I Give Up

Dear Self:

Saw your driving on Sunday. Not too bad. Even Bud Collins said you are a pretty good driver. However. I did notice a few things and wanted to offer you a few pointers:

• STOP HITTING CONES.
• When you hit cones, DO NOT look in your mirror to see how many people are running after them. Even for a second.
• Safe and slow sucks. Drive fast, take chances.

Thanks for listening.

Yeah. I suck.

Due to my less-than-stellar performance this past Sunday (results are here), I think I will hang up my driving shoes and get some pedaling shoes:

At least I won't have to walk to the porta-potties anymore.

Why does my Flickr get so many hits???


Hmmmmmmmmmm...................

Time for CHANGE

But only if CHANGE means MOD. Street Mod is back with more go-fast. We updated the rear end with beefier beefyness. It's beefy. 18mm of it. Big, long, and black. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Raise the roll-center like the roof, and bring the CoG down to the floor. Re-welded motor mounts drop the weight down like the times.

Hacked motor mounts for a lowered engine, along with some bling. Jenna and Paul put a good spitshine on the tranny while I was playing with fire:

Hooked up with a direct clutch line. No more funky pedal play for us!

Theere's more, but we'll keep that a sekrit until next time.

I'm not bored enough to entertain you right now.

Late Toledo Recap

Forgot to copy this over to the blog like a month ago. Here it is in all its glory: Toledo FAIL

Too frustrated to really post much now, but we're on the way home having pretty much rode the failboat into a rock. Saturday started off well enough, with Dave positioning himself in 2nd with lots of room for improvement. I got a clean first run in, but on my next run the tranny popped out of gear and made lots of noise. I coasted it in and we checked it out.

Put it in 1st gear and tried to roll it: OK
Put it in 2nd gear and tried to roll it: FAIL

After lots of noise we did a little more testing to make sure it wasn't the clutch, and also tried pushing it around with the engine off and in gear. You're not supposed to be able to freely push the car around with it in second gear....

After about an hour of phone calls, we found a transmission, but it was 3 hours away and they were closing in: 3 hours. Dave went to get it while I pulled the old tranny. Drained a lot of fluid and gear bits, showing fully that the tranny was toast.

Dave eventually got back and we got the tranny in within an hour from then, but in order to do so we had to jack the engine all sorts of angles. This would bite us in the ass later. I also pretty much forced the tranny in, so I think it may be slightly off, as the clutch is stuttering a bit. Grrreaaat.

Anyways, Sunday rolls around and we eventually get to our heat. Dave starts off fine but looks slow. He comes in complaining the clutch is slipping or something, and I check the fork and it seems to be fine. The pedal throw is all weird from the clutch stop no longer being at the correct height, but other than that it looks fine. He swears we're burning up clutches but says he can't get it past 4500rpm, which confuses the **** out of me. All he can really say is the clutch doesn't feel right.

I get up for my runs and instantly find out that I've got no boost. Turbo is spinning and I can hear it, and figure out it's a blown intercooler coupler (just pulled off from jacking the engine around). By then it's too late, and we can't fix it. My runs are over and we're sitting 4th and 5th, without enough points to be able to do any damage at this year's Pro Finale.

So, our year is pretty much shot. We're still debating on if we'll be at Nationals or not. I want to go still, but we'll see if the team as a whole wants to head out.

So I lied, that was pretty long. I might post some vids later, but I'm shot right now.

FML.

-PJ

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.