Project Update for March 14, 2012: Last week was a hell of a lot of work and activity and this week is worse. This will be a quick and dirty update - we're about to load the Mustang into trailer and then Amy and I head to Houston later today for a track event Thursday and a National Tour autocross on the weekend. If I flub any spelling or grammar, please know that this was written
quickly.
So the first track event of the year (RTTA) was a bust, what with the terrible rain, my erased times, Amy's illness cutting our trip short to the point where I missed the late afternoon dry session, and the overall level of disorganization of this event. I was hoping the first autocross of the year would avoid the rain, but I was wrong. It started raining the day before, which was when we held the Vorshlag Open House and SCCA Annual Solo Tech Party, held at Vorshlag on March 10th...
Open House and SCCA Tech
I won't bore you with all of the pictures (you can
see more here), but we thrashed for weeks getting the shop and front office areas of Vorshlag HQ in tip top shape for this event. The Texas Region SCCA Solo group needed a place to hold their annual tech and we needed an excuse to have our open house party (we've been working at our new location for 6 months!). So we put in a lot of late hours and weekend days, spent a little bit of money, and we got the place looking pretty good.
A customer's engine swap turned into a 3 week mega-thrash after some front chassis rot was found and corrected. That put us a bit behind on shop clean-up, which started about 7:30 Friday night before the Open House event. Ryan (with help from Cameron and AJ) had been building tables for several days and those were wrapped up, thankfully. We were also down a man all week, as Jason was Crew Chief for Brianne Corn's rally Subaru that ran in the WRC event in Mexico last week. It was the perfect storm of variables that made Friday night a 2:15 am night... but we got the shop and front offices cleaned up and looking great.
The first 3 hours of the Open House and Tech went off without a hitch, and right as we started grilling up burgers and brats it started to rain and kept at it all day. We still had over 100 people show up and 37 cars were teched, so it was still a great event. I didn't sit down all day and felt like I talked to 1000 people and gave 200 tours of the shop - people liked the place. Towards the end of the day Ryan and AJ put the Mustang on the lift, I took the 18x9" WedsSport wheels and got the new 265/40/18 Hankook RS-3s mounted (our new tire machine is
still down), the guys checked out everything, re-adjusted the pinion angle a bit, mounted the Hankooks to the car, and we loaded it into the new enclosed trailer (purchased 2 weeks before) still dirty, while the rain came down. I was running around this week getting the out of state title on the trailer transferred, DOT inspection, weigh station check, and paying for tags and taxes, too.
Tex Reg SCCA Autocross #1 - First Autocross of 2012
On Sunday the 11th Amy and I took the trailer on a short tow across town with the Mustang loaded inside. This was a test of the trailer before our longer tow the following week (happening in about 2 hours), as we could have driven to the site only 45 miles away. Still, I'm trying to keep the STX autocross tires off the street and reduce heat cycles, so it will likely be towed to all autocross events this year. I'm glad we had it - as it rained all morning, and the trailer became a good dry spot to sit inside of.
Made a few small mistakes this day, such as not scrubbing the tires in before the first run (silicon mold release + wet surface = slippery first few runs!), I didn't load the "autocross" throttle map tune via the SCT (so it had the bezerko street tune map - not what we needed in the wet), we left the Porterfield R4 "track" pads on (ran out of time), and we had the loose shoulder harness belts clanking around on the back of the seats (I only use a lap belt for autocrossing - lets me move my upper body around and I can see better out the side windows, which happens when you're going sideways a lot).
Anyway, we started with fairly low rebound settings on the AST 4150s and lower tire pressures, to soften the reactions as much as we could for the wet conditions. Amy and I worked the 1st of 2 heats, where it rained off and on until about 11:30, when it finally stopped. The skies were overcast and the wind was nil, so it didn't dry off much at all during our runs in heat 2, as you can see here on our first runs...
Left: Amy's 1st run Right: Terry's 1st run
As you can see it is not raining but it is still pretty damned wet. We both ran in STX open class, as I don't have another co-driver this year so we'll both run "open" until Nationals, where she will likely move to STX-L. Since we had a 2 driver car, had to adjust the seat and belts significantly, swap numbers, check tire pressures, and reset the video between runs, and the smaller heats made for quick driver changes, we ran 1 run each, then did runs in 2s... so Amy, then me, then Amy, Amy, me, me, Amy Amy, me, me. Even with faster changeovers we were running behind and I was one of the last cars to make my a run - and in fact I put myself on a 5 minute timer from my 4th to 5th run. It turns out that Amy stopped for a downed cone on her 2nd run, which they threw out, but she didn't know they gave her the re-run so she didn't take her 5th run. That sucks because she would have likely dropped more time.
The sun had just peeked out and it was a tick drier, but if you watch my 5th run you will see that the actual driving line was still wet, due to the cars dragging water from some drainage onto the line. It was the only lap where I tip-toed the throttle and braked early, so I wasn't too surprised that it was 1/2 second quicker than my previous best. It "felt slow", which usually means its fast... you know?
Left: Terry's 5th and quickest run (37.5). Right: Amy's 3rd and quickest run (38.2)
Let's see where that put us...
We had 8 cars in STX, pretty good for a wet event with only 67 entrants. Ledbetter got first in his newly restored BMW 328is... we installed a fresh longblock and repaired the chassis the weeks before this event (that was the 3 weeks of work that got us a little behind). It was his first outing of the year and with a fresh set of Dunlops and the added horsepower of the fresher motor (old motor had 230K!) he was fast, as was his co-driver (his mom) who got 3rd in class right behind me. The three of us were the only cars in the 37s, and I felt good only being .5 behind him. That BMW looked hooked-up in these nasty conditions, and this was the tightest lot we race on in Dallas/Ft. Worth - which is usually worst lot for the Mustang. Brad Maxcy (on fairly bald RS-3s) was in 4th and Amy was hot on his heels in 5th, both within tenths of 3rd place. Amy and I were both clean in all 10 of our combined runs so we didn't "cone test" the splitter yet (whew).
more below...