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| (the trials and tribulations of our STS prepared '89 Civic Si and it's drivers) |
| Blog ==== Drivers ==== Car ==== Video ==== To Do List ==== For Sale |
| This is the ongoing blog for our STS prepared '89 Honda Civic Si.... | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Thursday :: 7.24.08 :: by Jason
The brake pads and the brake vacuum valve that we ordered arrived today, boy that was fast shipping. [rolls eyes] We should be able to those in the car for the WAI events next Saturday and Sunday. I forgot to mention that we scrambled around on Friday night to try to bleed the brakes on the car, I left all of my bleeder tubes canisters back at my places, and the fluid got fried from all of the runs Craig took scrubbing in tires. We headed to Autozone to get some stuff to bleed the brakes, and get some fresh brake fluid. Why we buy those large bottles all the time is beyond me, we are always worried that the fluid has been sitting to long and we just buy more. I suppose it would be acceptable for our street cars, but we never put it in the race car despite me writing the date on the bottles. By the time we get the stuff we need and get back to the site it's dark out, so we decided to do it in the morning, which worked out. The brakes on the car didn't feel bad over the weekend (it was wet so who knows), but Monday during the Bridgestone Test they were feeling fine to me. Not sure if we just needed some new fluid or what. I still have a feelign when we replace the master cylinder it is going to feel better. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Sunday evening - Monday :: 7.20.08 - 7.21.08 :: by Jason
Sunday Evening - We scrubbed all but one set of the 15" and 16" tires earlier this weekend, however, all of the 17" tires for the STX and STU sizes were still freshly shaven. Luckily we had access to a Hyundai that had the correct bolt pattern. So we proceeded to scrub in tires on the Hyundia! This might have been the highlight of the weekend, it was a blast, dispite the crappy throttle response, it was still a challenge and it brought some grins to our faces! As the even wore on local competitor Chris Bailey decided to help out by scrubbing in two sets of the wheels on his RSX to speed up the process, and Ryan Kroupa helped by knocking out the last set of 16" tires. We had NASCAR style pit stops going on with the Hyundai, and lots of smiling faces after each run, from both drivers and some leftover tour competitors.
Monday - Today was the Bridgestone Tire Test at Miller Park. We used the Sunday Milwaukee Tour course for the test, which I think had a good mix of manuvers (2 slaloms and 2 faster sweepers). I drove the STS Civic, along with Rick Cone in his STS2 Mazda Miata, Colin Fielder in his STU Subaru WRX Sti, and Peter Cunningham in his EVO6. From my conversation with Peter the car has been parked for at least 3 years, so he hasn't driven it in awhile. I can't really comment much on the test, however, all I can say is that I'm excited not only for this year, but for what the future brings. It was also funny getting a ride from Peter driving around rally style after we finished up. I think he did about 4 rally-style runs in a row, by the time he finished he was looking pretty winded! Thanks to all of the Milwaukee Region members who came out to help run the event!
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:: Friday - Sunday :: 7.18.08 thru 7.20.08 :: by Jason
SCCA Milwaukee Milwaukee Tour Weekend
We are testing some tires for Bridgestone on Monday, so there are stacks of shaved tires on the support trailer, however, they aren't scrubbbed in yet. So Craig is the lucky dog that gets to run most of these tires today to get them ready for Monday. They don't want either Rick Cone or I to run more than one tires today so we can't compare tires, since the test on Monday is going to be blind. We both scrub in one set of tires, Craig does most of the tires, and local competitor Ryan Kroupa slaps one set on his car to help out. We finish up scrubbing in all of the tires just as practice ends, except for one set that got there late. That was a long practice session. After the practice session I catch some rest in the Brdigestone support trailer before I have to work registration of the event. I'm Cheif of Registration for the weekend, but thanks to a well organized registration crew there isn't much work for me to do onsite. Finish up registration at 7pm, then we head over to get some food and drinks provided by the region... pizza, breadsticks, wings, Sprecher beer and soda, mmmm, that was good! The forecast is looking like rain for tomorrow, we might luck out and get some dry conditions since we run oin 1st heat, but just incase I have the Bridgestone guys (thanks Rod, Josh, and Jeff) mount up some full tread depth tires on an extra set of wheels I brought with. We get a couple course walks in, another great looking course by Jeff Cashmore. Looks like we are ready to go, time to head home to get some sleep. Saturday - We get onsite to work registration from 7-8am for people who couldn't make it into town yesterday, it's still dry, however, we have some fresh, un-scrubbed, "rain" tires on the car. So I go buzz it around on the street for about 20 minutes to try and knock the glaze off the tire. Wish we would have thought ahead and did this during the practice session, oh well, live and learn. Despite numerous off ramps and Alonso style weaving the tires don't see to be scrubbing in. Not sure what else to do at this point, time is getting close to us running (heat 1), so we are going to have to "dance with the girl we brought" because our dry tires have about 1/32" on them and aren't going to dissipate much water. About 15 minutes before our heat starts it's still dry, so we decide to slap the dry tires on the car and get to grid hoping to get one dry run in since it sounds like the rain is coming. About 5 minutes before the heat starts the rain starts to fall. It's not that bad at first, just sprinkling, so we hang with the dries. I unload the rains from the Excursion and get them to grid because it's not looking good for me as the 2nd driver. I ask Craig if he wants to swap tires now as the rain is continuing to come down and appears to be affecting the timing lights, causing a delay in the action, again he replies that he is going to hang with the dries. Another 5 minutes passes and there are puddles forming now, I ask him again, and mention that I'm going to change them for my run if he doesn't change tires. That must have been enough to push over the edge and decided that it was time for rains. At least the conditions were equal for everyone in the class. Craig goes out and puts down a clean STS class leading time on his first run (66.199), he comes back and mentions that his run wasn't great, he was just trying to get a feel for the surface, which is basically what I was going to have to do next. I think I went out for my first run a little to cautious though, I broke to early at the end of the two long staights on the course and really paid the price with a 67.359, I had a good idea of braking feel for the next run though. Second runs go quicker since timing seems to be up and going now, and grid has a good handle on the amount of cars in grid so Craig and I are getting pretty even amounts of time between runs (not always the case). Craig lays down a 65.670 on this second run, which put him in 1st in STS with Larry Bereuter in a Subura 2.5 RS right on his heels, 0.202 behind. On my 2nd run I put down a 65.500, which would have been a class leading time, but I hit the finish cone as the car got loose. It would have been nice to go into the 3rd runs having that run be clean. I'm going to have to run a good clean time on my 3rd run if I want to have a shot to win, and I don't want to have repeat of the Peru Tour today! Craig takes his third run, he looks good on course as we watch of the sidelines, and comes in with a clean 65.003, extending his lead over Larry to 0.869. Larry was unabale to improve on his 3rd run. It has continued to rain throughout the heat and there is still standing water at this point in the day. I got out on my 3rd run wanting to get ahead of Craig, but I can't get crazy and cone the run. I put together a good run, which included hanging out the rear on the way though the finish in a controlled manner. The timing display throws up the good news, a 64.699 second run and a 0.304 lead over Craig going into Day 2. Next up is Megan driving STSL in Heat 3, it has dried up since heat 1 and the line is close to being completely dry. Megan went out and put down a clean 67.118 on her first run, good thing, becuase she cones her 2nd and 3rd runs, however, it was enough to head into Day 2 with a 5.753 second lead driving the Bridgestone/Redshift/Datatoys.com Honda Civic Si. After Megan is done we hang around the Bridgestone support trailer most of the day in the shake of the canopy, or in the air conditioned lounge and watch the rest of the classes for the day. We hang around until about 7:45pm, just long enough to get a couple course walks in before heading home. I really wanted to go home earlier since I have to bartend tonight, but I figured I should hang around and get a couple walks in since I probably will be tired in the morning.
Sunday - I arrive on site just early enough to get 2 course walks in, Craig and Megan are already there ready to go. I'm running on 2 hours of sleep, so I look like a walking zombie at this point. I get a second wind as we get the car unloaded and ready to go. It rained overnight so the surface is still wet, it isn't standing water like yesterday, but it sure isn't dry. We decide to start with the wet setup from yesterday with the shock rebound stiffer. Craig goes out on his first run and spins the car in the first slalom, maybe we went too far! I guess we'll take the rebound back out of the car. Craig states that it was looser than it was yesterday when there was standing water. The course is starting to slowly dry with each run now. I go out on my first run of the day and Craig wasn't kinding, that car is a handful for sure, and the fact that there was 2 slaloms on this course didn't help much. I come with a clean 61.571, which is second on the day about 0.4's behind Larry (61.187) for the fast time of the day. Larry would stil have to beat me by another 0.8's to catch me after day 1, at this point in my eyes my competition is Craig. It's becoming very apparent that this is going to come down to the last runs of the day due to drying conditions, everyones times just keep dropping. Craig goes out on his second run and puts down a cone-free 58.852 second run, which ups the bar some. On my second run I can only muster a 59.031, but it is enough to stay ahead of Craig because of my 0.304 lead after day 1. However, as I mentioned it's getting drier. At this point we are still running our rain setup, and I think that it's getting close to the dry setup, or at least stiffen up the car somewhat. We talk it over and Craig decides he wants to stick with the current setup because of some wet areas on the course, I'm not going to argue because I'm tired anyways! Craig goes out on the third run and it looks like the car is pushing through some corners, it's not terrible, but it's not good like it was during practice on Friday. He stays clean and improves his time by over a second to a 57.534, which puts the pressure back on me. I decide that I'm going to stiffen up the rear rebound, but in heinsight I think I should have just went back to the dry setup (tires and sway bar). I put together another good third run and cross the line with a 57.755. Not as fast as Craig, but my quick math tells me that I got him, however, no one in the crowd looks like I did anything to cheer about, then I see Dan Werzer cheering as he hands me my timeslip, followed by the crowd, the announcer must have been a little behind announcing the times. =) I got him by 0.083 overall, which was enough to take the win. So Team Undercoat Racing goes 1st and 2nd in STS. Craig got me today in the dry though, so congrats to him. After talking while in impound we both argeed that we should have made changes to the car for the last run, if this were nationals I don't think we would have hesitated to change the car. However, we need to make those decisions at all of our events so when we do change at nationals we have a better idea of the setup change.
Drying conditions continue and by the time Megan runs in heat 3 it's dry. Megan coned all of her runs for the day, but had a nice lead after day 1 to fall back on if needed and took the win in STSL. Maybe she was just coning all of her runs like I did at the Peru Tour so I wouldn't feel so bad, or maybe are car just likes the cones, or maybe the cones are scared of the new orange vinyl on the car! Again, I spend the rest of the day relaxing and sleeping at the Bridgestone support trailer, watch the F1 and IndyCar races, and hang out with most of the Milwaukee Region crew. I needed the nap since we still had tires to scrub in for the STX and STU cars (see next blog). It was a great tour weekend for Team Undercoat Racing, we won both of our classes and Craig got a 2nd. Bridgestone support was excellent as normal, the effort they are putting forth for us autocrossers is leaps and bounds over any other tire manufacture in the Street Touring classes.
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:: Thursday :: 7.17.08 :: by Jason
The Bridgestone support trailer is supposed to roll into Milwaukee this afternoon, I'm hoping to stop up there and get them settled in and help setup if needed. I also need to pickup some cameras from Roy at datatoys.com, however, before I head up there I want to get the Bridgestone vinyl installed on the car. Craig has stuff to do at work, but he's semi-free while some tests are being completed, so I pack up the Excursion & the Civic and head over to his work so he can help me install the vinyl. I estimated it would take us about an hour to install the vinyl, the plan was to put the new 15" wide "strip" over the top of the current Bridgestone sticker, then trim it around the edge of the existing sticker with a razor blade. It was all going well until we started to trim it, the orange around the Bridgestone logo was faded somewhat from the sun and didn't match the new orange background strip now. If we continued to trim it up in this manner we would be in the same boated with an orange border around the black Bridgestone logo. So we decide to jsut cut out the individual black Bridgestone letters out instead of following the edge of the original sticker. This took a decent amount of time, it's kind of tedious work if you want it to look good. The first side of the car takes about 90 minutes, the second side went a little smoother and only took about 75 minutes. This messed up my plans for the evening since it's about 8pm, Roy was busy at Road America, so I decided to not drive up to Miller Park (45 minutes drive) and we worked it out to met up tomorrow. The car looks good, but it has this in your face look now, in the past it was a little more subtle, but now you sure can't miss it! | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Wednesday :: 7.16.08 :: by Jason
We got a little break last weekend after being out of town racing for the two previous weekends, however, the upcoming weekend is the SCCA National Tour stop in Milwaukee, WI in our home lot at Miller Park. Bridgestone is bring the support trailer up to Milwaukee for a long weekend and we need change our Bridgestone logo a little bit to meet their standards, at this point the logo looks orange, which isn't one of their colors, so we are going to add an orange strip along the side of the car to make the Bridgestone logo look black on an orange background. I head over to Sign Shop of Racine, and they get me what I need as I wait, great service from them all of the time. Our new brake pads haven't arrived, not sure what is taking so long, but we aren't going to have them for the weekend. We are still on the same pads that got tore up at the Peru Tour when the axle sheared. We didn't have a new backup set, and the old pads that were in my garage have been taken over with rust, so here we are, I ordered two sets this time though so we have a backup pair now. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Friday, 4th of July thru the 6th by Craig!!!!!
Jason is lazy. So I have to do the write up, which is good because there won't be as many inaccuracies.
Toledo ProSolo Weekend A few months ago we spent some time figuring out what events we were going to run. Wanting to do a few more "big" events this year we eyed up the Toledo Pro. Seemed like a great idea then, but after the Peru weekend we were feeling a little beat down. Money, energy, ego (Jason again) had taken a hit and we contemplated skipping the event. It wouldn't have been a bad idea, but we decided to go for it anyway. Friday morning we leave and thanks to the holiday we are good to go for traffic. We might even be the first ones to the event site for a change! I hope Jason will let me sleep in the truck. I am feeling a bit tired, as I am on about 2-3 hours of sleep. Since I am actually a Pro Solo rookie, I take the "hole shot" instruction. Jason takes it too, since he hasn't done a Pro in like 4 years. Then we get some practice starts and try to compare 60' and 200' times to the other STS civics. We are right there with the others. Hollis is a bit faster but his car (and Andy) is lighter than ours. Maybe he is better at launching his car? Nah that can't be it. We get the stickers on our car from our newest sponsor DATATOYS.COM We got five cameras in the car. Easy to use. And the stickers look good on the car!
...Note to Salty Milwaukee competitors... Our car, 60 ft-ish times... 2.3 seconds with a best of the weekend being 2.23 by Jason. NO 1.9s, sorry! We pack it up for the day and get ready for tomorrow. Saturday we get to the event site get everything together for the day. We run in the "d" or fourth run group and work in the "a". Prosolo works nicely and has a good cadence to it. We get a chance to scope out the best lines by watching the great drivers in ES, GS and FS. Maybe GS will provide us with the best clues, since the cars are closest to ours?
At 9 o'clock we are going to see the UFC fight at the local BW3s. Is that still the name? Good times were had. Everybody we know is in bed, but we are out drinking 'til 1:30am!
The hotel sucks.
Sunday, no hangover. I am feeling like we can move up. Maybe the setup change will help? I watch the second run group closely (for cones of course) and notice some lines I like. It gets to our run group and I am a bit nervous, but good nervous. Right about optimal. Make the call to my Mom (insert Jason laughing here). She is good luck, what can I say? Ann Hollis tells us (she is always super nice to us even though we are sucking) that Andy is not going to sandbag since he expects us to be right there despite our poor showing yesterday. We'll see.
Wynveen has cautioned us to not rest on our laurels, and to continue to develop the car. We aren't. I can say even though we like to talk trash we are humbled by the level of competition in this class. The drivers are top notch and the car preparation is fantastic too. This is the first season we haven't been working and spending our asses off on the car. Which is nice... I am out of money. We are committed to B-stones. And will more than likely only be tweaking what we already have. So I hope factors we can't control become big ones. (faster tires... better shocks...$1200 headers) Personally, I am committed to losing weight... one of the biggest changes I can make.
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:: Sunday :: 6.29.08 :: by Jason
We get to the site in time to get a couple course walks in, yep it looks the same as yesterday. Today is feeling much more laid back, I feel like we should be rushing around fixing something! We hang around watching the Heat 1 battle in ES, congrats to Sam Karp on his first Tour trophy, nice driving! We work heat 2 and it rains again, this time more toward the end of the heat, BS guys are flying though the wallom. The rain catches out Neal Tovson on his 3rd run, sucks for him, he was looking good but this first two runs were dirty. =( We get into grid and get ready to run, as we are getting ready we fell some light sprinkles. I head to the truck to get the tires we scrubbed in on Friday since they have the most tread of any tires we have. The one tire doesn't have any air in it again, so something is amiss there. I head over to the generator and compressor to air it up while Craig pulls all of the gear out of the car in grid. The rain is on/off, but is pretty light, not enough to effect the surface to this point. Temperatures are in the 70's and the wind is blowing pretty good, so the course is dry. Craig needs to put down a clean run while it's dry, and if the run is good it might apply a little pressure. Craig goes out for his first run and attempts to take the wallom flat but got behind toward the end and had to lift, but got back on it for the right hander after, the car rotated nice, except he missed the cone on the outside and DNF'd. So much for putting down a good clean run to start, LOL. He comes back to grid, tires aren't really that warm so no cooling/changing required. As I approach the line the sky starts to open up, it's not too back, but bad enough that I have problems seeing without the wipers going, as I'm taking the run all I'm thinking is that I have to be clean because this might be the only semi-dry chance I get. The surface is semi-slick that this point and I have to really give it up a couple places to not hit cones. My first run is a 46.997... clean!!! Woohoooooo. Hollis comes in behind me with a 49.852, errrrr. As I get the car back to grid the rain subsides, WTH. The weather holds off and Craig goes out for his second run. He runs the wallom on the throttle the entire way through, it sounded like he was only the brakes a little bit through the last cone, regardless it looked fast. He keeps it clean and come back in with a 46.698, the fastest time in class to this point. I go out for my second run, the skies are being nice this time. There is more grip than the first run, I lift going into the second cone of the wallom, but I'm flat the rest of the way though, I finish up with a 46.588. Hollis follows me in with a 46.379, got me again! For the 3rd run decides to take some rebound out of the rear shocks to try and stop the rear of the car from bouncing around a couple places, mainly in the dip in the wallom. He heads out for his final run needing to run about 0.9 faster to catch Hollis for 1st. He makes it through the wallom with a little braking again, but said he probably could have made it, he goes faster and posts a clean 46.372, but only 0.007 faster than Hollis's run, not enough for 1st Place, he has a firm grip on 2nd though. Based on Craig comments about the wallom I decide to leave the rebound alone and drop the rear pressure to get more rotation. At this point I'm in the same 0.1 of a second as Brian Davis for 3rd place, I don't know who is ahead and don't care, whoever runs best on this run is going to take it. As we approach the line it starts to sprinkle again, not a lot of rain, but enough to need the wipers! Brian is just ahead of me at the line, so he is in similar conditions. I go out on my 3rd run and keep it clean, but I had to give it up at place like the first run to stay clean, I improve a little to a 46.538. Hollis was basically on a parade run and came in with a 46.773, slower than his second run, but the ground was a little wet. Brian dropped just over 0.2 seconds on his run, taking 3rd place. It was a good run to get back to 4th place and a trophy, it was still a "would of, could of" type of weekend though. Craig posted the fastest run of the day, so congrats to him.
We had thoughts of not running the Toledo Pro next weekend to save some money after having the car break this weekend, however, we decided that we are going to go ahead and run though. I feel like I need some seat time to get some rhythem going, Craig still hasn't been to a ProSolos, and there is plenty of contingency money that could be won, so what the hell... Toledo here we come. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Saturday :: 6.28.08 :: by Jason
We wake up early and get to the site at 6:35am, it opened up at 6:30am. We head right over to the car and start thrashing on it. A couple SCCA people come over and ask us why we decided to park our car there, LOL, we had to explain to them that it broke yesterday and has been there since. We got a good laugh out of that. We finished up everything and got the other tires mounted up on the car, we didn't want to chance the new tires not being scrubbed in enough. We didn't have a socket big enough for the axle nut, so we just tightened it down as much as we could just to get the car moving and off course. If we can't find someone with the socket we'll head to Autozone after our course walks and buy one. We drive the car back to paddock, woohoo, it drives! Only took us about 45-60 minutes total in the morning. Now that the car is together we need to get a walk or two in before the course is closed. We get three walks in and feel confident enough to go back to finish up the car, there is also time to walk after heat 2 and we don't run until heat 4, so we'll be able to get one more refresher walk in, and we work course during heat 2, so we'll see it then too. I track down Hollis and he has the axle nut socket, thankfully. Steve comes over and uses his fancy Snap-on beeping torque wrench to secure the axle nut. We jack the car up to feel what the junkyard ball joint feels like on the car, Craig wiggles that tire and I can hear it making noise! After some investigative work we find that the nut that holds the rear upper control arm mount is loose. We tighten it down and wonder how long it has been loose. Maybe the car will be better now! With some time to burn we decide to change the spark plugs. All is going well until we find that the little caps that screw onto the top spark plugs are missing on two of the old plugs! Where the hell did they go? We find one of them still in one of the spark plug wires, but it isn't coming out easy. Craig, Steve, and I all take turns trying to get it out, after about 20 minutes Steve finally gets it out! Then Steve brings over his fancy Snap-on DOHC spark plug socket, Craig gets to fondle it which putting the new spark plugs in, it's really sexy looking actually!. Wynveen also brings his micro torque wrench over and we get to properly torque our spark plugs to 13 ft/lbs. With the car all buttoned up we head to our work assignment with our rain gear on. After working we get one more course walk in before we need to get the car into grid. As we are walking course I see Hubert Borowski walking course all by himself, what the hell is he doing here, he isn't even racing! Come to find out the Borowski sister were jonesing so bad they drove down to Peru just to hang out, and they brought Mic-a-nic with them! Now that is dedication, or just weird, you decide. Wynveen got to use all sorts of tools this weekend that he wouldn't have got to use if it wasn't got our broken Civic, he seemed to enjoy it! We really owe him a big thanks for all of the help. Also need to thank Andy for the use for the socket for the axle nut.
After all of that we get to do what we came here to do, DRIVE! The Saturday course has the familar steps going out to a turn around and a couple steps on the way back. The temperature is in the mid-70's. Craig is first out and runs a 50.684 +1, the time looks good besides the cone. He comes back and the tires aren't really that hot so we hardly even cool them. I go out for my first run and put down a 50.683, which I think is clean. Hollis came in behind me with a 50.491, clean from what I hear. The car felt good during the first runs, no unusual noises or feelings going on, we could use less understeer, but we can work on that. Craig goes out for run number 2 looking for something clean, however, he runs a 51.406 +3 with what he said was a bad turnaround. I'm looking to put down a decent second run since I'm good after my first run. We swap the tires to some that are cooler and I go out. The run is going good for me, it wasn't great by any means, but it was better than the first run, as I'm coming through the finish I see a corner working running, crap I must have hit one, yep, I see a cone done. Crap, that was a better time too, a 50.218 +1. As I approach the trailer I hear them say that I have 3 cones, WTH, wait make that 4 cones! Hollis comes in behind me with a 50.604 (slower). Holy crap how did I hit 4 cones, I talk to Craig on the way back to grid and he said I'm just hitting them with the back of the car. Peru has more grip than we usually have and the car is just turning in too much, I didn't even know I hit one cone let alone four! We get back to grid and prepare the car for Craig to run, as we are there Brian Davis mentions that both of my runs are dirty, what! I ride up toward the line with Craig on his third run to check the preliminary results. Brian was right, I had a cone on my first run, crap, wish I would have known that before I went for it on my second run. And to add insult, I see that I actually had 5 cones on my second run! I only know of that one cone by the finish, I must have hit half of the apex cones on course, so for the record my second run was 50.218 +5! Craig is going out for his third run and he needs to put done a clean run to have a chance tomorrow. He plays it safe and comes in with a clean 50.959, slower than his other runs, but clean none the less. Craig is clean, but he is regretting not pushing it more to get a better time, I think he played it right. Now I need to do the same thing, get a clean run in. We go back to grid and prepare the car for my run, I decide to drop the rear tire pressure to try to induce some oversteer into the car, I didn't go too crazy though because I know I need to get a clean run in and I don't want to be fighting the rear of the car at some of the really bumpy parts of the course. I tell myself on the way to the line, just get a clean run in! On my way through one of the steps I give too much steering input trying to stay clean and proceed to smack a cone and lock up the inside front wheel pretty bad, no doubt that I hit that one, damn it. I push it though the rest of the run except at the finish were it was pretty bumpy, I matched my first run time-wise and hit a cones somewhere else on the course, so 50.653 +2. That wasn't very smart, oh well live and learn. In hen sight I should have pushed it through the finish too, because I could still improve from my first run if I hadn't have hit the second cone. So two lessons learned. The day ends with Hollis (50.491) in 1st, Craig (50.959) in 2nd, Brian Davis (51.312) in 3rd, and me way back in 11th based on my first dirty run (52.683). Time for some drinks! We got the car packed up, hang around for a little while in paddock for about an hour before heading to Ruby Tuesday to check out their drink menu. Looks like Craig is going to have to be the one to bring home the win for Team Undercoat Racing. We come back to the site to walk the course a couple times before we call it a night. Day 2's course runs in the same direction with most of the steps removed. It has a fast slalom which has a line of cones before the apex cone, referred to as a wallom in other parts of the country we're told, along with two other slaloms after the turnaround. Craig loves slaloms, because he's good at them, so he likes his chances with the course. My goal is to try to get back to 3rd place to get some Bridgestone contingency money. Later in the evening we go to some restaurant called something Charles that is known for their ribs with the Milwaukee/Chicago folks. Food was decent, bench racing was fun as well. Highlights of dinner is me trying to get Steve to bet me whether or not our motor is going to blow do to the speed we are going to carry through the wallom, Steve thinks he will get to 71 mph, which is fast. That would equate to some crazy high RPM, I know we don't have the grip of the Corvette, but we are skinnier than the Vette and we have more camber, so we typically see similar speeds. We head back to the hotel and for the second night in a row pass out in quick manner. | |||||||||||||||||||||
:: Friday :: 6.27.08 :: by Jason
Get up nice and early, 4:00 am, to finish packing the Excursion with the stuff that Craig is bringing over. We plan to leave at 5:00am in order to get through Chicago and to make the practice session (11:00am - 3:00pm) on time, don't forget time change moving everything up an hour. We get all packed up and leave the house about 5:10am. We decide to get some breakfest before we hit the higway, we stop at the local Hardee's since Craig wants some cinnamon biscuits, the Excursion and trailer aren't fitting through the drive-thru and the inside isn't open yet, so no cinnamin biscuits for Craig! He's not happy, we end up settling on some McDonald's, they proceed mess up my order... it might have had something to do with the big ass diesel in their ear. At this point Craig is hating the idea of this trip and thinks of having me drop him off somewhere for his wife to pick him up, LOL. Regardless we aren't off to a great start. Do to the food stop and leaving 10 minutes late I'm feeling like we are pushing to make it though Chicago traffic on I-94. Everything is going OK for awhile, then we hit the parking lot about 10 minutes after the I-94/I-294 split. We spend about 30 minutes in stop and go traffic, once we get closer to downtown it opens up and we cruise the rest of the way though taking the Skyway. Not to bad. We arrive on site about 11:45 am, which leaves up plenty of time to get the car unloaded and hit the practice course before it gets too busy. We get everything ready to go and put the freshly shaved Bridgestone RE-01R's tire on the car, we are going to scuff them in on this grippy Peru concrete. We visit with the local guys for a couple minutes before heading over to the practice course. We buy 8 tickets and signup for a work assignment. Craig decides to go out first and get a feel for the course, not expecting much because of the new tires. I ride with him to learn the course, the tires felt like they normally do prior to scrubbing them in. We go back to grid, check the tire pressures (they are low), so we go hunting for air. We had 80psi in our tank, however, we used it all filling up one of the new tires that didn't have air in it for some reason. Andy Hollis borrows us his air compressor (thanks Andy) and we are ready to go. I go out for the second run on the tires, it feels a lot like the first run, the car is pushing for sure, we're not sure if it's the new tires of the setup in general. I got back and Craig says go ahead take another one. I head out for my second run, car is feeling a little better grip-wise, as I'm going through the slalom before the finish lights I get on the gas and something goes wrong! It felt as if the car popped out of gear or something, no drive in the car, and as I slow the car I notice that the steering is for crap too. I row through the gear, nothing. I give everyone staring me the slit throat gesture, and we proceed to stop the practice session due to our broke car on course. I get out just as everyone else arrives at the car. The axle nut is missing from the passenger side of the car, then we realize that the end of the axle is also missing! Not good, we sheared the end of the axle off. Maybe we're just numb to all of this from fixing the Civic so much over the last 2 years, but I'm really not even concerned, I just assume are going to fix it. I run back to grid and get the floor jack, we limp the car off course with the jack holding up the front of the car. We get it to a safe place off course and start examining the damage as the practice session starts back up. Craig wiggles the tire around and I can see it moving all around, not good at all. I take the wheel off and the rotor is flopping around, the only thing holding our wheel and rotor on was the brake pads! The brake pads look as if someone took an angle grinder to them, the wheel shifted toward the rear of the car and as I applied the brakes to stop the car they bacically folded over the edge of the rotor and causes the groove. The wheel bearing is separated into 2 pieces, so it wasn't holding the wheel on. It looks like we dodged a bullet, it could have been much worse. We figure we need a new wheel bearing, axle, axle nut, and brake pads. So much for a relaxing evening.
Andy Hollis and Larry Harts give us some directions to a junkyard south of Kokomo, we close up the Civic since it looks like rain and head for Kokomo in the Excursion. We're not sure of the name of the place, but I start looking for the place in my GPS unit. Not coming up with much though. Our thought is to purchase an entire knuckle so we don't have to get the wheel bearing pressed into our existing knuckle, it will save us time and get us going for tomorrow as long as we can find an axle (Autozone usually has them instock). We find a couple junkyards in the GPS unit, but none of them have what we are looking for, so we ask them if there know of any other place that might have it, this goes on with about 4-5 places, no one has one. Finally we find a place that says they have 3 knuckles sitting on a shelf! Sweet, we don't have to pull them off a car or anything, that will save us some time. I enter the address (Anderson, IN) into the GPS, it says one hour ago, we don't even think twice we just start driving, it's about 2pm at this point. In the meantime we are calling local Autozones trying to locate an axle, the one near Kokomo has one instock, so we are good to go there.
We jump in the Excursion, plug the address into Garmin for the event site, 90 minutes to get back. I didn't realized we drove 30 minutes south before we found that place so the drive back was longer than I thought. We get back to the site about 5:30pm. We borrow a drill and drill index from the SCCA trailer and drill out the screw holding on the rotor, it's still rusted on there though. Wynveen has a punch which helps get the rotor off. All of the nuts and bolts come off pretty easy, with the help of Steve ball joint popper and our BFH. We get the new knuckle installed, the new axle in, and everything pretty much put back together, however, they needed to close up the site at 8pm, so we'll have to finish up tomorrow morning. Still have yet to even glance at the course, we'll have to do that tomorrow. We go to Steak 'N Shake for dinner (dinner of champions), head back to the hotel, and proceed to pass out quickly after a long day.
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:: Wednesday :: 6.55.08 :: by Jason
Picked up the required nuts and bolts from the hardware store. Reinstall the ignition on the "good" steering column using some new low profile bolts with allen heads and some lock-tite. Started installing the "good" steering column in the car, get about 6 nuts/bolts into the project and realize that we forgot to plug in a couple wires, undo all of that and start over. Get the wires plugged in and run in the correct area, connect the plug to the backside of the ignition piece, adjust the steering wheel locking mechinism, and finish up bolting the 'good' column in the car. Everything went well and I think we are ready to go for the weekend, just to need to pack up the Excursion tomorrow night. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Tuesday :: 6.24.08 :: by Jason
We decided to tackle the replacement of the steering column tonight. After getting something in the threads after the last event the steering wheel nut is seized up on the column and the wheel wobbles around. We are 95% sure that the threads are going to be trashed and we are going to need to replace it. First task is to head out to the parts car and pull the "good" steering column, that way we get an idea of what we need to do on the current car, and we still have the steering column on place if something bad happens (we've learned from experience that everything doesn't always work out as planned). Craig gets under the dash and remove the steering column, everything is pretty straight forward. There are couple small screws that are a pain to get to, luckily we just purchased some ratchets that allowed us to get in there without much trouble. Now it's time to remove the steering column for the currect STS car. First things first, we need to get the damaged wheel nut off. It's one there pretty good and it takes the two of us cranking on it with a 15" ratchets to get it off, as we thought, the threads were shot on both the column and wheel nut. I get elected to contort myself under the dash this time. It's starting to get dark, so it takes a little longer to get it removed since I have to keep repositioning the light to see the hardware. The key/ingition system is riveted to the steering column, and since we want the keying to match all of the locks we are going to have to swap the ignition. We drill out the rivets on both of the steering columns and be sure to note which is which. Going to have to get some nuts and bolts to reinstall both of the ignitions. We seem to have lost the nut that was on the parts car when we removed the steering wheel at some point in the past, so I will have to pick that up at the hardware store as well. We called it a night since we made some good progress, and the hardware stores are all closed at 11:00pm. I'll go to the hardware store tomorrow and we can finish of the installation and be ready to go to the Peru Tour. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Friday :: 5.23.08 :: by Jason
Craig had a fun idea that we should get a second hood and give it a chalkboard paint job like the old Colin Fielder STS Civic. We had lots of fun with the car at events, we got a little taste of that last year with the 'tiger hood'. So Craig headed off the junkyard to find a hood for the car. We plan to run it at local events, then swap our 'good' hood back on for the National events which we need to have the contingency stickers on the car. $40 later we have a hood ready for a transplant. =) This brought back memories of the old car, and Craig happen to send some pictures to me recently... so here they are. And some pictures of the car before the cool ass paint job, and of it's final fate after Colin sold it. There it is, the Civic that started it all, if it wasn't for that car we wouldn't be where we are today. We also had those bad ass Cheap Ass Civic Racing t-shirts!
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:: Sunday :: 5.18.08 :: by Jason
Today is the first SCCA-MKE event of the year for Craig and I since we missed Event #1 because of the Grand Prix of Long Beach trip, thanks to Bridgestone. =) This event was only using half of the normal lot at Miller Park because the Porsche Club rented the other half. However, this isn't anything new and Jeff Cashmore laid out a challenging course which was still over 60 seconds long. After the morning runs it was apparent that we were either slow or the course wasn't very well suited for our car. I found myself in 4th place in both Pro and index, but just over a second behind Colin Fielder in his STU Subaru WRX STi. I didn't doubt that I could get faster, but I don't think we were leaving a second out there on course. Craig was sitting in 6th about 0.3 seconds behind me. I only managed one clean run in morning, but it was my fastest run (all of nothing, LOL). Megan found herself in 4th place in STS, but coned away a run that would have put her into 3rd. Before our 3rd runs we decided to swap a new set of shaved Bridgestones on the front of the car. Either we would be faster, or we would be scrubbing in the new tires for the next event. I got the honor of going out first on the new tires. Initial turn-in felt a little better, but nothing crazy. Typically we have to run an event on freshly shaven tires to get them up to speed, but we were hoping today would be different. I put together a pretty good run and expected to see a drop in time, however, not to be, I was slower by about a second. Guess, our wishful thinking didn't help, these tires are going to need to be scrubbed in. Craig went out for his first run in the afternoon, same fate. Colin gets a touch faster, and Chris Shay cleans up his runs and leap frogs both Craig and I move us back to 5th and 7th. We take our last runs and are unable to improve on the day. By the way of her last run Megan moved up into 2nd place in STS, just over 0.25 seconds from first place. Megan is the top Team Undercoat Racing driver today, bring home the 2nd place trophy.
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:: Saturday :: 5.17.08 :: by Jason
We got some new tires mounted up, so we will be having a garage sale for the old tires in the coming weeks here, so check back in the For Sale section to see what we have. It was entertaining to see Craig's Eagle Summit jam packed with tires! | |||||||||||||||||||||
:: Sunday :: 5.4.08 :: by Jason
Well today is my maiden voyage of the year, WAI Event #1 at Miller Park, it's also the first time towing the race car behind the Excursion. I had to stop by Craig & Megan's to pick up the car since Megan drove it at the last event, it's been sitting there since. On the way there Craig calls and tells me that the car won't start and he thinks the battery is dead. We're not all that surprized, I'll just use the jumppack to get the car going. Craig and Megan are both staying at home trying to fight off some sickness, so I'm flying solo. I get there, we push start the car and get it loaded on the trailer... then I find out that Craig doesn't have the jumppack at this house, guess I'll be push starting the car... I get to the event and pop the clutch on the car as I roll it off the trailer to start the car, I'm getting good at this now. =) I haven't raced a car since last October, oh how I wish I lived somewhere warmer that had events for more than 6 months out of the year. Anyways, I need to knock the rust off today and get back into the swing of things. We've missed 2 events before this because of the Long Beach trip so everyone else has probably already knocked the rust off, so I'm hoping to just finish in the top 5 really. I let the car run all morning in paddock while I register, walk course, do my work assignment, etc. hoping that the battery will charge up enough for me to not have to push start it every run. I drove it halfway up on the triler so I could roll it forward without pushing it, turned it off, then tried to start it... bam, started right up, sweet! Hopefully it does that six more times today. =) The first run of the year was interesting, very sloppy, but I was running over cones on the inside because the car was turning in too much! Can't complain about that I guess. The car started for the second run, and I drove better for sure, on the 3rd run I came back with a great run that put me in the index lead. I actually had 'the shakes' when came back from this run, so I was feeling pretty good! I go into the afternoon runs with about at 0.8-0.9 second lead on index, way more than I expected. The course is very flowing without any corners that really need to be powered out of, so that helps out the Civic on index. Ryan Kroupa put his MaxQdata in the car for my runs since I didn't have ours with, so it was interesting to see my runs compared to his. Hopefully, it will help him out seeing the data.
The afternoon was really laid back for me (bad thing), the normal rushing around at the event wasn't there since I wasn't doing the normal co-driving and then having Megan drive the other half of day. I was wandering around a lot, not really paying all that much attention to everyone running, then I hear the annoucer rattle off the top ten, and I'm in second, crap! That is what I get for screwing around, at this point I have had 2 runs in the afternoon and only have one more to go. Time to get the game face on and put one together! I check the results board and I'm in second by 0.007, so I just need to be slightly faster to regain the lead. About 3/4 of the way through my last run I run over an apex cone, doh! I had enough time, but it was dirty. Note to self, we have lots of good drivers in the region, stop screwing around because they can and will beat you! BTW - the car started everytime in the afternoon too, the battery just needed to be charged up I guess. Oh well, I started the day hoping to be in the top 5 and I ended up being 2nd (-0.007) on index and able to compete for the win, so I'm happy with the day. The brakes didn't feel the greatest, but they haven't been bleed since that year, so I imagine that has something to do with it. That is something that we will need to do before the next event. We'll probably get some fresh Bridgestones mounted up for next event too, I ran this event on the same tires we ran all last year. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Friday :: 5.2.08 :: by Jason
I finally got the weight distribution hitch all adjusted and put on the Excursion, and I got the Prodigy brake controller installed. So, the Excursion is all ready for it's first tow this weekend. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Tuesday :: 4.22.08 :: by Jason
It has been well documented in the past about how well Bridgestone treated all of people who ran Bridgestone tires at Nationals w/ posters, framed pictures, ad with the winners on the rear cover of Sports Car, etc. The icing on the cake was an expense paid trip to the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach for the 4 ST* class winners and a guest! We just got back from the trip and what can I say, it was amazing! Hotel rooms at the Hilton right on the ocean, grandstand tickets for Fri-Sat-Sun, paddock passes for Fri-Sat, tickets into the hospitality tent on Sunday, dinner at the hotel on Saturday night, dinner at a great seafood/steak restaurant on Sunday (Caption Jack's), and tickets to the Champ Car party on the Queen's Mary on Sunday night. It really was a great time, way more than I expected... I was happy thinking we were going to get an airplane ticket and tickets to Sunday's race! Just when we think it's over, Sunday night at dinner they present each of the winners with a framed copy of the ad that was on the rear cover of Sports Car magazine, and it's autographed by all of the professional drivers who also won on Bridgestones last year!!!! Kimi Raikkonen (F1), Casey Stoner (MotoGP), Sebastian Bourdais (Champ Car), James Stewart (AMA Supercross)... Pretty sweet way to cap off the extended weekend! | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Monday :: 4.20.08 :: by Jason
While Craig and I were off gallivanting in California, Megan was starting her race season in Milwaukee. She had the joy of driving the car to the event (about 15 minutes on city streets), so next time the car has to go somewhere it will be Craig's turn. =) The brake light on the dash ended up being from the brake fluid level being low, not the parking brake contacts being bad. Some local autocrossers helped her get some brake fluid and get the car all set to go, thanks goes out to all that helped. Only other hiccup is that we forgot to swap out the steering wheels, and apparently we didn't leave the wheel in the car either, so she had to drive with the large offset steering wheel in her chest. Megan ended up in 3rd Place in STS after morning funs, and since she is on the 'three and done' plan preparing for Nationals, she decided to pack it up and head home for the day. =) She dropped one spot after everyone else completed their 4th and 5th runs of the day. The 4th Place finish was enough receive a trophy at the first event of the year. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Thursday :: 4.17.08 :: by Jason
Got home from work today, went out to check on the battery charger, it reads the same as it did yesterday... Put the key in the ignition, turn it, and BAM, it starts!!! Amazing, turn the car off, try it again, starts again! This is a good start to the evening, woohoo. I start the shuffling of car to get the trailer/car out of the parking spot. Craig comes over, we get the car off the trailer and get the trailer moved and out of the way. Get the old set of Bridgestone RE-01R's out and ready to mount up on the car. Get half of the tires mounted before I head in the house to start packing for the trip to California, it's about 11pm at this point... that 4:30am arrival time at the airport is creeping up fast. We decided that instead of me driving up at 4:00am, I'm just going to drive the Civic to Craig's tonight, that they he can follow me incase something happens, and maybe help me not get a ticket. I get most of my stuff packed up, he finished mounting the wheels, then I re-shuffled all of the vehicles to get the trailer back into it's place and all of the car off the street to avoid parking tickets (alternate side parking) while we're in Long Beach. As I'm moving the car, and probably annoying my neighbors in the process, I notice that one of the headlights is out. Not exactly something that is recommended when you are driving around a car with no exhaust and large stickers all of over it. I go back in to finish packing as Craig pulls a bulb from the 2006 season car to use. 1:00am rolls around and we leave my house for the 25-30 minute drive to Craig's house. The car starts up again for the 5th time since I pulled it off the charger, so I have some confidence on the battery. The brakes feel like complete crap, but they come around once I get the rust off them. The brake light is stuck on in the dash, I try moving the e-brake around a lot, but it doesn't go off. The drive to Craig's is very slow as I'm attempting to keep the noise level down by not reving the car above 3000 rpm, and not putting to much strain on the engine. On the highway we had to go past a cop who had someone pulled off, I had to gain some momentum approaching him, then get off the gas as I passed him to keep the noise down. Aside from that the drive went fine. Park the car in his garage, head inside, and proceed to pass out at 1:45am. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Wednesday :: 4.16.08 :: by Jason
Well, we are headed to the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach this weekend, but Megan is going to run the Bridgestone/Team Undercoat Racing car this weekend at the first SCCA Milwaukee Region event of the year at Miller Park on Sunday. At being said, we need to get the car ready for the event. It has been sitting on the trailer since the last Milwaukee event last year. The battery is almost certainly dead, the rotors are rusted over, the rain tires are still on the car, and the fluids need to be changed. Since the car was still on the trailer, changing the oil was first on the list. Craig headed to the autoparts store to pick up some Mobil 1 as I drained the oil. No metal shavings in the oil, so that is good. Fresh new Mobil 1 in the engine and ready to go. We then decided to tackle the battery, as expected, it was dead as a door nail. After a couple failed attempted to jump it using my battery charger, my neighbor was kind of to borrow us a battery to jump the car. We let it run for about 20 minutes, didn't really expect the charge to take, but it was worth a shot. Turn it off, attempt to start it, nada. Decided to put the battery charge on it for the night and see if it will start tomorrow. Not excepting too much, at this point I think we are going to add a $50 battery to list of consumables for the car each year. Maybe we could go with one of the smaller ones this time, even though this one is far from large. We need to be at the airport at 4:30am tomorrow morning, so it's going to be a trash on the car tomorrow. Also need to figure out how to get the car up to Craig's house so Megan can drive it to the event on Sunday. At this point, the plan is just for me to drive up to Craig's house before we go to the airport, and then Megan can drop us off. I'm so excited, I get to drive the STS car on the street again [rolling eyes], isn't this why I bought a trailer and tow vehicle? | |||||||||||||||||||||
:: Thursday :: 2.14.08 :: by Jason
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:: Wednesday :: 2.13.08 :: by Jason
Not much going on in the Team Undercoat Racing garage lately, actually, nothing at all. It's too frickin' cold to be out in the garage, we really need to get a unit heater. The current STS car is buried under about 20" of snow, the 2006 car is in the garage on jackstands waiting to be put back together, and my daily driver (97 Prelude) is also up on jackstands to receive a new suspension whenever it warms up. Our next scheduled event is the Newport Pro Solo in Arkansas on April 12th & 13th, we are hoping to find something local before that to put the car through it's paces after sitting all winter, however, there doesn't seem to be any major events going on, we might end up at a Miata Club event (or something similar). The week after the Pro Solo, Craig and I are heading out to the Long Beach Grand Prix thanks to Bridgestone, I earned a trip for 2 to the event for winning the STS National Championship last year, it should be a fun weekend. There are other race series running along with Champ Car, I'm really looking forward to seeing the LeMans and Speed GT series run. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Thursday :: 11.29.07 :: by Craig
Wisconsin's winter is upon us. Cold temperatures, sloth, Jason's love of slaying prion filled deer, and a decent Packer team have conspired against us getting anything done. I spend my day looking at car forums that don't seem to have much action in November. I would go ice racing, however, my wife forbid it. Something about a car, on ice, with water underneath it, "doesn't seem like a good idea". Really, I think she needs the offseason so that we can spend some time doing things not related to cars. We need a car cover and to sell the 2006 car. Anybody interested? We will have it back to stock and ready to sell in less than a month. (trying to motivate myself) | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Monday :: 11.15.07 :: by Jason
Finally got the concrete poured! I was starting to worry about the weather, but it all worked out. So in a couple days I'll be able to put the car and trailer on a nice concrete slab. =) Going to need to get some black dirty next year to level out the grade around it, but it's not a big deal now. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Sunday :: 11.7.07 :: by Jason
Finished up the bench top and placed all of the additional outlet boxes that I want. I made the bench 42" deep, the additional space is nice, however, reaching stuff high on the wall above the bench is an issue now. I'm going to run all of the romex wire to each duplex outlet (9 new ones total), then have someone come hook them up to a new breaker in my electrical panel, lucky I have one open. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Thursday :: 11.4.07 :: by Jason
One down, one to go. Thanks to Craigslist, the parts car is gone! They came and towed it away today using another Civic Si and a tow strap, they only had like 30 miles to go (shakes head). Hopefully they made it OK. I stood in my garage in wonder, just thinking, "What am I going to do with this space?" Maybe I'll move my stuff out of my storage garage, maybe I'll put one of my daily drivers in the garage for the first time in almost 3 years, or maybe I'll move all of that stuff out of the corner and finally build my work bench!!! Ding, ding, ding... work bench it is. I've been talking about doing that for awhile now, we have been getting by with a 6-panel door on a pair of saw-horses. Off to Home Depot for wood and electrical. The 150' of Romex cost more than all of the outlets and wood. I got most of it built, need to notch out the top and fasten it down, and then have someone come and hookup the additional outlets I added. Once I get the bench buttoned up it's time to get the '06 protest-mobile put back together. | |||||||||||||||||||||
:: Thursday :: 11.1.07 :: by Jason
Well, I need to clear out some garage/parking spaces at the house, so the parts car needs to go. Check in the For Sale area for pictures... Here is one of Craig molesting it, haha. This is the chassis I raced in 2005 before Craig and I went in on the protest-mobile. I finished 3rd at the Peru tour just behind Hollis (after leading day 1) with this chassis, Jimmy Crawford drove it to 7th at Nationals in 2005. Now that I got the tow vehicle, I need a nice place to part it, so I'm pouring a slab for the big ol' beast, you can see that in the background. Hopefully the weather holds out for the next week so I can get the it done before it gets too cold. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Sunday :: 10.21.07 :: by Jason
Flew down to Austin, TX yesterday to pickup the new tow vehicle, it was a nice 18 hour drive home for me to get acquainted with her. So now I need to make some room for the 2000 Ford Excursion Limited (2WD) with the 7.3L Powerstroke diesel, someone buy a Civic from us! I got just over 18 mpg on the drive home and was cruising along at 85-95 mph most of the way on Sunday from STL north. The huge gas tank is great, only had to stop once on the way home, in the Jeep GC I would have had to stop about 6 times. I need to get a new hitch because the old hitch that I used with the Jeep just about touches the ground when installed on the X, I had to move the hitch head up as high as it would go on the shank. The receiver on the Grand Cherokee was just so high, I couldn't get a large enough drop to get the car trailer level without having the Jeep nose-up. The receiver height on the X is much better and the trailer is able to sit level now. I think I need to paint the wheels on the trailer too, maybe orange. =)
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:: Friday :: 10.15.07 :: by Jason
Despite our bad showing yesterday the 2007 season was a good one. I ended up 4th overall in MKE region behind 3 national champs, Craig finished 8th overall. I'm happy with that considering we were building a car (again) as the year went along, it will be fun to run a competitive car all year next year instead of building one. And obviously, nationals was a capper on the year. Looking forward to next year. | |||||||||||||||||||||
:: Thursday :: 10.14.07 :: by Jason
Today was the last SCCA-Milwaukee autocross of the year, Event #8 at Miller Park. The weather in the morning started out OK, however, the forecast was calling for rain later in the day. It was just Craig and I running the car, and since we raced 2nd Heat we had time to putz around during 1st heat. We watch other competitors run and try to figure out some senarios for overall points for the year, it's pretty much a two horse race between Bartek Borowski and Jeff Cashmore. Chris Fenter has an outside shot if he takes index and the other two have to drop the event. During first heat the weather is holding out, however, it starting to sprinkle a little. We make the decision to switch to our rain tires, Goodyear GS-D3's. We had them mounted on our set of 16x7.5 K1's before nationals, and the overall diameter is larger than our normal tires, we test fitted them on the front of the car before Nationals. However, we didn't test fit them on the rear thinking there wasn't any issues, oops! We didn't even need to move the car to see that there was a problem, the fender basically sat on the tire as soon as we lowered the jack. So what should we do? Get out the BFH (big f'ing hammer) and roll the lip ofcourse! Craig did some massaging, then I did some more! While we would doing that the rain started to really come down, so our effort wasn't for nothing. We softened up the rear shocks to help reduce some understeer and took a guess at the tire pressures with the GS-D3's, which are now referred to as "the mudder's". As we went out for our first runs there was plenty of standing water on course, the car was sliding all over the place. I had a pretty fast spin in an area of the course with some higher speed offsets, I really thought I was going to make it, LOL. I did the same on my second run. I think both Craig and I were either dirty or spun on all of our morning runs. The thought of packing it up came to mind, I think the long season was finally wearing on us, however, we decided that we paid and I was kind of set on getting through that offset section! Haha, who am I fooling, Craig didn't want to leave... I was ready to go watch football and drink some beer at Chili's. The fact that all of the people on Hoosier rains were killing us on PAX wasn't helping my motivation. Bartek was hanging onto the lead for overall driver of the year by a couple hundreds of a second over Cashmore (who jumped into a STX WRX for the day). Craig noticed something that smelled like coolant, might be from the big over rev at nationals. That is something we are going to have to take a look at over the winter. The afternoon was more the same really, we really had to tip-toe the car through sections of the course to stop it from spinning. Looking back we really should have disconnected the rear sway bar on the car, it probably would have helped. Craig got a clean run in, however, I continued to spin in the offsets as I was pretty hard headed about getting through there at a fast pace. I was losing that battle, on my last run I gave it up a little earlier at got through the area, but coned somewhere else on course to finish the day without a clean run. Bartek had a better showing, stretching his lead over Jeff in the afternoon and taking the Overall Driver of the Year for the 2007 season with Milwaukee Region. That guy can do no wrong, a national DS championship, MKE Region Overall winner, and he wins the Pace trailer giveaway! In hein sight, we probably should have used the day as more of test-n-tune for our rain setup since this was the first and only rain event of the year, oh well, live and learn I guess.
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:: Saturday :: 10.6.07 :: by Jason
We decided to take the weekend off, the last week in Topeka really took a lot out of us. Craig & Megan also have this little wedding affair coming up on the 12th, so they might have some others things to take care of. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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:: Friday :: 9.28.07 :: by Jason
Oh, I almost forgot about our Team Undercoat Racing t-shirts we had make, the entire team was sporting the shirts on day one, as well as most of day 2 (got hot wearing a black shirt while working course). Anyways, they seemed to be a hit and we received lots of compliments. One person called them, "The best shirt of 2007 Nationals!"
Day 2 started off a little warmer than Day 1, however, it was still on the cold side. We had the tires up off the ground with the covers on them trying to reta | |||||||||||||||||||||
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