Playing with the Porsches - Not!

Well, today is Fathers day and I get to do whatever I want, so I chose to attend the PCA OCR autocross held at El Toro. Jason wasn't able to attend because he had an appointment with his father. We have a set of dead tires that are unusable at CSW, so I figured we'd try them here since it is so much grippier and put the race set on for the final timed runs to compare car handling.

Jason and Daniel have been working on the car and told me to expect some changes. In the mean time, since the last event, the rear bushings have finally been replaced with good bushings, stainless steel brake lines have been installed and the rear drums have also been worked on. The car is almost done. I had been busy enough at work that I really didn't have time to start thinking about the event until Friday afternoon, when Jason was dropping hints about changes.

After walking the course, it turns out to basically be a mini road course. It looked like it would be fast enough to spend a good 50% of my time in 3rd gear. The slalom was spaced so far apart that I figured I'd be flat going through it. What I hadn't figured on was that I was already on the rev limiter going IN to the slalom, so instead of being flat, I still had to slow down.

We had spent so much time in 3 gear and we were going so fast, on my first two runs, I missed the slow turn that was thrown in and blew straight through it. I had 'forgotten' that I no longer have Porsche brakes and can't stop like I used to, so I had to finally accept the fact that I had to brake way early in order to not go off course.

By the end of the third run, my oil light was flickering while I was idling in line for my last morning practice run. I checked the oil and it looked like it was still full, so I decided to take my 4th run for the morning. At the end of the run, as soon as I passed the finish, the engine died with the oil light on again. I let the car keep rolling for a little while and it restarted with the oil light still flickering.

Ken Motonishi was there, so I asked him about the problem. I also talked to Dale and Jason too. Ken referred me to Bret Norgaard and after a brief consultation, I decide that it's not worth running the Civic under these conditions and risk blowing up the engine, so I sit out the rest of the day and instead, get sunburned!

In hindsight, I should have swapped cars and run my GTI. Oh well.

Oh yeah, the good news - The shitty tires work at El Toro, so we can save them for practice events at El Toro. The other good news, the car now feels like it works. Turn in was very crisp and I actually hit cones instead of it drifting around the course. We are finally getting close. Yippee!