housegsx
20+ Year Contributor
- 2,455
- 44
- May 28, 2004
-
Greensburg,
Pennsylvania
My First Wilson Circuit TT
Getting Prepared
The week leading up the race everything was good. I didn't feel rushed to do anything with the car, had already registered and paid for the race, was prepared for bad weather etc.
I had been tuning with dsmlink for a couple days and I took my car out Saturday to finally do some nice 3rd gear pulls. First pull at 14psi everything feels fine. I check the log and everything looked to be in check. No knock, A/F ratios still a little rich at 10.6:1, and good timing. Great! Let's turn up the boost. I get out my allen wrench and give the boost controller 1 full turn. Ok, 2nd pull. What the crap! Still at 14psi... So I do another pull. Yep, the boost didn't go up any. Hmm, I pop the hood on the highway and go to adjust the boost controller again. Oh no! Metal shaving in the allen key adjustment. Great, it's stripped and I can't adjust the boost. I think it seized in place because it has been about 4 years since I've tried to adjust it.
After that little dilemma I decide to just take the car home, check the oil, and park it for the night. Pop the hood, pull the dipstick... What the crap again! The dipstick separated from the handle.
The plastic broke right between the two O-ring seals on the dipstick. I had to pull the rest of the dipstick out with needle nose pliers. I glued it back together just so I could check the oil level then decided it was best to just cap off the dipstick tube. I found a rubber cap that fit really tight so I would just use that and bring the dipstick along if I needed to check the oil. Ugh, bed time.
Race Day
Sunday morning. 10 miles down the road and I smell burning oil. I pull over immediately and notice that I blew my cap right off of the dipstick tube. Not a huge mess, but enough to make me curse a bit. Good thing I brought along my broken dipstick that I glued back together. I put that in and zip-tied it down for the rest of the day.
Sunday was the Steel Cities Region time trial. It's a challenging 0.8 mile course that provides a venue that's faster than autocross, but slower than a road course. Kind of a crossover between autocross and road racing. It's Beaverun's kart track actually. Here is the course layout.
Speeds are similar to autocross, maybe just slightly faster. Some differences between this and our usual autocrossing are...
1: Can't take as many risks because you can't go off course. Any violent spin or excursion into the grass and you're done for the day. This is a karting track after all and they can't afford to have ruts through the grass that could pontentially flip karts if they were to go off course.
2: Elevation changes. This throws in not only a bit more fun to the experience, but provide blind crests, off camber turns etc.
I get to the track, sign up for my weekend SCCA membership, and unpack the car. The zipties are holding my dipstick in place so I think I'll be good for the day. Our autocross' usually have a street tire shootout class and I run SMT, but today there is no tire class. So I'm stuck in SM with Kumho MX's.
I was able to talk my friend Sean to come up with me this weekend as well. He just bought a VW R32. He's new to performance cars, but has a good amount of track experience on bikes. He was excited to see what the car was capable of and just learn how to drive it. It was good company and I think I have him hooked now.
Morning Session
There were 2 groups that ran. About 15 cars in each group. Those groups were split into about 5 pods of 3 cars. Those 3 cars would go out at about 20 second intervals. I was in group 1 at the end of pod 3 behind a JCW Mini and a 97 Talon Tsi Awd, the only other DSM there. It went like this: 5 laps. 1st lap to warm up, 3 competition laps, 1 cool down lap. So it was a flying start coming onto the front straight at the end of the warm up lap.
As I go out on my warm up lap I'm about 1/3 of a lap behind Akiro's Talon. As I get to the back side of the track I can see his car up ahead smoking blue very badly. Oh no! Not DSM woes already. He pulls into pit as I'm coming around onto the front straight to start my first competition lap. Here's the track layout with turns numbered.
Coming out of turn 13 on the warm up lap it was WOT down the straight just hitting rev limiter for a split second before hard on the brakes to get set up for turn 1.
Going into turn 1 I found it best to come down the straight on the outside then cutting hard, lining up for the curb and getting back on the throttle ASAP. If done correctly, I was able to stay WOT through the exit of the turn and on the straight before turn 2. I was able to do this on most of my laps, but a couple laps I had to lift because the car was sliding wide and I would have been in the dirt.
Turn 2 starts out as a wide sweeper and goes downhill about halfway through the turn. Heading into the turn I'm near the top of 2nd gear and brake hard, continuing to brake through the beginning of the turn just enough that I can feel the rear of the car wanting to rotate.
I was pretty much just rolling through the rest of the turn until the kink. That kink at the end of turn 2 proved to be one of the most troublesome areas of the course. It's very tight, downhill, off camber.
This inside field of the course was build for much smaller nimble cars like CRX's etc... Or karts. Very tough and hard to get the car to rotate this tight. Once through that turn it was back on the gas waiting for boost as I was still in 2nd gear. Looking back, perhaps I should have grabbed 1st through the kink and starting down the straight into turn 3.
Turn 3 can be taken flat out with my eyes focused ahead setting up turn 4. The track at turn 4 was fairly wide. This turn was more like two turns actually and the second half of the turn had to be set up just right to get through turn 5 with any speed. It was either go fast through the end of turn 4 and ruin turn 5, or go slow through turn 4 and try to build speed through turn 5. I chose the second route. This way I was able to get some exit speed through turn 5 and carry a lot of speed through turn 6 and 7.
Turn 6 and 7 could be treated somewhat as one continuous increasing radius turn if set up just right. I got the hang of this after a couple laps. I could take turn 7 at WOT but the car would slide right and I'd be in the wrong position for turn 8. I made that mistake a couple times carrying too much speed and messing up turn 8. Eventually I learned to modulate the throttle just right through 7 so that I could take turn 8 properly and at WOT. Just barely having enough track on the outside of 8. When done right, turn 8 was a blast! Coming into the turn I'm going uphill and the course goes flat right through the turn. So you're coming up over the blind crest, not able to see the outside of the track and the car is getting light because of the course leveling out. Great fun! Being that there is a straight after turn 8, WOT was very beneficial.
This is me setting up for turn 6.
Hard on the brakes downhill into turn 9. Turn 9 and 10 felt very similar with 10 just being a little bit more open. Basically I was just try to get on the gas early and keep my exit speeds up.
It wasn't until the end of my first 5 laps that I realized turn 11 was just one turn. After a few laps I was looking ahead more and saw this. Treating it as one turn ended up being much faster. No matter how much I tried I could not stay WOT out of turn 11 down the straight. The car was right on the outside and felt like a fast, smooth, controllable 4 wheel drift. I was lifting for a split second at the beginning of the straight to regain maximum traction.
Coming into turn 12 was almost WOT in 2nd gear. Hit both inside curbs just right at the beginning of turn 12, using them to help rotate the car ever so slightly, and I'm carrying good speed. This is fun!
Slow into 13 and stab the throttle, just brushing the curb. The car tracks left onto the straight as it's fighting for grip and rocket down the front straight across the Start/Finish. It was easy to gauge how well I was taking turn 13 based on if and how long I would hit the rev limiter down the straight. When the motor bounced off the limiter for about a ½ second I knew I took the turn fairly well.
I used my next two competition laps learning the track. My second lap was messed up by going to fast into the kink at turn 2. I went WAY wide and knew I was going off course. Instead of holding the wheel trying to stay on course, I let the car go wide as I slowed down and just rolled slowly through the dirt. I don't think I pulled to much dirt onto the course as it was a pretty tame off course. Akira had the same problem on one of his laps. I think DSMs just don't like this turn.
My second time out in the morning session I was focusing on trying to take what I learned and adjust how I was approaching some of the turns. I felt like I was trying to rush the infield and my poor line was probably showing and reflected in my times. I took the turns a bit slower and this is when I learned to carry speed through turn 5 and how to approach turns 6 and 7 as one.
2nd Group/Lunch
After finishing my two morning session I went to see what was wrong with Akiro's car. SOaB!! Blew his dipstick out. You gotta be kidding me, this just happened to me a few hours ago. He was busy cleaning up under the hood and I used couple zipties to secure his dipstick for the remainder of the day. He didn't have any more problems after that. Always nice to lend a helping hand. It sucks he missed his morning runs, but he was prepared for the afternoon session. He was a very nice guy and said he used to autocross more about 3 years ago when DSMs were all over. Until the Evos came he said.
It was nice not having work assignments and getting to relax and chat with Sean about cars and how it was going in the R32. That and just watch the 2nd group of cars go. Lots of fast and interesting cars to watch. One particularly fast car is a 350Z turbo fully prepped with huge 345 slicks. A bunch of power and stick. Maybe too much for Sunday when exiting turn 2 the car stopped. Blown diff. I guess it happens when you got that kind of ridiculous grip and good power. Another guy had a really nice 1st gen MR2. He used to race his 97 Talon but said the MR2 is a more affordable track car for him. He said he put his Talon back to fairly stock and only drives it occasionally as it only has 39k miles. Other noteworthy cars were a bunch of ridiculously fast CRX's, an Ultralight S2K, CMU's Formula SAE, etc.
Afternoon Session
For my afternoon runs I didn't change anything on the car. Perhaps I should have added a bit of pressure to the front tires to see if I could get the car to turn in better on the tight infield. Looking at the tires, they read ok, but I should have tried adding a little air anyways. Honestly though, I was kind of interested to see what better driving would do in relation to my times rather than better car setup.
My best afternoon time was 1:12.581. I was slightly disappointed that my fastest run was in the morning with a 1:11.9. That 1:11.9 was actually the fastest lap out of group 1 so that felt nice. Looking back, that half second from morning to afternoon may have just been due some dirt and dust brought on to course and also having a passenger ride along in the afternoon. It was still an improvement over the few 1:14 and 1:15 laps I had earlier.
I realize with a doubt that my next mod with be a racing seat. I swear I could probably scratch a second off my times if I didn't have to fight trying to stay in my seat and readjusting my body position after each corner. I can see how there may have been times where I lost focus just because of a lost comfort level moving around in the seat. That and the additional head room with a helmet will be a positive.
That pretty much finished my day but I wanted to stay around watch Sean's last run and to check out the final results. Unfortunately, as soon as my pod was done the ambulances left because races on the North Course were over. WTH! So we had to wait around for them to turn around before the last two pods continued. Oh well, this gave me time to get my stuff together and relax for a while before the drive home.
It turned out to be a great event. Perfect weather, no major car issues, friends racing, the company of my girlfriend, and just an overall good time. Thanks to the Howard for getting me some nice action shots. He actually made a funny comment to me saying the 17SM on my door kind of looked like DSM at some angles. Haha!
The next event is on August 24th. It's an autocross at Console Energy Park's parking lot. It's a bit more low key of an autocross than at Beaverun. Can't wait!
In the meantime, I'm waiting on my new dipstick and a Hallman Pro RX MBC so I can get back to tuning.
Getting Prepared
The week leading up the race everything was good. I didn't feel rushed to do anything with the car, had already registered and paid for the race, was prepared for bad weather etc.
I had been tuning with dsmlink for a couple days and I took my car out Saturday to finally do some nice 3rd gear pulls. First pull at 14psi everything feels fine. I check the log and everything looked to be in check. No knock, A/F ratios still a little rich at 10.6:1, and good timing. Great! Let's turn up the boost. I get out my allen wrench and give the boost controller 1 full turn. Ok, 2nd pull. What the crap! Still at 14psi... So I do another pull. Yep, the boost didn't go up any. Hmm, I pop the hood on the highway and go to adjust the boost controller again. Oh no! Metal shaving in the allen key adjustment. Great, it's stripped and I can't adjust the boost. I think it seized in place because it has been about 4 years since I've tried to adjust it.
After that little dilemma I decide to just take the car home, check the oil, and park it for the night. Pop the hood, pull the dipstick... What the crap again! The dipstick separated from the handle.
The plastic broke right between the two O-ring seals on the dipstick. I had to pull the rest of the dipstick out with needle nose pliers. I glued it back together just so I could check the oil level then decided it was best to just cap off the dipstick tube. I found a rubber cap that fit really tight so I would just use that and bring the dipstick along if I needed to check the oil. Ugh, bed time.Race Day
Sunday morning. 10 miles down the road and I smell burning oil. I pull over immediately and notice that I blew my cap right off of the dipstick tube. Not a huge mess, but enough to make me curse a bit. Good thing I brought along my broken dipstick that I glued back together. I put that in and zip-tied it down for the rest of the day.
Sunday was the Steel Cities Region time trial. It's a challenging 0.8 mile course that provides a venue that's faster than autocross, but slower than a road course. Kind of a crossover between autocross and road racing. It's Beaverun's kart track actually. Here is the course layout.
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Speeds are similar to autocross, maybe just slightly faster. Some differences between this and our usual autocrossing are...
1: Can't take as many risks because you can't go off course. Any violent spin or excursion into the grass and you're done for the day. This is a karting track after all and they can't afford to have ruts through the grass that could pontentially flip karts if they were to go off course.
2: Elevation changes. This throws in not only a bit more fun to the experience, but provide blind crests, off camber turns etc.
I get to the track, sign up for my weekend SCCA membership, and unpack the car. The zipties are holding my dipstick in place so I think I'll be good for the day. Our autocross' usually have a street tire shootout class and I run SMT, but today there is no tire class. So I'm stuck in SM with Kumho MX's.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
I was able to talk my friend Sean to come up with me this weekend as well. He just bought a VW R32. He's new to performance cars, but has a good amount of track experience on bikes. He was excited to see what the car was capable of and just learn how to drive it. It was good company and I think I have him hooked now.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
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Morning Session
There were 2 groups that ran. About 15 cars in each group. Those groups were split into about 5 pods of 3 cars. Those 3 cars would go out at about 20 second intervals. I was in group 1 at the end of pod 3 behind a JCW Mini and a 97 Talon Tsi Awd, the only other DSM there. It went like this: 5 laps. 1st lap to warm up, 3 competition laps, 1 cool down lap. So it was a flying start coming onto the front straight at the end of the warm up lap.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
As I go out on my warm up lap I'm about 1/3 of a lap behind Akiro's Talon. As I get to the back side of the track I can see his car up ahead smoking blue very badly. Oh no! Not DSM woes already. He pulls into pit as I'm coming around onto the front straight to start my first competition lap. Here's the track layout with turns numbered.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
Coming out of turn 13 on the warm up lap it was WOT down the straight just hitting rev limiter for a split second before hard on the brakes to get set up for turn 1.
Going into turn 1 I found it best to come down the straight on the outside then cutting hard, lining up for the curb and getting back on the throttle ASAP. If done correctly, I was able to stay WOT through the exit of the turn and on the straight before turn 2. I was able to do this on most of my laps, but a couple laps I had to lift because the car was sliding wide and I would have been in the dirt.
Turn 2 starts out as a wide sweeper and goes downhill about halfway through the turn. Heading into the turn I'm near the top of 2nd gear and brake hard, continuing to brake through the beginning of the turn just enough that I can feel the rear of the car wanting to rotate.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
I was pretty much just rolling through the rest of the turn until the kink. That kink at the end of turn 2 proved to be one of the most troublesome areas of the course. It's very tight, downhill, off camber.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
This inside field of the course was build for much smaller nimble cars like CRX's etc... Or karts. Very tough and hard to get the car to rotate this tight. Once through that turn it was back on the gas waiting for boost as I was still in 2nd gear. Looking back, perhaps I should have grabbed 1st through the kink and starting down the straight into turn 3.
Turn 3 can be taken flat out with my eyes focused ahead setting up turn 4. The track at turn 4 was fairly wide. This turn was more like two turns actually and the second half of the turn had to be set up just right to get through turn 5 with any speed. It was either go fast through the end of turn 4 and ruin turn 5, or go slow through turn 4 and try to build speed through turn 5. I chose the second route. This way I was able to get some exit speed through turn 5 and carry a lot of speed through turn 6 and 7.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
Turn 6 and 7 could be treated somewhat as one continuous increasing radius turn if set up just right. I got the hang of this after a couple laps. I could take turn 7 at WOT but the car would slide right and I'd be in the wrong position for turn 8. I made that mistake a couple times carrying too much speed and messing up turn 8. Eventually I learned to modulate the throttle just right through 7 so that I could take turn 8 properly and at WOT. Just barely having enough track on the outside of 8. When done right, turn 8 was a blast! Coming into the turn I'm going uphill and the course goes flat right through the turn. So you're coming up over the blind crest, not able to see the outside of the track and the car is getting light because of the course leveling out. Great fun! Being that there is a straight after turn 8, WOT was very beneficial.
This is me setting up for turn 6.
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Hard on the brakes downhill into turn 9. Turn 9 and 10 felt very similar with 10 just being a little bit more open. Basically I was just try to get on the gas early and keep my exit speeds up.
It wasn't until the end of my first 5 laps that I realized turn 11 was just one turn. After a few laps I was looking ahead more and saw this. Treating it as one turn ended up being much faster. No matter how much I tried I could not stay WOT out of turn 11 down the straight. The car was right on the outside and felt like a fast, smooth, controllable 4 wheel drift. I was lifting for a split second at the beginning of the straight to regain maximum traction.
Coming into turn 12 was almost WOT in 2nd gear. Hit both inside curbs just right at the beginning of turn 12, using them to help rotate the car ever so slightly, and I'm carrying good speed. This is fun!
Slow into 13 and stab the throttle, just brushing the curb. The car tracks left onto the straight as it's fighting for grip and rocket down the front straight across the Start/Finish. It was easy to gauge how well I was taking turn 13 based on if and how long I would hit the rev limiter down the straight. When the motor bounced off the limiter for about a ½ second I knew I took the turn fairly well.
I used my next two competition laps learning the track. My second lap was messed up by going to fast into the kink at turn 2. I went WAY wide and knew I was going off course. Instead of holding the wheel trying to stay on course, I let the car go wide as I slowed down and just rolled slowly through the dirt. I don't think I pulled to much dirt onto the course as it was a pretty tame off course. Akira had the same problem on one of his laps. I think DSMs just don't like this turn.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
My second time out in the morning session I was focusing on trying to take what I learned and adjust how I was approaching some of the turns. I felt like I was trying to rush the infield and my poor line was probably showing and reflected in my times. I took the turns a bit slower and this is when I learned to carry speed through turn 5 and how to approach turns 6 and 7 as one.
2nd Group/Lunch
After finishing my two morning session I went to see what was wrong with Akiro's car. SOaB!! Blew his dipstick out. You gotta be kidding me, this just happened to me a few hours ago. He was busy cleaning up under the hood and I used couple zipties to secure his dipstick for the remainder of the day. He didn't have any more problems after that. Always nice to lend a helping hand. It sucks he missed his morning runs, but he was prepared for the afternoon session. He was a very nice guy and said he used to autocross more about 3 years ago when DSMs were all over. Until the Evos came he said.
It was nice not having work assignments and getting to relax and chat with Sean about cars and how it was going in the R32. That and just watch the 2nd group of cars go. Lots of fast and interesting cars to watch. One particularly fast car is a 350Z turbo fully prepped with huge 345 slicks. A bunch of power and stick. Maybe too much for Sunday when exiting turn 2 the car stopped. Blown diff. I guess it happens when you got that kind of ridiculous grip and good power. Another guy had a really nice 1st gen MR2. He used to race his 97 Talon but said the MR2 is a more affordable track car for him. He said he put his Talon back to fairly stock and only drives it occasionally as it only has 39k miles. Other noteworthy cars were a bunch of ridiculously fast CRX's, an Ultralight S2K, CMU's Formula SAE, etc.
Afternoon Session
For my afternoon runs I didn't change anything on the car. Perhaps I should have added a bit of pressure to the front tires to see if I could get the car to turn in better on the tight infield. Looking at the tires, they read ok, but I should have tried adding a little air anyways. Honestly though, I was kind of interested to see what better driving would do in relation to my times rather than better car setup.
My best afternoon time was 1:12.581. I was slightly disappointed that my fastest run was in the morning with a 1:11.9. That 1:11.9 was actually the fastest lap out of group 1 so that felt nice. Looking back, that half second from morning to afternoon may have just been due some dirt and dust brought on to course and also having a passenger ride along in the afternoon. It was still an improvement over the few 1:14 and 1:15 laps I had earlier.
I realize with a doubt that my next mod with be a racing seat. I swear I could probably scratch a second off my times if I didn't have to fight trying to stay in my seat and readjusting my body position after each corner. I can see how there may have been times where I lost focus just because of a lost comfort level moving around in the seat. That and the additional head room with a helmet will be a positive.
That pretty much finished my day but I wanted to stay around watch Sean's last run and to check out the final results. Unfortunately, as soon as my pod was done the ambulances left because races on the North Course were over. WTH! So we had to wait around for them to turn around before the last two pods continued. Oh well, this gave me time to get my stuff together and relax for a while before the drive home.
It turned out to be a great event. Perfect weather, no major car issues, friends racing, the company of my girlfriend, and just an overall good time. Thanks to the Howard for getting me some nice action shots. He actually made a funny comment to me saying the 17SM on my door kind of looked like DSM at some angles. Haha!
The next event is on August 24th. It's an autocross at Console Energy Park's parking lot. It's a bit more low key of an autocross than at Beaverun. Can't wait!
In the meantime, I'm waiting on my new dipstick and a Hallman Pro RX MBC so I can get back to tuning.
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I do have the smaller steering wheel though. It definitely helps.
