TAMSCC Spring AX #1 – 2014
Race season is kicking in with 2 events in the first month of the year! Event number two for January was a low-key event with the TAMSCC at Riverside Annex. Held on the day following the club’s novice driver class, it usually has a big draw of new people and this event was no different. My Dad made the trip up to College Station with me and took his turn in my 2012 Mustang, putting in some good runs and improving each time.
As far as the Camaro goes, we made some further progress on the handling setup, dropping rear spring rates and tweaking shock settings as the day went on which improved the handling a bit. We still are struggling with the carb which you can hear in the below videos… Our carb guy recommended jetting up the carb, believing we were lean, but it didn’t resolve the issue. We’re going to try to get the car on a dyno here in the near future and see what else can be sorted out…
We also got our first shipment of Lucas Oil products and put in our first fill of their Semi-Synthetic racing oil. Normally we run a full-synthetic, but Lucas offered the weight we needed as a semi only. Will keep you posted throughout the year as we use their products and how we like them!
Todd and I had a close battle for 1-2 in the PAX with Todd taking the win by ~3 tenths over me. Looking at the data it was basically a small slide I had in the middle of the course. Oh well!
I also started playing with my new camera, a ReplayXD 1080 which so far I’m extremely pleased with. It’s really small and has a great picture. I’ll post more of a review in the future, but in the meantime, check out this helmet cam video below!
We are skipping the next Houston event and are planning on an event with Spokes in early February. Stay tuned for more updates!
Houston Regional #1 of 2014
Damn it was cold, but we had a successful outing anyways! After Nationals we took a bit of a break, but over the past few weeks made some key changes to the car which we hope will pay off with some more tuning. Don’t have too many photos to share at this time, but we’ve been playing with rear suspension geometry, got our shocks re-valved, and got the carburetor rebuilt. This event was our first try at seeing how things worked out.
The good news is nothing broke and it appears that we got some of our power back with the carb rebuild. The downsides are that we still have some of the low-RPM stumble that plagued us at Nationals.
With the rear suspension changes we think we can soften the rear suspension up and get a bit better bite. One step to doing that was playing with our camera setup, so in both videos below you’ll get to see our 3rd link in action!
Anyways, as far as the event goes we got some good runs in, though embarrassingly the car ran out of gas on my final run so I didn’t get 4 official times (had 1 re-run on my 3rd) and ended up 3rd overall. Todd put in a killer 4th run and nabbed 2nd spot overall behind Daniel McCelvey in Kritzler’s BSP Corvette. Results are here:
My best run (was a re-run, but data shows to be ~1/2 faster than my official 3rd run)
Todd’s best run.
We’ll be putting in some more time running at A&M later this month hopefully. Stay tuned for updates!
Sponsorship! My Lucas Oil!
We’re excited to announce that we have picked up a sponsor for the 2014 season with Lucas Oil! We connected through Hookit and really looking forward to putting their excellent products to use throughout the year.
Speed News – The Ultimate Racecar Setup and Driver Instruction Manual Issue
In the cold of winter sometimes you just need a little reading material. I first spotted this post over on Neil Robert’s ThinkFast Blog. Neil pointed out that this month’s issue of Speed News is basically nothing but tech articles from the year. Click through on his blog for more information on the issue, it’s well worth the free PDF download!
2013 US Grand Prix
I’m late to the party I know, but this past weekend I went to my first F1 race with my buddy Chris. It was a good time and one that I hope to repeat! Not an F1 diehard, I skipped the first year for the return of the USGP at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin. This year though I couldn’t resist with Chris’ offer to stay at his house.
My photography skills let me down for most of the weekend, but I wanted to share a few cool shots I did get. For those who haven’t been, the people at COTA put on a fantastic event. The track and facilities are top-notch and getting to/from the event by the downtown shuttle was a breeze. Really have to say that the event was well done and one I would recommend to any car fan. My only gripe would be with F1 itself. Last year, people were able to rent headsets to follow the race as you moved around the track, this year there was no such option and any of the streaming sites were delayed. Since we had general admission tickets and chose to move around rather than stay in front of a TV, that was a little frustrating to follow the action. So, F1, please get a vendor to do this in the future!!
All that said, here’s a few shots that weren’t too bad!
Petrolicious – Martini Mustang
If the sound of this car doesn’t make you grin, I’m not sure what will!
Via: Petrolicious
Rhoades’ STX Chevrolet Camaro
A car that I think many have been following throughout its build process is Jason Rhoades’ Chevy Camaro built for competing in the SCCA’s STX class. And who can blame them? It’s a beautiful car that Jason has covered the build in-depth on his blog and an interesting choice to try and compete in the class. Having autocrossed my ’67 Mustang in more or less STX legal trim, I have to admit I think he’s a little nuts, but I was excited to see the car anyways! (more…)
Forza / Filmspeed
While I generally am terrible at video game driving simulators, I am pretty excited about the Xbox One and Forza 5. This trailer was simply too cool not to share!
There’s a lot of other cool features in the post I spotted over at Autoblog
FEATURE: Jeff Minor’s 1978 CP Malibu
I’m going to give something a shot that I’ve seen lots of other sites do, Feature Car! Most of the online car websites seem to largely ignore autocross cars which is a shame. There are some serious builds out there and really cool cars that could use some attention!
And so, we start with something just a little bit different – Jeff Minor’s 1978 Malibu! (more…)
2013 Solo Nationals (Updated 9/18)
What a week! Highs, lows, and everything in between. I apologize for the length of the post, but I didn’t get a whole lot of blogging done during the week. With that, we might as well dive right in!
We loaded up the 2 car trailer we borrowed in the past and got on the road Saturday. This year we brought along a brand-new car that our friend Jeff Minor purchased. More on that car later! We took 2 days to get there and Sunday started the usual preparations for the week. (more…)
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