Ran my 1st Autocross of 2012 today

M

mmarshall

Member #053
Location
Florissant
First Name
Mike
Last Name
Marshall
I ran my 1st event today of 2012. No my Daytona is not done but a friend was kind enough to let me beat on his 2002 Pontiac Trans Am. He runs in a different class but I ran it in XP so I could get credit and points even if I lost.

I fully expected to be playing catchup with Bill as the TA is a 3600lb car that I had never even sat in. Much to my suprise I learned the car pretty quickly and actually pulled off the win with a 1.3 second lead. The best part was how much fun the car was to drive. It was loose but very easy to control. I found it easy to countersteer and just keep the hammer down. What fun!!!!

Notice in the video how often I had to countersteer. I am not used to this much slip angle without a subsequent spin.
http://youtu.be/wUo1SwCfyKM
 
Update: I just got off the phone with the owner of the TA. I ended up beating his best time by 1/2 second. I think it might be bad manners to run better than your host. Ooops!

At least he ran in a different class so I did not cost him any points. I apologized profusely.
 
Good job Mike, Sounds like you had fun. I thought you would of been at work this weekend. Can't keep up!

Rick:)
 
Thanks Rick! You kept up just fine. I took a couple of days off work to be able to race. If I had missed this event I would have had a hard time taking enough points to win the championship.
 
You surprised me. Not a mention before Sunday. Glad to see you there, not happy with how I did at the event.
It felt like the course from Event 3 had a very wide groove that I was able to throttle steer around with confidence.
For event 4, it felt like the groove was a knife edge that I kept falling off of no matter that I did. My sway bar changes made things a mess. Too much oversteer. The only upside is no inside front tire spin as the car careened sideways through walls of cones.
And, many comments about my rear brakes locking up all over the place. Previously a low priority problem, now on the top of the list.
Not sure of the brakes were the cause of the complete problem, or if it just highlighted my failure to compensate for the front sway bar removal by adding an equal amount of spring.

On the numbers, XP class ran first, so we had the disadvantage of cooler pavement and none of the gravel had been swept off the course by a previous heat.
Mike ran a 8685 ICP. Slightly above the 2011 average. Pretty darn good for someone who hasn't driven for the winter and the first quarter of the season. And a car you had never driven before. Proves you are underestimating your ability.
I managed a 8442 ICP. Better than I expected with how disappointed I was on Sunday. Back down to the level I started the year, below previous year averages, and below my desire to stay above 8700 for the rest of the year. If I had driven in the top of my range, instead of the bottom, the finish times would have been very close.

Time to shuffle springs and order brake valves.

By the way, the right hand drive CRX was miss classed in SMF, and is only legal to run in XP. Not as quick as we were Sunday, but a potential irritation if either one of us has as bad a day as we have had in previous years.
 
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Bill you have a unique tuning situation being front drive. It sounds like changes to help put the power down tend to screw up the handling. This is a problem we don't have with rear drive.

Even though rear drive is easier to dial in I am still battling confidence in the car due to the severe oversteer. I hope my weight shift will help but there are no guarantees. I moved my engine forward about 2" and moved my battery about 6' forward. If I could drive my Daytona as aggressively as I did the TA I would be really fast. Jeff's TA could be 2 seconds faster if his rear gearing was spot on.

Just keep at it. Unfortunately you are working with a car that is not very competetive in XP. If you were working with a different car I am sure I would be struggling to keep up as my Daytona is a little weak in XP.
 
mmarshall said:
It sounds like changes to help put the power down tend to screw up the handling. This is a problem we don't have with rear drive.
Click to expand...

No, not quite that bad.
We talked about the difference between having a mass produced car where nothing is adjustable, and building a car that has everything adjustable. If it was a car they made everything for, I could have gone out and bought adjustable everything, and five or six years ago, had adjustable everything and no idea how to adjust it. It took me that long to make adjustable everything, and now I'm busy making stupid mistakes, fixing one problem and causing one or more other problems. I'm a little better than the people who make big, wrong changes and flip over their car, I'm just adding a couple seconds to my time and getting really frustrated.
I had the thing balanced. I should have known enough that I would have to add spring rate if I reduce sway bar size or remove the bar completely, to replace the spring action of the bar.

As far as tuning, it seems like the fastest way around the cones is to get the rear end to slide a little. With RWD, the window is wider, you can cause the rear end to kick out with the throttle. With FWD, the window is narrower, and more throttle causes understeer. As far as I understand, you set the suspension up to oversteer at the desired speed and cornering force, use steering and brakes to induce the tail to slide, and throttle to recover.

The front sway bar is annoying. More bar makes the car transition quicker, feels more precise, and lifts the inside front tire on exit. Less bar feels muddy. No bar with more spring to replace the rate of the bar should be the same, with a harsher ride. But I need an event to test it before June 17th. Eastern Illinois on the 10th or Indiana on the 3rd are looking like the only opportunity for testing.
 
Mike's Competition said:
But I need an event to test it before June 17th. Eastern Illinois on the 10th or Indiana on the 3rd are looking like the only opportunity for testing.
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How quickly four weeks passes.
Shuffling springs and sway bars took a day.
Adding parallel brake proportioning valves to the four channel brake system, involved lots of sorting through non-tapered NPT fittings from three different manufacturers, and took two weeks (if nothing decides to leak now that I bled the brakes with good fluid).
Then I decided to fix the trunk lid, which had split horizontally across the latch plate and reinforcing panel which the little weld nuts were attached to, between the panels. Naturally, the first piece to which everything else is attached, and can not be disassembled in one piece without separating the inner and outer panels. Two weeks of drilling, cutting, designing, tapping, welding, and priming.

And not even a chance to drive the car to see if the trunk still squeaks or the brakes work.

Tomorrow morning is driving school (if two out of three pages are correct, and it is not on Sunday June 16th), in an untested car that has to be handling between good and perfect for me to benefit from the time and money being spent.
 
Mike's Competition said:
Tomorrow morning is driving school (if two out of three pages are correct, and it is not on Sunday June 16th), in an untested car that has to be handling between good and perfect for me to benefit from the time and money being spent.
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Sunday was the correct day. Apparently someone found a web page that said it was at the Family Arena parking lot, and broke the speed of sound driving over to Gateway.
The suspension changes were, in the very least, a step in the right direction from the un-driveable mess of Event #4. Maybe not as good as Event #3.
The course was extremely tight and restrictive, just what would be expected for learning the basics (again, but this time correctly), revealing bad habits and trying to get rid of them, and keeping the driver's attention on anticipating the next step instead of being overwhelmed in the moment. A roundabout, an extremely tightly spaced five cone slalom, a 180 sweeper, an undersized Chicago box, and three offsets. Maybe 30-35 second range for almost every car there, using half the pavement we usually use at Gateway (and our events run 40-50 second times using the whole lot). So there was no wide groove to play around in, just drive the line and keep moving forward.
I did not see the big jump of improvement I did when I took the school many years ago. I was hoping for 2 1/2 seconds. I got a solid .8 seconds improvement. Maybe more if there is any truth to all the comments that the pavement got slower and slippery in the afternoon heat.

Next Sunday is the next event. Mike, are you bringing out the fuel injected, Chevy powered monster, driving the Firebird, or bringing out a new monster for me to chase?
 
Bill it will be good to compete against a professionally trained driver. I don't know about Sunday yet. The car has been with the tuner for 2 weeks and he is still having problems getting enough fuel to keep the A/F correct. At this point I don't know if it will be ready or not. I might need to call Jeff O and see if the TA can be a backup. I think I can squeeze another second out of it and be competetive even though it is a bit heavy for XP.

Hope to see you Sunday!
 
They managed to pull up a chunk of blacktop, fought about it for a half an hour, then changed the course (and had me re-chalk it), and then started fighting about if they were going to count the event for points or not, which is apparently an ongoing argument even now (Wednesday night after the Sunday event).

They probably won't even count the class points (Merry Christmas Mike), even though the classes ran together in each heat, and there is no valid reason not to count them. You could probably make a really good argument about not counting the index points, because that throws all three heats together. But who can argue with petty dictators and megalomaniacs?

So far, they are refusing to even release the times for everyone and I can't even calculate the index just to see if I improved or not.
 
I guess there is some hope for me. The ls is giving us fits. We finally found a program that will work, but now the car is overheating. The ls is a challenge to bleed the air out the system, but I also could have a bad waterpump. I might have it going for the July events. I am guessing it might become a best 6 races senario. Bill it was very considerate for you to offer to codrive. Thanks again.

To complicate issues further on Sunday we took our daughter to the er for a bad migrane. We did a mri. on Monday and found she has hydrocephalous again. On tuesday she had her 2nd brain surgery and is now starting the long recovery process. Thank God the surgery was successful and she has no major issues so far.

For now the car is on the back burner.
 
STL Mark said:
Sorry to hear that Mike. Hang in there.
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Thanks Mark! So she had brain surgery on Tuesday and came home on Thursday...pretty amazing. She is still throwing up alot, but the surgeon says that is normal due to the shifting around of her brain plus the trauma of the surgery. We will just keep praying for her.
 
Mike, If You or your wife need anything don't hesitate to give Elizabeth or myself a call. Our prayers are with you and yours.

Rick
 
Hoping and praying for a good outcome for your daughter Mike. Hang in there yourself, it must be hell to watch and wait.
 
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