April 26th Autox School

Well last weekend was the first autox of the season for me. Day 1 was a school for those who are new, or those who wanted to learn some more. I had considered signing up for an instructor but instead chose to have a local who runs competitively in a fwd car show me some of the finer points. Still didn't get any work done on my left foot braking (stupid huge feet and tiny footwell), but did get to work on the car setup and basic cornering skills on a technical course they setup for the school.

The good:
- The car has less lag this year than previous even with the addition of the HKS 272's. When I removed the old cams I found the intake retarded 1 whole tooth which meant I spent all last year down on power and with additional lag. Hooray failed install.

- With the additional lag and a new turbine housing that more accurately controls boost pressure I was able to put the power to the ground in second gear on most of the straights and subsequently due to the lag reduction keep the car in second gear for more of the course. This meant I could get on the gas earlier and be smoother with my inputs since I wasn't constantly pedaling it in first gear off of the slower corners.

- Even though timing wasn't official, the car was putting down pretty respectable times with the other cars in my class that were running this day.

The bad:
- Due to the extremely bumpy sections of the course, my oil cooler sheared off of it's mounting tab forcing me to end the day early. Luckily it was still held on by some zipties and another bracket so I didn't take out an entire motor in the process.

- Oil in the spark plug wells - not sure if it's from a cracked cover or a leaking oil cap gasket. Either way it shouldn't be there.

- Blew the dipstick tube out. This worries me because I'm venting the vc from the pcv port and the normal vent, on top of that I've got a throttle return spring from Holley holding it in place. Possible though that this could've happened while testing the mbc before the event where I saw 25psi. I'm personally thinking though that this motor has some bad blowby and may be on it's last legs.

- Suspension needs adjusted. Given the added traction in the rear the car is just too tail happy right now. I do have an adjustable rear bar, but when I went to adjust it to the normal setting it actually sheared the adjustmable spherical bearing right off leaving me without a swaybar connection on the passenger side. Luckily Mike Welch from RRE is locating the parts for me now, but it did force me to miss the first actual points event on Monday as the car would've handled like absolute crap.

- Oil leak. I hate oil sometimes. Seems like I've got a small leak that's only getting bigger near the oil filter housing. Already fixed the rear main seal last month, so now it looks like I get to tear into the front half of the motor to try and seal it up again.



That being said here's some pics from the event. More can be found at my gallery here: http://gallery.indystars.org/v/membe...-Junk/4-26-08/

Checkout the camber on that inside wheel


This is what happens when you've got too much rear bar and no weight over the rear axle. Saved this one but missed the next slalom cone to do so.


It's hard to get much closer to the cones than this


This time I didn't save it, went through the timing lights smokey and backwards.



I've actually got some video from this event, including the big spin. Hoping to have it uploaded to youtube on Thursday night.

PLayed around with that Vimeo site and got two runs from the day uploaded. The one where I start behind the gto is the ugly one, the one behind the evo was one of the less eventful runs of the day.

Big Spin




Clean Run