498 miles and counting

Moe wanted 500 miles on the engine before we attended the first race and was trying to put as many miles as possible on the engine prior to this practice event.

On Saturday morning, I stopped by to pick up the car from Moe's place and we drove to El Toro, about 20 minutes away. When we parked the car in El Toro, the trip meter was reading 498 miles - close enough to start racing.

Jason and I have been anticipating this event for the last week and it's finally here! A couple of people were impressed that Moe was able to do a full engine rebuild and be ready in 2 weeks. Max was announcing that our engine was rebuilt in 7 days every time one of us pulled up to the line - very funny if you were there.

Leslie Cohen showed up in her Civic and we were treated to a display of national caliber driving. She was beating up on the entire field - not just the Civics - big time. I had a chance to ride with her on the left course and see how well she drives. Wow! Now if only I can repeat what I saw...

The morning was uneventful, Jason and I did our runs on the right side and it was clear that everybody else had a raised rev limiter. We had to shift into 3 several times and the others only hit their limiter maybe once. We found out later that one of the Civics had the rev limit raised to a crazy 8900 rpm. It was nice to just go and drive and not worry about the car mechanically.

In the afternoon, Moe was satisfied with the engine and starting tweaking the car a little. He had noticed that the other Civics were running advanced timing, so we started playing with it too.

I liked the new timing and found that I was hitting the rev limiter earlier than I expected and there were a few places that I didn't shift because I wasn't expecting to need third. On subsequent runs, I did shift into third.

Both Jason and I liked the way the car was performing.

At the end of the practice, we went to hang out at Max's before dinner. We had a chance to review the video from the practice event. When Moe heard me on the rev limiter, one of his comments as he jumped out of his seat was "Get off the rev limiter" and "shit dude". You had to be there.

Moe was also telling everybody how I put a wheel off the road on the shakedown run earlier in the week and that I scared him. I wasn't familiar with the road, so it was a light (at least to me - no tire squealing on all season 165 width tires), no risk drive through the Canyons, so he picked up the nickname of 4/10ths. We'll have to see if the nickname will stick over time.

Great day. Now on to the real event on Sunday.