2011 NJ Pro Solo: Street Modified Parking Lot Pimpin'

Last year ended on a good and bad note for my little race team. On the upside, we had a car capable of winning a National Championship. On the downside, we let that National Championship slip through our greedy little fingers.

This year we've got one goal: win big

So far things have been hectic. Work on the ST car has gone slow, and development of the Panda has suffered. Besides basic maintenance and a new transmission, all of the new aero and weight reduction has hit the back burner. With everything getting hectic, we only had 1 event to get ready for our first ProSolo of 2011.



Thankfully, we rocked that 1 event. Placing 5th in the overall PAX at an event where Pro class went 52 cars deep, all while on shot tires from last season. Going into the NJ Pro as a huge overdog, things were looking up....

Things looked so good that we never bothered to check the grid sheets. Had I looked, I might've not run on the old tires. Pulling into grid, I found that a new challenger had arrived. Corey Ridgick of BSP fame (placed 2nd in BSP last year at Nats) had decided to move up to SM in Cy Lee's BSP Evo. Despite the class limitations, the Evo guys have combined E85 and the unlimited boost rule to make near SM power. The suspension development is also pretty deep due to the number of cars built for the class. To top it all off, the advantage of AWD adds another 0.3 to 0.4 sec per side before reaching 60ft. Initially, I felt we were a bit under prepared to go up against that kind of heavyweight.



Into the first round, things actually looked decent. Corey nailed some good runs as expected, besting Dave's best raw times by roughly a tenth on either side with a 30.3 on the left, and a 29.3 on the right. Dave started off with his usual hi-jinx, having cones on both of his left side runs, despite posting raw times right up there with Corey. Having been beaten by Dave all of last year, that wasn't very comforting.

Going into my runs, I took it easy at first. With the car at only 14psi, it was easy to drive, and I felt like the car had never handled better. It was confidence inspiring, and because of that I was able to kick things up a notch. The next left side run would be one of only two sub-30 second runs for the class on that side. Carrying that speed over to the next side might've had me a bit over zealous at the light, tripping it just 0.008 seconds early to negate a 29.6 that would've put me into the lead. That one was a heart breaker, and many profanities were yelled into the camera beside my head.



Sitting in second for the following heats was painful. The clouds in the sky were about as dark as they get, and every now and then some raindrops would tickle my face. It was enough that Jenna had the wipers going for one of her runs, but thankfully that's all it amounted to, and things were dry by the time SM came back up.



The afternoon heat went well. I started off with a 29.8 to knock my right side below 30, and eat into Ridgick's lead. He was able to dig deeper into the 29's, posting a 29.2 while I botched the left with a 30 flat. The next set of runs would eventually determine the overall winner, as I hit the right side running. Posting a 29.2 would give me the slightest lead, which was followed up by a 29.7 on the left that one of my favorite XP guys (Dave Newman) wouldn't even match (which was actually one of my highlights for the weekend, even though he obliterated me on the right with a 28.4).

Right side run:

YouTube Video

Left side run:

YouTube Video

Sundays at Pro Solos are usually the make-it or break-it day, and unfortunately the latter occured to Cy's Evo. On its first run on some fresh Hoosier A6's, it cracked the transmission case and wasn't able to run the rest of the day. Despite swapping the fresh tires to Micheal Fineberg's BSP Evo (which also runs on corn), Corey wasn't able to better any of his times. In the end, it feels more like a lucky win, as my final run resulted me in pushing the Panda so hard I had my second ever ProSolo DNF as I locked up the fronts cresting a hill, pulling the car to the left while I needed to go right (my first ProSolo DNF was due to a broken transmission, oddly enough).



Sunday afternoon came with the Gumout Super Challenge, which I qualified 14th of 32 for. This is probably the part of ProSolos I enjoy the most (even just watching from the sidelines). Unfortunately, I paired up with a good friend, Scott Thursby of ES in the first round. Fortunately, that gave me the chance to screw around, so I mounted a couple GoProHD's to watch him get his 2 second per side head start Coming off the first run, I had a 0.8sec advantage (running the faster right side). Knowing it was going to be close, I pushed a bit harder going into the slalom, and paid for it basing a cone with the back tire. Despite having the faster overall scratch time by a few thousandths, I had to concede the win to Scott (only to watch him red-light against a fellow New Englander later on).




That's about it for NJ. Next up is the Dover Tour in 2 weeks!

The most retarded picture ever

The things I stumble upon on my rotating picture gallery.....

I Love You Mom (But racing comes first)

I'm a horrible horrible son. Mother's day was on Sunday and I woke up at 6am to check wheel bearings on the US-Spec Skyline GT350 (shhhhhhh..... ). With everything checking out, we took a small team down to wreak havoc on FCSCC.

All I can say is: Hankook RS-3's LOVE heat. The hotter they got, the better, and 3300 lbs of Nissan couldn't work the new 265/35R18 tires enough to keep them happy in 60deg weather. Looks like we'll need Dunlops next year until T-shirt weather.... and here I thought street tires were supposed to be simple?

Things started off well enough, with the ST car giving us issues with braking. Braking issues generated flat spots which made issues worse, but we finally raised the front enough during the event to keep the wheels from locking up (and I'll probably raise the SM car 1/8th just to be sure we don't have issues there, too). After fixing the brake issues, the car called it quits and the fuel pump went lethargic. The car ran, but couldn't hold fuel pressure.... more on that later.

Photo by Said Hu

The Skyline on its 18x10's performed well enough, despite just being on Tein drop springs. With some real race springs and some shock adjustments, it could be a real contender. When I get some 18x9 wheels it'll get the easy-street STX index, where I think it might actually stand a chance. It'd be a fun local car at the very least, although I think when the ST car is at full power, it'll be close.

Photo by Said Hu

Yesterday, I got around to checking out the Panda engine mounts and the ST car's fuel system. While waiting for the ST car's fuel soaked o-rings to dry, I figured out that I could turn the motor mounts on the Panda to move the engine back a half inch. With additional slotting of the motor mount brackets and some shimming, I think I can push it back the rest of the way, taking a lot of fab work out of my week. All that's left to do is make a custom transmission mount and hope the new driveshaft comes in in time. The order is in through 240sxMotoring, and they haven't let us down yet.... no pressure, it's only the entire season at stake!

Getting back to the ST car's fuel system, I replaced the fuel pump, fuel filter, fuel injectors, fuel rail, and fuel pressure regulator all to no avail. The car still wouldn't hold fuel pressure. Finally getting to the wiring, I discovered that the fuel pump was only getting 12v (and not battery voltage). Seems like there's a crossed wire or corroded connection somewhere, and I think the tires eating through the fender liners may have something to do with it (the wiring harness is located directly above the liners). Getting around to that today, and patching up some loose ends on the car. Fun times!!

NNJR autocross at the Meadowlands this coming Saturday, with the NJ Pro Solo right after that! Are we worried with both cars still non-functional and a boat-load of work to do? Nope.... this is G-Fab.

Are you really reading this? Why? You could've read this on FB already.

Why aren't you watching people you'll never meet get married for an unspecified amount of time before the first ever Royal Divorce? Oh wait, that's not in America.....


Updates? Well, you've now officially missed a race or two, but rain events don't count, so for those keeping track of G-Fab points, you have now learned a few things:

1. The points system was not made for you to win

2. I have almost completed the 12th chapter of the Book of Excuses
3. Fast Five comes out tonight, and you bet I'll be there with a bunch of hooligans

4. No matter how many points you get by the end of the season, it will pale in comparison to the amount of bonus points each and every G-Fab member gets.

On to the good stuff:

At the most recent NER Points/ G-Fab non-Points event (except Jenna gets 70.948 bonus points for beating Wiley), the Panda Team figured out that Falken RT-615 (non-K) tires are better than 5 year old Hoosier Wet Radials (non-HWET) but not as good as Dunlop Direzzas, Toyo R1R, or Hoosier HWets.

Photo by Ed Savage. Thanks, Ed!

They're probably on par with Hankook RS3's in the rain, which absolutely BLOW. Because of that, the Falkens have been relegated to street duty on the STU/X G35:

New Hoosier HWet H2O tires are on the way, so we'll be armed and dangerous for the NJ Pro Solo coming up at the end of May. On top of that, we're making some super top secret suspension changes. Now if only I could get all our tires to fit in the truck so that we can run our regional tires, 12 run Nats tires, and have the sticker tires for an emergency, and also the rain tires, and maybe I should mount up a set of intermediates, and also some street tires might help if it's cold.... and that's also not including wet (Contis or Toyos?) and dry (Shaved RS3) tires for the ST car. Maybe I should get a set of Dunlops for that car, too?

One thing is for sure, I reeeally should invest in a tire mounting machine, or seek sponsorship from CT Tire, which has been our go-to place for mounting rubber because they have yet to damage a wheel (unlike everywhere else that has nicked the crap out of my CCWs).

More good stuff:
If it looks like I'm hunched over something that looks like a Skyline R33 GTS25-T RB25DET transmission, it's probably because I'm trying to figure out how to bolt it to my S14 KA24DE-T.

In some earlier post I showed how 3 bolts don't line up, while the rest are just about perfect. Well, when things don't line up, you either beat them into submission or cut them out entirely. Unfortunately, I didn't have a big enough hammer to beat the transmission into shape, so I took out an angle grinder:

I probably don't want a huge chunk of transmission missing, so I took an old transmission that lost its second gear (why do I have so many?) and cut a similar piece out. Like pieces of a poorly made jigsaw puzzle, they almost fit together!

And with that, I'm done.









No, not really. The entire assembly will go to 240sxMotoring where it'll be jigged up and TIG welded to perfection. For now, we're getting ready to head up to NHMS for NER Points Event 2!

FCSCC Points Event 1

Did an event on Saturday with a local club (FCSCC). It was a super small lot, but still managed to get 16 runs on the car (3 drivers at 5 runs each with 1 fun run) without any fuel issues, and we were done by 2pm in order to get out before the afternoon rains hit.



The car performed better than ever, but still has some quirks. The summary of performance is as follows:

Max GPS Accel G: 0.46
Max GPS Lateral G: 0.90
Max GPS Braking G: 0.32
Top Speed: 42mph
Average Speed: 28mph

I'd expect on a warmer day and a better surface the Lateral G number to be higher. Temps were in the 40's, with 25mph winds blowing over cones every now and then. The Hankooks, which are better hot tires, were likely never up to temp, even with 3 drivers cycling through the car.

The fact that the car accelerates better than it brakes means something is wrong. I'll go over the caliper slider assemblies and re-bleed them before this weekend. Seems like one caliper is locking early, or a tire is loading up too fast:


I also need to corner-balance the car a bit, and check the ball joints that I haven't yet replaced. I had the car up on blocks last night to check all the bushings up front, although at some point I need to burn them out to swap in the Energy Suspension bits.

Despite all that, I was able to outrun a friend's STR NC MX-5, which we had spent all Friday night setting up after one of the Ohlins height adjusters jammed up.

Having to disassemble the upper control arms to remove the shock is very annoying in that car. If he lets me design some new upper arms, I'm definitely building in the ability to swap the shocks out easily. Still, his car and the ST car are at the same level of development, so they seem to make a good pairing. On a small lot like the one we were on where we couldn't get up to speed (probably needed to downshift to first on a few corners we didn't), the handicaps even out. Sadly, an EF Civic with its shorter gears was able to outrun the ST 240 by a half second.

This weekend is another NER event on the runway course. Speeds there are more like National level events, so I'd expect the 240 to lay the smack down. Some small setup changes and another fresh tank of gas should make the car even faster, although I'm behind on working on the Panda so how much I'll get done is up in the air.