No, I'm not dead.

     ...I've just been doing that little race related activity.  And it makes me sad.

     It's been a rough year track time wise so far and doesn't look like it's going to get much better.  Back in May I went to a bachelor party in Miami and spent the equivalent of 3 track days money wise...ouch.  It was a good time for sure with good friends but directed A LOT of funds away from the cars.  I had a wedding to attend in Maine on what would have been my next available track weekend, and other than that it just seems like I work.

     Finally June 21/22 rolled around which meant it was time for NASA NE's inaugural event at Thompson speedway (only half an hour from my house!) and also my birthday.  My parents came up to visit for the weekend and so my dad could come hang at the track with me as usual.  Got the car prepped in basic fashion in the week prior, just brake pads and such and took another guess at tire pressures for the damn z2's.

     Got to the track Saturday morning and was tech'd and ready to go un almost under an hour, it really is quite nice being able to empty the car out at home!  Even though I was running Group 2 as usual we were given instructors for the first session, since the instructors had been there on Friday to learn the track.  Picked up the line quickly (EVERYTHING is late apex and TIGHT) and the day was off an rolling. 



     We had a very good group at this event.  Lots of respectful driving and courtesy on track, and we all picked up speed quickly.  A lot of people didn't like the track due to being so short and tight, but I kind of liked it since the tight corners and slow exits seem to fall in the favor of the evo.  I was VERY rusty having not been out since April, but I was able to keep up with the group and we were all turning laps in the 1:27 to 1:33 range.  What was also really nice was that the group leaders car had full motec data acquisition so we were able to review video/data in the classroom of him following us.

 Interesting chasecam view from a buddy in his Evo X.  Ignore the speed on his overlay as he was staying in 4th gear down the front stretch.

 

Here's in car video.

   
     I've also got a helmet cam view, but haven't converted it yet.  The worst part of the weekend?  We were tearing up the asphalt to the point that they are going to have to make some major repairs/changes.  There was talk that they may have used the wrong grade asphalt...

     I think that I am finally at the point that I'm going to give in and spend a huge chunk of money on safety equipment:
- Autopower roll bar
- Schroth Profi 2 ASM belt with 6 point conversion
- Buddy club bucket seat (going cheap on the seat for now to allow for purchase of new helmet and HANS)

     Other than that no big plans, the car is working well.  I had made a mental decision to change the front spring rate but i wound up getting misinformation and buying a set of used springs that were the wrong diameter for my ohlins...oh well.

Next Event: Probably Thompson again August 23/24.  Trying to figure out if in the middle of all the other crap going on I can squeeze in my first trip to the Glen at the end of September.  Also still trying to find some time to autoX the s2000.

NASA Two Day Season Opener

     I got extra lucky for this weekend.  The way my work schedule fell I noticed I had Monday off, allowing me to stay at NJMP for both days instead of just one for once...although I spent days going back and forth in my head if I should really spend the extra money.

    Anyway...so I picked up the car from the shop 2 weeks prior to the event, still having all the work to do that's listed in the last post.  Of course it took me until the exact last minute to be ready to go.  Alignment took 4 tries or so since I couldn't manage to get the wheel dead straight, then went further wrong the first time I tried to correct it.  Tried to change the rear diff fluid, but good old Mitsubishi changed the diff fluid containers and now my fluid pump can't attach to the bottle and of course I didn't have any suitable empty containers around.  But above all the tune was being the biggest bitch.  With the new o2 housing I gained almost psi of boost all the way across the board which led to my injectors going static at about 6k rpm, and going lean to >12:1 at about 6500.  I dropped a bunch of WGDC out and still couldn't get it in check.  Then it hit me...turn on boost control.  BOOM, problem fixed, sometimes its better to let the ecu take over.  The car was making in right in the 345whp/300wtq range SAFELY.

     Travel to the track was uneventful for once, and the weather forecast was looking damn good.  Got to the track Saturday morning, reg'd, tech'd, said hi to the evo homies, and got ready for first session.

First Session - Needed to get used to the new tires, went out slow.  Right away I knew the new z2's were very different from the r3's.  The bet way to describe it is that the RS3's used to feel like they were digging in and taking a set in the track, whereas the car now feels like it is sitting up on the tires.  Basically, the z2's gripping feels very close to how the rs3's felt just before/as they started to slide...on the other hand right from the get go the technical pieces of my driving felt quite good.

     I cant remember many other specifics of sessions that day, but I did some laps that felt decent, however my line through 2-3-4-5 was honestly quite terrible.  I tried some things, talked to Joe/Marc/Thai about the line and improved slightly, but the car continued to feel like it was gonna slide every time I went through that section and I got slightly annoyed at how I just didn't feel comfortable with the car as I pushed.  On the upside, there was some AWESOME racing to watch between sessions, as well as having plenty of time to get my camera out and take some pictures which I haven't done in quite awhile.

     Sunday was even better weather, but most sessions were planned to be combined group 1/2.  Obviously that turned out to be a mess, 40 cars rush hour traffic like.  Through someone elses bad luck (a blown up Speed 6...rods found on the track blown up) the schedule got shifted and group 2 got 2 solo sessions back.  car still felt the same, driving was decent, had fun.  The last session I ran though was great as we were grouped with the instructors.  I tried to keep up, but there was no chance.  Experiencing that speed differential was nuts, I was giving point bys as fast as I could...but i think I still managed to pick up a few things.

     I'm still happy with the car, it survived, it performed well, basically just continued to be great and allowed me to have some damn good fun.  My fastest timed lap of the weekend was in the 1:25 range which basically means I have some slight idea what I'm doing (Joe Ascoli and his evo set a new TT3 track record of 1:09 for reference...), but I certainly should be sub 1:20 with the current car setup.  All time is being lost in 3-4-5, and lifting halfway down the front stretch thanks to wonderfully wobbly front wheels.

     It's pretty lame I won't be on track again until some time in June.  Time to start playing with the S2000 and hopefully get some auto x in.  Plus I have a bachelor party in Miami to look forward to.  Need to figure out my front end wobble, and get a better alignment on the car, then just drive it.

     I'm still working on editing video and pictures.

Picture set can be found here  - https://www.flickr.com/photos/natebookbinder/sets/72157643561613583/

Quick vid using both cameras:

I'll add a better video this weekend probably.

    

Season starts in 3 weeks!!! (uh shit...I'm not ready)

     Hopefully what has happened so far this year is not a sign of things to come this year...

     Two weeks ago I went down to NY to get the evo out of storage.  While putting the battery in and doing my typical pre-flight checks  I noticed a not so blue brake fluid reservoir (I've been running ATE super blue).  A quick investigation lead to finding that both calipers had decided to leak and allow all the fluid out.  Driving 30 minute back to my parents house was going to be fun!  First thing i did was park the car in a snowbank and scuff the front lip trying to even back it out...awesome.

     After a little discussion with some people who are tight with/sponsored by RacingBrake (the maker of the upgraded caliper pistons I installed last summer) I was told that while after I did the upgrade, the company changed the thickness of the piston seals as a few people had slight leaking issues.  I fired off n email to RacingBrake with a few questions and they turned around and offered to send me a free set of new seals as well as 50% off their new hi-temp silicone dust boots.

     After all that excitement I made the drive back up to RI.  Surprisingly the car seemed to leak very little fluid when moving/brakes were heated, but parked for 3 days pretty much drained the reservoir again, but this time one caliper stopped leaking.  So I turned around and dropped the car off at the shop last Saturday and asked him to keep an eye on the fluid...no word yet.

     It's funny how even though all us track guys/racers know exactly how long our winter break is we all wind up in a time crunch before the first race.  My first event is officially going to be April 5th, which is apparently 3 weeks away as my writing this.  Crossing my fingers that I'll get the car back by next weekend, at which point I will still need to do the following:

- Change rear diff/trans fluid and oil

- Rebuild front left if not both calipers...again...and fully bleed system

- Align the front end

- Wire oil pressure gauge

   It's probably only about 4-5 hours of work, but the calipers need to be done in my parents garage which turns it into a full weekend...and the only option is the weekend before NJMP.

            It's gonna be close....

Here's some pics:

                                                    Inside view of the MAP O2 housing

                                                 Swaintech'd to try and control some heat

 

The rubber for this year

The old boots off the whiteline bits

 

     It should be a good weekend,  12 Hours of Sebring and start of F1...and right now I'm gonna watch days of Thunder...sweet

Welcome to 2014 (I thought it was a good idea at the time...)

     Better late then never I suppose.

     Lately I almost feel like a real person, I've been eating vegetables, I have bed time and I had to buy a bunch of new shirts/ties.  What this means is I finally got a new job...directly across the street from my old one, go figure.  I work days now so I don't feel like I'm constantly losing my shit although I'm still kind of going nuts because it's been effing cold here in the north east and all my fun cars are locked away in garages.

     Wait, did he say fun cars plural? yeah...whoops.

 

     I tried to talk myself out of it I really really did, but spending too much time surfing the internet and watching track videos made it virtually irresistible along with the fact that I'd reaaly like to keep some miles off the evo this year.  Quick stats - 2001 AP1 173k on the chassis, 50k on the motor, couple small dings and scratches, virtually new top, exhaust and intake.  Needs a set of tires that's it.  Only put about 100 miles on it but DAMN is it fun.

     Back to the evo.  Trying to refrain from any major changes to the car (which I think I spoke about previously) in an effort to focus on my driving.  Need to do a full round of maintenance of course, mods wise I just sent out an O2 housing out to Swaintech today (made sense to replace since I have to get in there to find the exhaust leak/failed part anyway) and I have a set of control arms sitting here with Whiteline front bushings and the RCK bits installed so I can easily get the arms swapped out.  Like I said, nothing too crazy.

Here's the list of events I've compiled so far:

 

March 29  Lime Rock  NASA

April 4-6  NJMP Lightning  NASA

April 12  Lime Rock  EMRA (1pm)

April 28-29  Watkins Glen  NASA

May 3-4  Pocono South East  EMRA

May 16-18  NJMP Thunder  NASA

June 7  Lime Rock  EMRA  (1pm)

June 20-22  Thompson  NASA

July 3-5  Lime Rock (unmuffled)  NASA

July 19-20  NJMP Lightning  NASA

July 26-27 NJMP Lightning  EMRA

August 9-10  Thompson Speedway  EMRA

August 23-24  Thompson  NASA

September 6-7  Pocono North  EMRA

***September 19-20  Lime Rock NARRA***

September 26-28  Watkins Glen  NASA

October 24-26  NJMP Thunderbolt  NASA

November 9-10  Summit Point  EMRA

     Notice that starred event...yeah I'm excited about that one.  A large organization like NARRA at Lime Rock on Trans Am weekend should be a blast.  The car is under prepped and I in no way expect to go out and win, but I certainly don't expect to be last mainly because by then I will have turned close to 300 laps on that track where most of the competitors very well may have only run it on iRacing.

     Unfortunately the schedule will be complicated this year.  I have no idea how things will work out with my work schedule...and as of right now I have 6 weddings and 2 bachelor parties in 2014 which is gonna eat a lot of the car budget and my vacation time.

We shall see, I expect big things this year! 

Chicanes - A Love/Hate relationship

                                                           Oops...I did it again...

     Been slacking on my write ups I know.  So, last weekend was PCD cold tire domination at NJMP Thunder.  I'm growing fond of this track (well turns 1-7...9-12 can suck it, just a terrible non flowing section I fail to get right every time).  The group behind this now annual event is a bunch of guys from evolutionm.net that I have met through NASA events, great guys.  The attendance list was huge and I was going to be running in the intermediate group.  My personal goal for the day was to start the long road of working on my line, entry, exit etc (the basics) and just have fun.

     About a week before the event I had another wonderful alignment saga.  Long story short, I wasted a day sitting at a shop while they set the wrong settings and then on attempting to do it correctly found they apparently couldn't get my requested settings.  The problem here was that they were not even able to go back and match the settings the last shop supposedly set the car to.  Wound up realizing the factory camber bolts were set to MIN not MAX.  Out of frustration I ran home, flipped the bolts and ordered an SPC camber gauge with the toe gauge add on.  Time to go back to trying this myself (recall that I had bad tire wear last event again)! Started measuring and found the toe WAY out, hour or so and i got both sides set closer to zero and with less thrust angle than any shop...was having trouble getting believable camber settings though as one side seemed to have a much wider range than the other...I was really only worried about the toe anyway since the tires are basically dead.  On to the track...

     Rolled in Friday night by like 5pm, first time we did the ride with almost zero traffic!  Headed over to the track to get tech'd and hang out with the guys for a bit and had some of the guys who had experience with my alignment gauge help me check what I had setup (little fact - race track garages are built with very flat floors so race teams can do alignments...or so I'm told.  Turns out I got the car set quite well! 

      Saturday morning we got to sleep in for once since nothing started before 9am.  The weather was pretty clear, mid 40's temps but with a bitter wind to take just about ALL of the temp out of the track.  Started tires at 36psi cold and headed out.

1st Session - Took 5 or so laps and a slow pace to warm everything up and get my head in the game.  Started ramping up the pace and immediately the tires felt very slippery.  Nothing exciting happened, rolled into the paddock and checked tire pressures...45psi WOOPS!

2nd session - After airing down the tires to 38 hot I expected the car to feel much better.  Session start was delayed due to a Porsche laying down oil/blowing a motor/catching fire into turn one.  Pop quiz, who remembers my turn one oil incident from just a month ago? (insert sketchy memory here).  Finally got out on track and did 3 or so laps to get the tires up to temp, settled in and started an expectant "decent lap".  Slipped a little through the chicane but lap felt good, came back around, hard braking, turn into the chicane carrying a little more speed, make the flick to the left at which the car felt settled and gripped and then BOOM snap spin (the video above).  Rolled off into the grass and the car was difficult to start for 3-4 attempts but finally got it to fire with a little gas pedal pumping and rolled back to the pits.  Session over for me.

At this point we had lunch and I swapped off my RS3's assuming they are just heat cycled out/have too much damage at this point.

3rd/4th session - Car felt good and just turned some laps and tried to focus on a few things.  Things went well (see video below)

     Lets analyze the video a bit.  First 2 laps are earlier in the day, second two are later (so on smaller tires)

- I am over braking at points

- I need to start using more curb

- I am turning in late...A LOT

     The biggest ting though is that I am not consistent with my marks, but mostly turn in.  I think this is due to not keeping my eyes up high enough and finding my self with almost tunnel vision but unfortunately the unfocussed kind.  This will be a big area to work on next season.

     Thanks to my dad for some cool pictures as usual (apparently he reads this now).

     I have a bunch more things I'd like to get written, but I think I'm going to put together a season wrap up post in the next week or so.  Until then, keep it shiny side up.

One step closer (and my first shit my pants moment)

     Sometimes life gives you a lot of shit and you go through very long periods of nothing going right and you feel like you have no control...and then you get to go racing, in a car you built and maintained and you get to make every decision and be in full control.

                                           Gas - Brake - Shift - Turn in - APEX - Track out

                                                           It really is a great feeling

    

     I woke up Friday at the ass crack of dawn to start my adventure down to NJMP.  I was feeling pretty good, well as good as you can on 3 hours of sleep.  The drive was pretty uneventful but took about 7 hours even without counting the stop at my parents house to meet up with my dad...it was still better than being at work, no question.  Got all checked in to the hotel and headed out to dinner with my Dad, typical life/politics/work discussion ensued.  At some point I made a joke about how the worst thing that could happen would be for them to sign me off to DE2 since that would open up the world of safety equipment purchases and some changes to the car I specifically have held back on...foreshadowing maybe?

     Saturday morning I rolled into the track as the sun came up.  Its funny how most days I'm lucky if I get out of bed by 11.30, but put the track in front of me and I can be out of bed at 6am like nobody's business.  Did the usual meetings and car clean out etc, and then had like two hours to kill before the first session (we had a weird schedule this event because of lack of daylight this late in the year and all DE groups/racers on the same track).  I didn't meet up with my instructor until we gridded up for session 1, but Jordan had told me he was a great guy...i should say though that my first two NASA instructors were both great and taught me a lot BUT one drove a Porsche and one a corvette and it was evident in their instructing.  This of course is certainly not a bad thing but it just doesn't translate to driving an Evo.

    So Andy (my intructor) drives a 1M, a bad ass car that has special characteristics I'm sure.  After some chatting it was evident he knew that the Evo was a special car and can't be treated like others.  We head out on track and about a lap and a half in Andy starts to chuckle and just says "you have no business being in this group, you are way better than this group".  Well ok then!  Andy went to talk to the head guys to get me moved up, next session he went out with me in DE2 to make sure i was comfortable and could run a decent enough pace (which I did), and I then got my first white bracelet! WOOHOO.

     This is usually the part where I give a session by session recap, but it was just a seat time day so I wasn't going for time.  Here's what I can say, the car was again nice and smooth and reliable and just did what I asked of it all day.  BUT it seems I still have an alignment issue or something since it appears I corded the inside shoulder of my right front tire.  Overall the tires are just smoked at this point after 7 track days and like 5k street miles.

The "OH SHIT" moment - long story short, an STi blew a transmission/engine/brake line or something and laid slipper fluid from turn 1 through 9.  I came down the front stretch at almost 130mph, got on the brakes and got nothing but abs and the car started to rotate without any input.  I got off the brakes which luckily let the car straighten up, dropped down to 4th and just turned into turn 1 and hoped it stuck...and it did luckily.  (the video below doesn't sort of minimizes the amount of rotation due to the camera angle...but trust me I thought I was gonna be in the tires.

 

Couple Solo Laps

 

 

     Next event is PCD cold tire which unfortunately has been shortened to just one day ut should still be a damn good time.  Hopefully I can squeeze in an alignment before then.

So, it's been awhile (a summer to forget)

     Until yesterday I hadn't even driven the car for 3 weeks? maybe 2?  I dunno.

     After Lime rock in August my grandfather got progressively sicker, quickly.  I pretty much got to spend everyday from the middle of July on waiting for "the phone call".   A lot of stressful days and sleepless nights later, my grandfather finally passed away on September 12th.  It sucked, I didn't deal with it well as usual.

Moving on.

     I'm sitting here watching the Formula D stream from Irwindale, really makes me want  RWD car more than ever.  Did i mention I spent most of September shopping for s2000's? No?...I came inches from buying one but couldn't sack up and do it.

      Flash back to the part where I said I haven't driven the evo in forever.  It started when I had a Friday off from work and decided it was time to take care of the rear diff bushings.  Had one mount off in like 20 minutes and then spent the rest of the day driving around to 3 different shops, all who failed to successfully press the factory bushing out.  $400 later, I ordered up a set of Buschur billet mounts.

     They are sexy and saves like 5 pounds off the rear of the car.  Install was a little tough getting the first bolt to line up with a stock diff still on one side.  Also wasn't easier doing the work at like 1am with beer in hand.  mmmmmm beer.

     Other project was finally setting up the saikou michi catch can i picked up a while ago.  After the obligatory 5 trips to home depot to buy one bolt at a time and one failed bracket making attempt.  I got it all installed.

  

     So how does the car feel you ask? Shifting is actually noticeable improved especially under power, as well as taking off from a stop.  The diff mounts definitely were worth the money.  The engine feels a little more snappy with the new catch can/breather setup but of course that could possibly be chalked up to not being in the car for a long period of time.

     Schedule wise  I am registered for two more events for the year.  In two weeks I will be down at NJMP Thunder with NASA and then the weekend before thanksgiving I will be at PCD cold tire domination 3 (NJMP lightning and Thunder).  In my dreams I will get bumped to DE 2 with NASA at this event which will allow me to finally make moves on safety equipment as well as a wing...we'll see what happens.

     Here's to some better times coming.  RIP Pop.