Tire Lifting Monster Car Fire Sauce: HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED

Mission One: Spit Flames
We had the 2step backfiring like a fat guy that just ate an incredibly well hung baby. Fire = cool. Cool = 8psi of boost at 2300 rpm. The result? TOO MUCH POWER. Wheelspin city, population: us.

Mission Two: Massive Wheel Lifting Grip
We tuned in the shocks a bit, and ended up getting the car well balanced. 16psi of force fed turbocharged fury? NO PROBLEM. Doing so while in a turn? BAD NEWS BEARS. More wheelspin city, and we just moved in downtown.

Anyways, Dave started off by hitting cones left and right (and up but not down). I took the first seat for the 2nd heat and ended up keeping 2nd place, trailing the Chris Travis by a lot. Dave ended up clean in the afternoon and passed me by .114, and Janusz is behind me by .4 (I think).

In other classes:
DSP: Chris and Mike are also in the Failtown bound boat, trailing Alex's car with Eric Campbell the ITR convert leading by lots (last I knew).
FSP: Quag is in 4th (I think?). Neil trails 1st.
DS: Scott's raindance fails and he drops from .8 lead in 1st to about .1 behind in 2nd. Chang and Matt continue to struggle. Chris thinks they need shock therapy. I'd agree.
SM2: Paul drops from 2nd to 3rd, but is pulling the fast raw times. Mike Condict went from conical habit to cleaning out high 50's, giving him the .3 lead over paul (but behind Fineberg by lots).
STX: Scott's friend is in 2nd. I have no idea how or why as Scott has not given me an update on his friend. What kind of friend is that?

Finally, I love food. Seriously. It's so good. 'Bout to get some right now. Finger Fucking Lakes... mmm mmm good.

-PJ

The Journey: Middle Finger Lakes

The Armada, bringing Dave, Paul, Jenna, and I (along with one trophy hungry 240sx) is on the way to Finger Lakes, NY for the 2008 Finger Lakes ProSolo. Clear skies above, hilly mountainous roads beneath. This is way better than sitting in an office filling out the cover sheets for CMM reports (yes, I got the memo).

So, it looks like we'll be on time for practice starts, but it seems as though it won't matter since some shitty weather looms on the horizon (although right now it's fucking beautiful in front of us). Yeah.... dry starts will not give us any setup data for wet.

Anyways, I'll probably report back once we're done with practice starts and grilling by the campfire tonight. All you people that wussed out and didn't come to this oh-so-close-by ProSolo are really missing out regardless of what the weather brings. Beer, racing, and fire. Fuck yeah.

-PJ

I Conely Wanted One...

First off, wtf is up with people hitting brakes on DOWNHILLS. FUCK YOU BITCHES! Drive fast, take chances.

We're on the way home to CoWnnecticut, trophyless, yet conefident. The Car handled well as we made small adjustments to shock rebound and conepression. There's conely one problem: I bitch slapped some orange and threw away the 4th place trophy position. Ah well, the scratch time was hoe-kay.

Final results are up at http://www.scca.com/popup/raceresult.aspx?event=12144&file=311
The jist of it is: Dave and I got beat by some Evos. Chris and Mike experienced technical difficulties, yet Chris gained time by tip-toeing through trying not to flip the car. Who'd have thought that keeping the car off of its roof would give him a 0.061 lead over Mike? Scott went from 2nd place (first non-BS car in DS) to 3rd as an R32 chiseled its AWD way into the 2 spot after a bunch of people gained time on a per-run basis. At least Scott got his cheesy yet metallic license plate place-holder. You wouldn't want to go a ProSolo season without one.

Anyways, 3 weeks untill the next big thing. 2 weeks untill the next NER event. This shit is time-energy consuming!!

-PJ

Bass Ackwards

So, I'm sitting there waiting for the end of practice starts, and I notice that I'm somehow not working on my car. It's running great! No longer does it consume oil, or stall at hot idle. It's launching much better than it did at DC. I just need to drive it.

So... wtf are all the SP guys doing to their cars??




Seems like Street Prepared isn't very prepared at all! :P

Anyways, NER spent the day pitting together:

With the "Wider Than Stock" club ready to wtfpwn some peeps, y0:

Anyways, I'm gonna go watch Scott set up his life raft... err... air bed. More updates tomorrow as the day progresses.

-PJ

Toledo: The Undiscovered Arctic

Wtf.... it's cold. 57 degrees!!!

That's about it. I'm crazy tired.

- PJ

CLEVELAND: FOUND TO NOT ROCK

1 AM: Dave resumes driving after discovering the valve stem on one of the trailer tires has gone bad while filling up on gas for the 3rd time today. Keith, we broke the trailer. It's ours now. Kthxbye.

Anyways, we're in Cleveland territory, less than 2 hours away from Toledo. We probably would have been sleeping by now had we left on time and missed all the traffic. Or, if we found a place to eat that wasn't the food court of an Outlet Mall, where the Chinese have taken over White Castle:

White Castle fresh off the wok!

I'm all hyped up on RedBull from my 5 hour driving shift. Nap time yay.

-PJ
(Still just 2 instances of traffic.)

I CAN HAZ GMAPS?!

Google Maps. Your best friend. Your only friend. Soooo awesome having LIVE ACTION TRAFFIC REPORT.

It's 3:01 PM. We're on the tail end of I-95 about to hit NY, leaving towards the later part of our scheduled departure. The car is loaded. We have way too many tools. Way too many drinks. Extra fuel. 5.6L of towing power. 600 miles to go.

-PJ
(Total times hitting traffic: 1)

Holy Toledo! Muffin Tops and Breakfast Sandwiches

Today at work we did a pot luck breakfast before the weekend. I brought in muffins but can only seem to get through the top before discarding the bottom in a wasteful manner which seems to provide some analogy for my life as a whole. Hopefully, I'll have some muffins to eat while possibly stuck in traffic along I-80.

You read that right. Despite the overwhelming mass of people who will be taking the upstate NY route to Toledo, Dave and I are planning on following one of G-Fab's most sacred traditions:

Drive fast. Take chances.

Drive fast? 70mph is fast, right? Maybe Dave will brave 75mph (I aim for 13 mpg). We're definitely taking chances though. There's a chance we'll hit traffic and arrive in Toledo at the same time as everyone else, and there's a chance we'll be scott free all the way to Toledo, where we'll be Scott-full, since he's sharing a room with us at the oh-so-popular Days Inn.

Anyways, before embarking on this journey, I took the liberty of preparing the 240sx for its next conquest. This ordeal involved:

- Oil change. This is only exciting because I'm now using Valvoline VR1 RACING oil. It must be good because it's specifically formulated for RACING, right? I'm hoping the anti-foam properties help in keeping the turbo from foamulating my oil and possibly reducing my oilability. I'm also running straight 60 wt in hopes of reducing oil blow-by, as well as expecting a lot of heat in Toledo. I hope I'm not wrong.

- New old spark plugs. I had some Iridiums already gapped and ready to go. They've been sitting on my desk forever. I pulled the old copper plugs and they were somewhat gritty coming out, but nothing some PB Blaster couldn't fix. I'm really hoping nothing is fucked, but I also hope I didn't lose any compression through the plugs being dirty and not fully seated.

- Compression. Check. While the plugs were out, I had Jenna crank it over. 180 across the board. My rings are good.

- Reworked crankcase breather. My evac check valve is seized shut, so for now I'm just running a breather line. Blow-by seems to be reduced, and hopefully oil consumption will go down. The rings should seat better as well, so I should have more power and less chance of detonation! Win-win!

Also, some newly installed parts since last week that I meant to put up include:
- New rear shocks:

- Lighter rear spindles (7lbs weight reduction per side OMG!):

T-minus 1 hour till Project Kick Ass In Toledo kicks off in a kick ass Armada.

- PJ
(fueled by an overabundance of breakfast)