stripethree

I do not know where April went but it’s gone, passed me right by.

The R32 still isn’t running mainly because upon going to replace the two motor mounts I have, something more fun was discovered, a drive shaft joint that was coming apart. Oh joy. Hopefully this will all be fixed tomorrow and even without the motor mount that I have been waiting on for 4 weeks now, the car can drive again. That’s a good thing, because the GTI is going to be getting some big things in the coming month(s).

I ran my friend Jana’s Mini in Tucson at the end of April again and couldn’t keep off the cones.

Comps: 53.778 (+1), 54.699 (+2), 55.032 (+1, CD), 53.802 (+1)
TOs: 54.270, 54.957, 54.405, 54.392 (+1)

At the Sierra Vista airport the weekend after (last weekend) I drove a CSP Miata on huge race tires. I finished at the bottom of the PAX class, but I beat the car owner, so we’ll see if I’m ever invited drive the car again. It was fun, completely different than the R32 or the Mini; I’d never driven a Miata and never driven on race rubber which made for a fun experience. I can see why people like Miatas (no power, but they certainly can handle!) and why race tires can be an expensive addiction.

I also went house hunting on Monday with a real estate agent, though this trip was more to figure out what I really want in a house than to find the house to buy. The whole process still seems complicated and daunting and I don’t know yet if I’m fully ready for it. It was good to look around at various houses and I figured out that there are many, many more things to think about than I had on my list. We saw about a dozen houses, most of which were vacant, some foreclosures or bank repos. Granted, there could have been things we couldn’t see, but I was surprised at the condition of these houses, I figured they’d be wreck. Probably the worst house needed carpet everywhere and drywall patched in one area of one bedroom. One other house had all the appliances missing, and by all I mean someone made off with the garage door opener and the water heater.

Softball is still going on and we are still looking for win number 1. Most of us are still having a good time even though we’ve only managed to not lose via the mercy rule twice. The season goes through the end of the month, so we don’t have many more chances to get into the win column.

The two hour drive to Bisbee-Douglas International airport was well worth it Sunday, as awaiting the 20 drivers that showed up just north of the border was an estimated 1.25 mile course with wide open sections that put me well into 3rd gear in multiple places. It was probably the fastest speeds I have hit at an autox course since third gear came early, often, and with liberal amounts of throttle added. The course also rewarded looking way ahead, the pivots at each end and a few deceptive offsets were crushing if you overshot, which was easy to do given the high speeds of the course.

My times were 79.569 (+2), 78.123, 78.373 (+1), and 77.826. In TOs, I dropped another 8/10s, but not without cones. The 77.8 was the second fastest time of the day, out paced only by an A-Stock Saturn Sky Redline on huge Hoosiers which ran a 76.0. PAX times were a different story as I beat out the Sky by just over a tenth of a second for the top overall spot. Now, there’s nothing left for me between now and San Diego other than some work on the car.

Saturday, Summer and I made a drive about 2 hours in the other direction to the Arizona Renaissance Festival in Apache Junction.

The guy in the last picture, where he is juggling a running chain-saw, a torch, and an apple, later went on to set off firecrackers duct taped to his chest and got the crowd to pelt him with water balloons in order to cool the resulting heat. Oh, and I did I mention this was all while he was balanced on top of a ladder? Yes, I got pictures.

That was entertaining to say the least and although I’m betting there’s some trick or secret, I’m impressed he emerged uninjured and coherent, minus not being able to hear anything. There were also some people in the crowd with killer aim as he got nailed in the face with at least 3 or 4 large water balloons. I couldn’t remember if, or when, I’d been to a renaissance festival but it was fun, the shows were entertaining and the steak on a stake was delicious. I think I was also just as amused by the sheer number of people just there to attend who were dressed appropriately. The irony of it was seeing grown men or woman dressed head to toe in period correct garb but who totally ruined the ‘act’ by, say, talking on their so-not-renaissance-era cell phone. Ha!

The guys in Sierra Vista bought shiny new cones to start off the year and I hit them (the cones…). Lots of them. Sixteen of them, actually. After the first two competition runs, I didn’t have a clean run the rest of the day. Part of the lack of adjustment on my part was that I didn’t know where I was hitting all of them. On my second time only run I was surprised to hear I hit 4. No idea where. Regardless of the cone carnage, I still ran a 67.040 in comps that was good for 8th overall and 3rd in PAX with a 990 score [ Results ]. I wasn’t able to match that time on another run, cones or not, but was pretty consistent, running within 3-4 tenths most of the day.

I am hoping the front tires have 2 more events left in them, but I will be replacing them before the Evo School over Valentine’s Day weekend. I really don’t have a choice. Oh, and I also got another cool glass beer mug as a 2008 STX Open champ award and it’s currently displayed in my office next to the one from ‘07. Sweeet.

The last event of the year for the Sierra Sports Car Club and back to the airport we went. I managed 12th overall and 7th PAX, with 932 points. I also happened to be the second fastest car on street tires, behind only a ‘95 BMW M3 n STU. My times were 43.057 (+1), 43.125 (+1), 42.795, 42.734, & 43.406 (+1) for my competition runs and 43.177, 42.402 +1, 42.814, 42.875 +1, & 43.372 in time only runs. During my second heat I had another driver ride along and drive my car, he was interested in seeing how it performed as he is considering moving classes and cars next year, and I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to get feedback from an experienced and competitive driver when he asked about driving my car. He had some good pointers for me and we also talked about the car setup as well as driving style and how I could do less ‘fighting’ with the car. If you watch the video you can see that on my faster runs I was throwing the car around to make the last two gates, which cost me time and cones. We’ll see if I can apply some of the driving tips this weekend in Phoenix, and I have some plans for the brief off-season in late December and early January.

Photo credits to Rob Rockefeller

Back to the slip and slide lot for the second to last event of the year in Sierra Vista. I made the most of it, managing to escape with fastest time of the day (FTD) among the 23 or so cars competing. There were a few CSP Miatas hot on my tail, one of which even beat my best time of 50.056, but not without picking up a cone. My times were 50.550 +1, 50.545 +1, 50.798, 50.056, 50.086, 50.807 with the last two runs counting as time only trials. Results are not up yet so I am not sure what the gap was between me and the next best car and driver, but I know I went home with FTD and certainly will also PAX 1000 (1st place). The tires again performed exceptionally and after two events I have a good feel for pressures to start with and how much pressures will change with this setup. These are heating up just as quick as the old Falken 615s, but are not picking up as much pressure when out and are not overheating and turning into slicks. Good things on all three counts.

There is one more event in Sierra Vista this year and it looks at though we will get to end the year on the concrete at the airport. I hope that holds true since the last event I was able to preform quite well on less than stellar tires. I really want to see what I can do with these Dunlops tucked under the R’s fenders on the concrete.

Update: Results are up and in raw times I beat out two CSP Miatas which ran 50.734 and 51.369, respectively. PAX I beat out a DS BMW 135i by .923 with everyone else 1.4 seconds or more behind him.

Ok I lied. The August event in Tucson wasn’t the last one on the Kumhos. The Dunlops came in on Saturday and got mounted on Saturday, but I didn’t have time to test fit them Saturday evening. We were too busy dinner-partying it up with Craig and company. I wasn’t interested in finding out the hard way if the Dunlops will rub the front struts, so I opted not to throw them on the car. I don’t like these Kuhmos anyway so the quicker I get rid of them, the better. After this event, there isn’t much left of them anyway.

Anyway, the course was challenging and I again wrested with traction issues even with the tires at optimal pressures. Time for competition: 69.118, 68.705, 68.619, 68.869, and 68.871 and fun runs: 69.005 +1, 68.694, 68.337 +1, 68.249 +1, and 69.333. Results are not up yet, but I know I finished about a second and a half behind a competitive STU E36 M3, which is a bit more than usual.

I have been rolling some thoughts around my autocross efforts with this car, stemmed by some discussions on on the AZ Solo message board as well as the results from letting another STX driver take a shot in the R at the last Tucson event. Basically, I want to make the car more competitive, which will hopefully start with the better tires. I still can use some improvement in the driver area, but I’m also considering some suspension changes to setup the car as best as possible, to the extent of the class rules. We’ll see where this actually goes because obviously it will cost some money.

Edit: Results are up and I did better than I thought really: 17, 9 PAX, and 936. I am thinking that I will go up to Phoenix for their event this Sunday to try out the new tires, hopefully. Many folks are off at Nationals so the event should be light in attendance, and I’m going to miss the Tucson event this month.

I missed the last two Sierra Vista events (New Orleans in March, flu in April) and in since this one was back on the sticky concrete, there was no question about getting to this event.

Save for starting it and taking it on a short drive Friday night, the R hadn’t even moved since the Tucson event in April. The day before this event I finally got the patched tire back on in and checked everything out for the event. Despite the layout, the car was in tip top, minus being dirty, and drove perfectly.

All my comp runs were clean: 45.904, 45.786, 45.246, 45.273. TOs were frustrating, too aggressive on tires that were too hot: 45.590 (+1), 45.746, 45.920 (+1), 46.216. I really need to get a sprayer, the summer series events are only going to make this worse (the tire heat, not the aggressive driving). My best comp time put me at 17th and 10th, raw and PAX, with a 946. I was less than a tenth out of 9th, and slightly more than two tenths out of 8th. On the other hand, 11th was less than three hundredths behind me, a close shave.

Video:

Almost forgot, some pics I took at the event are here.

I’ve been slacking on the blog front, mainly because February has been extremely busy. Work has been hectic for two reasons, the first being upcoming deadlines on the project I am working on and the metric ton of work that needs to be completed before those deadlines come and go. Second, I’ve been figuring out the ins and outs of a work transition, as it is more than 95% certain at this point I will no longer be working from home starting next month. I am changing projects, changing teams, and changing what I do on a daily basis from a software engineering focus to a software vulnerability testing and evaluation focus. So I’ll be driving to the fort in Sierra Vista everyday, but I have the chance to learn and participate in some very interesting and cool (as in nerdy cool) things and get sent to all sorts of fun (as in nerdy fun) courses such as ethical hacker training. So I’m excited, but I have been very busy organizing things and getting as much done with my current work as I can before the transition.

Besides that, there was the SSCC autocross on the 3rd, which I did ok, sort of. Apparently there were some issues with the radios and the course and a lot of course deviations did not get called in and recorded, on my runs included. So I have no idea how I actually faired since I know my times on the results probably aren’t right. In addition, I had some battery with my camera issues so the in car video I thought I took didn’t really come out well. I did get some good pictures with my XTi. This has lead to design thoughts on a way to secure the charger to have it in the car running off the 12v power adapter. On the other hand, I have taken a step into further involvement with the Tucson folks and have designed a course which we will be using at the February event next weekend. It took some time and some input from other members, and of course, approval of the design for safety and feasibility, but hopefully it will be fun to run next Sunday. I’ll post the map with my usual post event ramblings.

Last weekend Summer and I spend the weekend in Bisbee, which is a small town about 90 miles southeast of Tucson. Bisbee was a copper town before the mines were shut down in the 1970s and now sort of straddles the border of a small arts community and an old west ghost town.

We went down on Saturday, attended the annual Chocolate Tasting, and stayed at the Gym Club Suites. The suites building was originally a YMCA, then was converted to an apartment building, and now is a hotel. The loft we got was excellent and had a small balcony with a nice view of most of the town.

On Sunday we walked around ‘downtown’ and checked out the shops and sights. We also went on a tour of the Queen Copper mine and rode down the tracks over 1000 feet into the mine, 600 feet underground. I didn’t bring the camera on the tour because I had no idea how rough the ride would be and how much possibility there was for the camera to get damaged. After all, before we got on the rail cars we were outfitted in bright yellow jackets and hard hats along with battery packs hooked up to lights. Let me tell you how flattering that outfit wasn’t.

Yesterday I dropped by the Tucson Animal Fair which Summer was working at, which provided some good photo ops.

It was basically a mass gathering of animal rescue shelters and services located in and around Tucson ranging from breed specific rescue foundations, to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, to various dog agility and dancing (yes, dancing) classes/groups.

That’s all for now, next stop: New Orleans with Summer and 5 of the Maryland VW kids. Louisiana has no idea what it is in for.

Back at the airport!

Wasted my first two runs missing gates. Oh well. Here’s video of my three clean competition runs and my first couple time only runs.

Finished 11th out of 37 in raw times and 8th overall in PAX. I also took some pics with my new camera and got some good action shots. They are posted here.

The last event of the year with the Sierra Sports Car Club. Fun for all, minus the one little scare of a Sunfire blowing a gas line and leaking it right at the starting line. Ahh, whoops. It didn’t cause a problem though, thankfully. First three runs I knew there was more time to be shaved, I knew the car had a sub 46 second run in it. I did not think that it had a low 45 run in it, so I was incredibly pleased with my effort on the final competition run. I ran 47.503, 46.483, 46.231, and 45.355 to finish fourth in raw times and second to a certain CSP Miata in PAX. (Results).

This weekend there is another event in Tucson that might be the last one I run for the year. I’ll need a full weekend with the car to do brakes (spare calipers have arrived!) and some other routine stuff that I want to get done before events pick up again in January.