...part 2 continued from above...
The ASCS group did have some timer teething issues (with their brand new RFID track timer system they were breaking in), but Brian Finch of DSI was super helpful and worked with me several times to get my transponder to read. It took 2 transponders, moving them 3 times, re-adjusting the track side receiver, and me losing about half my laps to get it to finally work on my car. Any of you looking at RFID track timing systems, beware: they might be cheap, but they are far from idiot proof. Range is very limited and the angle of the transponder to receiver is critical, too. Maybe this Hardcard Systems unit was being messed with from the rain, I don't know - it just needed a lot of tweaking to work. By about 1:30 pm I got to where I was almost running over the receiver to make sure it read. Receiver blew over into the track surface and into the driving line once, too. Once we mounted it on the side window, aimed parallel to the receiver, it worked "pretty well". You can see the little little stick-on/disposable transponder on my right side window, below (this is the same stuff used to track groceries and other consumer goods).
On a positive note, I did finally get to see better in-car video from my 1080P vidcam, mounted properly on the harness bar, and not stuck right to the windshield with the old suction cup mount. Bad news is the rear view mirror and my ugly mug are now shown. I need to play with placement and maybe tweak the rear view mirror location, but it works better than before. I also managed to finally get my
G-Tech Pro RR Fanatic data logger + lap timer to work properly in Road Race mode.
I fought with this damn G-Tech thing for a couple of events last year but never got it out of the "SS" (drag race) mode. This time, after but sitting in the pits in the rain waiting to get out on track, I messed with it long enough to figure out that the "scroll wheel" is also a push button for "select", and that did it. I also figured out how to make it work for continuous lap timing, predictive lap timing, how to add segments, and even how to make a separate start and finish (for hill climb and autocross). So now this
$299 data logger display finally paid off - because now it works as advertised!
I need to make a "how to video" for this thing because the instructions it comes and that
they have online with are terrible. It has software I can download to data mine the laps and maybe...
maybe place these onto the video??? We'll see.
What else... oh yea, I guess I
tested the new Porterfield R4 brake pads, which worked fine on track but it
was raining all day. They are still on the car now, and after a week of street driving there's very little brake dust, they don't make too much noise, and they work fine cold, so it might work for autocrossing, too (I bought R4S pads for that, though). With the DTC-60 Hawks, the wheels would be BLACK after a DAY of street driving, they sucked cold, and after a week the noise would make you want to drive the car into a tree. I couldn't tell jack squat about any "new rear grip", other than
I had none. The new 6 point harnesses worked out nicely, and the harness bar was rock solid. Nobody wanted to ride in the Mustang - guess it wasn't cool enough? There was some pretty crazy hardware there, the weather sucked, and a lot of cars went off into the mud - not too shocking.
This event is supposed to be run on 200 treadwear tires, which I never mounted. You see I had borrowed a set of well worn 275/35/18 Dunlop Star Specs mounted on 18x9.5" wheels, but with less than 3/32" of tread on these things I wasn't going to risk those on a wet track until it dried off a bit - which it never did. So I ran the "cheater" full tread 180 treadwear Bridgestone RE-11 tires all day, but they saw that at tech noted this on my times for the competition event portion (before they
revised the results). Again,
the plan was to switch to the Dunlops once it dried off, then tell them to wipe out the old times, and start my timed runs over... but with 2-3" of water running across the track in 7 or 8 spots, it just wasn't safe to run on nearly bald tires. Even with nearly full tread RE-11s it was a frakking handful. I couldn't accelerate in any gear past about 3000 rpm or it would result in instant wheel spin. Even the "straights" were a handful, as most of them were curved or off-camber, so I was short shifting and using mostly 4th and 5th, and it was miserable.
Most sane people would have just packed up and left, but damnit I wanted to wait it out and post some good times when it dried out. This was a qualifier for the Optima Challenge event, you know? One person from the "top 5 times" would be chosen from this event, plus "one more hard charger", at the series organizer's discretion. So I "hard charged my ass off" and put in over 80 laps in this slop, worked on my rain driving
some more at HHR (it rained all day when I ran the Mustang here in Jan 2011, too!), and put in (according to my data logged times on the CW morning runs) the fastest times in the morning rain session. Burned a tank of fuel putting around, and getting sideways. Kept coming into the pits to check on my wife, who was sicker and sicker (running a 101-102°F fever all day), and finally at 3:30, when I wasn't getting any faster and the rain let up for a few minutes, I loaded the car back onto the trailer and headed north back to Dallas. It rained the entire way back, too.
So of course, about 30 minutes after I left, there was a break in the weather
right around HHR, the track dried up considerably, and lap times fell by 15-20 seconds.
Figures. Again, with a sick wife and the better part of 2 days already wasted, I made a judgement call, cut my losses and bailed. Maybe if I would have stayed until dark, swapped on the Dunlops, I could have hung with the top finishers? Who knows. Should/coulda/woulda. I was in the top 1-2 in times during the rain by the time I left, so I'll have to be happy with that. Which I am not.
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