I Want an S Chassis

A weekend alone means I need to keep myself busy. And busy I did keep.

Saturday brought the annual meet at 240sxMotoring in Milford, CT. Good fun, and nice to meet people, but damn. It was so hot, I felt like I could have been in Hell. You know what, maybe I was. There were these Genesi (?) that kept making their BOV's go off at like 2 mph. How cool of you. When it comes to motor vehicles, I have zero national pride.

NER on Sunday. I run around like a chicken with my head cut off. But I get shit done. 6 runs, (yes we were late to start), minimal reruns, excellent timing and scoring peoples, and NO ARGUMENTS from any other place. Well, except a certain someone that has made a reappearance to NER that is obnoxiously irritating. Yeah. You all know who I mean. Damn. Was hoping that ship had sailed to some other club.

As for the driving part of racing (because sometimes you have to do that), I think I channeled my inner suck. I ran a 70.5 for my second run, and then couldn't touch it all day. I also took a run in 4th gear...awesomely fast I was not. On the plus side, I was only just a little over 3 seconds behind PZ, which is much closer than normal. On the double plus side, I didn't end up spinning, or in the grass. Triple plus was that fastest run= in the first 3.

No pictures. Ass kicking. Again. Plus I worked a lot.

Due to some upsetting phone calls, I got lots of hugs. Thanks everyone. I needed them.

Renegade Miata next. First time running with them, in a car I've never driven. Woo hoo! Maybe I will suck less.

There's No Place Like Cones

If only this weekend was as incredible as my Droid Incredible, which is remarkably faster than Jenna's Droid Incredible, which is still incredible but not to the incredible credibility that is within my incredible Incredible. Dave wants a Droid Incredible like mine, but unfortunately since he's afraid of Walmart (and subsequently the people of Walmart) he's settling for a Motorola Droid X. Sorry Dave, nobody likes their ex.

It's kind of like how nobody likes their powerband falling flat on its face, akin to how the 240sx has been when it blows out spark while retarding timing like an incredible flux-capacitor enabled DeLorean. With incredible vigor, we finally conquered the beast of retardation and finally got the AEM EMS firing the LS7 coils to the tune of 19psi. The incredible happy fun pedal is back!!

However, as someone-who-used-to-drive-an-incredibly-front-wheel-drive-car-but-needs-to-play-golf-again-sometime-soon knows, power is nothing if you can't put it down. Poor suspension geometry plays a big role in that, and being an engineer, I'm supposed to be good at geometry! After an incredible amount of calculation which I can credit to my credo as an engineer, I devised a plan to ripoff someone else's work. Taking notes from Def over at Nissan Road Racing, I popped in some cheap lower control arms, drilled out my spindles (with my bare hands), and spaced out the outer ball joints as far as possible. The result: Incredible.

Our driving: Incredibly poor. Dave was incredibly fast. Dave was also incredibly dirty. He must've been drinking too much Cognac (Cone-yak?). Cones on each run pushed him into the 3rd spot, with raw times that were fast enough to scare XP cars. I was incredibly slow. Can't really say much about that. I can't drive, 55, but slow is at least better than dirty, putting me in second in SM. Todd was in it on Saturday, but incredibly copied my Saturday performance on Sunday much to our dismay. His first two runs were dirty, with a bad cone that would've had him safely in 2nd on his second run by a couple seconds. That left a 3rd run to not go for it and play it almost-too-safe to not hit cones, putting him in second place in SSM by 0.010 seconds, an incredibly small margin, if you ask me.

Up next: Holy Toledo

Spin or Win:: The Story of Finger Lakes

I'm really good at spinning cars. Especially cars I haven't driven in a year, that are a different drivetrain than what I've been driving, that are on street tires, that are way tighter than I'm used to, on pavement that sucks. And I'm really good at letting one stupid spin get to me for an entire weekend. I was like...10 seconds off pace on Sunday, just because I was being super slow and cautious. All that Need for Speed training did nothing.

Ok, the spin was epic. Agricultural, even. There was still grass on the trailer hitch, and mud everywhere, on Sunday afternoon.

Photo courtesy of minibeetle

Yeah. Hilaaaaaaarious. I am not smooth. I am not confident after a run like that. My inputs are stabby, and I can't drive for shit on street tires. And I am SUNBURNED. Yeah.

Otherwise, it was fun. Setting up tents in the torrential rain is always a good time. Also, the Finger Lakes should probably be renamed to Disgustingly Dirty and Full Of Seaweed Lakes. They were literally raking and shoveling it out. No swim for you.

Nate Whipple ghetto rigged some springs, so now owns G-Fab magnets. It was second places all around for NER, with a few 1's and 3's too...results are here.

No pictures. Sorry. I was way too busy getting my ass kicked.

Thank GFab it's Friday!

All the cops has lazerbeams!! Pew pew pew! Lots of cops on I-90. Watch out if you're heading to Finger Lakes from New England!!

We're an hour out from the Seneca Army Depot, site of the 2010 SCCA National Tour at Finger Lakes. Just ahead of Mike Steer (who we passed), and a ways behind Scott Thursbadges (save us a spot!). More to come when we're all unloaded and stuff. I forgot to take pictures of the awesomeness of upstate NY....

Fourth of July weekend. Usually a time for cookouts, fireworks, and drinking. Heavily.

We got the cookout part down. And the drinking part. Us G-Fabbers is good at that game. The fireworks part, not so much. Note to self: no more setting them off inside the car:

Due to a change in the 2010 rules, we can now remove the airbags and everything related to them. It was a process. I am never taking a dash apart again. We also decided to take out speakers, amp, and AC evaporator. (The power door locks were too hard to get to in 90 bazillion degree weather.) Total weight savings: 25 lbs. Was it worth it? Maybe.

While I was playing in plastic, PJ was busy with the second half of the Project Panda Diet: hoodpins so the new hood doesn't fly up while racing and a) ruin the run, and b) waste $500.

We bought a cheap Harbor Freight dremmel, which proved useless due to its cordlessness. It came with some spiffy attachments though, so it wasn't all bad.

Aerocatch is full of win. Yay. Looks pretty good, huh?

PJ was so happy, he did flips.

New LCA's come in today, and the race to install before Finger Lakes will be on.