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Phone posted:poo poo, I knew you had a Z06, but I didn't know it was a C6. It's always awesome when a weekend comes together. I stealth upgraded from a C5 one at some point. Oh, I had mentioned before how I thought the PSS were very gray for a tire. Here's a shot that depicts that:  The shirt is black, too.
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Jun 30, 2013 03:59
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Day 2: It was hotter and more humid and I was definitely having a hard time concentrating. My arm left this after a 20 min nap in the car with the doors open: Couldn't enter the oval as fast initially. When I started giving a little more throttle in the middle of the oval, my rear tires would start chopping. I was picking up a huge amount of rubber clag, and either the uneven distribution or the smearing of it as the rear had more slip angle caused the rear to slightly unsettle. It bugged me out and I just held back. It's weird how the otherwise most exciting things (like a 993 Turbo shooting twin flames on lift) pale in comparison to having your car not behave like you expect. This is maybe 1/3 of the rubber I scraped off the right rear after one session:  There were definitely parts of my tire that were effectively covered in foreign rubber:  I'm not exactly sure how I was picking up so much more than everyone else. The other Z06 on PSS had very little (he spun in the oval but didn't tap anything), so I don't think it's the compound. I guess some part of my line must have deviated from the norm and picked up a lot. e: one more note: my coolant stayed at 200 all day, but my brakes got soft in the last half of the last session. No bubbling, but had to brake much further out. Still a success, considering how much longer they lasted. Octopus Magic posted:Hey, it was good seeing you up there! I tried finding you at the end of the day to say goodbye but you must've gone to the bathroom. Hope to see you in October or earlier. I passed you going down on 93 after taking the in-town leg my GPS recommended, so I guess it's roughly the same time as 93 all the way. kimbo305 fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Jul 2, 2013 |
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Jul 2, 2013 04:17
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If you can get to AZ in a hurry, there's a deal on Bondurant's 4-day racing school:Bondurant posted:Brenan from the Bondurant HPD School here. Per the Government shut-down, we had a 6 person group of military personnel that had to cancel last minute. To fill these seats we are offering a $3,350 priced 4day Grand Prix course NEXT week on 10/7/2013. I thought you may want to know about this money saving deal. It’s the cheapest we’ve ever offered this class.
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Oct 4, 2013 04:57
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dangerz posted:On top of that, the seats did a terrible job of holding me in place. What seats do you think you'll go to?
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Oct 16, 2013 20:56
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Team O'Neil is having a sale: http://media.mycustomevent.com/em_teamoneil/Attachments/links%20blackfriday.pdf
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Nov 26, 2013 23:27
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StimpyBoy posted:It really was a tricky rally. 13 of 36 finished. And thus the adage of "just finish."
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Dec 5, 2013 03:20
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Having a snowbank catch your tail out drift is on of the best feelings.
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Feb 2, 2014 20:03
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Bondurant is having a special for a Formula Mazda lapping day:quote:Bondurant’s Spring, 2014 Formula Car lapping session is now open for enrollment. “Formulas@Bondurant” will be held Saturday & Sunday, March 8th & 9th , with 4 sessions offered each day.
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Feb 5, 2014 06:11
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I'm an alum so I guess they send out flyers in email. Their site never seems up to date. I think you just need to call/email. Here's the full text: bjiran@bondurant.com posted:Bondurant’s Spring, 2014 Formula Car lapping session is now open for enrollment. “Formulas@Bondurant” will be held Saturday & Sunday, March 8th & 9th , with 4 sessions offered each day.
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Feb 5, 2014 08:47
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Larrymer posted:drat, that sounds awesome. I have a buddy in Phoenix I could probably stay with... They have everything there. When I took the class, we only needed a neckbrace for the formula cars.
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Feb 6, 2014 07:28
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Everything else the same or perfectly balanced, what would the effect of having a 5psi difference in the rear tires be? Assume an LSD and double-wishbone suspension if those specifics matter. Could that tire pressure difference cause consistent tail sliding out to one side under tire slip?
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Apr 28, 2014 05:34
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If lower psi makes the tire softer -- will grip genrally favor that side? Again, ignore the complicating factors of different pressure on temp over time.
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Apr 30, 2014 04:20
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nollij posted:HAHAHAHHAHAH PSYCHE! The transmission is leaking all over the loving place. As in, the shop saw the problem before handing it back to you? Or after you drove away?
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Jul 19, 2014 07:06
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8ender posted:Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I don't understand why people won't let faster cars by. If you have a shot at losing a tail, sure, go for it. Otherwise, at least for me, having a faster angry car that wants to get past on your rear end is stressful and takes the fun out of lapping. From way back, but -- I find that if I notice more than one car creeping up behind me, I'll get distracted trying to drive and find the off-line and get my hand ready to do the point by, which leads to worse driving, which leads to both hands on the wheel for a bit. I think once I let this go on for 2 laps before I could settle down and let people by.
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Jul 16, 2015 04:38
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Let's say my tire choices are: 215, 255 BFG g-Force Comp-2 (exact factory spec) 205, 245 Michelin Pilot SS Are the PSSs good enough that they'll generally outperform less-sticky tires that are 1cm wider front and rear? Are there other F/R width choices that wouldn't significantly impact handling?
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Sep 16, 2015 01:07
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jamal posted:What car? What other stuff on it? Going a size or two wider in the front should be ok. I ended up getting the 348 I looked at. Stock is 215/50 17, 255/45 17. I don't want to switch off the wheels, and support for these sizes at 17" is not great. Neither the Rival S nor RE-71R have enough aspect height at 17 for the rear tires. Would 225, 245 be too different? The 348's F/R is 41/59.
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Sep 16, 2015 05:15
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jamal posted:Would not exactly be my ideal choice but from looking at available tires it seems to be your best option. How wide are the wheels? If the front's 7.5-8 you're definitely ok, but a wide 225 on a 7" rim is a little pinched. I put 225 hankook v12s on my 17x7s but if I were on something like an RS3 which is a good bit wider I would want an 8" wheel. 7.5 front, 9 rear. Looks like I can get Star Specs in 225/45 and 245/45, which lowers the car 6mm in the front and 4.5mm in the rear.
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Sep 16, 2015 07:53
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parid posted:Keep your eyes open, and start learning. I think your opinion of what the average human can learn unguided and unsupervised is kinda high.
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Jan 17, 2016 06:47
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blk96gt posted:From what I recall you have to be a solo driver with an HPDE group before being allowed to race WRL. Do you think they'd accept having driven solo with Bondurant's Formula driving program? I've done several HPDEs, but never got signoff on soloing there.
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Jan 18, 2016 01:53
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I'm loaning my friend this helmet for track day: http://www.gforce.com/products/helmets/3028.php I'd never noticed before, but it doesn't have an SA rating sticker on it anywhere. I think it's pretty lax inspection, but how would it be verified officially?
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Sep 8, 2016 16:40
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mekilljoydammit posted:Maybe a dumb question, but did you look underneath the padding and stuff? I moved around the padding that I could move easily, but the side pieces seem to be glued, not velcroed or otherwise reversibly mounted.
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Sep 8, 2016 16:59
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Octopus Magic posted:I went to Palmer Motorsports Park on Friday with the SCCA "Track Night" and it was fun! The course has a ton of elevation change, and all the turns are really challenging (super late apex/double apex hairpins). There's this one downhill bowl you go super late in, dive down, then power out, while trying not to understeer off the course. Really fun, and only ~2 hours away from my parents place. My friend was there in a white ND (and the helmet I asked this thread about). He was in the beginners group and still didn't have instructors in car. He said the tech was super lax, just self reported? Depending on which cars show up, I might be nervous about that. You're right that COM is way overboard, but it did give me peace of mind. He also mentioned that a couple areas didn't have enough runoff.
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Sep 12, 2016 03:01
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Octopus Magic posted:The way people were driving in COM in more advanced groups gave me more issues than a car breaking down/spitting fluids everywhere, but honestly most of the cars looked decently reliable and weren't hooptie. I also didn't know they didn't have instructors in the novice groups. That gives me a lil mixed feelings. :/ Yeah, when I ran intermediate at COM, it felt like open season for various groups' instructors to just do racing in everything but name only, passing without waiting for point-bys among them.
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Sep 12, 2016 06:41
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Human Grand Prix posted:If you are slow, drop the ego. It should be apparent if somebody is faster than you. I don't see what ego has to do with it. I just think it's higher risk for instructors who are advanced drivers jumping into the intermediate group and passing without waiting for point-bys on guys who could've just graduated out of beginner.
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Sep 12, 2016 17:39
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The angling isn't also to point it toward the center of the left-turning track?
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Jan 18, 2017 04:33
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What do you guys do with rotors that are done? Just throw them in the trash? I have a set of C6 Z06 fronts that were turned and are ok, but I don't think it makes much sense to try to ship something so heavy.
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Feb 20, 2017 06:02
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Do driving suits expire? My friend is trying to recruit new for Lemons/ Chumpcar and I would love to not buy a new suit. I think mine is SFI 3.2.
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May 16, 2017 00:54
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Piggybacking on this discussion, I'm looking to get some decent summer tires for my Boxster, maybe 200-300AA. One non-standard 17" setup is 225/45, 255/40. The 2cm extra up front dials out some of the understeer, supposedly. I can get (ordered by wear rating): - POTENZA S-04 POLE POSITION ($578) - EXTREMECONTACT SPORT ($570) - G-FORCE RIVAL S 1.5 ($790) - PILOT SPORT PS2 ($851) - DIREZZA ZII STAR SPEC ($740) I've not driven the Pilot Sport PS2, only the Pilot Super Sport, which I loved. Have driven Star Specs, they feel greasy but are still good. Anyone know about the Extremecontact Sports? They don't have ratings on TireRack yet. Leaning toward the Potenza S-04 as a better wet and long distance tire over the Star Spec. But could be convinced to get Extremecontact Sport if anyone has experience.
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May 25, 2017 07:54
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Phone posted:Is that the DW? It's not labeled as such, but the marketing copy says it's designed for wet conditions: https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tire...0S&autoModClar= crazzy posted:Extremecontact Sport closes the performance gap to the pilot super sport/pilot 4s, but it still a half notch worse or so. YMMV. For the price difference, I think I can live with it. The hard part about comparing tires is that very few of us have extensive experience driving different tires in all-else-held-equal conditions. So there's gonna be a lot of drift in how you subjectively recall/evaluate a tire model.
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May 25, 2017 18:01
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DJ Commie posted:Anyone is more than welcome to ask me about radios, LMR (Commercial) or Ham. I know them both, the legalities (none of it is legal!) What do pro race series use to be legal?
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Jun 5, 2017 04:59
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Do you guys find balaclavas help keep helmet padding cleaner/fresher? They're not required for LeMons, but I would get one just to keep my helmet nicer.
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Jul 31, 2017 21:23
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That its cooling system is in good shape. And maybe better brakes depending on how old it is.
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Aug 9, 2017 02:49
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 Glamping out here in the oval of Thompson cuz there's no more room in the paddock. Car isn't here yet and we're halfway into the pre-Lemons track day. I still haven't driven it yet 
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Aug 11, 2017 17:22
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Corner worker 1: did you work Lemons last year? C2: yeah C1: was it as much of a fiasco as they say it is? I've seen it on YouTube C2: oh yeah. You see some hosed up poo poo. It's... unique.
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Aug 12, 2017 13:52
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Bare metal is a great budget solution for endurance racing    They weren't fresh, but these pads were well beyond done by the end of 9.5hrs of racing on day 1 of Lemons.
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Aug 13, 2017 18:03
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24 Hours of Lemons writeup: One thing Lemons doesn't advertise is that it's pretty much the ultimate Crossfit workout: - sprinting (to find missing stickers and put them on your car so it can start the race) - vaulting (over the concrete barriers to fuel up and change drivers in the hot pit lane) - dumbbell bench press (swapping out driveshafts with the car on jackstands) - farmer carries (toting fuel jugs around) - speed and precision drills (accessing awkward bolts 1/6 at a time) - cantilevered balancing (to unweight the wheelless corner of the car) And that's all before you get into (itself a feat of dexterity, given the door bars) the car and drive. Endurance racing is very demanding off the track, and it was an interesting and welcome challenge to keep up with the scheduled fuel/pit stops and unscheduled repairs needed. It was a good overall experience for our team, all 4 rookies to wheel to wheel racing. Late morning Friday, we pull our rental RV into the infield at Thompson Speedway and setup our home away from home: The generator and AC would be somewhat uncooperative all weekend, but it sure as hell beat camping in a tent with the overnight rain. Cars were already hot lapping the field during the test session. Here's the Grover Rover 3500 showing some scary-looking positive camber under droop:  The trailer half of our team was late, so Thompson staff were trying to figure out where to put the truck and trailer for our service area when they showed up in the early afternoon. They found us this spot not too far a walk from the RV and quite close to concessions (and ice):  The shiniest the Elvis 280ZX (formerly of Frog Racing) would look all weekend:  The cleanest and least greasy I would look all weekend:  We each drove 20min on Friday before the end of the test session to get used the car. It was point-by optional, the first time I've driven that way, and also my first time at Thompson, so I was extremely conservative, pulling off line to accomodate faster traffic. It's been a long time since my last track day (a few years?), so pretty big jump up in stuff to process. Tire seemed to be holding up well and have fairly even temperatures. Car was running really rich but otherwise fine. Deal with it in the morning. The cool shirt cooler didn't work initially, but it was fixed by my turn, and the blast of cold water caught me by surprise, distracting me a bit from driving. We attended the mandatory new teams meeting, which reinforced the safety and procedure first mindset. Finished some registration procedures and picked up our paperwork, stickers, transponder, and driver bracelets. Found the spot in front of the rear bumper where the previous race team had ziptied the transponder and did it up the same way. Went back to the RV, grilled up some meat, got driven inside by all the mosquitoes, and fell promptly asleep. Saturday 7am: Rise and shine. It rained overnight, but was pretty dry on track by sunup. Wonder how the folks in tents slept. Race was starting at 9am, and we needed to get breakfast and tune the carbs. We popped the air cleaner off, fiddled with Strombergs, leaned it out safely, and let it be. Thought we were all set for the race and sent the first driver (Muffinpox) out. He came back 5min later asking about the sticker. After about 4 times back and forth on which sticker he meant (not the yellow round sticker for registered, but an event-specific sticker, I hauled 100% rear end to find it. Turns it was in the packet of paperwork we'd picked up but had forgotten to work through. Got some packing tape, slapped the new sticker on, and got the car off before we missed the parade laps. 30 minutes later, first driver swap and fuel up. Since we're a rookie team, we wanted to start with very short (as these races go) driver stints until we got used to things. We brought out the jug of fuel and waited for the car to come in, standing by pit lane in our full driving gear. Car came in, we hopped over the barrier, splashed the fuel cell with some gas with the extinguisher aimed and ready, swapped the HANS (we're on a budget) off the driver, handed old driver water, strapped in new driver, and fiddled with the cooler tank, getting it flowing. We went through 4 such rotations and realizde that 1) we're losing a ton of time pitting so often and 2) there's a lot of support work to do each pit stop. We agreed to go up to 1 hour for our shifts to give the crew more break time. Without a race radio, we didn't have much flexibility with schedule. Which is liberating, in a way. The car held up well, with no noticeable changes between my shifts. On my 2nd stint, I saw yellow and then white flags come out, then none at the next station. Came up to two slow cars and passed one only to realize there was another yellow up at the next station. Dammit, passed under yellow and got black flagged. I shamefully limped around the track and pitted out to take a fairly light admonishment, despite someone having already been black flagged on my team! Who? It was maybe a 5min affair and I was back out. Despite my best efforts, I really struggled with the wheel to wheel aspect. I hear driving is pretty wild at Lemons, and if so, that made the weekend a rough introduction to road racing etiquette. In a track day context, I have the entire road to work with to take a corner. I line up on the outside, brake as hard as the tires will allow, and come up and touch the apex before tracking out. In Lemons (and possibly elsewhere?) it seems like the passing tactic is to divebomb from behind and make sure that, at the apex, you're door-to-door with the car that you're passing. Now you have right of way and can take your preferred line out. I felt like I was getting bullied around every time that happened, and of course I wasn't going to make contact and make the situation worse. I kept taking very suboptimal lines to stay out of other cars battling through corners, which meant I had infrequent opportunities at clean runs try to learn good ways of driving corners, which would have helped decrease my closing speed with passing cars. The other 3 drivers had had a few track days at Thompson before, at least. Anyways, I counted several times where I predicted the passing car would run wide and left space, and sure enough, kept out of danger when they slipped up. A few more where I had to actively react to sudden line changes from someone passing in close. I made a few such mistakes of my own, to be sure, but I truly tried my best to pass less recklessly. The wreckers were ready and waiting for anything that might happen.   90% of the time, it was for mechanical trouble, at least. Once, it was from a serious T-bone situation, a spun car getting hit and wadding up its passenger-side door bars. I was out on track and knew something was up when the red flag came out and I saw onlookers around the track run toward the incident ahead of me. Saturday 6:20p: We headed out to watch the cars get checker-flagged.   It's nice to see your team's car rumbling along in a menagerie of other grubby, hard-boiled race cars. The Bazinga 300ZX team next to us asked about our car, and one of them takes a took at our pads, declaring them metal-to-metal. With little daylight left, we put it off for the morning. Wise to the mosquitoes, we ran the Thermacell much longer before grilling and managed to sit outside for dinner. We were a bit low on water and Gatorade, but had enough to get through 5 more hours. Sleep came even more quickly. Sunday 8a: We tried to get up early to deal with all the service work we wanted to do before the 12p flag. The pads were in the condition shown above. We rounded off one of the bleed screws and had to borrow a vice grip from another team. The rear caliper pistons took forever to manually retract, but we managed to get all 4 corners swapped and shakily bled before race start. I took the 2nd shift, and from the first corner, I knew the bleed wasn't great. A lot more pedal travel to access braking power. But at least with new pads, the stopping power still seemed adequate. I was taking better lines and thus managing to prevent people from trying to pass me so hard, so was really looking forward to gelling on the track. But coming out of a hairpin, I suddenly felt the car vibrating a lot more, in any gear. Not sure but definitely not wanting to blow the motor, I limped it back to the paddock and gave the news. Revving the motor in neutral sounded fine, so after some basic plug and carb checks, I went back out. Still the same extra shaking. And way more clanking between shifts. I bring it in again after one lap.  We decide to put up the rear on jackstands to try to simulate running the drivetrain. Something sounded mechanically broken for sure. We got distracted from that diagnosis, though, by noticing that the rear wheels wouldn't stop rolling in the air even with the brake applied. We decided to rebleed. In the process of doing that, we noticed we'd managed to run one of the brake fluid reservoirs dry. Yikes. Then decided to top off the rear diff, which needed it, as it turned out. While crouched behind the car post-diff top-up, I finally saw it -- the driveshaft wobbling way off axis, clanking into the exhaust and making that singular banging I was hearing on shifts. We ran to get the manual and spare driveshaft. After a couple of reads, it sounded like a pretty easy job, fortunately. We had 2 hours of racing left at this point. Still only halfway peeled out of my driver's suit, I climbed under the car and started unbolting the pinion flange. That took a while but at least nothing was rusted stuck. The U-joint had left part of itself on the field somewhere.  Were those big bangs I heard flying down the back straight not rocks but bits of U-joint instead? As I pulled the splined end out of the trans, someone plugged up the hole in the trans. I brought around the other driveshaft and held it to be slid in. Started off ok, but didn't go in far enough to let the other end mate to pinion flange. I had to use the old driveshaft as a hammer to budge the replacement in. But everything assembled tidily enough, and we got the car ready 90min after I pulled in. We sent the next driver out. I hosed myself off as well as I could, which isn't well given how water repellant grease is. Ambling over to watch the race, I saw it was already yellow flagged. At the far end of the course, I saw see the white profile of a Z sliding onto a truck bed. After no more than a couple of laps, the right rear hub failed. No contact or injury on the course, at least.   Pained me a bit to see pads that I had put in fresh not but a few hours ago be destroyed. The race was over -- we didn't have spares or time to fix it. DNF for our first race. Sunday 5p: We got a lot of volunteers to push the wounded 280ZX back onto the trailer, using a combination of manpower and jacks to keep the wheelless end off the ground. Took a furniture dolly hacked down to be narrow enough to roll on the trailer to push the car off the trailer back into its garage spot. A long day, to be sure. I think as a team, we're still very proud of what we did get done. Our repairs were reasonable. To fill the diff, I found a small funnel and some rubber hose in the parts bin to gravity feed in gear oil. I picked a rugged spot on the driveshaft to do the hammering -- having just lost one to a failed U-joint, I didn't want to break the bearings before we left the paddock. Finally, it's refreshing to put trying to stay in the race above all else. When you get out of your shift, you don't have the cool shirt to help you, so you immediately start heating up. Normally, I try to stay modest in public. But here I had no problem sagging the driver's suit halfway down my underwear just to try to cool off. We'll let this event settle down in our memories, rebuild the car, and plot the next race. kimbo305 fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Aug 15, 2017 |
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Aug 15, 2017 00:29
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Only the lower half, which is still plenty to go three wide. Seems like you can go outside, brake harder, and dive into the apex, or trail brake through the middle, tuck to the apex, and balance your grip until you're out. I kept getting distracted by watching cars lifting and locking their wheels. FWD cars' RR on trail braking and RWD cars' FR as they powered out of corners or all the way through. Yesss, someone snapped the errant wheel: 
kimbo305 fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Aug 15, 2017 |
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Aug 15, 2017 03:39
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Gonna see if we can field a team for Louden in October. But primarily I'm concerned about helping put the car back together, which is gonna be time. I've heard it's tough on the cars in the cold weather, so better to have an enclosed trailer.
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Aug 15, 2017 16:15
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Oh yeah -- I misunderstood our drivers discussing gearing during the test session on Friday, and took "you can drive around the track in one gear" extremely literally. Those two were using 4th on the back straight, and there I was blithely sitting at 7k in 3rd just letting everyone fly by for all of Saturday. Only a chance discussion about the redline of the car revealed my error.
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Aug 15, 2017 22:53
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 04:57 |
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While servicing the race car at Lemons, I snagged my cool suit on something and tore one of the tubes open. I fixed it by cutting the tubing open at the tear, sliding over a sleeve of heat shrink tubing, smearing a bit of rubber cement at the cut ends, and hitting the heat shrink with a lighter. The leak seems fixed. Does introducing that bit of rubber cement really matter, as far as fire risk? It's under the driving suit, after all.
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Sep 12, 2017 01:39
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