'90 Mazdaspeed Miata Rallycross Project

Google Maps says it is 235 miles and a bit under 4 hours, which is less time and distance than I-96 Speedway. Heck it is only ten more miles than Smoke & Mirrors Rallycross Park was and my record time to there was 2 hours 57 minutes. (In the Golf. Man that was an awesome car for covering ground quickly)

When I entered the lat/long coordinates in my GPS it gave me some really weird directions that involved a bunch of surface streets. Garmin must be on the take from some truck stops or something, it does that crap to me every time I drive to Michigan, too. And it tells me to take the turnpike all the way to I-75, when getting off at I-280 is faster, less time, and much lower tolls... So this time I am going to say berkeley you Nobu, I do this myself.

Relevant to thread: Evan, I'm bringing the impact, a torque wrench, and my special spline drive socket. Anything else I should bring? I'll be stopping in at the Batcave and then stopping in at work tomorrow before leaving proper.

Oh yeah, I named my garage Teh Batcave. Don't know if I mentioned that to you. I'm also bringing my tent but if it is going to be as hot as I think it is I might see if I could slum it in ZB's hotel room too because running water is awesome.

Yeah, not sure of your route from that direction. We went through Cumberland when we went out to the Speedway in 2014, IIRC. Hell, most of us are about 3 hours from this venue and it's our "regular" site lol....

Also bring quarters, lots of quarters, to pay for test and tune laps ;)

Ha! The main resident of the Batcave came from Cumberland.

That's part of the reason why it's called Teh Batcave. Dr. McNinja is from Cumberland and he fantasizes about being Batman. IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW

In reply to Knurled:

Can't think of anything else to bring. I left my usb/serial cable at Bitzer's and can't find my Bluetooth so I guess I can't do any tuning on the way there.

irish44j wrote: One of our local MR e30s just had a major electrical fire under the hood today (coil wire shorted on something and fried everything nearby). Unfortunately for all of us, he's one of our back-markers. Meanwhile, we could not get Nick's M3 sorted out in time so he's gonna codrive with someone else in MR. And Orion has a pinched neck nerve and isn't coming. The MR field is thinning.... See you guys up there tomorrow and drive safe. Evan, if you leave at 830 I want to see if you beat us there (that's when we're leaving too, from the other direction)...

What?! Who?

I didn't place so well in Frostburg (9/12) but it was a lot of fun. I didn't take many pictures but here are a couple.

For fun I calculated the times for the whole class without cones and I would have been first in raw time. I guess I need to stop hitting cones.

EvanB wrote:

Or try drag racing

You were trucking indeed though. Of course, it's easier to get good times when you don't actually go around the cones

In reply to irish44j:

I only hit one or two head on...the rest were with the back end.

Looks like it was fun!

Evan had more fun opening beer bottles on e30 hoods than actually driving ;)

Before and after.

It may have mangled but it did its job as the radiator stayed undamaged.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/WBeBtuX_mQ4

Language warning.

Final MR run of the weekend! Finally figured out how to drive the car.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/xqOeC0pfIBo

Thanks again Evan for letting me drive your car again, it rocked!

you guys need taller cars This ain't autocross!

Hey Evan I had a thought. You mentioned that you think the Englands' car has much lighter steering. You have greasable upper jall joints which have a lot more friction than OE ball joints.

Possibly, they didn't really seem to make a noticeable difference when I first installed them though.

That pic makes me think of something I un-did on my car: camber. With camber plates I found that my front end was pushing/sliding through corners because the outside edge wasn't biting. Once I took them off (going from 2.5 to about 1 negative) it turned in much better. WIth the Miata camber curve and all the negative camber it gets in turns and under squat, I almost wonder if you raised up the rear end (and perhaps the front) to get your camber more toward vertical, if you'd get the rear end to "stay in" better and bite on corners - since you said that most of your cones were with the back of the car.

Just a thought - I know jack about Miatas but that photo made me think about it.

The weird thing about the Miata rear suspension is just how much toe change there is. It toes in a lot under compression. IIRC the toe adjusters are maxed out in the toe-out direction and there is still something like .4" static toe-in, which is kind of odd since it sits higher than stock. But, eh, it works.

There are things I'd do Differently if I was doing a Miata, but then there are also a lot of things that I'd do Differently with an RX-7. The problem with that, speaking from the RX-7 side, is that the things I want to do Differently are damned hard because none of the bits I'd need actually exist, which is why I did things the way I did in the first place.

I note that Leon seems to have no issues with negative camber, and I never really noticed a change on loose surfaces in the RX-7 so I set it up to be okay on asphalt. Maybe the BMW has other characteristics that make the camber change more profoundly affect handling?

Knurled wrote: But, eh, it works.

Yeah it does. Doesn't sound like the suspension geometry was a limiting factor in the driver's performance at this event.

It definitely was not. There are a few cones that I know I hit fair and square but I have a feeling most of the ones I hit were from rock spray, so mudflaps would have been an improvement. And I lost abour four seconds from having my first run scrubbed and replaced by a really bad run, and when the 190E died on course and got me red-flagged, my rerun was significantly less good, so that hurt there, too.

Ifs and buts, ifs and buts!

I was mostly talking about Evan, who said he hit all his cones with the back of the car lol.

As to rock spray....In 3 years running here, the only car I've ever really seen do it was Nonack's 300+hp Mustang, which had giant all-terrains on the back, no overhang, no flaps, and unleashed tidal waves of gravel out of turns. I don't recall any of the other Miatas having mud flaps either (except Jason's) and they weren't taking down cones with rocks. Even the corner we were working all the cars were directly pelting the outside cone with rocks and it never went down except on actual hits. YMMV though.

Whatever I hit the cones with it was near the back of the car since I only had a couple that I knew I was hitting. Either way it was a learning experience on the gravel.

I knocked over cones plenty of times with the RX-7 on dirt.

One thing that I forgot to express was the unusual burnout box aroma after every run. This is something I am used to from hanging around at dragstrips but not something I have ever experienced at a rallycross.

Not sure what it means but this car is one of the ones in timing that we knew had a pretty good chance of double tripping the timing lights from lingering dust.