I love it when a plan comes together (and when my car works!)

     Another track day along with its emotional roller coaster has come and gone.  I lucked out and managed to get a three day weekend for this event.  Got on my way a little later than I wanted to on Friday morning thanks to spending a half hour on the phone with my credit car company dealing with some fraudulent charges...awesome.  The route from where I am out to Pocono goes right past my parents house, so I was able to stop home for a little while and see my mom for the first time since she broke her leg, which was definitely nice.  Got out to my hotel, which was just a tad sketchy, around 8pm and went on a little adventure to find some beer and a WaWa.  Only to find that PA has some weird ass liquor laws...and buying beer at a pizza shop.

     For various reasons I got little to no sleep and finally got out of bed around 6am Saturday morning, got some breakfast, got to the track around 7.30....and then the bad luck hit.

     It was a tad bit foggy as you can see, wound up not clearing up until almost 1pm which was a little shitty, but it gave me time to wander around and meet some new people as well as hang out with some current friends.

     Go Time...first sesion we went right out on the big (north) track which uses nascar turn 1.  It was pretty damn interesting and speeds were easily in the 120+ range minimum.  Learned the track asll went well.

wait...did I just say things went well???  YES I DID.  I must have prayed to the car gods just enough.  THE BRAKES FREAKING WORKED.  No drama, no shudder just bled speed instantly and so smoothly.  It was a down right beautiful thing.  It is epically awesome when you go out and the car just works and you can focus on driving and just going fast.  I found out that i actually can be progressive and control my braking when I know in my head that they are going to work.

     Next up was the South East course which is short, but very technical and pretty fast for what it is.  First session on this track I figured out the line and thought I was doing well.  Had a quick turn around right back out onto the big track and had a nice clean session and pushed harder...to the tune of 130mph on the way into turn 1 and carried 115mph through and out the other side...it was a pretty damn cool feeling.  That's officially the fastest I've ever gone in a car.

     Back to the southeast course.  I had been chatting with some of my evo buddies, and Jordan (one of the NASA NE head instructors and an evo racer) said he finally had time to go out with me for a session.  I have been looking forward to this for a few events now, as the Evo is a special beast and I needed to be shown how to appropriately drive it.  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

     After three laps Jordan asked if he could drive my car and show me how to do it.  Yup, I felt like less of a man after that.  I was absolutely stunned at what my car could do, and how weakly i was actually pushing it.  After that awesome demo, I took the wheel again and went after it.  Check the video:

     This was a damn good weekend even with the weather delay.  Good friends, fast cars and high speeds, what else can be said about that.

(pictures courtesy of my dad)

     Jordan gave me some great feedback and told me I made some very big improvements after being shown how to do it (the word flick was applied HEAVILY to driving the car).  He also added that the car felt pretty good overall, brakes were very good but it felt to him like the car was lacking some front grip.  Our collective thought is that the tire pressures I run were dialed in with my weak driving, so they probably need 1-2psi taken out when driven correctly.  That plus a little more camber and I should have a very solid car to improve my skills with.

     I actually did have one tiny issue, the car started to eat the inner shoulder of the right front tire after 2 sessions.  Luckily I caught it and rotated front to back.  By the end of the day the drivers front had also started to show signs.  This is more evidence for me to change up the front alignment and I will probably get the tires swap side to side and get the worn edge on the outside.

     Next event is up in the air...I will update when I know.

Vacation's are great....until they end

     Another vacation has come and gone.  Surprisingly I actually accomplished 98% of what I wanted to on the car...still didn't get the damn kiggly in.  Got the brakes all rebuilt and nicey nice, wasn't a bad job at all.  The dust seals were definitely cooked and hardened but overall they didn't look terrible.  I'm sure it won't hurt to have upgraded anyway.  I wound up only replacing one rear sway end link since the drivers side wound up coming loose after a little work and was able to be adjusted, while the passenger rear needed lots of cutting/sparks/brute force.  In hindsight I probably should have just replaced the drivers side even though it moved...oh well.  

     I've got the ecu boost control pretty dialed with just a little work left to do from 6k rpm up.  Had a few hiccups and found that that my RPM/gear table is a tad off so I was getting weird interpolation on one of the tables, and just yesterday with some help found why my boost error was logging all wacky.

      Overall, the car is an oil and brake pad change away from being ready for pocono next weekend.  Pretty excited to get back out on track.  It looks like for DE we will be running the south east infield which doesn't look terribly exciting, but I'm sure it may prove otherwise for me somehow...but it is kinda lame I won;t get to be out on the NASCAR pavement.  Either way track time is track time.

     Unfortunately it looks like I might be doing this event with out my dad/crew chief.  Shortly after I left my parents house to end my vacation my mom wound up breaking her leg pretty good ad spent two days in the hospital, had a rod put in and all that good stuff.  Looking like the crew chief will have to be a nurse instead.

     If my luck holds out, I will be hitting NJMP again 2 weeks after pocono.

Welcome home (clutch break in is a bitch)

     Picked the car up from DynoTech on Friday.  Made for a damn good birthday present.  It's like driving a whole new car to be honest.  The clutch engagement is much smoother and requires a lot less finesse, the exedy flywheel actually improved things I think, as now when you let off the gas while cruising the rev's don't immediately drop like a ton of bricks (I was very concerned about going to an aftermarket flywheel, but the exedy is only like 2 pounds lighter than stock...great choice).  The gear box is straight up buttery end of story.

     Of course the bill wound up being a little larger than I had hoped, as they didn't listen and did an oil change and put in Denso spark plugs...I ONLY run NGK.  But i can't really complain DynoTech has been great, and even with 15 cars at the shop in various stages of builds they met my deadline like pros even, even though the transmission took way longer to get here than I thought.  

     Interestingly, the timing belt hardly looks worn to me.  I figured at 61k miles I would at least see a few cracks.  The clutch/flywheel also surprised me, never slipped on me once but it looks like theres a few hot spots on both the face of the pressure plate and the flywheel.  Im curious what the thickness of the stock disc is though...

     I'm on vacation this week so that means more work on the car.  Big things are the new rear end links I think I previously mentioned, as well as rebuilding the front calipers with Racing Brake stainless pistons and high temp seals (PLEASE SPONSOR ME RB!).  Also bought a vortex generator because I really feel like my car does not look aggressive enough.  I had wanted a factory one since there is wind tunnel data behind it, but I couldn't justify the price plus needing to paint it...enter rexpeed...whatever its for looks and maybe a tiny bit of performance since it will eventually be a small part of a large aero package.

     Also started playing with a few things that may/may not aid in cooling.  You can see I just covered up gaps where air could escape with aluminum tape.  I will also be installing a 6.5 inch 300cfm puller fan on the oil cooler to help with cool down/in case I get too hot on track.  Guys have seen about a 10 degree drop with similar setups.  Next step will be wrapping some things with Aerolyte foil (google it, they use it in Indycar it, it's something like >90% heat reflective.

I'm going through track withdrawal....

I miss my car...

     I've been too lazy to post anything, but today I'm in a crappy mood and normally when that happens i would just go for a ride in the evo....but it's not here.  I dropped the car off at Dynotech on the 1st  for a ton of work.  If you listen closely you can hear my credit card crying.

     So now i play the waiting game...

     That's my transmission.  So the current list of work goes something like this:

          - 60k service (timing belt/balance belt/water pump)

          - Comp Stage 2 clutch

          - Exedy lightweight flywheel

          - Jack's Stage 1 ransmission

          - Stainless clutch line

     The car should be done by my birthday aka the 21st if we stay on the current schedule.  Then I'm on a much needed vacation from work for a week and have even more parts in the form of new rear end links so that I can soften the rear bar (the proper setting to compliment my coilovers, and the old links are rusted on), energy suspension rear diff bushings and RacingBrake front caliper rebuild kit which includes all new seals/dust boots and of course brand new stainless pistons...I really hope this will sort my braking shudder on track or I'm going to be severely pissed. 

     Of course when I dropped the car at the shop I was knee deep in tuning the car on ECU boost, which is annoying because I'm sitting here waiting to try a new map revision.

     Anyway....not much else to report, as I'm jut playing the good ol waiting game, and once the car is back in my hands I have to play the 500 mile clutch break in game...

     Next track day is July 13th at Pocono.  Crossing my fingers that all this work/money/time without my car will make it a dream to drive again...otherwise i may just bail on any more track days this summer to save money and redo a ton of shit on the car.

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.