Recent content by Mike's Competition

Mike telephoned the other night to ask what went wrong at Event 10. It wasn't my best event. It was supposed to stop raining. Well, it wasn't raining when I left at 5:30, but started a few minutes after I got in the car. There was standing water on the Family Arena lot when I got there, and...

They hadn't fixed the registration problem this afternoon. I had emailed them to fix the double registration problem before billing my card. I was cc'ed on one of the responses, someone in the club was supposed to toggle a setting to zero instead of one, and that would have fixed the whole...

They had announced earlier that the registration was suspended because they had to sort through the Event #8 entries before the date was changed, and issue partial refunds for the two-day entry discount. (OK, they did not first announce that there was a change in the date of Event #8, which is...

Very light attendance today, something like 21 people signed up, two groups of ten. The pavement was wet with puddles in the morning, some mist. The re-tarred (resealed) pavement was slippery as ice. It dried some through the day. I don't think we had sunlight for more than a few minutes and...

I signed up. They show 19 entries with a 45 entry limit. I may have the brakes resolved, or at least better, and need a lot of seat time to get used to them and learn what I can get away with as far as pushing the car harder. It hung the tail out a couple times last weekend. Gateway is...

Mike and Gary were signed up but did not attend. I arrived with another new inner tube to repair the flat tire on the course lining machine. But was informed that the tire had already been repaired. The number of people who DNFed at Event #6 due to the unlined course, motivated the...

Several social visits to the machinist, and he decided to move my brake caliper brackets up and crank them out last week. (WOW! CNC programing time is expensive!) Several days chasing a bottoming tap (and finally grinding down a tap to a flat end) to get the shallow hole to accept the...

I have not gotten a response from Gateway, anyone have first hand knowledge of the current test-and-tune situation? Wide Open Wednesdays was the response to the street racing stories on the TV news. Did they totally do away with Tuesday and Thursday night test-and-tune? (All test-and-tune...

The club/series page is at: http://www.americanauto-x.com Results page: http://www.americanauto-x.com/results/ July 19: http://www.americanauto-x.com/results/pdf/2014/2014Round06.pdf July 20: http://www.americanauto-x.com/results/pdf/2014/2014Round07.pdf It's under "Classic American Muscle"...

I did some searching, I found a reference that read like "The Larry Park Memorial event, when they move the cones a little wider than usual..." That looks like it might bet into third and fourth gear speeds, kind of like the high speed autocross on the road courses. That wallom close to the...

Oddly, the CP Firebird set fastest time. I guess brute force was able to overcome the torturous course layout. A few 55s, a few more 56s. If I could have managed not to hit that cone on my 60 second run, I would have been back in the neighborhood I was in previous years. I caught some newly...

The background for this one becomes more important to understanding than what happened at the event. This is the first of the big clump of events in the schedule for Family Arena parking lot. It is still not repaved from the damage done by the tornado debris and mulching from last year, and...

Speedway and Summit are close on price. But since Summit stopped the $12 minimum handling charge per order, and started in with free shipping on orders over $100, their price is a little better overall. Not sure what kind of price I could come up with from the wholesale distributor, but then...

Many more hours spent/expended/consumed/wasted on brake bias research. Much of this is academic, but might be useful or interesting to any car builder... As best I can tell, the car started out 2167 pounds, with a 65/35 weight distribution (1409/758). And FWD. Original brakes were 9.02 inch...

I'm researching brake bias, pads, calipers, etc. Basic problem is that the car is ridiculously nose heavy with something like a 70/30 weight distribution. And half the rear weight shifts forward during braking. So the front brake has to be able to provide something like 6 times the braking...