2014 event #4

M

mmarshall

Member #053
Location
Florissant
First Name
Mike
Last Name
Marshall
I ran event #4 today and continued to be amazed by how much better the car is. It understeers in some places and gets loose in others, but remains controllable no matter what. My raw time today tied my best finish ever back when I was on fresh R-comps. Not too bad for my 100 TW street tires. What is cool is that there is even more time left in it. I have no doubt there is another second left in it. I was the 6th fastest car on raw times and all the other 5 were some really fast cars on Hoosier bias or A6's. One of them was a EM national champion Sam Platt. I was only .2 sec behind a really fast CP car on Hoosier Bias tires. What a blast it is to finally have a car that I can push really hard everywhere on the course. The NT-01's are also holding up very well.

Here is my best run of the day. I did get a bad cone call which I was told only moved 1/4" and was still in the box. :( Even so it was a very fast run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjT8VyvBVpo
 
I may have to be less disappointed in loosing. You beat me by 3.4 seconds at Event 3, and 1.9 seconds today at Event 4. And you are are telling me that you improved a great deal from Event 3 to Event 4. So I am chasing an opponent that is getting faster and faster, and I am whittling the losses down. That seems to mean I am improving also, and gaining a little. (But I am still getting murdered in the event points).
That would all sound really great, but Franco drove your car really well, and got remarkable times for someone who could not launch the car or shift. That makes me feel like I must be spending a lot of time in reverse or getting lost in some far corner of the parking lot for several seconds before finally returning to the course.
Not sure how the switch from three heats to two, and shafting me from 3 PM warm and cleared pavement, onto the 9:30 AM less warm and un-swept pavement worked out. Did second heat get faster?

I did not like the two brake test / right hand elbows. There was supposed to be another left hand elbow / brake test, between the two sweepers, but it got edited out in setup.
I would have liked to have had a sixth run. I had my tires bled down for another trial and discovered the heat was over.
I keep feeling like something obvious is wrong. I softened the rear spring, removed the rear sway bar, decreased the excessive rear camber so more tire actually touches the ground, turned the rear dampers way down, and raised the rear tire pressure, and the car is more than happy to continue kicking the tail out. It's supposed to be on the other end of the spectrum and I expected I would be slowly stiffening the back to edge from understeer back to barely hanging the tail when shoved hard enough.

I am really skeptical of the G meter. Those numbers sound too good. Is there any way to check the calibration?
 
Well that cone that got called barely wiggled, but in the end I got stuck with a bogus penalty. That does not change the fact that if I had been 1" further to the left I would have had a clean run and had a 3.9 second win. My car is getting much faster and I just need to re-widen my lines slightly to stay clean and I can continue to run with the fastest guys out there.

Bill you ran an 80 on the pax today which is close to my 76 I ran in your car at event #2. I still think your car is capable of running in the high 60's on pax but it will take a perfect run.

Yes Franco did very well for someone that can't drive a stick. With another go at it he will be nipping at my heels.

The G meter is just fun to play with. It calibrates between .98 and 1.02 when layed on it's side. What it does beyond 1 G is unknown. I do realize that it is reading the peak G's, but I have yet to find a program that will allow you to use a 2-3 second average. BTW for those that don't know what we are talking about, I used to run a Garmin program that records peak G's. On my old Hankook slicks I recorded 1.8 G's peak. I tried it today and recorded several runs with a 2.2 G peak lateral and 3 g's under braking.
 
mmarshall said:
Well that cone that got called barely wiggled, but in the end I got stuck with a bogus penalty. That does not change the fact that if I had been 1" further to the left I would have had a clean run and had a 3.9 second win.
Click to expand...

I didn't know you were measuring based on not having hit a cone and from a wider margin of victory. Back to not helping my confidence.
When I calculate my index points, I should end up with a 8396. I think I was up in the 88XX-92XX range in the last couple years. I know I am chickening out on late braking, but that seems like a big slide.

There were some comments about the top finisher for Event 3 and index calculations. He was driving a Miata and shot way out in front of everyone on calculated index result from his previous finished in a STi. He was back in the STi at this event, and was back down the list on the index results. Fast driver either way, but he changes from a good STi to a good Miata, and he moves the bell curve to the right by two seconds, and that is drawing some criticism to the index.

Additional thought:
I softened the rear spring, removed the rear sway bar, decreased the excessive rear camber so more tire actually touches the ground, turned the rear dampers way down, and raised the rear tire pressure, and the car is more than happy to continue kicking the tail out.
Click to expand...
Potential problem found. I had previously bled the rear tire pressure down below the manufacturer's recommendation, because there is about 500 pounds on the rear axle and the tires won't roll over. The rear got loose on cold pavement, and I raised the rear tire pressure to get the tire back into its bell curve of optimal grip in the middle of its normal range. But I ignored the popular Nascar sundy morning "every pound of tire pressure is X number of pounds of spring rate. I'm reading different claims from 1:20 to 1:40. So I have to consider the tire pressure doing two things: changing the grip of the rubber treaded surface, and changing the overall spring rate of the suspension.
 
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Bill we discussed before that different cars are good or bad in a class. The Imark nor my Daytona will ever be top dog in XP. The Miata is not only good in it's class, but also has an easy index for such a fast car.

I think you still need to reduce rear brake bias and lower the pressure even more. Under braking the rear of your car has no weight on it which is why it wants to come around.
 
The group of people critical of the Event 3 index results are a little different from you and me. We race the cars we like knowing the deck is stacked against us. I'd rather have some kind of class with no engine swaps and unrestricted modification of what came with the car. And I would have never imagined a Cobra/Daytona could be tweaked out to run as fast as that thing you have.
But the ones commenting about the Miata/STi change and jumping up the index, are the ones who went out and shopped for the most favorable car for the class they wanted to race in. They usually stay happy and don't complain about the rigged system.

On the brakes, I think having a front rotor smaller than the rear rotor is screwing things up for me. I need to go up on front rotor size. I just found out that the rotors I designed my big brake kit around were discontinued. Now I have 12+ sets of center top hats for a rotor that is no longer available.

Finally figuring out that the tire pressure is a double edge sword is a big one. Increasing pressure to get more grip also increases stiffness. That's self defeating. I'm going to play with much lower rear tire pressures next event.

I may need some people to look over my shoulder and tell me I'm doing things wrong (when I am actually doing things wrong). Then I can get past some roadblocks before throwing away a whole season. And just wait for that moment a couple seconds after the last run of the last event of the season, when I figure out what I have been doing wrong all along this season...
 
You guy are having to much fun with autox, I keep missing events the next event at the end of June I'm just getting back from vacation so not forsure if I can make it. Been looking at Mike's videos and Gateway looks like a nice track. Shingles are much better, I can drive my car with shshoulder straps now. Mike I need to get with you on tires and see if I can run 275's on the fronts or do I need to buy 245's and run the 275's on the back, they worked real last year with my 555 Nitto's on the front but I think slicks will let cut some time off. Hoping to make some events this year? ? ?

Rick:)
 
Bill I still wonder if you would be better off placing your car back into whatever modified class it fits into. I think it would be very competitive there. You would probably get a 20-30 place bump on index just from the class change. XP is the worst class we could be in. I have no choice but you can move around some.

May be easier to dumb down the rear brake pad compound or go to some really aggressive compounds on the front. I have done just that. I run HP+ on front and HPS on the rear.

Rick I have 2 of the 275's still mounted up so you can have them any time. There is nothing wrong with 275's on both ends (if they fit up front) but I think you will be fighting oversteer. You won't know until you try it. Glad to hear the shingles are better.

BTW here is the outside view of my best run. You can see the cone wiggle just after the start. 1" left and it would have been a clean run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VrGjVASlyo
 
Rick, I run 275/40 Hoosier R6's front and rear with no issues, however, I've never had to turn mine to full lock either to see if it rubs anywhere. My car has understeer on the track, but probably due to weight, not tire.
 
Cool Tim I guest that answer that question. So Mike as soon as I get my two 17x9 wheels straighten we will has to get together so I can get the tires mounted and get to an autox event.

Rick
 
Interesting. Rick was running 255/315 street tires his 1st event and the back end was coming around on him. We then put my 275 slicks on the back and his street tires in front and it was understeering.

So if your car understeers with 275's front and back what does it do on your mis matched street tires?
 
gtech.jpg


Guess what piece of 15 year old, questionable accuracy, waste of $30, that I found. Now we can play liars G poker. Or hook it up in the Daytona and try to figure out which one is less accurate...

It does continuous Gs also, but that takes a three second sustained corner, like a skid pad, which probably isn't going to be as impressive on an autocross course.

I had asked them to post the raw time results list. They finally posted the points lists, but no raw time in the bunch.
 
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Very cool can't wait to try it out. So what parameters can you set? We are way too busy to be looking at the display during a run. Does it record a max G force or will we have to put a camera on it?

I found the manual online. It does record and save max G's.....but I think it needs a cigarette lighter outlet which my Daytona does not have. Maybe we can try it your car next to my phone app.

Manual:
http://www.dakota-truck.net/resources/gtech/GTech.pdf
 
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