July so far

**Big Sky WRX** · 07-07-2008 12:09 PM

nothing like the smell of clutch in the morning

**ButtDyno** · 07-14-2008 06:28 AM

June 28: first time driving the car after the Pro

After the Pro I put the car in the garage since I daily drive the MR2. On Saturday I drove the car to Herndon for work. I got all the way there (~45 minute drive) and then passing a bus in 3rd gear I noticed the clutch was slipping. Not surprising given its rough life. 85K miles and 439 autocross runs since January 2003 (there are a lot of schools in there), including three ProSolos.

July 3: new clutch, new belts

So my next stop was Andrewtech. Luckily the clutch wasn't gone yet so I didn't need to tow it in. They installed another OEM clutch (after the normal questions about why I wasn't installing an aftermarket one) and also re-did all the belts since I was close to 90K anyway and they were showing signs of wear.

It's very strange driving a car with a new clutch after driving a car with an abused one for so long. It was engaging instantly and my left foot's programming struggled at first. I had to break the clutch in before I could autocross it so I daily drove the car for the next week and a half.

Event 13: CDC @ Frederick

I broke out the MR2 for this one. It's a fully ES legal 91 MR2 and when I bought it, it came with a pair of front swaybars, Konis, an alignment with crash bolts and a spare set of wheels with V710's. So when the Subaru is down, or if I just feel like experimenting, it's there.

CDC doesn't run SCCA classing - just penalties for weight, R-compounds and horsepower.
Capital Driving Club

Tire Multiplier1
Street Tires = 1.00
R-Compounds = 1.03

Horsepower Multiplier2
Below 150 hp = 1.00
150 hp to 250 hp = 1.01
251 hp to 350 hp = 1.02
Over 350 hp = 1.04

Vehicle Weight Multiplier3
Vehicle weight < 2000 lbs = 1.02
Vehicle weight 2000 to 2500 lbs = 1.01
Vehicle weight 2501 to 3500 lbs = 1.00
Vehicle weight > 3500 lbs = 0.99

1DOT approved street tires will have a treadwear rating of 140 or greater
2As measured at the driven wheels
3Curb weight without driver or passenger(s) onboard

This doesn't work out well for the MR2, which gets a multiplier of 1.03. My WRX (and most cars in STU) get a multiplier of 1.01 for horsepower and that's about it. This despite the fact that ES's PAX is slower. Ah well.

I had a fairly meh day in the car. The steering in the MR2 is electrohydraulic (?) - it depowers itself with speed/throttle/G-load/something so the steering you use to enter the slalom may not make sense at the end of the slalom. It's neat, but wierd. I ran a 43.0 and my codriver (as per tradition) beat me running a 42.3. FTD was a K-20 swap Civic at 38.xx.

Event 14: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex

For this event we switched from the normal lot (E/F) to the lot on the other side of the stadium (A). I actually like this lot better and have usually done okay there. It's definitely different though, almost like the difference between convex and concave. Looking ahead is more important but also harder as you are often driving at something you can't see over the crest of a hill. The camber differences from spot to spot are also greater than they are at the other lot.

Run 1 I took a passenger and ran a 61.1. The car felt strangely loose but not too bad. My starting tire pressures of 39/36 had shot up to 41/38 during my run so I bled them down to 37/35 before starting my next run. Run 2 was a 60.6. I fixed a lot of things from my first run (mostly just pushing harder) but I didn't feel like I did the first half of the course very well. I wrote down some notes on the course map - take a different line through here, brake deeper here, etc etc. Run 3 was ugly - I pushed too hard too soon and the tires went away about halfway through the run so I was understeering everywhere. I ended up going OC trying a "momentum" line through one of the middle sections. Ah well.

Josh (who outside of the Pro has been beating me all year) had a 58.9 at this point which I knew was going to be really difficult to catch.

My last run started out pretty well. The first half was definitely better than the first half my 2nd run so I was optimistic that I could make up some of the gap. The second half did not go as well though - I got on the gas too early in a couple spots and ended up having to lift to correct it. In my zeal to get across the finish line, I got on the gas too early again and ended up taking out the left side of the finish (plus 4). Doh. The run was faster - 60.0 - would have been good for 2nd place but instead I sat on the 60.6 and ended up in 3rd. Larry Olsen in Craig's Mini had a 60.3 for 2nd place.

Monday morning quarterbacking - if you took the 2nd run and 4th run and combined their best parts, I think a 59.5 is definitely possible but catching Josh would have been a heck of a trick. Josh PAX'd 24th out of 236. I PAX'd 68th on my 60.6. If my 60.0 had been clean it would have moved me to 50th, and a 59.5 would have put me at 34th. I can't feel too bad about it really - I'm not driving as well as I can, but even if I were, Josh has been fast, consistent and mistake free pretty much all year. PAXing in the 20's at a WDCR event isn't easy.

Season standings update

In the WDCR, 1st place is 12 points, 2nd is 9 and 3rd is 7 (it goes down evenly from there).

Since STX was tornado'd away in April, only the best 4 of the 6 remaining events count for points. At this point Josh has three wins and I have two 3rd places (at the other event, I was running in ESP) so even if I somehow won the last three events Josh would need to finish no better than 3rd at all of them in order to win STX. That's pretty unlikely to happen. Josh has been on fire this year.

Suspension tweaks?

One big contrast between last year and this year, setup wise, is that the car really isn't tossable like it was with the tiny rear bar. Since the math doesn't look good for me I am probably going to change the ride heights a little bit (raise the front back to 13.8, raise the rear up to 14.0 and soften the rear swaybar a little) to see if I can get some of last year's mojo going again. The car isn't bad right now but anything I can do that would make it easier to drive fast would be a bonus, especially since we are going to be on the "convex" lot for the rest of the season.

Next event is Sunday the 20th.

**ButtDyno** · 07-15-2008 10:30 PM

Finger Lakes Pro update

As posted in the NASIOC Finger Lakes thread...
SCCA.com Forum: ProSolo Single Course Changes

After the 2008 Newport event, it was clear to us (me) that the change we made form the 2007 scoring method was not the best choice to appropriately replicate the "feel" of ProSolo in this alternate format. Also, the grid plan was not accomplishing what was desired. Yes, the pace was more hurried than a Tour for instance, but it was frantic and complicated without really once again replicating the feel of a ProSolo. So back to the workbench we went for our next try in NY.

This has resulted in three changes:

1. The previously announced change to scoring the best two runs during class competition, which will minimize the competitor cautiousness of the last method, while keeping the competition interesting through all the Heats.

2. When cars leave their grid spot, they will make all three runs before returning to the grid for Impound or the second driver. Approximately 6 to 10 cars will be in the Stage Lane, so there will be about 3 to 5 minutes between runs. This will simplify grid and the traffic flow, while still allowing time for tire pressure checks and a bit of reflection about the last run and the competition.

3. Grid order will be the same as a traditional ProSolo where in Heats 2 and 3 the fastest drivers will be at the front. This is simply an anti-sandbagging tactic used for years.

Veddy interesting. For those of us on street tires, it's probably going to suck, a lot. At the DC Pro and other dual course Pros, you are running four runs in a row, but, you are generally running a 30 second course, and it's not as complex as a typical Tour course.

At a single course Pro, it is (supposedly) closer to being a complex Tour course and longer than a dual-course Pro course - more like 45 seconds. So while first runs will be okay, 2nd and 3rd might get hairy.

It's also pretty meh that they made this change less than two weeks before the only other single course Pro of the season.

Car tweaks

In addition to raising the ride height a little bit (as discussed in the last post), I had another maintenance issue to take care of. The front camber plates had been making "spring pop" noises for the last couple of months. It mostly manifested itself in low speed, high steering situations (i.e. parking) but I noticed that the car felt a little different on the highway over the last stretch of driving.

As discussed in post 7, the sproing noises can be fixed with grease. I called Ground Control yesterday and they recommended the Redline grease at first (and I think that's what they shipped with - not positive), but after I was briefly put on hold the tech I talked to said that any marine grease should be fine. AFAIK though the GC bearings are not teflon lined. I found an old thread on the BMW forums about it...
GC Users with "Spring Pop" noises, Read this! - Bimmerforums - The Ultimate BMW Forum

Since I was changing ride heights anyway I didn't have to be that careful about restoring the perches to their exact location. Hopefully there is enough grease in there now to shut them up for a while.

Tomorrow, a re-alignment, and then there is an event on Sunday at Fedex.

**ButtDyno** · 07-18-2008 09:18 AM

Car tweaks update

The re-greasing has shut my camber plates up. Excellent. I don't know if it was impacting the handling, but it couldn't have been good as there was very little grease remaining in there.

I raised the car about .2-.25" all around - raising it in the front to get more travel, raising it in the rear to get it to rotate. We'll see what happens.

**Big Sky WRX** · 07-18-2008 10:59 AM

good deal- nothing more frustrating than creaking/squeaking/clunking/etc noises

**ButtDyno** · 08-18-2008 07:06 AM

Event 15: Finger Lakes ProSolo

Cliff notes: Got 4th/11 in STX, the last trophy spot. I lost to the people who I figured would beat me. Car feels good, not great. Didn't improve after Saturday AM. No bonus challenge this time, boo.

Long notes:

Friday

So... the drive there was 6.5 hrs. The last hour and a half or so sucked, as there was lots of construction on RT 15 once you get up to the top of PA. And then once you get close, you have to fight your way through 25 mph small town Watkins Glen (I didn't realize it was such a big town, I thought it was just a racetrack) and some other stuff. Then you have to fight through some really crappy Country Roads(tm) that have really illegible signs.

At a normal dual course ProSolo you take your best run on the left and add it to your best run on the right. There's no room for two courses here so it was supposed to be a single course Pro where you would take your two best times on the course and add them together, no matter what heat they happened in. Then it turned out that the single course tree was ****ed up so they ended up ignoring reaction times and it was basically just a normal autox event but with a long straightaway at the beginning.

I got there in time for practice starts on Friday. The single course tree was LED's and it was screwing with me. The way the bulbs look is a lot different and it was throwing off my timing. I redlit two of my runs, got a 700 on one and they didn't announce the last one. So I was not optimistic about the tree part. On the flip side I wasn't the only one complaining so I don't think I'm crazy.

Saturday

It turned out that after the first 4 cars went on Saturday morning they gave up on the tree. Reaction times were irrelevant. You pull up to the staging lights, it goes green and after that you can go whenever you want to. With the LED tree sucking, this was fine with me - my car would still have an advantage because of the straightaway and I wouldn't have to worry about launching at exactly the right time.

Morning runs went pretty well. JR had a combined 104.9, Eric (New England guy in a Civic) had a 105.5 or so and I had a 106.1. (remember, add the two best times - I had a 53.0 and a 53.1.) Cy Lee was having serious brake problems (even drove into the grass on his first run). Despite that he was right behind me with higher 106.1. This is because Cy is fast.

Afternoon sucked. I didn't improve at all. My first run felt fantastic but it was slower, 53.3. I overdrove my 2nd run and coasted for the second half to save the tires. You only get about 3 minutes between runs, and you can't use water because you're in a staging lane. So if your run is toast, overdriving just to see what will happen is a bad idea. My last run was sloppy, 53.8.

Cy took the afternoon off to fix his car - replacing the brake booster and the master cylinder.

I was bummed but had a good idea of the spots on course I needed to fix. Just needed to do it.

Sunday

Cy found out that his brake problem was in the rear drum so he borrowed JR's car. Bad news for me as he only needed a 53.2 or so to take 3rd.

I needed to break into the 52's to help myself. My first run felt pretty good, a couple of iffy spots... 53.3. My second run I overcooked one of the fast parts and crushed a wall, went off course. (I also broke my Andrewtech front license plate frame). My last run also felt pretty good but some minor mistakes at the end and it turned out as a 53.4. Bummer.

Cy came up for the two-driver drivers and, no surprise, found the time he needed. The co-driver of the #2 Civic almost put me out of the trophies but he coned... after the finish. Whew. Dodged a bullet there

I entered for the Bonus challenge but my name was not drawn.

Fortunately there were 11 cars in STX even though there were only 8 originally - that meant 4 trophies instead of 3. So I barely got the 4th one.

Closing

I need to do one or more of the following
-Stop messing with the car (HA!)
-Do another school
-Get a data acquisition system - the Philly guys have done some really cool analysis with theirs
-Get a co-driver who can push me to improve

A lot of it is going to be getting used to the car so I have confidence chucking it, which I don't really have right now. I am probably going to soften the rear bar so that I can "rally" the car more without getting too loose.

Overall though it was a fun weekend despite the iffy finish.

**Big Sky WRX** · 08-18-2008 11:35 AM

clearly a good co-driver to help push would be a big benefit (EVO school never hurts either

)

**ButtDyno** · 09-07-2008 09:26 PM

I really need to stay on top of this thing!

I was on vacation from 8-2 to 8-9 so I did miss a couple small events but nothing at Fedex fortunately.

Event 16: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex, August 17

After Finger Lakes I wanted to get the car a little tighter so that I could toss the car a little more without spinning. I only wanted to tweak one thing - softening the rear bar to the "22" setting. Sadly, I was too lazy to get to it before the event.

I also picked up a co-driver, Josh, since he had sold his Sentra. He needed a car, and I needed to co-drive with someone that would push me.

The event didn't go so great. This was the first event at Fedex with the new suspension tweaks (higher ride height) and with the stiff rear bar, the car was pretty loose. Josh felt it more than me, because I was used to the car. He was pushing it harder than I was, and getting oversteer when getting on the gas and turning after braking zones. Fedex definitely exacerbates any looseness in a car since the lot is rarely flat - you are generally in some sort of on or off camber position pretty much everywhere.

As a bonus, the announcer was new, so he was announcing times (sometimes) and not announcing position in class. So Josh and I didn't really know what was happening since we had no idea if our runs were clean or dirty.

Josh had a 61.5 (+3) and a 61.2 (+1) before getting two clean 61.7's. Sadly Larry Olsen in Craig Garfield's Mini had a slightly faster 61.7 and took the win.

I had a 61.8 which I thought was clean, but it wasn't

That ended up being my fastest time - with the cone. Bummer. I had an eight-tenths lead in raw time over the #3 car but did not end up finishing with a clean run.

The raw time wasn't bad though, closer than I usually am to Ian Baker (STS2) and Mike Neary (STU) - two benchmarks of mine as they are both very nationally competitive and running in ST*.

So, mental note, soften the damned swaybar!

Event 17: Autocrossers Inc at Fedex: August 24

The night before, I finally softened the swaybar.

This event wasn't full, so I ran STX in the morning and non-comp in the afternoon. I had a co-driver in both heats. In the AM it was Jeff C from Philly, who used to drive an STX WRX (trophied at the Divisionals in 2005, at the DC Pro in 2006) and then drove an ES MR2 (trophied at the DC Pro in 2007, then sold the car to me

) and briefly co-drove an AS '08 STi before the car owner sold it for an SS Z06. In the PM it was Travis (ProDarwin) who has a GD 2.5RS and had an STS Saturn.

Both co-drivers beat me. Doh!

In the morning, because of some registration confusion, I took the first two runs consecutively. After that Jeff and I alternated. I couldn't get a decent run to save my life and ended up with a 55.3, good for 4th place. Jeff had a 53.1 on his second run which would have won the class by half a second, but coned it. His best time was a 53.9.

Jeff didn't even get to walk the course! Pretty impressive. I guess driving an STX WRX is like riding a (porky, turbocharged) bike. For comparison, Cy Lee's best time was a 52.8. This was a pretty good indication that my car was set up pretty well. With a little more experience and a coursewalk I think Jeff could definitely have caught Cy. (I'm not there yet, but learning)

In the afternoon I ran non-comp. With the hecticness of the morning gone, I could just focus on driving. I started with a 54.8 and then ran a 54.2 (spinning through the finish wall), a 54.3 (mostly okay) and a 54.2 (same). Travis got a 54.1. Riding along with him it was clear to me where our differences were. I was driving fast in the slow stuff, and he was driving slow in the fast stuff (pretty normal for someone getting used to a car with 2x the horsepower than what they're used to). With Travis and Iman (bdi)'s help I improved a lot on the trouble spots. I still couldn't put together a run without at least one noticeable overcooking, though, which is why my times kept coming in about the same.

In general this was an eye opening event for me.
1) It showed me the car is fast and that it's set up pretty well. Fast enough that Jeff could come in without a coursewalk, never having driven it and be .3 (raw) off of Cy's time.
2) It made me want to delay running AS for at least another year. (I want an S2000, a lot.)
3) I felt like I needed to start thinking a lot less about the standings and more about my runs and how I can improve them. Running non-comp PM was really good for that. (I later read a thread on another forum that was really instructive in that regard. For instance: "Between runs, sit in the car, turn on the music and relax. DO NOT care about what anyone else ran. Run your own runs. ")

One other bonus about this event: there were reps from Yokohama there. They were representing the company in general but also hooked us Yokohama drivers up with some nice schwag (they even had a t-shirt in Medium which is pretty rare for free shirts). They also took tire temps. It looked like the fronts needed a little less camber, and that they also needed maybe a pound more pressure. So at some point I'll probably knock the fronts down to -3.7, and also start running 40 psi in the fronts instead of 39.

Event 18: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex: August 31

This was the next-to-last points event in the WDCR series. I can't tell for sure, but I think I am one point out of 3rd (thanks to the cone problems at the last event and at the July event).

Josh was co-driving Craig's Mini. The course was pretty fast and not as technical as usual, but very fun.

My first two runs were okay. My 3rd run was starting out really well, and about 3/4 of the way through the course I came into the slalom and noticed that the next to last slalom cone was misplaced in a way that made the slalom easier. Somehow, my brain processed this fairly quickly.

*lift*

Originally Posted by Brain

Hey, that cone's out of place.

We could stop and get a re-run.

Do we have to stop?

No, we could keep going. I'm pretty sure it's optional to stop. And this run's going pretty well.

Wait a minute, this misplaced cone makes our run easier. We should keep going.

*gas*

It ended up being a 47.9, good enough to win the class by almost a second. The misplaced cone helped, but I am pretty sure it was a good enough run to win anyway.

Once again, the car felt really good.

**ButtDyno** · 09-07-2008 10:04 PM

Event 19: WDCR/SCCA (test n' tune) @ Fedex: September 7

New this year are big, limited entry test and tunes run by the DC Region. A max of 24 people pay $200 each for an entire day of runs. There are 14 half-hour slots. Each person needs to cover 4 work assignments and they can drive the other 10 slots.

Most people split it with another person, because 40+ runs is a LOT in one day. It's flat out tiring. And if you're on street tires, it's punishing - not to mention that on an 85 degree day you need to be spraying pretty often. I split it with my teammate Slava in his STS2 MR2.

The course is a typical WDCR course, and it's reversed in the afternoon to create the second course .

In the morning I took about twelve runs across two sessions. I had a best of 59.0, and followed it up with a 59.1 with Brian Garfield in the car as an instructor (without spraying the tires). For comparison, Cy had a 57.8 (don't know if that was his best) and I think that Mike Neary was in the 56's. So I was reasonably far back, but Brian gave me some good feedback about some of the mistakes I made. He said that the run was pretty good and that the car felt really good, so that was a bonus.

In the afternoon I ran three heats.
1: 5 runs: 34.5 (timing problem), 60.5, 61.1, 60.3, 60.1
2: dunno, but best of 59.6
3: 60.0, 59.4, 62.8 +several

The 59.4 had me pumped as it felt like a really good run. Again for comparison, Mike Neary had a 58.1. PAX wise, that's probably as close as I have come to his times. Just ignore the part where it took ten runs to get there

I feel like just over the last three weeks I improved a lot, just with a minor setup tweak and a different mentality. Overall very encouraging for next year.

In other news the Neovas now have 101 runs on them. They still feel great. The inside shoulders on the fronts took a beating from the test and tune, though.

[insert pic]

What, no Topeka?

It's a long story. I was planning on going, but after switching jobs (it was either that or offing myself) and then taking a weeklong August vacation (and some other stuff too complex to explain) it just was not in the cards. I wanted to go this year, just to get the experience, and then go in with loftier goals for '09.

So next year, to hopefully balance out not going to Nationals this year, I'm going to try to do two tours and maybe the divisional depending on where it is, plus at least two Pros (DC, Toledo, NY?) and the WDCR series.

What's next?

I still have a handful of events left, but the schedule does slow significantly from here on out. I'm planning on primarily focusing on the mental stuff discussed above - re-running the course in my head and making note of areas to improve.

I finally have a working camcorder and Chasecam setup again so that will help. Data aq is on the list for next year, but probably not this year.

And as a general observation, I really do love my car

**Big Sky WRX** · 09-08-2008 06:47 AM

John- sounds like your getting the car dialed in nicely

Too bad about Topeka, definitely a very large commitment in time/$/sweat/tears- more than most folks would ever realize.

My Yoks are holding up well too (well except the part where I screwed them up early trying to run toe out w/ too much camber- more like too much toe out w/ the right amount of camber)

Mike