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We actually had a bad one in AZ a few years back - for some reason they were letting people stand in front of a concrete light post support, and a car lost control and pinned someone against it. I can't remember if the person who got pinned either lost a leg or got killed or what. Bad course design indeed. Edit: It was the timing trailer, not concrete, and he did lose a leg. IOwnCalculus fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Mar 13, 2011 |
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Mar 13, 2011 17:52
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Ziploc posted:I doubt that had anything to do with the organizers. The problem is that as far as I know, the course was set up such that people were able to stand on the track-side of the timing booth with no concern (ie they didn't cone it off or anything). Also, I'm not a huge fan of AZ SCCA anyway. The course layouts I've run the few times I've been have been absurdly short, like even the slowest of the slow drivers and cars were putting up 50 second times. The really fast guys were doing low, low 30s. It feels like almost as much as a ripoff as Friday night drags for $ to track time. Edit: Ha, just noticed the guy above me is in AZ. ~50s in a Yaris in a course that looks a decent bit longer than the one time I took my Miata out. IOwnCalculus fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Mar 14, 2011 |
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Mar 14, 2011 05:09
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Podothehobbit posted:That's certainly true up in Phoenix! The track today has a best raw time of something like 35 seconds with my car hitting it at 42. It was a bit hard to justify the drive from Tucson up there for what amounted to <200 seconds drive time. I honestly hope they can get off that skidpad and get somewhere bigger, like the Tucson group did by switching from SIR to Marana. At least Marana has been netting between 50 seconds and 80 seconds raw time For a good while, the AZ group ran out at PIR. Never attended an event there so I don't know how the track layouts worked out there. Thing is, way back in ancient history when they were at Firebird the first time around, they used to run on the pad that Bondurant uses and I'm 90% certain the run times ended up considerably longer on that one.
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Mar 14, 2011 05:59
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Ziploc posted:Dude's Porsche 944 Turbo's engine goes splodey. Granted, my Ranger probably has double the miles that one has, but oh god the body roll I'm imagining (plus the habit of the rear jumping any time it hits any bump) makes me want to vomit. Back when my dad was into autocross in a big way, there was a guy who kept coming out running a GMC Caballero. Apparently it was fast as hell, too.
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Mar 22, 2011 07:32
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The Locator posted:We do the best we can with the lot we have to use. If you know of a better venue in the area that will rent to us, we'd love to hear about it, as we are constantly in the search for a better site. The Bondurant pad is not an option, except for maybe 1 time a year at best, and even then they've decided occasionally to boot us at the last minute, when we had the lot rented for a year in advance. Sorry, I realize I worded that poorly - I wasn't necessarily trying to rip on the guys running the events here  If you're going back 30 years, I would wager my dad's flaming 911 sometime around '86 might rank up there for on-track incidents.That sucks about the Bondurant pad, I think the first few events I ever ran years ago (in my dad's old Z28) were all at that location. I admit, I'm thoroughly intrigued at the idea of running the West course. Are you guys just running around the track or are you adding some chicanes / slaloms to it here and there? Trying to figure out if it's enough time to get my dad to come out in his Corvette, and whether I want to bring my MS3 or my old Miata.
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Apr 7, 2011 00:15
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The Locator posted:Having said that, the courses we've had on the west track in the past have been an absolute blast, with much higher speeds than we can get on the little skid pad, and much more of a 'national' level feel to them. Fairly sure that the last course on the west track was 60-80 seconds depending on the driver/car. Dug up some videos of it, the old man and I both registered today. Hope the weather holds up this weekend, I suspect the MS3 will need the new rear pads and rotors installed before I go. Edit: When does the track map get posted, usually? IOwnCalculus fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Apr 9, 2011 |
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Apr 9, 2011 04:46
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Eh, it's all about PAX times anyway. My dad got all worried that I put myself in Novice 3 because my cold air intake technically takes me out of DS, but the reality is DS and ST are so close in PAX it will come far more down to how 
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Apr 16, 2011 22:00
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Oh yeah, definitely. At least I should be able to get through sooner than later, got work group A and run group B. Looks like the course map is up too. Should be a fun, if not painfully early, day tomorrow.
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Apr 17, 2011 03:43
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The Locator posted:I lied, I ran in group A. The course was a blast, but I managed to finally kill the power steering pump at the end of the last run, so ended up not doing time only runs. No worries. If you were running in A, I was the second courseworker you would've passed after the start. That track layout was amazing. I didn't see what my first run was since I had an instructor along with and was maybe going 6/10 at best, but I started cranking it up and went 90.xx, 85.xx, and 84.xx after that. That fourth run might've been a bit quicker if I hadn't ended up needing to re-run on my third; I got maybe 1/3 of the way around and got red-flagged for someone else, then sat in the grid with my engine idling and tires already warm, ran, and then did my fourth within another five minutes or so at most. The Ecsta LEs I have on there started getting greasy as they got hot. I did see there was one other Mazdaspeed3 there, though I have no idea what run group or class it was in. Should be interesting to see how far off of its pace I was. I know I was leaving a lot of time out there, I wasn't getting on it hard enough to really need the brakes coming into most of the corners but I really didn't want to go shooting off into the dirt. My old man did decently well too in his C6 - I think he was around the low 72s? Edit - the video converted. Were you the one they kept saying was leaking on the radio? They thought it was a DSM at first. I remember watching your BMW, that thing is quick. IOwnCalculus fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Apr 17, 2011 |
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Apr 17, 2011 23:40
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The Locator posted:Nobody ever mentioned a leak to me. I discovered the leak when I got back to grid after losing power steering right before I smacked that cone near the end of the run in the video. I don't think it was pouring out enough fluid to have been noticed by the course workers, as it's still got a fair amount of fluid in it right now in the garage. No idea on the quantity of fluid lost, and I don't think anyone was complaining of it on the course itself, just some building up at the start. You can totally see me looking useless in your video pretty early on. I only had to pick up one or two cones in that section, I know most of that action went on in the oval section.
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Apr 18, 2011 01:20
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It's a drat shame they're just going to turn the GM proving grounds into yet more tract housing. Could probably have all kinds of fun there.
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Apr 18, 2011 01:51
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I think that's part of what the ST classes are supposed to help, they allow a lot of the more common mods without necessarily chucking you into a *SP class, and if you really are new / unskilled (i.e. me) you should be in Novice anyway. Of course, like every 'spec' there's ways to game the system. If I were to autocross a lot more, to make my MS3 competitive in ST I would need to buy another set of wheels and run some Hankook RS3s on them, but not ever actually run them on the street because that would heat cycle them to death. The intent of the street tire class may be to just drive your car there, run, and drive home without jacking it up and mucking around, but the reality is no matter what they set the bar at for treadwear, even if you run the exact same tires, all things being equal the guy who changed his tires that morning for his dedicated track set will have an advantage.
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Apr 21, 2011 14:35
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To be fair, there's one really easy way to take all of that insanity out of it - just drive to have fun. I was hilariously not competitive on Sunday but I had a loving riot doing it. I don't care what class I end up in, I don't care what position I end up in (as long as it's not "in the wall" or "on my roof"), as long as I had fun and my last run was faster than my first, I'm happy.
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Apr 21, 2011 17:15
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Podothehobbit posted:That's how I always run in Tucson and now that I have become an accepted member my number 1 goal is to get the announcers/track workers to say something comical about my car whenever I go out. I view it as almost a car show where you can go out and have some fun on the side. I got that back in the day when I would autocross in my dad's old '94 Z28 (I would just get the rear end out and keep it out, before drifting was cool), and even the one time I took my Miata out on rock-hard tires. The MS3 was definitely the one time I kept the car pretty much completely under control the whole day. Dave Inc - when you start out as slow as I do, unless conditions become undrivable, my last run will be faster than my first. The hardest thing with autocross for me is having so little time to learn the layout. I'd love to get some proper track time in but given the risk for cracking up my daily driver, that will wait until I have the money and space for a track toy.
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Apr 21, 2011 21:03
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Goddamn that looks like fun. I'm too busy this weekend getting any relaxing I can get in done since I'll be traveling next weekend.
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May 21, 2011 22:47
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Dave Inc. posted:Oh those poor course workers, just a cone massacre. I love the one cone sliding along in the back but never actually tipping over.
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Jun 18, 2011 00:35
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Disciple of Pain posted:Is there any reason why I shouldn't grab my helmet and go autocross my '11 Honda Insight? I mean, I know it is slow as hell, but I miss autocrossing. I figured with a CVT, electric steering, and dime-thin fuel-saver tires it might actually be fun. Car is pretty light, I'd imagine lighter than the mkIV VWs I used to run... The only reason my dad's coworker didn't have his Nissan Leaf on the track at the last event I was at was because he's (probably rightfully) worried about Nissan voiding warranties. Well, that, and as funny as the Leaf would be, his NC Miata on sticky Hankooks is probably more fun
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Jun 27, 2011 18:07
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shane86 posted:How do you factor no displacement in a more displacement=more weight classing system? kW ratings? In R/C cars with brushed motors, it was always classified by number of turns and degrees of advance (27 turns and 24 degrees was "stock", anything else was "modified", with 19 turns becoming a common in-between spec). Brushless motors don't have the timing aspect, so it just became number of turns, but in both of those scenarios, the physical size of the electric motor is fixed to a 540-spec motor. Nominal battery voltage is limited as well - the two big groupings being 4.8V (4-cell NiCd/NiMH or single-cell LiPo) and 7.2V (6-cell NiCd/NiMH or two-cell LiPo). The problem is, in real electric cars, you can't really put class rules around those because everyone does their electric car a different way. Different cars may have wildly different nominal voltages from their battery packs, but due to other configuration changes, may have very similar real-world performance around an autocross track where range is not critical. I think they'll just need to rely on performance benchmarking of the cars themselves to slot them in, at least for the production cars - there's no reason you can't find somewhere good to slot in a bone-stock Leaf or one without any drivetrain modifications, for example. Homebrew electric conversions become far more difficult to classify.
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Jun 27, 2011 19:47
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The Locator posted:Actually, the bum has no plans to autocross the Leaf, even though a bunch of us are bugging him to bring it out. Ha, clearly he's changed his story since I talked with him at the road course event...of course, he was also busy giving my dad crap for being slow. Must be all of that fame from landing in an AZCentral article
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Jun 28, 2011 19:51
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Yeah, aside from the roadcourse layouts, I really, really like the look of the Marana layouts. Unfortunately it does mean that an already time-consuming activity takes even more time.
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Jul 25, 2011 20:07
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Joe Mama posted:You wreck your car at an HPDE and they'll call it racing. For some insurance companies, the factor is whether or not it's timed. If it's not timed, regardless of speeds reached, it's driver education.
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Jul 26, 2011 02:25
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The Locator posted:We had a 2 day event in Taylor this past weekend. 12 runs on Saturday, 11 runs on Sunday. I've lived in AZ my entire life and I had to map where the hell Taylor is. That is a long way to go for some cone-killing but I bet it was a lot nicer up there, and that track layout looks awesome.
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Aug 9, 2011 18:27
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Sockington posted:The wife's Mazda5? Autocross the engineless shell of the 323 with someone pushing if you have to. Answer is always yes.
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May 17, 2012 01:05
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Yeah, the stop box has always been "DO NOT TOUCH THESE CONES UNDER PAIN OF DEATH" to me, in an effort to keep people from overdriving to get into it.
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Jun 4, 2012 23:59
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Unless you have an absolute garbage ABS system, trying to brake hard but not so hard that you engage ABS is making you slower. Threshold braking is going to involve some amount of wheel slip / lockup, and that's going to engage ABS.
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Feb 27, 2014 21:28
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animeliker posted:I engage the ABS quite a bit so I thought I needed to hone my technique. Unless you're really good at threshold braking, just stand on the pedal and let ABS do the work for you. If you are really good at (or are trying to get better at) threshold braking, you need to disable it altogether so that you're not fighting it. ABS only works best when you keep your foot down hard on the brake; trying to threshold brake with it is going to hurt you.
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Feb 27, 2014 22:54
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Joe Mama posted:Nice work. I've never autocrossed and I don't think I could do it without getting lost in the sea of cones constantly. This is honestly one of the bigger problems I have with it  I want to enjoy it, and I do have fun, but I spend way too much time trying to figure out where I need to be going next. Probably doesn't help that I've done three, maybe four events in my life.Well, that and the fact that I no longer have anything autocrossable.
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Jun 9, 2014 20:48
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You drove a Cobra near the limits and survived. That's a success right there.
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Jul 28, 2014 21:28
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nm posted:When the change happened, didn't one of the tire companies say "hey just kidding guys, our 140 tire was really a 200, we just marked it down for marketing"? Pretty much, yeah. The whole thing is dumb anyway since there's no real standard for how treadwear ratings are calculated, and people on both ends want numbers as extreme as possible. Racers want sticky tires with artificially inflated ratings, cheap people want tires as hard as concrete with a huge treadwear rating. It doesn't matter where SCCA sets the bar for is / is not a slick, the manufacturers will keep on relabeling as needed.
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Mar 17, 2015 14:45
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