Ran my 1st Autocross of 2012 today

I hope Emily is resting comfortably,we are praying for all of you. Let her know Buddy is waiting for her to come back over and play
 
Thanks everyone for all the prayers.

Emilee is doing pretty well. She only threw up once today and has started eating and keeping it down. She still has a few minor issues that will hopefully work themselves out as the trauma from the surgery decreases. We just keep praying every day and she keeps getting better.

On a side note I took a break today and went out to Omer's today to pick up the Coupe. He has a base tune in it but can't put it on the dyno as it was overheating. I finally found a special proceedure for the LS engine to get all the air out. Once using this techinique it ran pretty well. I took it for a drive and wow, the extra torque is incredible. It really pulls alot harder off idle and will be alot of fun on the track. The engine still needs some tuning but it is close. I hope to get a few things done to it the next few days and then take it back out to Omer next week for some dyno time.

Thanks again for all the support!

Mike
 
Sorry to hear about the family emergency. Makes me feel a little bad about needling you on the telephone Sunday morning, when you declined to drive the little car.

It looks like they changed their mind again and are going to count the Event 5 points for class championship, but not the Index Challenge points.
The actual index numbers aren't, but I calculated my number and it was almost dead on average for the previous four events (three upward trending and one setback). I was hoping for an upward trend, or a bump after driving school. Maybe if we had gotten that fifth run...

Sunday will be just as hot, and probably also less than five runs, so no building for a late run improvement. And I don't know if I will have time to practice driving with the center and right pedals both mashed down. I need about three years experience in the next four days.
 
Bill don't worry about it. At the point we spoke I did not know how serious things were about to get with Emilee.

I do appreciate the offer to co-drive and I may take you up on the offer next Sunday if it still stands...if my car is not race ready by then. PM me your number so we can chat.

I think you are looking at the numbers the wrong way to evaluate your performance. I have a goal to run with Rick's CP Boss. If you look at his performance he is very consistent. I also look at some of the other top drivers like Zander and the ESP crowd. Compared to them you have made major improvements in your car even though the index does not show it due to the horrible XP index multiplier. Last year you ran about 6 seconds slower than Rick and this year you are within 3 seconds. I'd call that a major improvment!
 
mmarshall said:
Bill don't worry about it. At the point we spoke I did not know how serious things were about to get with Emilee.

I do appreciate the offer to co-drive and I may take you up on the offer next Sunday if it still stands...if my car is not race ready by then. PM me your number so we can chat.

I think you are looking at the numbers the wrong way to evaluate your performance. I have a goal to run with Rick's CP Boss. If you look at his performance he is very consistent. I also look at some of the other top drivers like Zander and the ESP crowd. Compared to them you have made major improvements in your car even though the index does not show it due to the horrible XP index multiplier. Last year you ran about 6 seconds slower than Rick and this year you are within 3 seconds. I'd call that a major improvment!
Click to expand...

I'm in XP because I have a couple cars that won't fit into any other class, and it's the lowest class that allows stripped interior and no emergency brake (the I-Mark interior was rotted and combination calipers are a pain). The idea was that I could drive any car I own, and still be in the same class. I thought I would race XP locally, and then take one of the other cars to nationals, and run DSP, because most of what I do fits into Street Prepared class rules.
But, for some reason, I keep spending all my time playing "Keeping up with Mike", instead of fixing a couple of the other cars.

I've been fighting with the car for several years, and got really tired of the overall comment theme "It's really quick, considering what you're working with". I have enough in the car that it should be more like "I can't believe you outran me with that thing that I've never heard of or seen before". Even with my bad driving, it should be running as fast as some of it's natural enemies (market competitors), like the Civics.
Our region does not post a raw times list. That would probably help both of our egos. I went down the Event 4 list and I think I was 27th out of 110 entries. But all anyone sees is the index, and plenty of people out there, who think racing means beating the guy in the other lane to the next traffic signal, smack-talk about how low the XP cars are on the index list.

I looked at the rule book the other day, wondering what class it would go into if I wanted to run in a regular Prepared class. The later cars, with independent rear suspension and five more horsepower are in D Prepared. But for some reason, they put the lower power car, with the solid beam rear axle, into E Prepared, a faster class, against CRX Si and Integra Type R. The CRX has an independent rear suspension, and after years of fighting with the beam axle, that makes a huge difference.
Adding to the surprise is that Rick and the CP Mustang have a more favorable multiplier than EP! Rick said some guy with a CRX is outrunning him consistently at nationals. That should be against the laws of physics.

As far as chasing Rick, he's a very good driver, and a very good car builder with a lot of years of work and driving in that Mustang. His daughter seems to be a pretty good driver too, running a second or more faster than me.
My target is to be about 1/2 second behind Wiese on raw time, which would put me quicker than Ned and the V8 RX-7. Or at least up into the 9000's on the index.


You might not want to drive my car at the next event...
If the paint drys in time, I am finishing up a set of adjustable strut rods for the car. Mostly because there is not money to do molds and a run of bushings, and I want to get rid of the alignment change due to bushing flex. It's been a long time in the planning, and the current swaybar-less front suspension setup eliminates designing and building another Nascar bar for the front.
It's built so you could hang the car from the rod mounts and the rod end is grossly over sized. But you would have to trust the work of a non-engineer designer who is a self taught welder.
These things should not change the balance or cause oversteer, so it isn't like a spring change. And it's a stock engine rebuild with stock ECU and redline cutout. It shouldn't be possible to hurt anything.
Aside from that, as long as the car doesn't go on strike by breaking down just because I agreed to let someone else drive it (and it has done that before) it's fine with me.
 
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Bill I really like the competition and hope you keep pushing me to be faster. Hopefully we will eventually have some roadsters join the fray and keep us both honest. On the national scene EP would be a much easier class than XP. Last fall in Nashville I was 9 seconds slower than the S2000 that took 2nd at nationals in 2011. The XP Lotus is crazy fast. Currently I believe you would be in the points lead in EP.
 
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