoon to give it a better shot.

Then came the second heat, again running the audit sheets in the truck. Unfortunately, we had computer problems and for a while we thought we were going to loose all the data from the first 3 runs, and half of the 4th run. That would have been a disaster. As it was there was a huge delay while we found a way to make a back up through the anouncer's client, and wrote down the times thus far for the current run (these were still visible on the anouncer client). After that, we had to reboot everything and when we loaded the data... it was corrupted. Luckily, the backup made from the Anouncer client was clean however, and so eventually we got things running. The bad news was the event wasn't going to have time left for 6 runs, let alone the 7 we had been hoping for... only 2 afternoon runs.

So what turned out to be a good event at the start wound up having a reduced number of runs. This event also featured a large number of drivers who were gearing up for two larger events, one at Finger Lakes, and one in DC. The level of competition for this one I suspect was higher than any other so far. Russ for example switched over to his new hoosiers for the afternoon...

But the good news is I laid down a good clean run on my first afternoon run. A 63.944 was good enough to ensure 3rd place and put me within 0.2 seconds of 2nd place. The final run felt like it was going even faster until I over did it slightly and had to save a spin in the back super wide tripple cone offset slalom thingy... But even so I still beat my morning times, with a 64.763, but I retained 3rd place (finishing 0.4 out of 2nd). I also finished MUCH higher in both the raw and pax time standings than any other race so far. I was faster that 39% of drivers in raw time and faster than 25% of drivers after PAX adjustment. Thats a huge improvement over 12% and 8% the previous week. Makes for a much prettier picture....

Testing 1 2 3

2009-06-07T21:09:00.007-04:00

This Saturday was yet another first time experience. This time the event wasn't a school, and wasn't a timed competition. There was no organized runs with score sheets, and there were no instructors. It was a free form autocross... a veritable playground of cones. This was the Test 'n tune!

First I spent some time in the mini-course on the theory that seat time is always useful, and I wanted to practice pushing myself to higher speeds. I got some decent times, and had some spins, and noticed something odd in the 180 degree turns... sometimes I would get into a massive under steer condition. Frequently this was with the brakes ON. Everything I've read indicates that breaking while turning should cause over-steer. Even more odd, I noticed that the car tended to stick better when I let off the break... at first I thought I must be imagining things, but then at the end of the day I was talking to Russ about his Elise, and his track-bar/adjustable shocks. He made a comment about the car being "camber challenged" And suddenly other stuff I'd read about Elise's and about sway-bars all made sense.

Test 'n tune lesson 1: The Lotus Elise is different in turning. What happens is the camber (vertical tilt) of the wheel changes as you break, and the weight is transferred to the front. This is true on most cars, but in the case of the Elise, the tires are fat enough and the stock camber setting is such that the effect is enough to lessen the pressure on the outside of the tire. This means that less tire surface is actually working for you in the front outside tire (which is already smaller than the back) and so the front slides before the back does creating under steer. This means that to get a good turn out of the Elise, one needs to *not* break hard. This also leads me to suspect that trail breaking would therefore have to be done after the turn stabilized and the front-back loading was more equalized than it is when you are turning in.

I finished up at the mini-course around the time things shut down for lunch. After Lunch I borrowed Russ's pyrometer and headed over to the skid-pad. I had started off at 22.1 lbs in the front and 24.5 lbs in the back in the morning, just to see how a lower pressure felt. All in all it had felt pretty good but now I, and set about warming up my Kumho v710 tires with the idea that I would figure out what the best pressure... I took the readings, and it came out fairly linear outside to in. I went around the circle again the other way... same result.

I didn't want to go around the circle too many times in a row because long periods of sustained sideways G's can do funny things to oil flow in cars, so to get an even better warm up on the tires, I went around one way, then did a quick 180 and went the other-way around the same number of times.... Same result but not as drastic of a fade across the tire...

Test 'n Tune Lesson #2: Kumho v710's on a stock lotus Elise like to be a lot lower than the stock pressures. Stock pressures are 26 and 28 lbs front and back, but 22 and 24.5 seem to be fairly close to the right setting.

In all this I eased the speed up until I started having trouble holding to the line around the circle, and one thing I noticed was that I was holding a LOT more sideways force than I normally did in the sweepers on course.

Test 'n tune Lesson #3: I've been dogging it on sweepers. I need to break less and hang on more. If my guts aren't trying to climb out the window I'm not doing it right. This car TURNS.

So after that I went over to check out the offsets... I didn't like the setup. It seemed like the offsets were too easy. The entrances were to far apart and it was really easy to get a good late apex. Every offset/clam shell on courses I've been on has taken a lot of work to get yourself into the right position, including the one in the NER Novice/Intermediate school. I felt like I was practicing bad habits, and getting away with way too much. I left after two runs there.

The slalom was the next place I went and I had a lot of fun there. I really worked on getting the speed up on the slalom and began to regain some of the feel for correct slalom speed. Somehow I think I had lost the "feel" for it that I got on the first day of EVO school, and then in the NER school, the slalom session was a bit too short, and didn't provide me enough time for introspection about my own performance to quite find the groove. I knew the words they were telling me already, but what I needed was to develop the feel. I did the slalom about 10 times, and spent a good 30 min shagging cones for people too, but in the end I felt like I had begun to get a good feel for the difference between a 26 pace slalom (FAST) and a 22 pace slalom (slower, but with more aggressive early turn ins... )

After that I decided to finish out the day on the mini-course. I did 4 runs, and got the distinct impression that coming out of the 180 degree turns I was craving more power. Now that I had the line down and the feel of the car had been seeping into me all day, I found myself with the pedal to the floor and waiting impatiently for the car to get it's revs up, especially coming out of the first 180 degree turn. After a brief confirmation from Russ (I'm probably becoming a pest, but he knows sooooo much more about racing a lotus than I). I decided to try downshifting to first in the turn. Obviously heel-toeing it would be ideal, but I decided one thing at a time... we will work the heel toe some time later.

The result was that the first time I did it I got up so much speed coming out of the turn that I spun the car on the next turn :-). so control obviously was key. There followed several runs where I had difficulty getting it into gear smoothly (first one was a charm apparently) and then the last couple it seemed to work and I did get some improvement out of it. The conclusion however is that that will be something to try *after* have at least one decent (clean!) run laid in at an event.

So much fun, so much learned, and the next day... Dodging Orange, Points event #4!

CWND by speed

2009-06-01T01:34:00.004-04:00

So Points event #3 came and went. The weather was beautiful. A full six runs were had by all. So what did I learn this time.... Well to start with timeliness is next to godliness. Being late to an event is a bit like being late in a slalom. You get there late, you rush through your tires, get over to tech. They tell you that you forgot to put Numbers on your car. You sell your soul, your first born and 3 limbs to convince them that you will indeed put numbers on it before you run. YOu scurry over to get in a single course walk before the drivers meeting. Just one walk, and you realize that you can't remember a third of the course, but it's too late to walk again... you rush back to your car, tape up one side of your car, and rush over to the drivers meeting. You check in for work, rush to the port-o-potty and then back to your car to grab half your lunch as a breakfast to eat while walking out to your station. As you walk out you realize that now you can only remember half the course since you haven't had time to sit and visualize it, and only one walk. After the first run group, you come in, hop in your car and start to visualize, but the only thing that's clear anymore is the part of the course you were working... The first run is really a course walk in itself...

NOT the way to do it :) Be on time, it makes everything easier.

Thing two... it's easy to let the fact that you spun take over your thinking. The two afternoon runs, I probably spent too much effort ensuring that I didn't spin.

Thing three all that stuff I've been learning. It gets harder when the course gets faster. This course was way faster than the last one. Unfortunately I had some difficulty adapting. In the first 4 runs, I got a slow clean time, a fast dirty time, a really dirty time where I let up at the end because I'd lost count of cones, and finally, a spin-out. The last 2 runs, I wound up backing off too much and only improving on my first run by a little bit.

The weather was beautiful, and I do feel like I under-represented myself... this time I calculated stats for my fastest legal run, and my fastest dirty run. The dirty run was mostly dirty on incidental cones. I doubt I picked up much time from either cone and I'm rather certain the second cone was due to a lack of control, not cutting down the line :)

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=r4YKCevM2JAPnAOegVwt4lA&output=html

I also am beginning to suspect that either my tire pressures were sub-optimal, or the tires are getting old... I'll investigate that closely in the Test'n Tune coming up this Saturday...

Easy would be Booring

2009-05-20T08:23:00.010-04:00

So Now I've learned about slaloms carousels, sweepers, offsets, chicago boxes, increasing radius turns, decreasing radius turns, more offsets, long slaloms, looking ahead, visualization and verbalization... Enough school! Time to see if it helped!

Or so I thought... Mother nature had other ideas...

Points event #2 was not what I envisioned. Everything had been going just grand so far this season. Every one of the 4 days of autocross so far had had good or excellent weather. Dry conditions all day, nothing too cold for the clothes I brought, some days were even sunny and warm. I even managed to use sunscreen every time. Golden.

Not so for Points event #2. My dreams had imagined a day with glorious weather dry and 75 with sun and occasional clouds. My dreams had imagined a day where everything went smoothly and we all got 7 or 8 runs on a 60 second course. A day with conditions comparable to my previous two competitions so I could see my times drop dramatically due to all the recent practice and training. Here's the blow by blow of what really happened...

6:30 am - Leave the Hotel, pavement wet and dry in spots, no rain... looks hopeful!
7:00 am - Arrive at Devens... it's sprinkling the pavement is definitely wet.
7:15 am - The rain is steady and puddles are forming, scratch the slicks, keep the AO48's
7:30 am - I'm using my poncho as a tent by shutting one end of it in the door while taping numbers on my car.
7:45 am - Windy wet, cold I bite the bullet and take off my poncho and windbreaker long enough to put on my sweat shirt.
8:00 am - Course walks open. No chalk... they have to use crayon.
8:45 am - Starting my 3rd walk of the course... not changing tires and stuff has at least one benefit. I'm wondering what happens to the car when it hits a puddle in a slalom...
9:30 am - first run, the rain has dissipated to occasional sprinkles, but wind-shield wipers still on. I have to wipe my feet dry with a towel so that they don't slip on the pedals (much). I have no idea where the limits of traction are. I'm so distracted by figuring that out that I get 102 seconds + DNF for cutting off a cone. The top times at this point are in the low 80 and high 70 second range.
Second Run - The rain has stopped, there is still a moderate wind, conditions are drying rapidly. The pavement is still wet, but no where near as wet as the first run. How does that help... I have no clue, I push it further, and shave 7 seconds off my time, but so do the leaders. Top times are now in the low-mid 70's. I get a 95.101
Third Run - The pavement is mottled dry and wet, more dry than wet. I probably could have put my slicks on. But hesitated and didn't have time. So this one is mostly dry, but still on Ao48's... I shave another 6 seconds off. down to 87.451 + 1 cone (effectively an 89.451)
I console myself with the fact that the morning runs are worthless anyway given that the conditions are going to be so much better for the afternoon runs.
Then comes the second heat... complete chaos... Timing troubles cause half a dozen re-runs. A car breaks down and has to be pushed off course. We get a red flag for no good reason... and then 3 more cars are red flagged because one corner hasn't got the message that all is clear... this heat takes twice as long as it should. Meanwhile Russ runs times in the low 70's proving that I am still really really slow today. A Modified is running in the mid-60's...
Lunch is 20 minutes... I have peanut butter and jelly to make sandwiches... I forgot the bread. So it's peanut butter on cliff bars with Gatorade and a tiny swig of what's left of yesterday's coffee for lunch... gourmet at it's best. The announcement comes down. only 2 runs in the afternoon because the second heat took so much time.
Run 4 - I have the Kumho V710's on now. The pavement is dry, time for some real autocrossing.
Out of the gate, I forget to shift into second. I remember part way through the first slalom. I do shift but it distracts me and I get late on the last cone, which puts me late on the next element. I have to slow down to get back on line and I'm so releaved when I do that I don't look ahead and enter the next element at completely the wrong angle. Again slow down, get back on line, By the second half of the course I am settled down a bit. I brake a little to late at one point, but not catastrophically so. The back half of my run is almost ok. I shave another 6 seconds off my time... 83.560 with no cones. Finally I am (by my quick estimate) at a time that is better than the very first time I ever autocrossed.
Waiting for the second heat I practice my visualization over and over again, analyzing the mistakes I made, and walking myself through the course repeatedly in my head. I know I can do a lot better than the last run. I remember the NER school where I spun on my last run, and caution myself not to over do it either....
Final run... I shift early and pay attention in the first slalom. I stay on line and gather noticeably more speed before the first big turn. I remember that I need to brake earlier because I am going faster. I make it down the far stretch beautifully and take a good line into the second big turn... Since I'm on line I can gun it and I get my car up on the cams in the following sections (probably as much as 50-60 mph full throttle), but I remember to brake earlier than last time and get a good line through the next element. I've just corrected ALL of my major mistakes from the first run! Awesome!!!
O wait... I haven't' finished the course!!!... I should be heading for the other side of that cone!!!! $#!^!!!! I almost DNF by going around the wrong side of the cone. I nearly have to stop to correct and stay on course.... right before the big sweeper. Now I'm slow on that long element, and going into the offset slalom, very risky to put on speed in that slalom, so I just try to run it clean and then finish fast. I do finish fast, but my time is 83.9 half a second slower... despite almost stopping... CRAP. I know I could have been under 80 seconds... or at least close. Oh well... time to go shag cones for the second heat and curse my early celibration repeatedly...
At the end it turns out I came in # 5 out of 6 in SSM. The person who I beat was co-driving the car that broke down on course... They did fix it and run it and it broke down in heat 2 again, but there's a good chance that it wasn't performing well even when it wasn't breaking down.

So did the school help? If you just look at some relative measures on the hard numbers below I got worse after 3 days of school. But what the numbers don't show is the difficulties I overcame... and they also don't show the potential that my final run had until I started celebrating too early... I am sure I lost 2-4 seconds because of my near DNF... which means on the first half to 2/3 of the course I was running 1.5-3.5 seconds faster... I am pretty sure I could have run an 80. That would have put me at a sharp increase in all the % based statistics and nearly level in the factors...

I figure that if I had encountered these obstacles before all my schooling, I would have run my worst times ever. I know that I was able to make improvements... except for the last run, my times improved by leaps and bounds...

We'll see what the next one throws at me on the 30th...

Back to School

2009-05-18T07:23:00.009-04:00

One of the fears I had about doing the NER Novice school right after the Evo-school was that it would be redundant. Luckily the morning talk was the only redundant part. The first part of the day was working on a course full of offsets. This was really good because the Evo-school courses only contained one offset.

The second course was the "kidney bean." What that is is a pair of increasing and decreasing radius turns that face each other. This way you drive from one into the next repeatedly... we went around a couple of times each and this was another element that the Evo-school didn't use.

The third course of the day was a pair of long slaloms with a cross-over and big turn at one end. This was in the Evo-school, but the slalom was longer.... longer is harder, mistakes accumulate... something I didn't appreciate, until now.

All in all it was another good learning experience... and complimented the Evo-school nicely. Just wish I hadn't spun on the last run of the day :)

Phasing in Some Speed

2009-05-15T21:06:00.003-04:00

This past weekend I finally got some serious seat time, and some serious instruction. I went to the Evolution Performance Driving School. Actually to be more accurate the school came to our area, which it does once a year, hosted by the Boston chapter of the BMW Car Club of America. It was a complete blast! I learned so much that I think it melted my brain :). I attended both days, and have now completed Phase I and Phase II of their course. Phase III and the Challenge school will have to wait for next year, but that's good because I need some time to practice what I learned.

The first day was Phase I and it featured a short 30 second course where we got many many runs and had the opportunity to really refine our technique on the elements. In regular events this is difficult to do since only 3-6 runs are available, sometimes as much as 8 but that's kinda rare. The course included a Slalom, a carousel (circle) a large, sweeper some offsets and a Chicago Box.

Things I learned in Phase I:

My car can Slalom! FAST! I had been dogging it and didn't realize it...
Sometimes Slow is fast. Staying in control, and cutting a tight/smooth line around the carousel and sweeper was a lot faster than sliding around, traveling more distance with only slightly more speed and then being forced to wait for the car to settle down before applying throttle.
Long, ill defined sweepers seem to have this feel to them that I think I started to get by the end of the day...
Looking ahead helps a lot. I learned to do this a little bit on the first day...
There was this neat tap the breaks and go technique that I managed to do a couple of times going through the offsets... I'm hoping I learned that (at least somewhat). It felt really good when I did it right.
Chicago boxes are annoying. Mostly because they are slow and tight, and it's real real easy to run over the final cone.

So how much did that stuff help? Well at the beginning of the day we got 3 runs to show the teachers what we were already capable of. I ran a 39, a 38 and a 34.6. I was one of the faster times, and I was feeling pretty good about it. I figured, I had shaved 5 seconds off and that further progress was going to be difficult. Little did I know how much I sucked :). By the end of the day my fastest clean run was 30.7 and my fastest time was 29.6 +1 cone (the last cone in the Chicago box, which I apparently just barely clipped) That's right, I shaved another 5 seconds off of my time (holy crap!).

The next day was Phase II, and in Phase II they screw with your head... The course design is much more challenging, and they emphasize looking ahead. The Phase 1 course was a series of relatively clearly defined elements, only one element in Phase I (the sweeper) had any lack of definition for the (approximate) line you should take. In Phase II the course was much more open. The speeds were faster, and the sweeper was ridiculously undefined. Furthermore they keep changing the course, and the direction you run the course... No dialing in exactly what to do over 20 runs like the first day. Things keep changing, so it's key for you to be looking ahead... not driving by memory, which is the point!

Things I learned (at least partly) in Phase II

Looking Ahead - I only thought I had learned to do this the first day :).
Visualizing - one segment of the day focused on trying to get you to build a mental picture of the course.
Verbalizing - It turns out that talking yourself through the course reinforces the looking ahead, particularly coming up with names for the cones that you need to be looking at. If you say the name as you do your run, you can't help but look for the cone!
Verbalizing - saying what's next helps you re-focus after a mistake too. One huge problem in Autocross is that if you make a mistake, then your attention gets drawn back in, and you stop looking ahead. Instead, you think about the mistake, and all the funny things the car is now doing because you screwed it up... then suddenly you are at the next element and you screw that up too... and this can repeat over and over. Saying what's next get's your brain out of the cycle, and back into looking ahead and getting the car through the next element.
On poorly defined, elements I got two pieces of advice which are different shades of the same thing... Imagine an extra cone that would make the correct line more obvious, or simply imagine the line directly.

Phase II was harder, and I didn't do as well, partly due to some bad "street driving" habits that seem to crop up under stress. Particularly, I tend to take my right hand off the wheel to shift and then leave it on the shifter, Racing one handed is not a very good idea. Secondly, I tend to forget and depress the clutch as if I'm comming up to a stop-light or turn on the street before some elements. This screws everything up because mostly you just want to stay in second gear, and not downshift. Once the clutch is out, then you have to manage to put it back in without upsetting the car... and by the way, all those offsets or other elements that were hard without fiddling with the clutch... they keep coming just as fast, while you're all distracted messing with the clutch! :) One useful trick for fighting the clutch problem is to press down on the "dead" pedal (the place to rest your left foot to the left of the clutch pedal) while you drive.

For the future I need to work on handling speed coming into slow elements. This manifested itself in several near spins on day two and in my tendency to come into the Chicago box, and the carousel to hot on day 1.

And I need to remember all that stuff I just wrote while negotiating turns and slaloms every few seconds... EEK!

Novice Class Conundrum

2009-05-10T19:13:00.012-04:00

So in a previous post, I mentioned that I had a busy set of weeks coming up. I am now 3/5 of the way through and at this point when I close my eyes, an army of Orange Cones starts flying by inside my head. Last Sunday I did my second ever Autocross event. This was points event #1 for the NER SCCA autocross series which they ran in the parking-lot of New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The event itself was a blast and my times seemed to improve drastically relative to my first event.

This time I managed to class my car correctly... not that this really matters at my experience level, but one of the side-lights of having no way to do anything but think about my Lotus over the winter is I went through it and the Solo rulebook, and discovered that the previous owner has made at least 3 modifications that simply are not allowed in the Stock category. So I must run in SSM (Super Street Modified). I may detail the mods and exactly why they change my racing class in a later post, but the only thing to know is that the modifications I have are a pittance relative to the chages that would take place in a properly prepared SSM car.

In the end I've decided that this is actually likely to be a good thing. In the novice section of SCCA Solo II, the drivers drive all different kinds of cars, and the times are handicapped by a multiplier based on what class the car qualifies for (this is called "PAX time"). A driver that had a Stock Elise that was close to what you get from the show-room would be in the super-stock category and would get to multiply their time by 0.856. However because I am in Super Street Modified I only get to multiply my time by 0.876. In practical terms means if the super stock car runs the course in 60.000 seconds he gets a PAX time of 51.360, but my PAX time for the same 60'seconds would be 52.560. To put it another way, if I wanted to beat a super stock car that ran the course in exactly 60 seconds, I would need to run a the course in 58.629 seconds.

1.371 seconds is an eternity in Autocross. People are reasonably serious about this sport spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours trying to shave a quarter to a third of a second off of their time. In the two events I've been to the top novice was getting a PAX time between the 60th and 50th percential across *all* drivers. Thats in the realm where a half second is a lot of time. To overcome my SSM PAX in my (almost) Stock Elise and win novice in the last event would have required a skill level that would allow me to drive about .7 seconds faster than the person who won given identical cars. That ability level would put me in the top 1/3 of all drivers at the event... I'm not even close to that.

So the novice/PAX competition style puts me at a pretty stiff disadvantage, but in some ways this may be good for me. My focus is now on having fun and improving relative to the folks running in Super Stock. It's my own private little contest. The really good thing about this is there's no points and no season to this personal contest, and if I need to take a break from it to try something new as a learning exercise then there's no penalty for it. So I'm going to intentionally take myself out of all hope of competition, and simply run in standard SSM (no novice PAX timing). So the up side is I can focus on educating myself. Until I've learned a whole lot more, the competition thing is basically out the window...

At some point I'll want to either get a new stock elise/exige and trade this one in... thus becoming eligible for stock category, or... dump a whole bunch of money into modifying this car to the point where it can live up to it's official racing class. But for now have fun and hope for a day when the real SSM cars don't come out to play :).

What's the lesson? Well if you intend to do any sort of racing with a car you are buying used and you *do* want to try to be competitive, research the rules you expect to race under and inspect the car for mods. But you can always just do it to have fun, and then you are free to crush some cones in a learning exercise add a variety of tastey mods to your ride as suites your taste and budget.

Next, Basic evolution...

Keep on Trucking?

2009-04-27T23:58:00.004-04:00

The modifications for the comming autocross year have extended beyond tires and brakes (more on what I chose for tires in the next post... they are in the mail). This spring, with the help of the fabulous folks at BOE Fabrication I've gone went and turned an internet spoof into a reality (almost). No I didn't implement the IP internet protocol on carrier pigeon. (This is a car blog folks, and it's been done anyway!). What I did do was install a towing package on my lotus elise.

There have been a number of entertaining spoofs of this floating around the internet...

And people doing crazy things...

http://www.lotustalk.com/forums/f99/getting-hoosiers-track-13879/

Now in contrast I've gone and done something totally sane *cough*...

Spring into action

2009-04-22T22:09:00.004-04:00

Well, spring is here! My car has now been liberated for several weeks. New brake rotors have been applied, Wheels have been balanced, and I'm tire shopping... for 8 tires! My Street tires are on the wear bars and at about 3/32 tread depth. This is none too fun in puddles and heavy rain. I've also resolved to make a serious attempt to learn how to autocross this year. I'm currently planning to attend:

SCCA Points Event #1 @ New Hampshre Motor Speedway (5/3)
BMW CCA Evolotion Driving School @ Devins/Moore Airfield (5/9 & 5/10)
SCCA Novice/Intermediate Driving School @ Devins/Moore Airfield (5/16)
SCCA Points Event #2 @ Devins/Moore Airfield

That means I'm going to be putting a LOT of track time into the comeptition tires too... perhaps enough to wear them out (since I'm not too sure how much they have left...) So that's two sets of tires I need to get in the next few weeks... YIKE$

But this should give me LOTS of Seat time and instruction in a short period, which I believe is a good way to really get started. The first event will be working the kinks out hauling my tires on my new trailer, and getting an idea what driving an R Compound tire is like... but of course that means I need to lay in a second set of R Comp tires so that I don't get sidelined by slow shipping or tires being out of stock... plus I should get an oil change in there somewhere... Ouchies on the wallet, but I'm really looking forward to it!

Deep Freeze

2009-02-21T13:13:00.008-05:00

It's winter. Winter is boring for sports cars here in New England. I've managed to tuck the car away in my landlord's garage (she is the *best* landlord ever!). So it's safe from the snow, salt and ice, but this also means I can't drive it. Driving it in the winter would either be dangerous (if I try to take any fast corners in the sand/salt/ice/etc) or safe but boring anyway. Furthermore the car can't be taken to a car wash so it would quickly look like crap with no good way to wash it until spring. Driving slow in a car that looks dirty as hell only to have layers upon layers of brake dust to clean in the spring doesn't seem worth it.

So what do I do? Well I go out and visit it every couple of weeks to roll it a few feet back or forward so that the tires don't get flat spots, and then I spend a bunch of time wishing I could drive it. I also spend a bunch of time thinking about the driving I did last year...

Now that things are all snowbound, and the car is behind a 2ft plow drift, I should probably tell you about the final driving event of last year. On the recommendation of my mechanic I went to the final event of the year for COM. That's right I got to drive it around New Hampshire International Speedway. It was an absolute blast! There is nothing like heading into a steeply banked hairpin turn at 80+ mph and then breaking hard, turning and gunning it up the hill on the other side (yes that would be turn 6). Also, its the only place to (legally) open it up and blast your way up to 115mph in relative safety (the car can go faster, but one does have to turn eventually). I've never been a big NASCAR fan, but now that I've been on a real track, the whole thing does make a lot more sense... Now when I watch, I remember... I still can't account for the millions of fans who have never driven on a race track, but at least some of it now seems sane, and I can really see why it is folks would want to be a race car driver.

I also got to ride along with my instructor in his Honda S2000, and that was awesome too. He is very skilled and takes the turns much more skillfully than I. I'm sure his lap times are better than mine, but it was quite heartening to see that my car *is* faster than his. Even with my lesser skill I was 15 mph faster on the big straight. I also clearly could catch most of the miatas out there on the straight. Once I improve my performance driving skills I'll definitely have one of the faster cars. I won't ever be faster than the former NASCAR stock car, or the Arial Atom that was out there. Also there were some gutted VW rabbits that blew by my instructor's S2000 like it was standing still. I took a peek at one and it was literally a seat, an engine, a gas tank and a fire extinguisher on wheels. They take turns on 3 wheels (the inside rear lifts about 4 inches!) and so I'm not sure I can beat those either, but they aren't street legal. Among street legal vehicles I mostly only need to worry Z06 corvettes and then about cars that have an MSRP 2-5 times as much as mine. (and of course other Elises and Exiges). The z06 vette is only 1.5x the MSRP of my lotus, and probably the next best deal in high performance automobiles ZR1 vettes are twice as expensive.

There were two other lotus cars there. One was driven by my mechanic... his hypersport Esprit which is an incredibly fast but not street legal car, and a gray 2006 Exige. The Exige has 30 more hp than me with only a little more weight, but , it never passed me except when I spun out.

Anyway, full pictures are here, and the first two are of my Mechanic's car... which he fixed that night and came back the next day to take 2nd 3rd and 4th place (time trials, 3 people drove it..., only one car beat any of em!). I am not yet certified to drive solo, so I couldn't drive on Sunday. I'm fine with that because I am aware that I do still have lots to learn, and the last thing I want to do is to hurt myself, hurt my car, or screw up the event for others because of a newbie mistake. I'll leave you with a quote from my instructor... "When I got back in my car [a Honda S2000] it felt like a family car."

Yeah, Lotus makes a pretty cool car :-)

Second Gear

2008-08-19T08:44:00.004-04:00

So now I've soloed. I learned a lot. The first thing I learned is that you must remember to bring sunscreen (yes that's right I'm all good and lobstered). Autocross is 60% prep/helping 35% free time and 5% driving really hard around ridiculously tight turns. And with my car the 5% in the car provides no shade anyway since the top was down. Only the racing helmet blocked sun from my face (for the 30-40 minutes I wore it.).

The 5% driving however is an opportunity to do all those maneuvers you really wanted to try. The course lasts 60-90 seconds depending on how fast you and your car are. The kind of car you bring is probably less than half the speed too. Lotus Elise's are in the top racing category, and mine only has a few modifications for racing so it's still considered a stock car. I raced in "Super Stock" as a novice. Ironically the guy who won the novice category was driving a Mazda 3. There's quite a bit of skill to this sport and that's one of the reasons I know I'll be back. I love a challenge.

Another thing I learned was that the previous owner had put the front tires on backwards... and I hadn't noticed. (doh!) Luckily with the help of another driver who had extra tires for his Elise, I managed to correct that. Changing a tire is easy, but swaping two tires requires a lift or an extra tire.

Anyway the results of the competition are here, and pictures are here

Unfortunately, this event brings my season to a close. I injured my hand 2 days after the event, and while it is healing nicely, I probably won't be competition ready until next spring... The only thing bad about a Lotus, is having one that you can't drive!

Till next year....

Going Solo

2008-08-13T23:48:00.004-04:00

When I finally got serious about the prospect of buying a sports car, I started by searching the internet. I had been doing that before, but now I was taking names and numbers and calling dealers. Unfortunately, I had waited until June to do this. The proper time to be buying an Elise is somewhere between March and May.

There is a seasonality to cars like the Elise. An Elise is not a practical car. It's ridiculous to consider driving it in New England winters. It is a "fun car" that people own in addition to some other more sedate transport, much like motorcycles.

Folks who are trading up to a newer model, or a higher racing class or whatnot often sell in the fall, and buy the new vehicle for the spring. This of course avoids 3-6 months of payments (or earns 3-6 months of investment income) and frees up parking space etc. By way of contrast, by June, most people are sticking with their fun car for another summer or are now enjoying their newly purchased fun car.

So it wasn't entirely surprising that where I had previously seen a half dozen used cars at a single dealership in Connecticut there was now just 2 brand new ones there at full price. In all of New England (counting Schenectady NY) I found a total of 4 Used 2005/2006 in the mid $30k range available for sale. The only one that was really close was in Foxboro at the Boch Luxe dealership. It was silver and silver's a nice color so I left work early and headed down Rt 1.

Unknowingly, I had picked the day that the Brazilian Soccer Team was playing at Gillette Stadium. I left work at 3:30, it should have been less than an hour's drive. I got there at 6 pm after being treated to 2 hours of stand still traffic in which every one but me was dressed in green and yellow and spoke Portuguese. And of course I had to pee like a horse after the first hour...

I got there and the dealership was too close to the stadium. They had their cars (mostly Ferrari's and Maserati's) circled up near the back of the lot away from stray beer bottles. Furthermore, about the time I was leaving work, they had been taking a deposit on the car. They let me sit in it and turn it on, but that was it.

The next closest one was in Bourne, MA at Atlantic Subaru. I called them up and said "Can I come down Saturday and take it for a test drive?" After a moment on hold, the salesman told me that the car wasn't actually there... the owner (of the dealership) was driving it and probably about to buy it. A few days later I had driven part way down to the subaru dealership and then stopped to check if the car was available to drive. The salesman told me that the owner of the dealership did indeed buy it. The (very nice) salesman also offered to help me find one and ship it to Massachusetts, but given that I hadn't even driven one yet I wasn't willing to put down solid money on a car that I had neither seen nor driven.

So I decided that I had to cast my net a little wider than just the internet. I embarked upon the next most powerful tool for finding something of value... Networking. I began stopping at high end car dealerships to see if they had recently taken any in trade or knew anyone else who had. My mission was to find one that I could drive. I had a whole host of niggling little worries like how stiff was the suspension? Would I hate potholes too much? I'd never driven a 6 speed... what if my imagination was bigger than reality? I needed to get in one and be 100% sure that this was something I liked. I really didn't think there was much chance I wouldn't like it but would I like it enough to spend 30-40k on it?

Believe it or not, this strategy of just talking to people got me 2 leads. The first one was a $40k Exige in solar yellow. It allegedly had less than 5k miles on it and the owner was giving it up because of a ruptured disk in his back. It was obviously a **fabulous** bargain, but out of my intended price range. I felt that there was really no call for me to spend more money on an Exige. A 2005 Elise would be vastly more powerful and perform better than anything I had ever had. It also sounded just slightly too good to be true.

The second lead came from the Porsche dealership in Westwood. A nice salesman told me he hadn't seen any come through this year, but had had them in the past. But then he said "But there's this place I drive by every day. It's a repair shop and it always has several lotus's parked out front. It's on Rt 109 in Millis, by a big intersection." This was golden and I KNEW that if anything was going to yield a good lead this would be it. The owner had to be plugged into the Lotus community, a hub in the network.

I set off immediately down Rt 109 with my eyes peeled for a parking lot full of lotuses. The shop turned out to be Michael's Motorsports. I met Michael, and he was a friendly, helpful and clearly knowledgeable sort of guy. As it turned out his friend was buying a "Rolex Porsche" (which I take to mean one of the GT3 911 models that can compete in the Rolex racing series). That meant he was selling his 2005 Lotus. This was exactly the sort of connection I had hoped to make. He gave me his friend's phone number and one thing lead to another.

However in the process of talking to Michael and his friend, I became increasingly aware that the machine I was buying really was a machine that should be taken to the track to be appreciated. Michael had a picture of the car I bought and his car going around a turn on a track. His friend runs his own high end car track day program. The mechanic in the shop regaled me with tales of his racing exploits on oval tracks. Here was a door into the world of competitive auto sports, one of those doors that had previously been out there, somewhere far away and inaccessible.

So as I bought the car I also resolved to open that door. I had a good car now, and I ought to do something with it that I can't do with a Mazda 3 hatch back. So I bought the car, and along with it I got a set of track rims with track tires, and several track modifications. But I also had the impression that the track tires were necessary. Soon after I realized that I had no way to get the track tires to a track unless I rented a truck and trailered the car. You can't tow anything with an Elise, and you can' even fit one tire in the trunk. My ambition stalled out. I resolved to solve this problem next spring.

However, as fate would have it, I had issues with the battery, and after discovering that none of the auto parts chains had one I called upon Michael's services. In doing so, I got the opportunity to talk with him again. The racing juices got fired up, and I learned that really I shouldn't worry about the track tires until I learn to find the limit on the street tires. I did a little web browsing when I got home and came across the New England Region of the SCCA's web site. I was looking at the various types of competitions. Solo Autocross was looking most approachable, and least likely to result in bent fenders if I screwed up (which on an Elise means cracked body halves!... there are only 2 pieces to the body work. Front and back.)

Then I found the forums... At the very top of the forum were a couple of locked posts, of the sort that moderators and forum admins post and set to stay at the top for informational purposes. But the name on the post was distinctive. It's the sort of first name last name combination that simply doesn't get duplicated (much like mine). It was clear that one of my Alpha Phi Omega brothers from college was into solo racing, and heavily enough into it to be taking on an admin role on the forums.

That clinched it. I signed up, left a post and after reconnecting and chatting with my old friend (whom I've only seen passingly only twice since college). I am now registered for a race this weekend.

Next... racing in second gear.

First Gear

2008-06-30T02:34:00.006-04:00

So now I've had the Elise for two Months. I have to admit, the car is every bit as fun as it looks. This post is about some simple ways to have fun with a lotus. I'll start with the obvious ones

Look at it. Once you have one, there is a serious temptation to seek out restaurant seating that affords a view of your car. Reading the owner's manual is also a great excuse to sit on the front stoop where you can see it.

Drive it. This one applies only to well maintained roads. The car does a fabulous job of giving the driver feedback about the road. If you are driving on crappy surfaces the car will tell you all about it. It's not bone jarring, and one *does* get used to it after a couple weeks but I'd like to require certain road crews to drive a lotus on the roads they maintain. That said, given a half decent road, the mere act of driving is transformed into pure pleasure.

People Watch. It's such a hot car that people stop and stare. I had one 16 year old kid nearly fall off his bike trying to watch me and cycle down the sidewalk. Parking it somewhere obvious and then sitting in a cafe across the street provides quite a bit of entertainment... And you get to do #1 at the same time :)

Give people rides. This of course is a mixture of 2 and 3 through the lens of 60+mph exit ramps, and is even more excellent if the passenger is an attractive member of the opposite sex... Even if they are married, or just a friend, the rest of the world doesn't know that! Really, most people look at you like you've got it all... and if the attractive person is your girlfriend then they're right :) (at least within the visible parameters).

Wash it. Yup, that's right, the once mundane and tedious task becomes a joy and a challenge. (Believe me the break dust IS a challenge). Once you get it clean... you really feel like the effort was worth it.

Those are the mundane everyday things at least. I've been so busy doing them that I've basically had most of this post sitting in draft for a month :) The car is obviously capable of competing in a variety of automotive sport events...

Next: Solo Bro

The 111 Shift

2008-06-14T20:10:00.000-04:00

The preceding posts form sort of an automotive memoir. Today begins the next chapter. Since the the point I left off in the last post I was promoted, switched jobs, got promoted and then promoted again. The income has doubled again, and I can finally afford to do that which I had only previously day-dreamed about. Today, I screwed the license plate on a real sports car. It looks awesome, and it is as fast as it looks. It is a type 111R Lotus... an Elise.

I put over 100 miles on it today and I have to admit I can't stop smiling. It is every bit as good as I imagined. It is convertible and although it does nothing to hide bumps on the road, you get the distinct impression that the car is saying "give me the road back" every time it rattles over a bump. There is never a second where the car feels like it isn't fully in control. I'm 100% sure I didn't take it anywhere near it's limit today, but I went faster and had more fun than I've ever had in an automobile. For my mother's sake I won't admit how fast.

Driving will never be the same. The car has a Blaupunkt radio. I'm not sure I'll ever use it. The sound of the motor is far more entertaining than some silly DJ. The dealer's stats on the car say it can do 0-60 in 4.9 seconds. I did a standing start full tilt to 50mph today (the speed limit on the road was 50, I topped out at 65 and then slowed back down), and I don't know how long it was, but holy crap It sure felt like no time at all. They say time flies when your're having fun. That may or may not be true, but I can say for sure.... A Lotus flies and it is definitely fun.

In any case I'll tell the story of how I found this particular vehicle and answer questions like why a lotus, why not xxxx car in future posts. For now I'll just cut to the pictures (My sister is already IM'ing me that she wants them)

Voluntary Zoom Zoom

2008-06-14T09:42:00.000-04:00

The Protege was the first new car I had ever owned. The odometer was mostly zeros... I had seen that before, but the non-zero digit was on the other side. However within a week I had a problem. The engine began to randomly go into sag/surge cycles. When this started to happen the vehicle was almost unmanageable. I took it back to the dealer. They looked at it but couldn't reproduce the problem. I drove it away. A couple days later it came back. Again to the dealer again, no idea what caused it... I started talking about yellow fruit. The computer got replaced. It happened again I took it to a different dealer. They drove it and said that they didn't see any problems... It never happened again. I highly suspect that it was something simple that someone overlooked and they fixed it but didn't want to admit the problem. It was under warranty so it cost no money but was very annoying.

Along with that rocky start was another annoyance. About a week after I bought the vehicle, it was a windy day. The wind took the door in a parking lot. I was parked next to an old beat up suburban. WHACK! the door slammed into the wheel well of the suburban. Just a tiny mark on the already bespeckled suburban, but the edge of my door was bent. My nice new car had a big obvious dent. I was so annoyed and frustrated, but there was nothing to be done about it. The paint had not quite broken, and any attempt to fix it would almost certainly inflict further damage.

A week after that I came out from work to find a good sized ding with a smidge of red paint in it in the middle of my door. The area had plenty of parking spaces and they weren't even all that tight. But some bozo had simply been careless (perhaps as I had with the suburban) and now my car had 2 very noticeable dings in 2 weeks of ownership. My Firebird hadn't had any defects as large as either of those that weren't caused by rust.

The Protoge served me well for almost 6 years. It started to get old and require repairs. In the meantime my life had changed quite a bit. I had given up on finding a job in Ecology/Ornithology because none of them paid enough for me to live on. The ones that did pay well required a PhD rather than a masters, and generally had dozens of fully qualified applicants. The sign shop had gone out of business. The .com bubble had burst, but I had found a job as a Curricular Software Developer at F. W. Olin College of Engineering despite the programmer glut. I was cheap and the out of work programmers were used to 6 digit salaries. The grant that paid for that job ran out 2.5 years later. I got hired at a into a commercial setting. I began to appreciate Dilbert in new ways. I got promoted, I was now making twice what I did in the sign shop.

My Protege was not a very cool car. It was economical, but I no longer really needed to drive the cheapest car I could find. It was time for an upgrade. Finally, I was going to get to pick a car from a position of power, rather than a position of need. So I shopped around the internet and decided that given my rock climbing hobby, I needed to still retain some level of practicality. A sporty hatchback seemed like a good option. I decided that 3 cars looked interesting... The Volkswagon GTI, The Subaru Impreza Outback Sport, and the Mazda 3. I was skittish about VW's because I had known people who had repair problems with them. I drove the 3. It was substantially peppier than my Protege. It also cornered better. It had 6 disc CD, moon-roof and it was blue. I wanted a car with color. I had had grey white and fancy beige so far. It had a 2.3L 4 banger with variable vale timing and weighs 3300 lbs.

The Subaru I drove was also blue. It was a turbo charged with a bunch more max horsepower, but it had a 1.8L engine and weighed 3800 lbs. The low end torque was quite insufficient. One had to rev the engine to get the car to move. Once the turbo kicked in, it moved real good, but aside from getting on the highway, the power was not going to be very useful. The car was simply too heavy. Then there was the shifter. I swear, to date it's the only shifter in which I consistently couldn't find 3rd gear. The shifts were stiff and clunky and required a lot of force compared to both my current Protege and the 3. The third time I found myself skipping 3rd gear and going directly to 4th, I knew the sale was off.

I never bothered with the GTI. I liked the 3, and they were offering me 2.89% leasing on it so I bought it. I still own it today, and have been very pleased with it except for one thing. Mazda made a very bad choice with the oil filter. For the first 2 years it was impossible to find an oil filter anywhere but the dealer, and it cost $15 from the dealer. What ever possessed them to make the oil filter a dealer part! Talk about annoying. Obviously they were trying to force me to bring the car back to the dealership. I hate being pushed around like that. I have yet to take the car back to the dealer for service even once, and don't plan to do so if it can be avoided.

Finally, I had a car I really wanted. It wasn't a sports car, but it was a very good driver for a non-sports car. I still remembered driving my dad's Miata. That was fun, but I had moved into a new apartment and my new income was being fully utilized again...

Next... Incoming type 111

Totally Shifting to Practical

2008-06-13T22:42:00.000-04:00

All in all the Firebird was a good car, but all good things must come to an end. In the winter of 1998/1999 my water pump went. The parking arrangements were not near a building, and one of the bolts was corroded into the block permanently. I had to buy a battery operated dremmel and cut the head off the bolt. The car was out of commission for 3 weeks. During the debacle it sat still and probably appeared unattended. Someone broke in and stole the spoiler off the back. Some of my rust repairs were incomplete through the winter. It was neither pretty nor powerful.

The following spring I was driving home from work and I thought I saw a kestrel in a tree to the left of the road. Having done my masters research on that species of bird, I was distracted for a few seconds. Unfortunately, in the intervening seconds the gray Ford Taurus in front of me decided to stop for a left hand turn. I did my best to stop. I would have swerved but by a freak chance there was a man pouring gas into his truck to the right, and oncoming traffic to the left. I had nowhere to go.

The impact was probably around 10 mph or maybe a little more. I was stunned by my own stupidity, but otherwise no one was hurt. No glass was broken. The Taurus had just a tiny scratch on the bumper... Not so with the Firebird. The bumper was crooked, and pushed back. The left fender was slightly bent. The hood was untouched and the car still drove fine, but the left headlamp no longer poped up. Repair would be mandatory to pass inspection. Then the insurance numbers came back. The front of the engine compartment was slightly bent. The cost of repair was over the value of the vehicle. It was a total.

After deductible, I had 2 grand. I was working in a sign shop making $12 an hour. I had to keep the payments down. I was paying off school loans and credit cards. My financial situation didn't leave room for lots of savings or tolerance for unpredictable large repairs. A low milage or new car seemed like a good idea if I could keep the payments under $200. I test drove a Hyundai Accent. It was an automatic, and I think my Schwinn Tornado had a bigger motor. The thought of drivng that car made me want to puke. I also specifically wanted a manual. I had learned to drive stick on the GMC 3500 utility truck at the shop, and in my dad's 1990 Miata. Though I could drive a stick, I knew I'd never really get good at it unless I owned one.

Why drive a manual? Why get really good? I of course rationalized it with "better gas milage," "Better able to take the keys from a friend if they are drunk," and "better able to handle any vehicle that I might need to use when I finally got a job doing biological field work." But inside, I also knew that I felt slightly inadequate around people who did know how to drive a stick. Also, I remembered the experience of being unable to test drive the Capri myself. If I ever was going to have a sports car later in life, driving a stick was obviously mandatory.

Luckily, I found a good deal. I found a new manual Mazda Protege that was a left over from the previous model year. Furthermore, it was an ES model which meant it had a CD player, moon roof and the 1.8L engine not the 1.6L. It also had a shifter that felt a lot like a long version of my dad's Miata. If there is one thing I've decided I like, it's the Mazda shifters. As of today, I've driven or test driven manual transmissions on a GMC 3500, Toyota Tacoma, Toyota Corrola, Mazda Miata, Mazda Protege, Mazda 3, Subaru Impreza, and a Lotus Elise. The best shifter was the short throw in the Miata, the Protege and the Lotus tie for second, followed closely by the 3. The trucks follow on as passable. The Corrola was clunky but usable, but the (brand new!) Impreza was just down right annoying and difficult.

The Protege was "sand" colored (fancy beige) and totally boring for looks, but it weighed in at a just over 3000 pounds. It actually had similar power to weight and acceleration to the heavier V6 automatic Firebird. Of course the cornering wasn't as good, but with the manual, it was at least as fun to drive...

Next, A Voluntary Vehicle...

Fire Duck Redemption

2008-06-12T06:07:00.000-04:00

Although the v6 2.8L Firebird was not a performance vehicle, it was an improvement. It sat lower and cornered substantially better than a station wagon. Exit ramps came alive as a source of entertainment. It also had a little more horse power than the LTD wagon. I don't know the weight of the LTD, but I suspect it was heavier than the Firebird. It was more fun to drive. My best friend got a Honda Civic around the same time. My car was cooler than that.

The Firebird V6 engine did have one tangible benefit over a V8. There was lots of room in the engine compartment. It was easy to work on. Since I was in college and had no real income self repair was a key benefit. During it's tenure, I replaced lots of stuff including the alternator, the radiator hose, an annoying radiator pipe that ran down beside the engine, the sparkplugs, the entire radiator, the starter and the bushings on the sway bars. I learned about torque wrenches and started to accumulate metric tools. And of course there was body work... endless body work fighting off the rust caused by the salt of New England roads in the winter.

I graduated college, and went on to Graduate school in Buffalo. For my research project I studied a bird called the American Kestrel. Each pair requires several square miles of territory. Among other things I was checking nest boxes for occupation, clutch sizes and fledgling counts and most nest boxes were a mile or more apart. The research was conducted south of Buffalo near Springville NY. I drove all over the nearby villages of East Otto, East Concord, Morton's Corners Riceville and others. This was farmland. The roads were undivided 2 lane, hilly and mostly 55 mph. Even in a V6 Firebird there were thrills to be had driving between nest boxes except when the roads turned to dirt.

During the winter, in Buffalo, a Firebird can only be described as less than ideal. Rear wheel drive and light in the back, I learned a lot about skid control. I discovered that sometimes the easiest way to make a turn in the snow was to intentionally pop the back free and let it swing the car until it faced the new direction. That was a fun trick especially if someone was in the car to gasp and curse about it.

Even though it was not high performance in any way, I did enjoy driving the Firebird. No peel outs, no drag racing, but more turning than a station wagon, and I had never driven a real performance vehicle, so I didn't have a clue what I was missing.

Next... Totally Mazda and a stick.

A Flameless Bird

2008-06-11T20:32:00.000-04:00

The LTD served me through the end of high school, and into college. It was the summer after my sophomore year and I was driving by the local ice cream stand when I realized that the slight squishiness in the accelerator that had been creeping up on me suddenly was getting much worse. Stepping on the gas was actually cutting power initially. The fuel pump had gone. The fuel pump was unfortunately located above the gas tank. The repair promised to exceed the value of the car by a significant margin and my parents weren't up for that. The old gray whale was finally beached.

I had no real money at the time. I had just embarked on a summer job selling knives. I had manged a few small sales and one big one. My commission rate had just been bumped up. It looked like I might possibly start making money soon, but without a car I'd be out of a job. My parents decided to support my new job and fund a replacement vehicle. I wanted a sportier car, preferably a V8, but the price range left only 5+ year 90k+ Mustangs, and F bodies in play, and those were not so easy to find at dealerships. My parents strongly preferred dealerships. I found a Capri with a V8 (the Mercury version of a Mustang). The big problem was I didn't know how to drive a stick. I basically had to rely on my dad to test drive it for me to see if it was in good working order. We did that, but the sales tactics at the Boch Used Car dealership on Route 1 where I found it were a deal breaker. They used high pressure to the max, and really stupid tactics like holding my dad's credit card hostage during the negotiations. After 30 minutes of that, I wouldn't have let my dad buy the car for me. I was that pissed at the salesman. Any hope of getting the Capri was caput.

Then my mom got involved. It became clear that a V8 was not acceptable. I wasn't paying, so it was kinda hard to complain much. It wasn't a birthday or graduation gift, it was a car to keep me employed. I came dangerously close to having a white K car station wagon. I really wanted a sportier car than the LTD, so a compromise was struck when we found a white 1989 Firebird. At least it had some style, and a lower center of gravity. It wasn't a V8, nor was it the turbo V6, nor was it a manual transmission, and it didn't have the big decal on the front. It was essentially hollow with respect to performance but it did look a little like a negative of KITT from Nightrider.

It was a piece of pretty, white fluff. It did attract attention which was fun the first few times it happened. But I soon discovered that after praise such as "Cool car" or "Nice ride" came the standard inquisition from people who knew anything about cars:

Them:	"What year?"
Me:	"'89"
Them:	"Nice, is it the 3.8 Turbo 6?"
Me:	"no"
Them:	"Ah well the 5.0 liter V8 is good too"
Me:	"actually it's a v6"
Them:	".... mmm .... well the 2.8 is a good reliable engine. You do have the 5 speed don't you?"
Me:	"no"
Them:	"Oh"

Usually the person didn't know what to say after that and neither did I, so the conversation generally ended there. Half the time they asked about the V8 before the turbo, not that it mattered in the end.

Next... Fond memories of my lame fire duck.

In the beginning...

2008-06-11T01:26:00.000-04:00

In high school, I was not terribly into cars. My first car was a 1984 Ford LTD. It was a mid-sized station wagon... yes you guessed it, the old family car. Technically, it wasn't even mine. In some ways getting a Schwinn Tornado bike with knobby tires that made it an actual "dirt" bike when I was 11 was cooler than when I received the small gray boat I drove in high school. Of course all the freedom and independence of a car was cooler than any bike, but when I got the bike I wanted to show it to my friends. Not so much with the LTD. Although I never did any off road bike racing, I had a bike that could do that sort of thing and that was cool. This probably also explains the indifference to maintenance that led me to learn the hard way why it is you want to check the oil regularly. Honestly, I thought my dad was checking the oil, but he was quite reasonably expecting me to do it. Yes, that's right, I blew the head gasket, billowing white smoke out the tail and all. The car survived. One hell of an expensive repair later, I was on the road again. This my parents paid for bless their souls. I was not employed at the time, with the idea of focusing on my school work. I did eventually obtain scholarships in excess of the repair amount, so I guess that makes up for it somewhat.

I'm sure that those looking in from the outside, wouldn't have thought I'd be getting a sports car later on in life. Looking back I remember a few things that were only visible from inside my head that do foreshadow the adventure I am embarking on. I distinctly remember doing 45-50mph down the road by the lake, which was totally unsafe, but the curves were fun. Thankfully, I only did that a few times. There was a tiny rotary at the top of the lake. If I came into it in the far right of my lane, flirted with scraping the left side of my car on the rotary's curbstone at the midpoint and narrowly missed the curb with my right wheel as I came out of it I didn't have to slow down at all. I did this every chance I got. Finally there was the time I laid down a good 2-3 car length skid mark on the road that lead to the shopping area. I had left a mark on the road... That was neat. Of course in a mid-sized grocery-getter, the only way to leave a mark is with a good long panic stop. Today, I would consider laying down such a skid to be the result of very poor defensive driving on my part. Luckily, I did manage to avoid having an accident with the cretin that pulled out without so much as a glance in my direction.

So I wasn't so much into cars, but I would say I was somewhat into driving. At least I was into driving as much as one could be with a station wagon...

Next... birds with no flames.