Some On-Track Pics from Gingerman!

A few pics from our event at Gingerman earlier this month!

Road America!

The last scheduled event on the NASA MW/GL schedule is a crossover (aka combined) event at Road America this weekend. I'm signed up and the weather looks crazily great with highs in the low 70's.

So I'm headed the 6 hrs north for what will probably be my last event of the year. Wish me luck!  The car hasn't been touched since we left Nationals - and it's a great opportunity to use up the last of this years brakes and tires that are already on the car. 

Any guesses on my top speed?  Think I'll clear 145 or 150mph more than once per lap?

Autobahn Sunday - 07.10.11 - 1st place in TTA!

For Sunday I knew I needed to make a change. I decided the simplest was to pull the Kognition rear wing and put the stocker back on. The car felt much better when I was there in April and I ran the stocker back then. The Kognition was definitely producing downforce, but since I don't have a front splitter to balance it out, with my current alignment/settings it's just too much for this track right now I guess.

So I lined up Sunday with the stock wing and ran a 1:33.4. Car definitely felt looser in turns 3 & 4 where I had to left off the gas earlier. And the bandaid was still holding! Still though, I wasn't as fast as I was in April. I looked over my traqmate data and see I was loosing time in the braking zone of T1 of all places! So I set out to correct that in S2 and ran a 1:33.4 again! I assumed at this point the tires much be nearly shot.

I was going to run at least 1 more session and I wanted to make some change. Talked it over with a friend and I made a 1-click rebound adjustment - note this is the FIRST TIME this YEAR that I've touched the suspension settings on my new AST's since they were installed (they've been that good). Amazingly enough I felt the 1-click adjustment! The car rotated better through 2 specific corners and I was able to drop a 1:32.5 to end the day. That time held to win TTA for Sunday - although I wasn't able to reset my April track record of 1:32.1

Here's a good vid from Sunday. It's me and Jeff in his Evo; running nose-to-tail 1:33's.

Autobahn Saturday 7.9.11 - Working through Troubles!

Saturday I went out for the morning practice session with a passenger.  I lined up with my buddy Jarrod behind me as it was his first time in TT; 2nd time at the track and I wanted to show him the lines.  I ran a 1:37 and qualified 7th in grid.

I went to switch in 2 grippier tires for the first timed session, but realized an issue.  The car was covered in thick fluid by the driver's front tire.  I figured out it wasn't fluid, but axle grease - apparently from when I had my trans pulled recently.  I cleaned everything up as best I could and decided to go out for just 1-2 laps in the 11am session before the heat really set in as I needed a time.
I ran something like a 1:33.8 but the car was pushing in the turns; at turn-in and I had to get out of the gas more than once as it pushed mid-corner when I went back to the throttle as well.  I had the Kognition wing on and it set to the lowest AoA.  I also had some sloppy lines as I was bothered by the axle boot issue and was getting used to the new shiftpoints in my new longer 4th gear.  I was sitting in 2nd of 5 cars.
But the real fun was a very near incident during the session that caused me to take some evasive manuevering!  I was following another Evo; we were running 1:33-34 laps and we came up on a much slower Miata with a passenger.  The other Evo passed him between T4 and T5 and I was setting him up for an inside pass in T5.  While the other Evo was completing his pass, the Miata started to spin sideways mid-corner.  I left off to not T-bone him as he caught it.  But as I reached back for the gas, he jerked left again and I jerked left and went off-track to avoid him again.  The guardrail was insanely close at this point as well as an upcoming flagstand.  I turned right but the car kept going straight!  I brought the wheel back straight and slowly turned right and it took that input and I was able to avoid hitting anything.  Fun...  Vid below!

I checked the car after the 11am session and it messier yet.  I decided to let it cool and try to figure out a fix (if there was one).  I was posting to facebook for advice and texting with Boostin Performance; who pulled the trans.  I got a few suggestions including tape, superglue, zipties, trashbags, more tape, etc.  I also sourced some fancy volcanizing 'fire' tape from the paddock area. 
I let everything cool and went to work on the car.  I started with superglue; let it dry; then went with electrical tape (sticky) and the fire tape back-n-forth.  Then 2 zipties at the end with some electrical tape over them!  I skipped the 1pm session as I didn't want to rush things. 

Well into the mid 90's by now, I lined up for the 3pm session with no other changes.  Went out and the track wasn't great but I put down another 1:33x and the car was clean underneath!  That in itself was a success for me!  The car pushed worse being things were hotter and greasier at this point.  I chalked it up mostly to the high afternoon temps and took 2nd out of 5 for the day.  1st was a 132.8 that went to the reigning 2010 TTA Nat'l champ who happened to put his car in the wall in the 3rd session.  We'll see if he can get it fixed for next weekend at Mid Ohio so we can battle again!

Boostin Performance

After my last track event in Michigan, I decided there was a good hole in the schedule to get the transmission addressed. It had developed a small grind into 5th at my first event of the year.

Till this point, the trans has been great. Car has 24,000 miles on it and around 70 days on track. I've been using Redline fluids in the trans for awhile. I change them 2-3 times a year as it's a pretty easy job. But with all the heat generated from road-racing and the fact the car has pumped out 300-370whp since the first month I got it (April/2006) vs the 250whp stock... I knew it was only a matter of time.

So rather than it locking out and screwing me at the track to a DNF, or causing worse damage to the entire gearbox - I wanted to have it pulled before Nationals in September. And this was a good gap in the schedule. Doubley so as I'd be passing back by Chicago on the way home which is where the work would get done.

As to where in Chicago... that's something I've been trying to decide since about April! Quality of work was #1, and cost was a #2. Scheduling, timeframe and availability was #3.

I called around, talked to a few new shops, priced things, got timelines, etc. I ended up deciding to work with Devin at Boostin Performance. Heard a lot of good things, but I'd never even met the guy before. I told him my timeline and he volunteered to meet me at the shop on Sunday for a dropoff on the way back from my Michigan track event. That right there was huge for me; saves me a night in a hotel and a 1/2 day off work (assuming a monday morning dropoff).

Wish me luck...

NASA - Gingerman - 1st in TTA & Track Record - June 5th!

The TT group was the first group out on track - 8am. Very early. I figured the track might be a little damp, but I was wrong. After about 1.5 laps of 'recon' I started pushing it. I ran a solid time of 1:39.6 but I didn't have the optimal tire/pressure setup so I left some on the table as I did not think the track would be optimal. It was almost a grave mistake as another TTA car ran a 1:39.0 but got called for 4-wheels-off and DQ'd for that session!

Session #2 was at 9:45am so still pretty early. I set everything up, left the wing alone and fired a 1:38.9 which was my fastest of the weekend, reset my track record from Saturday and stood for 1st in TTA on Sunday to give me the weekend sweep!

I pushed the car hard through every session this weekend; really hard! Because of the track layout, I think I was pushing near 7500 rpms 4 times per lap. I kept expecting to find the rev limiter on the front straight but never did. So lots of high rpm revving in 4th, high oil temps, lost rubber, cranked up boost, etc. Everything help up beautifully though.  Thx as always for a great tune from AMS Performance.

It's been a pretty good year thus far. 8 wins in 8 events and track records at all 4 tracks I've been to. I've got some ideas for things to change and a lot of mid-season maintenance to take care of before a busy July schedule. Check out the progress via or twitter (@boomn29).

Vid from Sunday:
This is actually my fastest lap of the weekend. Only the audio sucks as the camera is clicking off the window; install error! Still, the car that passes me is a TTS Vette which is 1 class up from me. He's also the 2009 Nat'l champion. We nearly get 3 wide around T6...check it out!

NASA - Autobahn - TTA Track Record!

Sunday morning the TT group was the first ones on track at 8:30!  I decided to go out and defend my gridspot - as we grid by time and all the Sat times were in the 2:03-2:35 range. So I asked a buddy to go with me for the hell of it because I like to scare people! As it was in the 40's it took a bit for the tires to warm up, so the rear was pretty loose for several laps which is quite fun! Eventually we played a few laps of cat-n-mouse with a TTB 350Z and had some fun running mostly 1:38's to keep at the front of the grid.

S2 I went out and hammered it. The car felt good but I was getting held up by a TTR C6 Z06 (check out the vid below). Unfortunately he ruined 2 of my laps and after that the tires were out of their prime. I did manage a 1:33.5 to regain the #1 gridspot so I'd be in front of that C6 Z06 the next session! I was also just .2 off my TTA track record from 2010 and knew it was well within site.

S3 was probably going to be my last as there was a 2.5hr gap afterwards and it'd been a long cold weekend for the wife and dog. I led the group out, took 1 lap to warmup everything and ran a pair of 1:32's with the last being 1:32.1 and breaking my own TTA track record from 2010.

Apart from a few sloppy lines; that was pretty much everything this current config had in it. That in itself was some great knowledge to have. I only wish we could have done all that on Saturday instead of Sunday. As I had a different config I wanted to test; but it'll have to wait.  All in all I ran 1.1 seconds faster that last year and reset my track record. I also had FTD both Saturday and Sunday over the entire TT group.

With zero changes to the suspension, the car is already rotating better on the setup than it ever did last year.  I have to thank Aaron from Winning Formula for the setup, AMS Performance for the power delivery and Sheppard Racing for the trick rear diff.  Enjoy the vid...

Teched and Ready for 2011 NASA Season!

Talked things over with my pit crew (the wife and sometimes the puppy) and the advice was to put the rains back on the car in preparation for the Mid-Ohio forecast this coming weekend. At the time it was showing mid 50's and 30% chance of rain on Friday. Knowing I HATE to change tires in the rain; the advice was to show up on the rains/streets.

So I made the change, tightened things down and loaded the car on the trailor this weekend. I then made the trip to my get my Annual tech inspection for NASA. Doing it early keeps me out of the long long lines at the track - and being an Annual it means I'll be free from tech the rest of the year!

So I again hit my new goal of having the car on the trailor the weekend BEFORE the event. Awesome feeling to not be rushed. Here's a pic of it stuffed in the garage. 

The 2011 NASA season starts this weekend at Mid-Ohio!  This will be my first ever trip there.

Alignment & Corner Balance @ Winning Formula

With < 9 hrs of sleep in 2 days and about 830 miles logged - I'm freakin exhausted!

Part 1 of 2.  Alignment trip & Test Day.

Part 1 takes us down to Louisville, KY and to The Winning Formula.  The shop consists basically of 2 people; Aaron who I know from the track and have been dealing directly with - and the owner, Mike. It's pretty much just them 2. They primarily setup SM's (Spec Miata's) along with various other street/track car alignments and maintenance I believe.  I made it to the shop about 8:40am my time (9:40am ET local) on Friday.  I unloaded the car as we started mounting tires and noticed some spitting snow which wasn't a good outlook for our testday on Saturday.

 

First check on the scales showed 3266 lbs with driver!  That was a great start as it's damn close to my post-race required weight.  After verifying the suspension installation, next up was the actual alignment.  We found the rear of the car no longer had the eccentric bolts for toe adjustment! Fortunately for me, I had stripped a front suspension bolt with my install earlier in the week and I dug through my spare box of crap downstairs and while I didn't have a spare front bolt I did find some interesting other bolts (including the rear toe eccentric adjusters) that I threw in for the trip just in case. Lucky us. So we switched those back in. 

All-in-all it took a lot longer than we had planned. We had to redo a few things that had been done incorrectly by other shops over the years. We also had to deal with some rubbing caused by the longer springs from the new setup. We have a plan 'B' coming down the road for that one.  But Aaron stuck with it and took his time. He talked me through everything and answered all my questions and we joked through it all.

A few other people stopped by the shop in the mid-afternoon that were headed to the testday too. We didn't leave the shop until about 9pm that night. We had to help some other guys pack up, install some Miata hard tops, pack extra tires, grab dinner, etc. 4 of us caravaned the ~2.5hr drive to Indianopolis to our 2 different hotels for the next days event.

2am...bedtime. 6:15am alarm for Saturday testday...

Seats & Harnesses bolted back in!

Final prepwork for the upcoming testday being wrapped up.  Testing Sat 3/26 at Putnam Park.  With that in mind, we put the seats & harnesses back in.

Drivers:

Driver seating position has always been a small struggle with me.  I definitely like to sit low; lower than stock! I've went through 3 different seats and 6 different mounting options. With fixed back racing seats, you don't have as many angle/reclining options which makes it more difficult. Plus if your butt & legs aren't help down in place via belts or seat bolsters or whatever, you're going to be sliding around; no doubt.

I finally got it lower than I liked, where I couldn't fully see over the dash! Nice! Sure that was w/o using a seating pad, but sh1t happens. Anyways, I redid the angle a bit and think I have something I like better.
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Passenger:

Because I needed the weight, I bolted back in a passenger seat along with the harnesses. Plus it's always nice to have the option to carry a passenger which it be a student (I occasionally instruct) or another track buddy or someone helping me learn a new track.

Sticker & Decal Update!

First of all, I want to say a huge 'Thx' to my buddy Randy for providing a majority of the official numbers and class stickers I run. He does excellent work. 

This winter I decided to remove everything on the car, thoroughly clean and re-apply. I know I'm going with a slightly different font, probably arrange things differently and a few other changes. I haven't fully decided yet, just getting the process started as it's finally pushing into the 40-50's these days!
 

I'll definitely be putting the signature '929' numbering back on.  I'll have my NASA class designation and a few required contingency stickers.  Beyond that; not really sure.  I'd like to add something a bit unique but I'm not sure what yet...

 

Here's some in-process pics -->

 

2011 Hoosiers!

New stock of Hoosiers!  This allotment of 7 brand new Hoosiers was the remainder of my freebie contingency tires from 2010 that I had to order. 

All-in-all I have a total of 22 Hoosier tires in my possession at this time.  Of course, 8 of those are trash/used and the rest aren't all new...

Thank you to Hoosier for their generous NASA contingency program.  The 'purple crack' rocks.

Aug/Sept Track Vids!

Gingerman (old/short course) - new TTA record



Gingerman (new/long course)



Autobahn S



Autobahn S - new TTA Record (external GoPro view)

Girodisc Front 2-piece Rotors!

My new quest of lightening the car as much as possible along with needing new front rotors led me to Martin @ Girodisc!  After some conversation a set of Girodisc 2-piece front floating rotors along with their recommended Raybestos ST43 pads f/r were on the way.  The old front PowerSlot rotors did a good job for a 1-piece but after 14 days there were shot!  This will also be a brand new pad for me, so I'm anxious to see the results.

NASA TTA Win & Track Record @ Gingerman!

Woke up to rain. Got to the track and finished unpacking and it was still raining for the warmup. Even though I was on Hoosiers, I decided to head out just to make updates were all installed correctly. I switched back to TTA mode, meaning I reinstalled my AMS FMIC, AMS LICP, AMS MBC and brand new Buschur UICP (finally dumping the stock UICP for good and all it's troubles staying attached I hoped). I ran just 2 laps of fun in the rain and literally slid through the last turn and into pit lane - but everything shook down just fine.
I went out in the first timed session, and planned to hammer it right away while the temps were still cool. It was a good plan, but I took it a step too far and blew through the first turn on my 2nd full lap. Just a scenic trip through the grass; no harm no foul other than a DQ for the session. Everything mostly felt good except the car liked to understeer out of some corners which seems to be a theme my last few events. It was bad enough in some turns that it was literally hopping while fighting for grip.
Anyways, in the final 3 sessions I put down faster and faster times and ended up with a 1:32.1 which snagged me first of 4 in class and broke the TTA class record.

In the last session I got a soft brake pedal so I figured my already this pads were shot. As soon as the session was over I tore into the brakes. I had put in an older replacement set to hopefully get me through the weekend; but they only lasted 1 day as they were down past the middle wear marker on the RF. Having a new set of DTC60's; I popped them in and rotated the tires to get ready for Sunday. I'm not a big fan of doing maintenance at the track, but this isn't a bad job and the temps weren't bad at all. Much better than how the day began with all the rain!

Sunday

Sunday we got to run the new config which adds about a 1/3 mile to the track in the form of another carousel turn and a longer backstraight that starts uphill. It took a bit to get used to it as their's really 2 carousel turns and some off-camber downhill stuff - the longer straight...well it's straight! Carousel turns can be difficult to get a handle on, especially if your car doesn't handle well. I think mine handles pretty well, but it seems to be disliking corner exits more and more over the past month; understeering like I mentioned above. It's probably a combination of a few things including the fact my JIC coilovers have 35+ days on them now and likely need refreshed. I also have the camber plates maxed out up front which only nets me about -2.5 of camber. And lastly I've been running a higher class - TTA. Even though I'm not fully utilizing my points allotment yet, I am running more horsepower which in turn seems to make the corner exit understeer that much more pronounced.
Anyways, I dealt with it the best I could in the carousels and came away with a best of 1:40.6. This time I flip-flopped with a TTA Corvette from Sat and finished 2nd of 5.

Old Course vs New Course:
Just to give you an idea of the changes and how they affect the Evo vs others:

• 1.8 miles vs 2.2 miles
• Top speed on backstraight of 110mph vs 125mph

Anyone that's competitively tracked an Evo knows that we fall victim to straight-line speed to things like Corvettes! I think the longer backstraight definitely brought this sad fact into play with my finishing order. The longer straight combined with basically 2 additional carousel type turns made for a new course that doesn't seem to flow quite as well. Then again; based on my results over the weekend maybe I'm biased! haha.

Shedding some weight!

Every little bit helps!  With NASA, you have to meet certain minimum weight requirements with each car.  Mine is 3263lbs and I can get right down to that mark current with about a 1/2 tank fuel. 

However, you have the option of taking 'mod' points for additional weight reduction.  Personally, I don't think it's the best use of points, but in the absence of something better - why not!  I can always add strategically placed ballast back in to make minimum weight.  Plus the other groups I run with like Redline Time Attack have no minimum weights.

Not pictured is a lot of carpet and sound deadening I pulled from the floorboard and under the dash.  Lots more left...

VIR Videos!

2010 GRM UTCC - 07/23/2010 at VIR

NASA Mid-Atlantic 07252010 at VIR

July 10th - AMS Track Day @ Autobahn

Made the trip Saturday to Autobahn Country Club to instruct for an AMS Performance track day.  Helped out a few students and ran a few sessions myself as well.  Temps were high and the car performed well once I got all the intercooler hoses tightened back up.  I ran in my developing 'TTA' form and ran some 1:36-1:37 laps with a passenger so I was a good 250lbs over my min weight.  I will be back this weekend running TTA with NASA - so it was good testing!  Got several changes planned this week...

April 17-18 - NASA @ Gateway

The first NASA Midwest region event was held last weekend
at the Gateway Int'l Raceway 'Roval' roadcourse.

  Saturday I won TTB and set the new track record with 1:08.75. Unfortunately there was some oil spilt on the track and we all had to take different lines through T2 to avoid the oil slick they put down so I feel there's more time to gain here.

  Sunday I jumped up 2 classes to TTS for a few different reasons. In the 4th session I was using leftover A6's from last year and actually spun a near 180 between T5-T6 which is pretty hairy to say the least.  I quickly decided to ditch the old A6's and go back to my setup from Saturday. So I put my TTB R6's back on climbed to within .012 seconds of the TTS leader - another Evo.  We both had to go out for the last session to try and squeeze out some more time and in the end I squeezed out a victory by .7 seconds.

  Along with a pair of 1sts (TTB & TTS) and another track record, I debuted the new Forgeline ZX3R's, new Exedy Twin HD clutch, and new PowerSlot rotors.  Everything (save for the old A6 tires) worked out great.

  There's some tweaking that needs to be done to the suspension and alignment before the next event; but that's nothing new!

  Big thanks to AMS Performance for the powerful & safe tune & the new clutch install, AMSOIL for keeping the car cool and lubricated and Forgeline for help with the new wheels!