Over the last two weeks I’ve swapped springs (600/500 from 500/400), put in new trailing arm bushings, put in a MSI Direct Steering Kit, installed a new intercooler, drove to Oregon to get a ProTune from Tim Bailey, grinded, sealed, rolled, and pulled my rear fenders, got new Hoosier A6′s mounted, and I just now I’m finished up putting on my Hoosier stickers. I haven’t even washed my car yet.
I’m taking off in a couple of hours, I might still take out the backseats and seat belts as well as my amp/sub from under the front seats.
This weekend I installed (well, I helped, Robby is a tour de force in the garage) new forward and rear trailing arm bushings, a new front control arm inner bushing, and upgrade the spring rates front and rear +100 lbs (600 lbs Front, 500 lbs rear). Body roll is pretty much nonexistent now. The main goal of the springs was to keep the rear tires off of the fender (they are gouging the tires and have stripped some paint).
Also, now that we have a new iPhone mount for the car, I can record some stable video. Here’s video of my winning run from event #5.
I co-drove John’s Elise on Sunday. It was the second time I’d drove it (first time in the dry and first time on slicks). I didn’t fair too well in the AM in class. John, however, managed to pull out a 2nd place trophy (out of 7). I ended up in 5th. I did manage to pull out a quick run on my last run of the day (a 44.4), which would have been the fastest time of the day had I not hit the cone on the way out of the slalom. Overall, I think things are looking to be fun for this WWSCC season.
My work buddy, Craig, recovered my friend Corey’s keys that he lost a year ago down our black-hole stair case at work; but we didn’t let him know we had the keys. So, over the past few weeks before we went to lunch (Corey usually drives us all), I would go out and mess with his car just a little and then watched as he slowly started to think he was crazy.
One day, I moved it just slightly into the next spot, then before we got into it for lunch, we mocked his parking job. This prompted a response of “Hrmmm, I didn’t think I parked on the line.” Then one time I cranked his stereo up and moved his seat forward a few inches. It was super hard not to laugh as he was verbally confused about his new seating position.
Finally, today, he was parked where I normally parked. We switched his car back to where he normally parks and put my car back where it’s supposed to go. We also moved his seat all the way forward. His reaction was too hilarious, preventing us from containing our laughter in response to his “I think someone has been driving my car!” and “I swear I didn’t park there”, so I decided to finally give him his keys back. Good fun though.
This is the 2nd time I’ve found Stig hiding around the world on Google Maps. I thought I’d share it for any one who gets a kick out of this type of thing.
Tuesday and Wednesday I was at the Evolution Performance Driving School in Packwood, WA. I’ve been waiting a long time to take that school (almost 2 years) and it was totally worth it. I strongly recommend it for anyone interested in getting better at autocross.
The school was nothing like what I thought it would be in terms of what you learned. At autocross, you hear people talking all the time about “looking ahead”. During your runs, you’d try and “look ahead” and might not get any faster. This school totally taught me what looking ahead really means and showed me a lot of tools to make sure you’re looking ahead.
I was also nice to be able to ride with some national champions so they could show you what your car is capable of doing. My scoring results sheet showed a huge improvement after one ride with Karl Coleman driving my car through the slalom.
I’ve moved the stable beta version of AutoX Event Data (AXED) to http://axed.danpodhola.com. I’ve done this so my development alpha site’s intermitten downtime doesn’t stop people from using it while I add new software features and updates. If you want to see the latest and greatest, the old URL still works but reliability will be low. I’m in the process of adding another organizations autocross data (WWSCC) to the site, so if you tried to use it all this weekend, it could have been all-kinds of screwed up.
Over the last two weeks I’ve swapped springs (600/500 from 500/400), put in new trailing arm bushings, put in a MSI Direct Steering Kit, installed a new intercooler, drove to Oregon to get a ProTune from Tim Bailey, grinded, sealed, rolled, and pulled my rear fenders, got new Hoosier A6′s mounted, and I just now I’m finished up putting on my Hoosier stickers. I haven’t even washed my car yet.
