Gaunt596 said:Led bars with some actual lenses in them will do a lot for distance lighting. the cheapie bars on amazon and elsewhere lack those, which is why they have great throw up close but no distance. IIRC Hella makes some relatively affordable bars with good optics in them.
read closer ;). The small bar in my bumper is a Hella pencil beam for distance lighting. The big curved bar is for flood and cornering.
Well well, I guess its time for some competition update. Today a few of the DC folks ran up to Harrisburg PA to try out the Susquehanna region's new huge venue, since we found out our event tomorrow is posponed due to the big storms coming.
The bonus for the small MR class was that Vaughn Micchie came down from vermont with his ultra-light Porsche 924S, which is one of the true "legit" Mod RWD cars in the country, in my opionion. And Shawn Roberts bumped from his usual PR class into MR to play as well. So there i was against two of the fastest RWD class rallycrossers in the country (both have had runner-up finishes at nationals and many challenge/divisional wins). I fully expected to get my ass kicked, basically. I know Shawn is always fast, and Vaughn killed all of us at East Coasts 2 years ago in some softer conditions.
The Susquehanna venue was very large and hard-packed field. Also very dry, so dust was an issue. I only brought four tires with me - two old Dmack gravels for the fronts, and two old Maxsports for the rear. They worked fine, but four gravels would probably have been preferable, I think. Oops, that's what I get for being lazy.
So anyhow, the morning course was set up very reminiscent of the old Summit Point "Big" course from back in the day. Very fast, very flowing, with a few hilly areas. In short, it was a "power course" I would have done poorly on with the M42 engine, for sure.
As usual, i came out of the box on the first run full-on, counting on my car control to keep me out of mistakes. For the first few runs i was clean and fast and jumped out ot a nice little lead as Shawn and Vaughn picked up some cones pushing hard to make up time. On the 3rd run, I came too hot off the fast transition and pitched the car full sideways into the "moon dust" on the outside and started to go around in a spin. Somehow I managed to go hard lock and out of the corner of my eye I noticed the outside cone wall was actually pointers (no penalty), and just clutch-kicked the car and somehow spun it back the other way, while taking out the whole wall of pointers and continued on. It cost me 3-4 seconds probably but no penalties. At lunch I had a 6 second lead on Shawn and almost 15 on Vaughn. So, that was pretty nice, and pretty unexpected.
The afternoon course was far different. No real uphill sections of note to use my power. Several very tight transitions, and a LOT of close cones. Usually I do fine on that kind of course, but on my first run my eyes got lost in an uphill "sea of cones" that I hadn't looked at well on the dusty drive through, and I ended up pointed at the wrong end of a pointer wall, about to be way off-course. Went both feet in and snapped the wheel and somehow managed to flick the car back to the right and then on the throttle hard to go back left and....wow, actually cleared it. But, it really slowed me down coming into a fast section, and the first afteroon run time was lousy. I also threw a second spare tire in the trunk to try to settle the rear end down. This usually works, and it did again. Just a bit too much spring rate in the back for an empty trunk.
Meanwhile, Vaughn had taken off the fancy Lithuanian gravel tires he was using in the morning and put on these fancier Belgian grass-track tires, which were super-gummy. The top dogs at nationals all carry a lot of funky tires to suit specific conditions.
After three runs Shawn had picked up 4+ seconds and Vaughn 6-7 seconds. And then last run was called, with me leading Shawn by 0.6 seconds, and he had beaten me on every afternoon run. Ugh. I decided running clean was the real key, so I hit the course and made a fully effort to keep my lines tidy and the car in line. Ran my best time of the afternoon by far. But Shawn was faster, and also clean. But....only 0.5 seconds faster. And so, I won by 0.166 seconds. Vaughn finished about 10 seconds back of us.
So, good event. And I'm pretty pleased I was able to beat these guys, since that's always a tall order. I think that brings my head-to-head record against Shawn over the years to something like 3 wins, 15 losses lol. Vaughn, I'm 2-2 against now, for what it's worth. The course and hardpack surface definitely helped me put down the M50 power, to boot. But still need to work on not making dumb mistakes. I feel like I make two major dumb mistakes at every event these days and have to drive extra-good to make up for them, which doesn't always work.....
--
sadly during the event one of our friends and long-time competitors blew the engine on his WRX (shocker, I know). Being 100+ miles from our neck of the woods, that was an issue. It's his daily driver. So Shawn says he could trailer it back , but his Miata is on gravels and he has no street tires with him. As luck would have it, when I changed tires at home, i just tossed my street tires in the truck since it was closer than the garage. And, e30 wheels fit Miatas. BUT I have pretty big tires on there. So we test-fit to see if it would work...and it did, barely. They had to set their suspension to full stiff to keep it from rubbing hard on bumps. So, Shawn headed out towing the WRX, and the Miata took off with Katie driving (hey, at least it has AC since it's a PR car). This is "rally family" in action, and why rallycross is great.
Euroweaves on a Miata? barely...
I ended up being only about a mile away from there yesterday helping my brother in law pick up a go kart. When the guy mentioned it, I was pretty sure you had just been there the day before. I was right. Awesome job on the win!
So here's a nice pic taken by somebody at the last event.
As to other rallycross stuff - this weekend was the Great Lakes National Challenge in Ohio, which I didn't go to due to already filling my quota this year of visits to Ohio. But who was there were, well, pretty much all the national contenders. England, Vaughn, Evan, Pete, Briana, and several others. More interestingly, our own Shawn Roberts decided to enter MR in his PR class Miata since PR didn't have much competition. Watching the times, looked like Vaughn pretty much had the win in the bag until he broke a shift linkage and lost 6 seconds. he finished 2nd to England. Shawn pulled off a 3rd place finish, beating the reigning national champion (Briana). Not that it matters, or that internet comparisons really work well, but having beaten Vaughn by 10 seconds last week (and Shawn by 0.1 seconds), I'd like to think I could have gone there and fought for the win. Who knows, maybe one of these years I'll go find out (the last time I rallycrossed at that event when it was the Great Lakes Divisional), I finished 2nd by 0.1 seconds. Maybe my car liked Ohio fields :) But more notably, this once again proves what I've been saying for years - that Shawn is possibly the best RWD class rallycrosser in this country. He ran a mostly-stock Miata up against some serious MR machines (Vaugh's sub-2000lb 924S, England's boosted Miata, Evan's boosted Miata, Briana's crazy Miata, Pete's oddball RX7, a couple e30s, and the Subaru-engined 914) and was right there at the top of the group. For years Shawn would beat me when he ran in MR locally, and it was pretty frustrating finishing 2nd time after time. But I'm pretty sure him being so fast is the main reason I got faster, so there's that.
On an unrelated note, we decided we are going to do STPR again this year, as some rally friends kindly offered us a couple rooms to stay, which makes it much more affordable. I didn't love STPR the first time (I like the more technical, lower-speed rallies personally), but maybe with more power STPR will be less of a drag. Guess we'll see. I have to order up some new gravel tires soon, to go with all these new 15" wheels....
In the meantime, decided after 5 or so years since my last real rattle-canning, it was time to sharpen up the front end of the car, which has been looking pretty grungy recently. So, after getting a big pack of sanding discs for cheap from Amazon, i got to work removing old stickers and several layers of paint...
Took me a while to figure out what shade of dark red I had used on the rest of the car and then a while to search out a couple cans of it...
Then some taping, and some matte black
Once all done, my daughter helped me cut some new vinyl....
And a new main logo for my friends at Condor Speed Shop, which I designed to go with all my band stickers on the roof :)
The girls were at the beach for the last few weeks, and while there they got me a father's day present, laser-cut out of PVC. Which is pretty cool. Have to find a place to hang it.
In reply to irish44j :
Vaughn was given (then-currently second place) John England's car to drive for a final run so he would not get a DNS. IIRC he said something to the effect of "How does he DRIVE that thing?" when we were talking and disassembling an 016 transmission.
When times get posted, do note that I remembered how to drive in the second heat and was faster than most 
After the morning runs I was so slow that I was 12th in a class of 11. I don't know what issues everyone else was dealing with, but I do know that the super light, super stinky Miata got a diff swap Saturday evening, in a downpour, because they thought their limited slip was holding them back vs. a welded diff, or vice versa. Really though, IMO the car was just all wrong, way too little unsprung weight vs. sprung weight, so it was not really very settled when on course. It's not the diff's fault that it had no grip out there. I did note that the morning course was super flowing, while the afternoon course had a few kinked turns and tight sections, and it was all right up my alley while everyone else was commenting on how difficult the course was. Oh well, I liked it.
Mizzad props to Roberts for kicking ass in his PR car while other people in heavily modified cars couldn't keep up.
Knurled. said:In reply to irish44j :
Vaughn was given (then-currently second place) John England's car to drive for a final run so he would not get a DNS. IIRC he said something to the effect of "How does he DRIVE that thing?" when we were talking and disassembling an 016 transmission.
When times get posted, do note that I remembered how to drive in the second heat and was faster than most
Mizzad props to Roberts for kicking ass in his PR car while other people in heavily modified cars couldn't keep up.
Funny, that's what I thought about Vaughn's car last weekend. And I actuallly OWN a Porsche 924S. Looking at the way he drove it at the Susquehanna event (even using his super-fancy tires vs. my old gravels), I kind of started to wonder if his car is really the answer or not, at least at dry events where traction isn't an issue. IDK.
Re: early vs. late runs - you're sounding like an autocrosser ;) At the Susquehanna event last week I had a monster lead (like 15 seconds over Shawn and Vaughn) at mid-day, thanks to a wide-open power course that the 924 and Miata could keep up with me on. In the afternoon, I squandered almost the entire lead on a much tighter "Miata course" and beat Shawn by 1/10th. I was driving well the whole time (other than one bad run), but the different courses made a huge difference. So, I hear you.
Re: diff changes at a rallycross. Hell, I hardly bother changing tires to suit conditions, and only even adjust air pressure occasionally. The thought of people changing diffs at a rallycross just makes me roll my eyes. Serious business lol.....
Re: Shawn. Yeah, we are all very thankful locally that he usually runs in PR rather than MR. You can't even know how stellar a driver he is until you work course for multiple years watching him go by in the other run group, looking like he's not even trying - while still going seconds faster per run than any other PR car (and most of the MR cars).
also, what is the "super-stinky" Miata? I mean, that describes most rallycross Miatas 
irish44j said:also, what is the "super-stinky" Miata? I mean, that describes most rallycross Miatas
That's the super light weight Miata that Brianne was borrowing. This Miata wasn't just gutted, it was partially tube-framed, had those solid octagonal rotors that I want to put on my GTI, had a rear mount radiator... basically if it didn't hold the steering wheel, pedals, wheels, or driver, and wasn't necessary by the rules, it was removed in the name of lightness. And, for some reason, they were running race fuel that didn't smell like any race fuel I'd ever smelled. Race fuel that I'm used to is sweet smelling because of all the lead and toluene. The stuff they were putting in smelled like "paint remover" times "Superfund site dumpster fire". I could tell when they were putting fuel in the car 50 yards away.
When he removed the hood for tech inspection, I swear he'd found a way to make paint stick to Saran Wrap.
Knurled. said:irish44j said:also, what is the "super-stinky" Miata? I mean, that describes most rallycross Miatas
That's the super light weight Miata that Brianne was borrowing. This Miata wasn't just gutted, it was partially tube-framed, had those solid octagonal rotors that I want to put on my GTI, had a rear mount radiator... basically if it didn't hold the steering wheel, pedals, wheels, or driver, and wasn't necessary by the rules, it was removed in the name of lightness. And, for some reason, they were running race fuel that didn't smell like any race fuel I'd ever smelled. Race fuel that I'm used to is sweet smelling because of all the lead and toluene. The stuff they were putting in smelled like "paint remover" times "Superfund site dumpster fire". I could tell when they were putting fuel in the car 50 yards away.
When he removed the hood for tech inspection, I swear he'd found a way to make paint stick to Saran Wrap.
oh, I thought that was her car. I remember hearing something about the engine being moved back in the car as well, but it being a Miata, can't say I really cared that much, lol. I love seeing the crazy builds using all the crazy tires, but also get a perverse enjoyment out of seeing them lose to comparatively "normal" cars that simply have better drivers. I"m sure Vaughn was pretty frustrated to get beaten so badly last week by a heavy stage rally car (with two spare tires in the trunk!) and a PR-class miata. The nature of extreme-built cars. Win by the sword, lose by the sword.
IDK, having driven Shawn's Miata I'm of the opinion that a moderately modified Miata should be damn near unbeatable at rallycross. And by that I mean some moderate weight reduction (nothing crazy), some moderate boost, and a good suspension. If my intent was simply to go win at rallycross, that's exactly what I'd do.
As someone who has sat behind my share of rally Evos running race fuel, I'm gonna have to disagree with you. It smells terrible and cruising behind an Evo running it on a long transit will result in a massive headache. ....
Maybe they were using the same stuff, then. C16 smells so good some people put it in their lawnmowers just for the olfactory effect.
I don't know if you ever had a chance to be around Sunoco 94, but it actually was kind of similar in smell to C16.
Knurled. said:Maybe they were using the same stuff, then. C16 smells so good some people put it in their lawnmowers just for the olfactory effect.
I don't know if you ever had a chance to be around Sunoco 94, but it actually was kind of similar in smell to C16.
The fact that you're so in to sniffing gasoline explains a lot 
In reply to irish44j :
i am not an enthusiast but i read things online...
Video is pending. Good news: I bought a VIRB X and mounted it to my roof. Bad news (for you): It needs a microSD card and I could not find one in time, and Miles hooked me up with GoPro hardware, so helmetcam is in effect.
Knurled. said:In reply to irish44j :
helmetcam is in effect.
In the category of "random things you find that make the internet kind of fun"....I was searching Google for a photo I took about 10 years ago at my first rallycross and I stumbled upon this little article someone wrote about the early days of my build, which is kind of fun.
Man, 100 pages of this stuff. crazy.
So let's see, what's new here at the 80s chateu.....
1. Ordered a set of new 15" Federal rally tires (for STPR)
2. Also picking up a second, slightly used set of the same tires from Jon Kramer, who used them for half of SOFR or so.
3. Dustin and Dan Yarborough swung by today on their way back from getting some cage work done at Ozgur's place and on the way back down to N.C. They dropped off these for me (which I bought down in NC off FB Marketplace for cheap):
15", 12lb Mini Cooper stock wheels. So now I have two sets of these (Pat Henry picked up a second set for cheap out in W.Va. for me, as well as the set of Integra wheels. So, basically I'm set for 15" wheelsets now.
And they picked up a bunch of my old 14" wheels (bottlecaps and weaves) for use on their Rally Golf. I kept a couple sets for rallycross as well
Made a Home Depot run, because wanted to test some stuff out on the car and make sure it was running well before the 2-day rallycross next weekend
And decided to do some cosmetics in the engine bay
Also helped Jason this week dispose of the Miata shell he stripped. So my trailer got to do another run to the scrapyard. You may recall the e34 shell got about $150 in scrap. Well, a stripped Miata only gets about $35 lol..
I'm also running wiring for a second horn button in the car. Right now only Jim has one on his side, which is fine for stage rally, but in rallycross when I need a horn to signify a down cone, I can hardly reach it. Since I don't want to get penalized for someone else's cone, time to put a button on my side too lol...
Some fresh Federal Federally G10 tires arrived today. Haven't used these before but the price is right and they've gotten good reviews from a lot of the guys up in New England who have been running them. Went with the 185/65/15 size, which will be about an inch taller diameter than our 14" sets, so that'll be nice to get a little more ground clearance. I'm also getting a second set of these from Jon Kramer, which he used for SOFR last month.
Side note: These tires weigh almost exactly 30 lbs each. The Mini wheels weigh about 12 lbs each by my scale. So, that's not a terrible combined weight.
In other news, got my hands on an old Dinan chip for the 413 DME (for free), so that will be a nice addition. Word is they are good for about 20hp/tq, with a lower peak tq rpm and a raised redline. I alreadly liked the M50, now I will probably like it more :)
Also put some new (cheap) Hella horns off Amazon on the car (since the OEM horns finally bit the dust), and added a 2nd horn button to my side of the car since Jim's is hard to reach in rallycross when I need to beep for a downed cone.
And this weekend is our big 2-day event. Weather looks totally dry and hot, so it promises to be a dusty and tiring event. The big news is 1) Andy and Mike Golden finally finished their 2ZZZ-swapped MR2 (about 200hp) so that may be very fast in our class, since they're both great drivers. 2) Nonack is brinigng the Merkur, and 3) the Helgesen/Stephen car has a new set of Maxsports on it and a new suspension (a clone of my suspension). So, they may be faster as well. 15 cars entered in class, should be a hell of a weekend1
In reply to irish44j :
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the Federal tires. I've been eyeing a set on eBay for a while now. Good luck at the rallycross!
In reply to irish44j :
How gummy is the rubber on those Federals and how are they for sidewall stiffness?
artur1808 said:In reply to irish44j :
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the Federal tires. I've been eyeing a set on eBay for a while now. Good luck at the rallycross!
hit me up on Facebook and I will give you a link to somebody who can get them to you cheaper than eBay
Knurled. said:In reply to irish44j :
How gummy is the rubber on those Federals and how are they for sidewall stiffness?
These are the soft compound ones and they are pretty similar to my medium compound Dmacks. Sidewall stiffness is just like most other real gravel rally tires, those people say these are slightly softer than some brands. There are substantially stiffer than any of the recaps (maxsport, indysport, etc.)
In reply to irish44j :
I wonder how they compare to the Black Rockets then... technically they are recaps but they are supposed to be recaps on rally carcasses.
I know Orion did not like the BRs' soft sidewalls.
Knurled. said:In reply to irish44j :
I wonder how they compare to the Black Rockets then... technically they are recaps but they are supposed to be recaps on rally carcasses.
I know Orion did not like the BRs' soft sidewalls.
IDK. I keep a pair of Maxsports on hand for my rear wheels in softer conditions, but otherwise I buy competition gravels (non-recaps), since most of my tires do double-duty on stage. I'm not one of those people who is gonna buy all kinds of funky grass and mud tires for different rallycross conditions. Rallycross isn't that important to me to spend thousands of dollars on tires the way some people do.
This weekend was DC's annual two-day rallycross, up at Panthera. With the weather looking hot but otherwise awesome, there was a big turnout of around 60 cars, and Mod RWD by far the largest class with 16 entries. In addition to the usual bevy of BMWs (e36 M3, e36, and 6-7 e30s) we also had Chris Nonack come out in his rally Merkur XR4Ti, Andy and Mike finally had their 2ZZZ-swapped MR2 ready to run, a turbo Miata was there, another MR2, and a few other random cars.
Upon arrival in Mooresfield, WV at the local Sheetz, ran into Eric and Neil, who inconveniently had their windows down when the sprinklers turned on and sprayed right into the car, lol
Then we all headed up and found the crowded paddock
The course was hot and dry - and DUSTY. There was a pretty good breeze going, but due to the fact that we used the "backside" course, which snakes back and forth up the hill, the main issue was running into your own dust.
From what we could tell, only Adam Kimmett was fast enough up the hill switchbacks that he outran his own dust in his STi. Shocked. Adam can outrun everything, including dust
With the sun and dust blowing, all the work stations and the timing station had their pop-ups in full effect.
The course wasn't all that much to my liking, honestly (we are limited as to where we can run by the terrain there, so it's not the course designers' fault), but still managed to do ok, though with a few cones. At the end of Day 1, I was in 3rd, a few tenths behind Eric Eisele and almost 12 seconds behind Nick - who as usual had his M3 in top form and drove totally clean and fast.
Then we rode around in the dust in the course van and had some beers and picked up cones
Then we cleaned up and went out and drank for a few hours at the local watering hole across from our hotel, minus Nick (who was rumored to be hand-washing his headband and watching saucy videos of his winning runs on the hotel room TV). As you can see, the Subaru (and Volvo) drivers throw down hard...and the bar staff were so impressed with their drinking accumen, they all showed up the next day to watch :)
Day two was a bit cooler (so, low 90s) and there was rain overnight so that kept down the dust but didn't make the course very slick, thankfully.
We used the front side (larger/power course) this time, which is my favorite since it mixes power elements, hard braking elements, and a lot of great-rythm technical areas as well. I got out to a good jump and immediately knocked a couple seconds off Nick's lead, and then another second. But then he got up to speed and basically started matching me for the rest of the morning, hanging onto about 9-second lead.
I mean, he has a headband. What am i supposed to do?
Meanwhile, Kimmett's trunk wouldn't latch, so many straps were used to tie it down since it kept breaking bungees.
In the afternoon I went out fast and got another 2 seconds back, cutting Nick's lead down to 6-7 seconds or so in one run. On the second run got another second back. Then Nick again got up to speed and started matching me. WIth two runs left it was about a 6-second gap. Against most of us, that could be workable due to cone hits and such, but Nick literally NEVER hits cones (none this whole season, at least called!), so the only way was to push super-hard and just try to be fast. I let Eisele ride shotgun just to see if some balance would help things (and really, at that point I was pretty sure it was beyond catching him, and I had a big lead over 3rd place), but I overshot a braking zone and lost some time while also taking out two cones and that was that. The gap went back to 11 seconds. On my last run I decided to just see how fast I could go running really clean lines, and I beat Nick by 3 seconds as he probably took it a bit easy to avoid any big mistakes. Guess I should have done that the run before, and might have gotten very close. Oh well.
Meanwhile, Eric kind of fell apart and I ended up beating him by almost 20 seconds, with Jeremy Sitar moving up to 3rd in his e36 328i.
So, that's that. I usually would be a bit annoyed, but it's hard to be annoyed losing to Nick. He has a very fast car, pretty new tires, and "cares" more than anyone there - to the extent that between runs when we're all goofing around and chatting he usually sits in the back seat of his (air conditioned) car and watches his previous runs a few times - so he KNOWS the course really well. When it's blind, I usually can beat him by a couple seconds a run, but once he learns the course he's at least as fast as me, and never hits cones. I drove pretty well, with a few mistakes here and there and more cones than I'd like (5-6 all weekend, I think), but that's the breaks. Maybe I should check my tire pressures more than once all day, lol.
I also used some REALLY old tires on Saturday that were not very good. I switched to some sharper (but still well-used) tires on Sunday and was quicker. I should have switched on Saturday at lunch, but it was really hot and I'm kind of lazy :) It's the financial tradeoff - I have a set of brand-new tires in the garage, but they're being saved for STPR. So, will continue to tear up mostly leftover tires from the last couple years until all the 14" tires are dead and I'm totally switched over to 15".
Minor side note: for the last couple events I've had a vague gasoline smell from the car, usually after turning it off - not really when running. Today it was significantly more noticeable. So I pulled off my underbody armor on the side with the fuel/brake lines, and there was some gas-saturated mud on top of it, which was odd. The HP fuel line showed no evidence of leak. The return line, however, looks like it's been rubbing against the rocker pinch seam for some time, and basically rubbed a tiny hole in it, which progressively got worse I guess (though still really tiny). Anyhow, when the car was turned off it would drip down slowly on the undertray and cause the smell (no dripping while running). It's nowhere near the exhaust (or really anything other than the rocker panel), so wasn't real concerned with it, but did a quick fix in the paddock nonetheless.
I found a little tiny piece of hose sitting in the trunk of the car and a hose clamp from the parts box and made a temp fix, which seemed to work:
So, I'll get some hardline and bend a new line in the near future. Otherwise, the car seemed to run fine other than the very noisy transmission bearings (still) and some rear-end clunking that I'll have to take a look for. My Dinan chip should arrive at some point, so that will be a 20hp/20tq bump with a bit lower peak torque RPM and higher redline, so that should be nice as well. Rumor has it the next event will be back at Summit Point (probably on the hardpack clay) so we'll see how that goes. We haven't run at Summit since I swapped, and the Barn Course there that we usually use is really suited to more powerful cars, in my opinion, since it has a couple large straights coming off slow turns usually - so we'll see if the M50 does better there than the M42 did last year.
All in all, as usual a fun weekend seeing all the "rally family" and the typical great competition in my class. It's gonna be a long wait until mid-August when our next event takes place. May have to find some other region to go do a tune-up at.
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