Thursday, January 31, 2008
New DIY Toy
So I thought it would be great to get more info on our video about our driving.....since the exhaust tells us when we are accelerating, I thought if we mounted a brake light in the cameras view it would help us find out how each of us were braking and dragging, or wimping out in a fast turn...so VIOLA!!! This is what we came up with.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
A little paint never hurt anyone...
So even with all the rain we managed to get some paint on the replacement fender...not too bad but it will do till we get another fender and get a full paint job...but paint never slowed us down before so at least there is a few less dents...hood will be here tomorrow so more pics tomorrow....
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Prepping for some Paint
Well with the recent mishaps of the civic's fenders, we decided to temporarily source a local fender and prep the hood and both fenders for some rattle can paint....we figured at least the color could all match in the front of the car can match....maybe we will paint the roof next...hmmmm
Friday, January 18, 2008
Now back to wrenching....
So here is the head count.
One dented fender
One bad wheel bearing
So luckily we were able to source both in about a day or so and great prices to boot.
As for the fenders we are going to remove both the fenders and the hood and paint them all the same color... at least Makofoto wont have to touch up our hood every time he wants to show someone pictures of our car
so at the end of the night, all the fenders and the hood are off and the wheel bearing and hub is replaced
One dented fender
One bad wheel bearing
So luckily we were able to source both in about a day or so and great prices to boot.
As for the fenders we are going to remove both the fenders and the hood and paint them all the same color... at least Makofoto wont have to touch up our hood every time he wants to show someone pictures of our car
so at the end of the night, all the fenders and the hood are off and the wheel bearing and hub is replaced
Late Tuesday night...
So late Tuesday night I get a call from Daniel who was Daily Driving the Civic that someone "bumped" into the fender of the Civic while parked in front of of his house. I rush home to grab all the tools i can think of to persuade the fender back to shape and head over to Daniel's place. Two hours later I arrive and we start pulling the fender. There doesn't seem to be any damage that has hurt our "go fast bits" so all is good and we were able to pullit out enough to not interfere with the wheel turning. Now our poor civic have even more dents. =( maybe its time for a Show Style Paint job.
Monday, January 14, 2008
2008 Season opener
This is so neat living out here now and being able to go from the end of one season straight into the next season the following month and have 70 degree weather to boot (albeit a little windy).
The weekend was beautiful for January. The run group set up didn't really allow enough time to do the tire testing that we had wanted to do, so I ended up running the morning session on the old set of tires and mounting the new set in the afternoon.
Will Kalman put together a wonderful, flowing and technical course that showed it's difficulty as my times were still dropping even after 9 runs. The Civic felt very good and we went fast, finishing the day 1/10 behind Leslie Cohen. It was nice talking to Leslie and she test drove our car and told us that our car lacks grip, both in front and the rear, but she is on the 16" rims/tires.
I swapped the new tires on for the afternoon session and was never able to get back to the original time I ran in the morning. I was almost 2 seconds slower in the afternoon. Jason later noticed that I had mounted all the tires backwards. Oops :(
Sunday arrives and my alarm doesn't go off, so Jason wakes me up. Fine way to get a start to the first event. It's a big day. Steve Ekstrand isn't at the event, Paul Whitehead isn't running the Civic and Kyle shows up in an 89 Civic with an absolutely drop dead gorgeous paint job - you could see the paint reflecting, no, glowing in the sunlight. Ken was also registered in STS in his Civic. What a change from last year.
The course is backwards from Saturday with a few twists. Will has put together a tricky course that would take many more runs to figure out what's the fast way. On my first run, on one of the key turns, I enter with my apex cone in sight, then I lose sight of it. By the time I regain site, I'm 20 feet too far away. Minor oops. The run is dirty and worthless.
I spend two more runs trying to go faster and don't beat my first run raw time. After my last run, I'm only about 1/10 faster than Jason and I know the car should have at least another half second in it, so I wait and watch to see if Jason can get a good run in. Unfortunately, Jason isn't able to capitalize on this and we wait now for Ken Motonishi to take his last run to see what the final order is going to be. I see brake lockup during his run and can only wonder if he would still go faster. In the end, the margin of victory is .011 seconds and Ken doesn't even have his car set up properly.
It's nice to have the win, but I'm still wondering what I did wrong because I know the car has more speed in it. It's not till we are packing up that we figure out that the shocks were never set to firm, so we raced on street settings. Guess we learned our lesson on pre-race checks. LOL.
Fun but tiring day with all the delays for the day. Independent of the wind difficulty, it just didn't seem very organized compared to normal events.
The weekend was beautiful for January. The run group set up didn't really allow enough time to do the tire testing that we had wanted to do, so I ended up running the morning session on the old set of tires and mounting the new set in the afternoon.
Will Kalman put together a wonderful, flowing and technical course that showed it's difficulty as my times were still dropping even after 9 runs. The Civic felt very good and we went fast, finishing the day 1/10 behind Leslie Cohen. It was nice talking to Leslie and she test drove our car and told us that our car lacks grip, both in front and the rear, but she is on the 16" rims/tires.
I swapped the new tires on for the afternoon session and was never able to get back to the original time I ran in the morning. I was almost 2 seconds slower in the afternoon. Jason later noticed that I had mounted all the tires backwards. Oops :(
Sunday arrives and my alarm doesn't go off, so Jason wakes me up. Fine way to get a start to the first event. It's a big day. Steve Ekstrand isn't at the event, Paul Whitehead isn't running the Civic and Kyle shows up in an 89 Civic with an absolutely drop dead gorgeous paint job - you could see the paint reflecting, no, glowing in the sunlight. Ken was also registered in STS in his Civic. What a change from last year.
The course is backwards from Saturday with a few twists. Will has put together a tricky course that would take many more runs to figure out what's the fast way. On my first run, on one of the key turns, I enter with my apex cone in sight, then I lose sight of it. By the time I regain site, I'm 20 feet too far away. Minor oops. The run is dirty and worthless.
I spend two more runs trying to go faster and don't beat my first run raw time. After my last run, I'm only about 1/10 faster than Jason and I know the car should have at least another half second in it, so I wait and watch to see if Jason can get a good run in. Unfortunately, Jason isn't able to capitalize on this and we wait now for Ken Motonishi to take his last run to see what the final order is going to be. I see brake lockup during his run and can only wonder if he would still go faster. In the end, the margin of victory is .011 seconds and Ken doesn't even have his car set up properly.
It's nice to have the win, but I'm still wondering what I did wrong because I know the car has more speed in it. It's not till we are packing up that we figure out that the shocks were never set to firm, so we raced on street settings. Guess we learned our lesson on pre-race checks. LOL.
Fun but tiring day with all the delays for the day. Independent of the wind difficulty, it just didn't seem very organized compared to normal events.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
What that sound back there?
So towards the end of the practice on Saturday, Stephen mentioned that there was a different sound coming from the rear of the car. We couldn't quite put our finger on exactly what it was so I marked it on my list of things to do...Race day passed and I don't remember any sounds but maybe thats because our exhaust is so loud that you would have to be off the throttle to hear any noises. So since we usually are punishing the little pedal on the right I didn't hear anything. However on the way how there was a weird rubbing like noise coming from the rear of the car but I thought maybe it was the 6 tires in the car. I got home and inspected and nothing was rubbing. I emptied the car and drove around the block and isolated the sound on left wiggles and silence on right wiggles. Definitely a bearing!!! so here we go back on the wrench horse. Time to put the gloves on and fix this thing...
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