CSCC Champ Event ~ May 27, 2007

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From the Co-Drivers Seat...

With the changes from the practice day I was very eager to get on the track for sundays competition. As usual the course was run backwards and it created a very interesting start. What we decided to do is take it nice and easy to line up that car for a stragiht shot at the timing lights and maximum trap speed through the timing lights.

Over all I felt I did a good job of sticking to the line that we determined to be the fastest and identifying the places I needed to look ahead and the cones I needed to make sure I was right on top of. When all the dust settled I finished in 8th place which was honorable for me but definietly wanting more. Stephen on the other hand was able to bring it all together for a great 3rd place finish.

Going back looking over the video a definte place I felt I was falling behind Stephens pace is in my left turn. It looked like I was entering too slow making my ext much slower killing my time quickly. I will have to continue review to see how i can make sure that I am quicker there. My slalom line is better but still not fast enough, but better nonetheless.

So overall great weekend with the help from JLB motorsports on the practice day and Moe from Hyper16Valve on both days making the motor go as fast as it can and make sure it was tip top shape between every run.

Pics from the event:

Cats out of the bag!!!

Well as you can tell there has been alot of changes in the car in the last month. Lets take a look at where the mostly were. Can you see them. The beauty of it all is that you cant even tell what chages have been made, well sort of.



Lets just go through the changes one by one. Before I do that let me introduce one of the coolest guys we have meet on this journey towards STS domination. His name is Moe, and he is from Hyper16Valve. He specializes in Honda performace pre-1996. He did all the work for us and he did it in record breaking time. Also thanks to Adam N. from the Porsche Club of America with hooking us up with Moe.



First big change or better said first removal was of the 27lbs a/c system. Every hose, bracket, pulley, belt removed






Next up we changed the timing belt and the tensioner using all new hardware to make sure that there is no question this timing belt was going to go another 233,xxx miles.




After that we had the water pump, the intake manifold and the head gasket changed. All pieces were replaced with the exact honda specified parts to make sure that we could be compliant to all the rules of our class.




Lastly we went ahead and replaced the unknown milage clutch with a OEM Factory replacement piece, along with the throw bearing.



Overall the past week or so drving the car breaking in all the new parts have been great. With all the new additions it made driving the car this past weekend a blast. Ill will be covering my side of the race in the post with the dual screen video.

Thanks again to Moe@Hyper16Valve and Adam N. from PCA for all ur direction and help, and I hope we werent to hard on you Moe, Rules suck but following them is not optional in the racing that we do and we cant thank you enough to coming to the track to tune the car on the fly between runs. Your the Man!!!

Big expectations go south

This post is coming out late, but I'm going to date it for the evening of the event.

Championship day comes around after a fairly successful practice. Both of us are feeling good about the car and feel confident that we'll be competitive against the other STS drivers.

We do our walks, taking time analyze the possible lines on this wonderful course that was designed by Guy Ankeny. It was a course that had wide open lanes, allowing many choices of lines, so while it looked like it was more of a road race course rather than an autocross course, I felt that it was in fact a fairly technical course. Lot's of high speed entry turns that pinched you on exit but then opened out onto a long section of full throttle acceleration.

The first group gets ready to run and Jason and I report for work. After our work assignment, we return to the car to find Moe under the hood. He has all the plugs out and is doing a compression test on all the cylinders. Kinda funny to see this happening on race day. All is well with the car. We have Moe's blessing.

We go out and have a terrible first run, coming in about 2 seconds slower than Jason. Towards the end of a fast and bumpy slalom, I feel like the tail gets bounced off line and I find myself facing the wrong direction and have to correct. Here's a classic picture that you may not see very often. I'm steering left, but the right rear wheel is in the air.



Anyhow, Paul Whitehead seems to come from nowhere and puts 8/10th on the me. By the end of the day, I end up with only 1 good run as the back end bounced me off line in the slalom for the other two runs. Maybe it's something I did, but right now I have no idea what that might be.

We check out Paul's car and chat for a while. Our basic components are virtually the same since his car was built by Chris Shenefield also. The only visible difference besides ride height was the use of the new 16" Bridgestone RE01R tires. It looks like it may be the tire to have. We'll have to wait and see.

I finish 3rd and Jason finishes 8th for this event. Need to find more speed...

Discovery at practice

A lot of changes have happened in the last few weeks to our car. I'm sure Jason will provide the specifics about what's changed to the car. Moe has been hard at work fixing the car (not upgrading).

Given Jason's feedback from driving the car on the street, I was looking forward to a car that would feel and drive very differently. The anticipation was killing me. I was so excited.

We get to the practice nice and early to get ready, walk the course and go to work on course. After our work assignment, it's time to take the first run. Moe has come by to check out the scene and plans to stay till around lunch time. Jason gets ready to go out and we put on the tires that were freshly mounted since we corded the last set. These were used tires from a friend that had nearly full tread on them.

On the very first turn of the first run, the car was pushing and it was not how the car felt on the street with the 'old' tires. The car continued to push the rest of the way around the course. Maybe it's just the old 'new' tires that have oxidized and just need to be scrubbed. I take my run and it's pushing very badly. When Jason goes out again, we try spinning the wheels to burn off some of the oxidized rubber. It doesn't seem to help at all. The good news is that the car feels like it has enough power to pull the car off line in a turn when you get back on the gas.

We have to figure out what's wrong with the car and why it's behaving this way. With the changes that have been made in the last few weeks, we expected the car to feel great. We suspected the tires but weren't sure. We talked about it and Daniel came to the rescue with the suggestion to try the old tires and see how the car feels before we make any other changes, so we did. The car felt better with the old tires, so it wasn't anything else that has been done. Now for the tough decision. It's almost 11:30 on Saturday and what tires are we going to run tomorrow and what do we do with the rest of the practice? If we stay on these tires, we'll be creamed tomorrow and we aren't sure if we'll be able to get another set of tires mounted in time.

Jason makes a few calls and JLB Motorsports comes to the rescue. They are open and will mount tires for us immediately, so we start the trek from California Speedway to Jason's house, pick up the wheels and tires, go over to JLB, get the tires mounted and head back to Fontana. All in all, not too bad. We did the round trip in about 2 hours. When we arrive, no cars are running. We see the super fast Berry-mobile on stopped on course with a bunch of people around it. It turns out that shortly after we left, they stopped for lunch and the Berry Evo was the 2nd car out in the afternoon, so nobody else had run either.

We put the replacement tires on and get in line to take our first runs in the afternoon. The car feels way better. It now turns in. The car still gets pulled off line in a turn when you accelerate, however, not as much as when we were on the shitty tires. We have made a little progress. However, the tail is still absolutely buttoned down, so something is still not set right. We try playing with the rear tire pressures, going down into the mid 20's and up as high as 50 to try things. The tail is starting to rotate at 50 psi in the rear - a little more progress. It's still not right and we are still off the pace, so after further discussion, Jason suggests that we raise the rear to put more weight on the front. Now we make a little more progress. the tail is now rotating a little more. It's the end of the day before we get to this point, so it's too late to try and make more changes, so we try to get a little seat time in with this setting to get ready for tomorrow's points event.

Moe had such a good time that he decided to stay until almost the very end of the day. He took lots of photos and went for a couple of rides with other people. I think he's hooked and he will be back.

All is quiet - for a while

It's been a while since we've had an update. I'm hoping that this is the lull before the storm. There won't be any events until the end of this month and the car is scheduled for some preventive maintenance that is probably long overdue for a car with 233,000+ miles on it and a questionable service record from the prior owner.

We'll have an update probably shortly after the next event. Hopefully it will be a good update - both for the car and our performance at the event.