Be Progressive! B-E PROGRESSIVE!!!

     So another track weekend has come and gone...in the form of 1000 miles and a lot of gas money.

     After what should have been about a max of 6 hours of driving taking 9 freaking hours on Friday, My dad and I had dinner and crashed for the night.  In typical fashion I woke up like a kid at Disney Land Saturday morning and made my way to the track.  My instructor had emailed me Wednesday before the event to have a quick discussion about expectations for both of us as well as my car etc, which was pretty nice.  Even though some fellow evo guys think I'd be fine in DE2 with NASA, I decided to stick with DE1 so that I was guaranteed an instructor all day.  With 5 track days under my belt prior, I explained to my instructor that I was really looking for some coaching and to see if we could identify my specific weak areas.  The issue I was slightly expecting was that it can be very difficult for a non evo driver to instruct in an evo...my instructor (Alan) was of course a Porsche GT2 Rs driver.

     Lightning was a much more technical track than I initially expected, but damn is it a fun one.  For the first session I started slow and began ramping up the speed while keeping the braking zones long.  As soon as I got comfortable my wonderful brake shudder came BACK!  Lets back up for a second...if you look back a few posts, you'll see the brake issues I had at LRP last month.  In an attempt to combat this issue, which was assumed to be cause by some bad deposits, I put on a set of new blank rotors, but with the same pads...dumb idea.

     Overall the day went well, Alan told me it was impressive to see how quickly I was able to pick up and show that I knew the line.  Notice I said knew the line, not drove the line.  I was having some...well...issues putting the car exactly where I wanted at times and I honestly think it was due to losing focus thanks to the still grinding 4th and 5th gear syncros as well as the god damn brakes.  At the end of the day, Alan was able to pinpoint exactly what I was doing wrong under braking...i am not PROGRESSIVE, I seem to be either on or off the brakes instead of gradually increasing pressure nad the "rolling" off and back to the gas.  I started to get a little frustrated in the afternoon with the car, and myself for not being able to do what I knew I was needing to do so I called it a day.

     Now all that was left was to drive my ass all the way back to RI.  In the end, the car was impressive honestly.  I have never driven it that much in such a short period of time, it didn't event flinch at the trip and even managed 26mpg on one tank of gas.  The addition of about 10 square feet of dynamat to the trunk floor help GREATLY as my head didn't feel like it was going to explode after 2 hours of highway cruising.

     I know I've said it in probably the last 3 posts now, but hopefully I will get to work on ECU boost this weekend finally.  I'm waiting on a large parts order including clutch/flywheel/fluids/stage 1 transmission so that I can get the car back to almost perfect.  I thought everything was on schedule but of course now I was told 3-4 week wait on the gear box...oh and this:

 Apparently I ordered a clutch and they shipped drugs???  I mean c'mon...

     The other big issue right now is safety.  Some big wrecks have happened in Time attack/track days lately and safety has been constantly on my mind.  I will probably be ordering a Hybrid Pro Rage neck restraint and new helmet very soon to hold me over while I try and decide on what to do about a cage/seats/harnesses

  Next event will hopefully be NASA at Pocono July12-14 pending my day off request with work.  I've pretty much decided to dump all June events due to the transmission, Having to baby the car gets frustrating VERY quickly.  No idea on other events...

     Not to self:  WaWa's by NJMP only have 92 octane.  I found out the stupid way that my car does not enjoy 92 octane....and then had to spend $70 on a half tank of 100 octane.

See ya on the track.

Just a quick update

     Not a ton to report at this point.  The car is currently sitting at DynoTech getting the passenger side front axle replaced due to the tiny tear in the boot.  Other than that...

     - Got the car up and running on Tephra V7 finally.  Pretty much went without a hitch, had an EGR cel pop up but it it turned out that I hadn't perfectly matched the periphery settings from ROM to ROM.  This brings up an interesting point due to the fact that as far as I knew, the car should not need any EGR systems shut off through the ROM...

     - I need to decide what to do about the brake shudder.  I either need to skim the RB rotors, or pick up some blanks so I don't have to deal with the terrible shudder again.  The trouble is finding some place to skim the rotors.

     -  I've become a little well, disenchanted I guess you could call it with EMRA.  I deal with enough politic-ing and bullshit at work to not want to see it going on when I'm at the track where I should be having good pure fun.  This is not to say I will not do any more events with them, but I think I need to change up my schedule a bit.  I had planned on going to the NYS safety track with them in June, but there has been a severe lack of updates on basic events let alone for an event at a brand new track...the track has even announced they are totally open yet.  I think I'm going to target a TrackDaze event in it's place at NJMP.

     Here's an an awesome picture taken by JDS photography at Lime Rock last event.  He has some more I will probably purchase since they are wall hanging quality for my condo/garage, just haven't had the spare cash yet.

Some espresso and two red bulls later...

     And the first event is in the books.  Another good day at Lime Rock.  Keep in mind that I went into this event on new suspension, alignment and brakes.

     I headed out for the first session having no idea what to expect.  I had spent the week contemplating how to set up the rear suspension as well as what I was going to be facing with my brake cooling.  The weather was challenging, as it was in the low 50's with the sun going in and out of cloud cover so track temp was staying quite low.  Since the first session is a short warm up one, i decided to just run the brake ducts full open and go easy.  Upon returning to the pits and checking the rotors with my handy dandy laser temp gun, I saw somewhere in the range of 300 degrees...waaaaaay to cold, I knew i needed to be in the 700+ degree range.  The suspension was down right impressive.  The new lateral grip is intense and a challenge, as I am now having a VERY difficult time staying situated in the seat even with the CG lock.  

     This was also my first competitive day on a familiar track since I started with iRacing.  Do I think it helped?  Absolutely.  I already know the track well at LRP, but there was a new mental feeling, almost more focused.  I knew exactly where to point the car and had some new turn in points that felt much better than last year, as well as rolling the corners better and overall just feeling like i was maximizing the setup a decent amount better than I was last year...pretty neat if you ask me.

     The next session, I added some tape and blocked off about 50% of the duct inlet which resulted in much better brake temps at the rotor of about 500-600 degrees.  Unfortunately I developed HORRIBLE brake shudder.  After some discussion, it is possible i made some bad deposits on the rotors running the DTC 60's in the rain in February.  Further more I had 4th and 5th gear grinding both up and down shifting.

    

 After all was said and done, I came home with a 1st place trophy and a new personal best lap of 1:05.8x.  Although I will admit that it was first place because my only competition got protested and bumped up a class for running R-comps (not by me though).  That being said, my time would have landed me in about 4th place in the next class up.

     My GoPro didn't want to cooperate, so I have very little useable footage from the day.

     I didn't even remember to mess with the rear rebound all day, as I was distracted by the brake issues.  As always, my work is never done, and the car has more in it even just as it sits.  BUt of course I am now left with a decent checklist of things to do.

-I need rear diff bushings ASAP

- Probably need to have my rotors turned

- New pass front axle/boot, as I discovered grease flung everywhere, and a small tear in the outer boot

- Need to adjust the clutch a little and see if I can get it shifting better before i wind up with a large repair bill

- Could probably use to check the tune and start working on ECU boost/Tephra v7 finally.

OVERALL:  car was great, tire wear and temps looked very good and now i just need to prep for the next event, my first with NASA in May.

Spring Break: more car, less tits same amount of beer edition

     I finally consumed enough beer to be able to sit down and write tonight.  Unfortunately, I have to start off with a rant, I apologize in advance.

     For those who don't follow closely, on basically a yearly basis I take a vacation from work in March, call it cliche or whatever but it's sort of my spring break, and allows me to do a bunch of work on my cars and as of the past two years has been my sort of season prep time.  This year I added moving into my vacation.  I've lived in a small expensive apartment in the city for a little over 2 years now, and while certainly nice, it was pricey for what it was and the parking situation sucked.  I always search listings/craigslist as does my mom, and back in December we ran across a condo listed.  Fast forward to February and I sign the lease to rent a 2 bed/1.5 bath condo with a garage and ample parking in the burbs from a young professional couple who bought a house.    

     Now is the part where I lost it.  I used the first two days of my vacation (this past weekend) to move, which promised about as much fun as getting kicked in the balls.  Long story short, things go semi smoothly, but when I get to the condo it is straight up GRIMEY, like they never mopped, just moved the dirt around or some shit.  every cabinet and shelf is gross, all walls/molding need repaintig in my opinion.  So whatever, I rushed them to let me move in.  Next day, go out for breakfast, come back, and I'm locked out...come to find out pretty much every lock in the house has a different key including the damn front door knob and deadbolt, and the garage door opener took a shit on me...WTF.

     How, as a young professional couple with money do you live like this?  I mean I get that they probably said fuck it were moving...but c'mon man.  So now I'm gonna have to replace multiple door knobs to get them properly functioning and on the same key, and hang a new garage door opened...the landlord has proven that his DIY skills are terrible...but I won't get into that.

     Let's get to the car.  This week my main goal was to get my gauges installed as well as my Ohlins coilovers.  Took me a rediculous 2 hours to do my gauge install even not having to do any wiring, this is gonna go well...

     So, I decide to at least do the rear coilovers the same day in case I run into any bad bolts etc.  All bolts come out easily, but this is what I find:

     I know what you're thinking, "Nate you suck, how did you kill that bolt???".  The asnwer is I didn't, that is either a factory defect ORRRRR (revert to rant mode).  The shocks and springs on the car were installed by the previous owner.  Either he put this bolt back in with a 1000ft/lb air gun OR he saw this and decided to re use it.  I HATE IMCOMPETENCE.  It's just a major kill you if it breaks suspension bolt...no biggie.  Apparently the dumbass has never heard of anti seize either...

     Onto the front, drivers side goes ok, passenger front not so much.  2 days, multiple heat sessions and lots of hammering later, the seized camber bolt was out. So there you have it, it took me 3 days to install coilovers (insert facepalm here).

     I had hoped to put some shifter bushings and diff bushings on the suby, but didn't get to that.  Same with my oil pressure sensor, and kiggly HLA.  Oh well.

      OH, I did grow a beard though.

     Car goes off for an alignment tomorrow.  -2.8 camber front with zero toe, -1.5 camber rear with 1/16th total toe to counteract the possible over steer i might get from having seized end links and not being able to adjust the rear bar softer...I picked up a Smart Camber gauge for cheap off eBay, but I feel like I should at least get a baseline and only trust myself to make adjustments from there.

     Looking forward, officially registered for Lime Rock on 4/13 and NJMP lightning with NASA in May.  Let the fun begin!

    

The green flag waves, and were underway...

     Well, the first event of the season has come and gone...and what a great event it was.  The event was put on by a group of guys known as PCD aka Philadelphia's classiest drunkards, a large group of guys who all track their evo's.  They had the first event last year as a season kickoff/warmup and had a great turn out, so luckily they decided to do it again this year.

     I went down to my parents house and prepped the car the weekend before, fluids, brake pads etc, nothing crazy.  Trailered down to the track next weekend, and after that it's pretty much a blur at this point.  

     I spent most of the week leading up the event staring at the lame weather forecast, as the midwest got dumped on with snow...it didn't look good.  Everyone kept saying a rainy track day is the best thing you can ever do, but of course that's hard to believe.  I was bummed, but finally accepted the forecast, and damn did my attitude change after the first session on track.  I know understand, and would recommend to ANYONE to do a wet track day if you can.  I learned exponential amounts about my cars handling and how to be smooooothe (learned that the hard way...see below).  When the speeds are lowered by rain you are given all kinds of time to concentrate on exactly what the car is doing and how it is reacting to every little input.

This is what happens when you are not smooth:

     I got on the power way to early and hard and went right around.  

     Don't have much to say, other than to reiterate my big thanks to the guys who put on this event, and that I hope i get to hang out track side with them many more times.

on to the video:

and here's a little teaser of whats to come:

Yes, those are ohlins...and yes, I'm a baller (I would never have bought these if I hadn't gotten the SMOKIN deal I did from one of the PCD guys who switched to something else).  Running hyperco springs in the generic and well accepted evo rates of 8k/10k.  Will add more camber up front and see how awesome the car becomes.  I have some other thing in the pipeline I'll talk about later...

Back to iRacing for awhile....

It's been a long winter...........

     Yeah, I know I have posted nothing basically all winter.  It's called real life I guess.  Some stuffs happened blah blah blah.

     Anyway...

     So lets start the season fresh, did I mention I'll be on track next weekend?  Group of evo guys are putting on a second annual track day at NJMP, sort of a season warmup event/lapping day.  The car has been in the storage all winter, and I finally got my dad to go release it back into the wild this week.  As the "pit crew" he has been tasked with getting the car inspected and burning off the gas that has been sitting in it all winter...I just have to keep reminding him that the boost gauge has a memory function...

      I've spent an ass ton of time playing iRacing the past few weeks, so we shall see if it has any effect on real driving.  I'm also signing the lease on a new place today and it has a garage, which is sweet!  I will finally have both cars in one place.

     I will have some fun new part announcements coming soon too...

The winds of change are blowing (hopefully its not just gas?)

     I'm a pessimist that's just the facts.  Due to that I have been looking over my shoulder waiting to get hit by a bus lately...I've just been having oddly good luck.  Most of it's in the life realm, and I can't post it publicly just yet...

     I also managed to survive the hurricane, and even today's nor'easter.

     Anyway...somehow I missed the fact that a new road course is opening near Albany about 2 hours north of my parents house.

Length - 2.1 miles
Front straight - 2,300 feet long, 40 feet wide
Back side - 36 feet wide
Turns - 18
Elevation change - 450 feet

 

     Looks like a really nice layout and EMRA, who has released a tentative 2013 schedule already (sweet!) has 2 weekends scheduled there so far running counter clockwise one day and clockwise the next.

     Speaking of schedules, with how poorly things are going at work lately including an impending nurse strike, we haven't had to request our 2013 vacations yet.  Most people are pissed, but I'm kinda happy because it is allowing more time for NASA/EMRA/NARAA/RTA etc. to release their 2013 schedules, which should hopefully equate to me getting a bunch more days on track (hopefully this isn't where the bus I mentioned earlier decides to hit me...).

     I'm still plotting/planning the car setup for next year as well as setting aside stacks of cash necessary to pay for it all.  Things might change yet again depending on what black friday deals I find.  So far all I've picked up is a spare ACD ecu and a set up barely used Hawk DTC 60 pads to try. 

until next time...