Track's Logbook
11-17-2011, 06:15 PM
#11
BAMFr
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: NC
Posts: 1,787
Got my car realigned and corner balanced today! Boy is she doing great. I am 4.75" at the pinch welds front. and possibly 4.8-4.9" at the rear. just a slight very low rake.
Now for the good stuff (with the driver and half a tank):
LF - 631 RF-609
LR - 601 RR- 561
50.4% cross weight
Total weight came in ~2400 lbs flat with 160 lbs in for the driver(I had a jacket, two quarts of oil in the trunk and a bunch of ---- in my glove box).
I would say 2250 for an NB is pretty f'in good don't ya think?
The alignment:
Front:
2.0* Camber
5* Caster
1mm Toe Out
Rear:
1.8* Camber
1mm Toe In
also did an oil change today, checking out my spark plugs and hoping to stop my ridiculously shitty valve cover leak which has moved up to the very front of the car now. God I hate the VC gasket right now.
Now for the good stuff (with the driver and half a tank):
LF - 631 RF-609
LR - 601 RR- 561
50.4% cross weight
Total weight came in ~2400 lbs flat with 160 lbs in for the driver(I had a jacket, two quarts of oil in the trunk and a bunch of ---- in my glove box).
I would say 2250 for an NB is pretty f'in good don't ya think?
The alignment:
Front:
2.0* Camber
5* Caster
1mm Toe Out
Rear:
1.8* Camber
1mm Toe In
also did an oil change today, checking out my spark plugs and hoping to stop my ridiculously shitty valve cover leak which has moved up to the very front of the car now. God I hate the VC gasket right now.
11-21-2011, 03:15 PM
#12
BAMFr
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: NC
Posts: 1,787
MVPTrackTime RA
Club: MVP Track Time
Track: Road Atlanta
Dates: Nov. 18-19
Car/Mods:
-550/450 Bilsteins, RB hollow, stock end links, ES CA bushings
-msm cam, 01+ header, 2.25" exhaust
-15x8, 205/50R15 6ULs
Nothing too crazy before this event, although I have to mention that I saw the NICEST cars out at this event. A large number of GT3s, a radical, an AVENTADOR ,ACR-X and a GT40 replica which promptly wrecked on his first lap out. Got acquainted with the club. Tech was a decent, checked my battery, brake fluid and brake lights. the driver's meeting is ridiculously long on the amount of 40-50 minutes, but they give out coupons ($100 off a simpson item, free set of bridgestone tires, and an assortment of other similar stuff).
Day 1:
The kicker? They actually shared instructors. There was a total of 10 instructors for us, and 36 novices. Since this is my second time out on RA, I wanted an instructor for sure for my first 1-2 sessions to get reacquainted with the line. Also, as a novice you have to do this stupid lead-follow session which is ridiculous, because 5 students following one instructor just leads to the last 3 students learning nothing and wasting their 20 minute session. Anyways, the day went incident free, other than a few catches I had on turn 7 and turn 12. Both my instructors were NASA drivers, one in particular is a rx-8 TT driver who was really ------- fast. Got the line down well, and posted a 1:58 laptime by the end of the day with my instructor in the car.
Day 2:
Woke up to a surprisingly wet and raining day. Completely unexpected, with no news of it until I saw everything was wet. Good thing I had decided to lay out the tarp and cover everything the night before. Anyways, today we had 46 students and the same 10 instructors. unfortunately, everyone freaked out over the rain and they signed up all the instructors before I could get a single one. No hard feelings, I remembered a few things from my class at previous DEs like stay off the gators and paint, give more space, test out your available traction before rolling into corners are obscene speeds, etc. First solo session out, I was flying on the first lap having done plenty of traction testing on the lead-follow lap and setup my tire pressure nicely. Second lap out, I pinched my trackout for turn 5 onto the short straight after the esses and spun the car. Thankfully, I was far enough ahead and saved the engine, so there was no issues getting back into the groove. Took it easy through the session, but not before kicking out the rear a couple of times on turn 7. The day got interesting after lunch where the track was completely dry. I ran pretty good through out the day. I met two guys at the track, one had a white/red miata and the other had a white s2000. Great guys, were very nice and it was pleasure to ride around on track with them. By the last session, they were both faster than me, so I think I need to work on my driving overall.
Conclusion:
A few things I picked up on is that I have a habit of pinching my trackout (not letting the car track out as it likes), and I have a very undeniable fear of oversteer. I have noticed it in two particular areas. First, when I trailbrake, I don't do leave enough braking to benefit from its ability to rotate my car. Second, I have a tendency not to get on the throttle enough in the whole sequence after turn 3.
Places to improve:
-clean up the sequence from turn 3 all the way to turn 6 (I get out of turn 3 pretty quick, but I am not staying on the throttle enough through the quarter circle, the turn into the esses, and the esses themselves).
-More trailbraking into turn 1, turn 5, turn 6, and turn 10a. This is just a matter of getting comfortable with trailbraking.
-Stemming from my recent suspension modifications, I need to start unlocking my new found grip, which is pretty much the summation of the first two.
-I need to get a feel for where the car wants to go (in otherwords, get comfortable with tracking out right at the apex). I am apexing into an area, rather than a point, which is probably hurting everything.
My next RA event is Dec. 3-4, so its not far away at all. I hope to drop my time down by at least 2 seconds if not more. I was really hoping to be with-in 8-10 seconds of SM times, which is a 1:44.
Track: Road Atlanta
Dates: Nov. 18-19
Car/Mods:
-550/450 Bilsteins, RB hollow, stock end links, ES CA bushings
-msm cam, 01+ header, 2.25" exhaust
-15x8, 205/50R15 6ULs
Nothing too crazy before this event, although I have to mention that I saw the NICEST cars out at this event. A large number of GT3s, a radical, an AVENTADOR ,ACR-X and a GT40 replica which promptly wrecked on his first lap out. Got acquainted with the club. Tech was a decent, checked my battery, brake fluid and brake lights. the driver's meeting is ridiculously long on the amount of 40-50 minutes, but they give out coupons ($100 off a simpson item, free set of bridgestone tires, and an assortment of other similar stuff).
Day 1:
The kicker? They actually shared instructors. There was a total of 10 instructors for us, and 36 novices. Since this is my second time out on RA, I wanted an instructor for sure for my first 1-2 sessions to get reacquainted with the line. Also, as a novice you have to do this stupid lead-follow session which is ridiculous, because 5 students following one instructor just leads to the last 3 students learning nothing and wasting their 20 minute session. Anyways, the day went incident free, other than a few catches I had on turn 7 and turn 12. Both my instructors were NASA drivers, one in particular is a rx-8 TT driver who was really ------- fast. Got the line down well, and posted a 1:58 laptime by the end of the day with my instructor in the car.
Day 2:
Woke up to a surprisingly wet and raining day. Completely unexpected, with no news of it until I saw everything was wet. Good thing I had decided to lay out the tarp and cover everything the night before. Anyways, today we had 46 students and the same 10 instructors. unfortunately, everyone freaked out over the rain and they signed up all the instructors before I could get a single one. No hard feelings, I remembered a few things from my class at previous DEs like stay off the gators and paint, give more space, test out your available traction before rolling into corners are obscene speeds, etc. First solo session out, I was flying on the first lap having done plenty of traction testing on the lead-follow lap and setup my tire pressure nicely. Second lap out, I pinched my trackout for turn 5 onto the short straight after the esses and spun the car. Thankfully, I was far enough ahead and saved the engine, so there was no issues getting back into the groove. Took it easy through the session, but not before kicking out the rear a couple of times on turn 7. The day got interesting after lunch where the track was completely dry. I ran pretty good through out the day. I met two guys at the track, one had a white/red miata and the other had a white s2000. Great guys, were very nice and it was pleasure to ride around on track with them. By the last session, they were both faster than me, so I think I need to work on my driving overall.
Conclusion:
A few things I picked up on is that I have a habit of pinching my trackout (not letting the car track out as it likes), and I have a very undeniable fear of oversteer. I have noticed it in two particular areas. First, when I trailbrake, I don't do leave enough braking to benefit from its ability to rotate my car. Second, I have a tendency not to get on the throttle enough in the whole sequence after turn 3.
Places to improve:
-clean up the sequence from turn 3 all the way to turn 6 (I get out of turn 3 pretty quick, but I am not staying on the throttle enough through the quarter circle, the turn into the esses, and the esses themselves).
-More trailbraking into turn 1, turn 5, turn 6, and turn 10a. This is just a matter of getting comfortable with trailbraking.
-Stemming from my recent suspension modifications, I need to start unlocking my new found grip, which is pretty much the summation of the first two.
-I need to get a feel for where the car wants to go (in otherwords, get comfortable with tracking out right at the apex). I am apexing into an area, rather than a point, which is probably hurting everything.
My next RA event is Dec. 3-4, so its not far away at all. I hope to drop my time down by at least 2 seconds if not more. I was really hoping to be with-in 8-10 seconds of SM times, which is a 1:44.
Last edited by Track; 11-23-2011 at 02:14 PM.
12-07-2011, 10:30 AM
#13
BAMFr
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: NC
Posts: 1,787
Club: NASA-SE
Track: Road Atlanta
Dates: Dec. 3-4
Car/Mods: Same as before, minus a decent alignment. grrrr!
Nothing too exciting the night before. Went out with Bryan (GeneSplicer) and Mike (Doppelganger). First time meeting them, very cool guys! They also seemed to have fun with some chick from girls gone wild named Michelle or something.
Day 1:
Great stuff, good day for driving. Temperature was warm enough for optimal tire temps, but cold enough to keep them from overheating. I think many NASA-SE track records were broken today. I was very slow in the first 3 sessions, mostly working out some comfort issues and dealing with a TON of plowing due to my reallllly fucked up toe in the front. Slow first session, instructor for the next two sessions, and then I let go and had a very very good last session. after running slower than 2:00 all day, I ran a 1:56 on the last session with plenty left on the table. Do note, I am not flat in all the locations I could be. RA has a lot of concrete walls and I am not a big fan of those considering I have to drive my car back (unlike VIR where I have no problem being flat through the esses and beyond, or CMP where the kink has a mile of run off in most directions).
We visited the skidpad, which showed me that my ridiculous front toe in was causing lots and lots of plowing. We tried to adjust toe, but due to lack of good location and wind, my toe was not necessarily fixed. I did take out a lot of the understeer and had a good bit of sideways fun on the skid pad. Jarod blew out his power steering on his G8 after doing some very clean donuts.
Day 2:
Cooler day, started off with slightly higher tire pressure, but I really had zero problems with traction. I was consistently much faster, cleaned up my line from the chicane through turn 12, started carrying a lot more speed in turn 1, 3, the esses, turn 6, and through the chicane itself. I don't have exact numbers, but I know I bumped my turn 12 speed up atleast 4-6 mph more than the weekend before, and through turn 1, I was easily going 10 mph faster at the apex. I found a new line through 2 and 3 (I started using the left gator to push me out further and cut across the gator more) and turn 5 (don't touch the gator there, but I do a slight right to get a wider line, I will eventually use this to carry more speed and trackout OVER the right hand gators to the straight). I ran a 1:54.3 WITH traffic on the exit of 12 during the beginning of the lap and on the entrance of 12 during the end of the lap. I have no doubt that I could have ran a 1:53 on a cleaner lap, especially if it was earlier in the session. BTW, I was the fastest miata in DE2 by far. Even though one or two of the miatas were running R-Comps, I was consistently faster than them during the second day.
I am thinking that a tow vehicle will be the best mod for my next tangle with RA. With that, I will feel more comfortable staying flat all the way through 12, the esses, and going faster in 5. I am also not using the full grip in my 205/50 star specs, but it was a bit hard to get comfortable with my gobs of toe induced understeer. Good alignment, tow truck, and probably a new set of 205/50s (possibly move back to xp8s in the front) and I should be good to put down 1:50s on this track. Maybe even below a 1:50...that would be AWESOME!
Track: Road Atlanta
Dates: Dec. 3-4
Car/Mods: Same as before, minus a decent alignment. grrrr!
Nothing too exciting the night before. Went out with Bryan (GeneSplicer) and Mike (Doppelganger). First time meeting them, very cool guys! They also seemed to have fun with some chick from girls gone wild named Michelle or something.
Day 1:
Great stuff, good day for driving. Temperature was warm enough for optimal tire temps, but cold enough to keep them from overheating. I think many NASA-SE track records were broken today. I was very slow in the first 3 sessions, mostly working out some comfort issues and dealing with a TON of plowing due to my reallllly fucked up toe in the front. Slow first session, instructor for the next two sessions, and then I let go and had a very very good last session. after running slower than 2:00 all day, I ran a 1:56 on the last session with plenty left on the table. Do note, I am not flat in all the locations I could be. RA has a lot of concrete walls and I am not a big fan of those considering I have to drive my car back (unlike VIR where I have no problem being flat through the esses and beyond, or CMP where the kink has a mile of run off in most directions).
We visited the skidpad, which showed me that my ridiculous front toe in was causing lots and lots of plowing. We tried to adjust toe, but due to lack of good location and wind, my toe was not necessarily fixed. I did take out a lot of the understeer and had a good bit of sideways fun on the skid pad. Jarod blew out his power steering on his G8 after doing some very clean donuts.
Day 2:
Cooler day, started off with slightly higher tire pressure, but I really had zero problems with traction. I was consistently much faster, cleaned up my line from the chicane through turn 12, started carrying a lot more speed in turn 1, 3, the esses, turn 6, and through the chicane itself. I don't have exact numbers, but I know I bumped my turn 12 speed up atleast 4-6 mph more than the weekend before, and through turn 1, I was easily going 10 mph faster at the apex. I found a new line through 2 and 3 (I started using the left gator to push me out further and cut across the gator more) and turn 5 (don't touch the gator there, but I do a slight right to get a wider line, I will eventually use this to carry more speed and trackout OVER the right hand gators to the straight). I ran a 1:54.3 WITH traffic on the exit of 12 during the beginning of the lap and on the entrance of 12 during the end of the lap. I have no doubt that I could have ran a 1:53 on a cleaner lap, especially if it was earlier in the session. BTW, I was the fastest miata in DE2 by far. Even though one or two of the miatas were running R-Comps, I was consistently faster than them during the second day.
I am thinking that a tow vehicle will be the best mod for my next tangle with RA. With that, I will feel more comfortable staying flat all the way through 12, the esses, and going faster in 5. I am also not using the full grip in my 205/50 star specs, but it was a bit hard to get comfortable with my gobs of toe induced understeer. Good alignment, tow truck, and probably a new set of 205/50s (possibly move back to xp8s in the front) and I should be good to put down 1:50s on this track. Maybe even below a 1:50...that would be AWESOME!
Last edited by Track; 12-25-2011 at 02:01 PM.
12-08-2011, 07:52 AM
#14
Moderator
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Tampa, FL; Lake Jackson (Atlanta), GA
Posts: 1,902
I got a chance to watch you in DE2 a few times (more time than we got to talk) and you were running what appeared to be good lines (to my rookie eyes) and were definitely running down other cars that should have been faster.
We didn't get to have that tow vehicle discussion but I would be happy to talk about it here if you want to open another thread. There are lots of extraneous tangents and fairly wild opinions on the MT version of that thread.
We didn't get to have that tow vehicle discussion but I would be happy to talk about it here if you want to open another thread. There are lots of extraneous tangents and fairly wild opinions on the MT version of that thread.
12-08-2011, 08:47 AM
#15
BAMFr
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: NC
Posts: 1,787
12-25-2011, 12:28 AM
#16
BAMFr
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: NC
Posts: 1,787
Broke an intake manifold stud today, but I got a ton of new parts on the way. Here is the run down:
Parts:
Wideband (MTX-L)
OBX 1.8 4-1 header (Racebeating knockoff?)
Fiberglass wrap for the headers
bulk chromoly for round 2 on getting a perfectly centered driver's seat
a TON of coroplast for a series of projects
phenolic gasket
Steering wheel
2001+ Bumper
I am also toying around with a series of other rigid lightweight plastics for making an undertray and ducting around the car. At this time this will be on the backburner as I sheared one of the intake manifold studs and I gotta get it out. I am still waiting on the phenolic gasket so its no hurry. So far the header, wrap, MTX-L, 01+ bumper, steering wheel, and chromoly are in. waiting on the phenolic and the coroplast. I am also picking up a leakdown tester soon and hopefully can borrow a friend's compressor and put to rest any engine health concerns. I will have some pictures soon.
Parts:
Wideband (MTX-L)
OBX 1.8 4-1 header (Racebeating knockoff?)
Fiberglass wrap for the headers
bulk chromoly for round 2 on getting a perfectly centered driver's seat
a TON of coroplast for a series of projects
phenolic gasket
Steering wheel
2001+ Bumper
I am also toying around with a series of other rigid lightweight plastics for making an undertray and ducting around the car. At this time this will be on the backburner as I sheared one of the intake manifold studs and I gotta get it out. I am still waiting on the phenolic gasket so its no hurry. So far the header, wrap, MTX-L, 01+ bumper, steering wheel, and chromoly are in. waiting on the phenolic and the coroplast. I am also picking up a leakdown tester soon and hopefully can borrow a friend's compressor and put to rest any engine health concerns. I will have some pictures soon.
12-25-2011, 10:25 AM
#17
MFz Regular
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Oregon City, OR
Posts: 200
I think that OBX header is of a different design, but it's actually "good". Difficult to install if I'm not mistaken, although for the price a little frustration is worth it. Apparently they rust, so put some high temp exhaust paint above and below your wrap. If it were me, I'd put two layers on the pipe and another on the wrap, that's more just for color though.
Edit: and you forgot to buy another stud if that list is complete.
Edit: and you forgot to buy another stud if that list is complete.
12-25-2011, 11:54 AM
#19
BAMFr
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: NC
Posts: 1,787
I think that OBX header is of a different design, but it's actually "good". Difficult to install if I'm not mistaken, although for the price a little frustration is worth it. Apparently they rust, so put some high temp exhaust paint above and below your wrap. If it were me, I'd put two layers on the pipe and another on the wrap, that's more just for color though.
Edit: and you forgot to buy another stud if that list is complete.
Edit: and you forgot to buy another stud if that list is complete.
BTW, any suggestions on high temp paint to use? I am about to go pick it up tomorrow along with metal ties from advancedauto. I think DEI stopped manufacturing the exhaust paint, so I maybe out of luck on that...
I bought it from their ebay store, I offered $145+$30 for shipping. with that said, I have seen it for sale for $150 at other stores, perhaps shipping will be cheaper there. It looks pretty good, the runners are slightly offset from the flange, but the welds look durable and should hold up for however long I need it.
12-25-2011, 02:00 PM
#20
BAMFr
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: NC
Posts: 1,787
oh, btw, I got the sheared stud out, but its a pain of course to go through and remove all the good ones using a giant channel lock and pliers. Any suggestions on easy ways to remove good studs with less hassle?
