Can you hear me now?

Jason and I head down to San Diego in search of more seat time in preparation for the National Championship in Topeka. The Qualcomm lot in San Diego is supposed to have similar traction to Topeka, so it would be a good place to prepare ourselves.



Rumor has it that Ken will show up in his Civic to run STS also - and he does show up. It looks like it is going to be a fun showdown. Our car is ready and Ken gets ready by adding extra plates in to his super trap exhaust to quieten his car down for the sound restriction at Qualcomm.



Jason takes his first run and comes back with a decent time. No surprises. I take my first run and finish the run with a decent time and while in grid getting Jason ready, the first surprise comes in - I'm over the sound limit. Now the mad scramble starts. Jason adjusts the exhaust tip to point away from the sound meter. He takes his second run and is fine. I take my second run and finish about 4/10 behind Ken, so I think the hunt is on. But while we are in grid, we find out that I'm over the sound limit again. It's do or die now. We pull out of line and Jason puts on the 'quiet' exhaust that we use for the street.



Jason goes out for his third run. His third run comes in around a second slower and I'm thinking something is wrong. After talking to him, it's the exhaust. It appears to be that much slower in terms of performance. I take my third run and I'm quite a bit slower as well - though no sound problems - probably because I lose the back end right before the sound meter and DNF there, so I wasn't on the throttle when I passed the microphone. Good for sound, not so good for trying to chase Ken.



Jason finishes his fourth run uneventfully. Unfortunately, running the 'quiet' exhaust appears to have taken us out of contention. I take my fourth run and manage to go a little faster with the quiet exhaust, but nothing close to the normal time. The annoying and amusing thing is that the report comes back that I'm over the sound limit again. All my run times are disqualified.

It's frustrating. The car has been legal in this configuration at San Diego all year without any problems with sound. Today, we had lots of trouble. When we talked to other competitors, it appears that a lot of drivers also had a problem. Cars that have run here without issue for 4 years with no changes, failed today.

The microphone was placed on a section where we were flat out at the top of second. Other times, it was accelerating, but not at the top of second. It also sounds like the sound may be caused by the intake, not the exhaust. Grrr!

Here are a few photos from the days event. Thanks to GGCADC for the great shots!!!



















Lastly LOUD Video from the event...Camera courtesy of Cam-FX.com


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Click to play

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Night of the Living Dead ~ Fontana CA

Welcome to the annual Night of the Living Dead held at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. This is the third NOTLD that I've attended and I have not enjoyed the first two. Like last year, we run almost at the tail end of the event, which pretty much means that we will finish very late. Last year was better than the first year because the car had extra lighting and we got a lot of attention - enough that we got some attention BEFORE this event about the extra lights - even from competitors that were not going to be attending this event.

Jason had sent me pictures of the light bar and lights, but this is the first time I'm seeing the car in person. The lights look incredible. Baja Designs has a really nice set up with these LED lights. Rally Innovations fabricated the light bar for us. Take a look at the photos to see how good the car looks.




















This time, I approached this event a little differently. Night events are not my strength with weaker night vision, so I just decided to have some fun and try to go fast. The course design helped. It had key turns that were critical to leading into the fast sections, so you really had to put the whole run together to get a good time event. At the same time, the course was straightforward enough that you could tr to memorize the key points. With that in mind, Jason and I walked a couple of times to try to memorize the course in advance. I felt that the lighting from the inside shining out was better this year compared to years past.

After the walk, we had plenty of time to kill, so we went off to have a pleasant, relaxing dinner before coming back to the Speedway. We still had many hours before it would be our turn to drive, so we hung out, talked about stuff and I also had a chance to meet some of Jason's Honda experts that have been providing behind the scenes technical advice.









It was around 12:30 before we got ready to drive. Jason goes out and makes a pretty good run and comes back with very good feedback on the course. The tires are a little cold and the tail is loose. I go out and miss a key apex, so I try to tighten my line to get back on my chosen line. That sends the tail out and I'm scrambling to regain control. In the process, I drift off course and DNF. I keep going through the rest of the course and miss a second key apex and slide around again. At least the tires are no longer cold.

I lay down a good second run, but it's dirty. At least I'm starting to feel more comfortable with driving at night. Jason takes his 3rd run and almost matches my raw time. I take my 3rd run and try to go flat in the back wallom as we had planned. However, I'm late and get out of shape and DNF again. Instead of trying to avoid a DNF and take out a wall (which would make my time worthless anyway), I elect to go around the outside of the wall and leave it intact. On my last run, I make a few mistakes in the key areas leading up to the fast sections and end up almost a whole second off my fast time, but it's clean. Night driving is still difficult for me, but it wasn't so bad after all.

At the end of the night, Jason finishes 2nd and I'm 3rd. Not a bad night out (actually pretty good for me). We head out, grab some food and head off to bed. It's almost 5AM before we get to bed.

Here is the video...

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Click to be dazzled


Click to be dazzled