Great weekend! My first time ever on grand east and only my 3rd time at VIR. Learned a lot of stuff and had a lot of fun even though my car isn't the fastest thing out there. Such a shame the track is so far away (esp when you aren't towing) ;P

Anyone know the owner of the yellow FD pictured, with the Pettit flares?

Hey Pete,

I've met him a couple times and he's usually at the Chin 4th of July event. I'll get some more info for you then. His car is really well sorted and looks like he has added Motons to his car. What's the status on your FD? You still leaning toward the JRZ setup?

^^^

Pat,
I saw the car at Piper Motorsport. Those are Stance triple adjustables that Mitch ordered for him, and said they were great for the money. I might have to consider that route now that I need a trans too. Wanted some more recon.

Hey Pete,

They look interesting but I'd like to see more tech info. I wonder if they service their dampers at their facility in Il? http://stance-usa.com/sus/products/c...ay#GR+3Way-top

What's the price difference between the JRZ and Moton setup?

Pat,
Mitch at Piper, who installed them on the yellow car, mentioned them as seeming like a pretty good deal at $2300 or whatever they are (might be less, can't remember). I don't think they service them in-house, if you blow one they just send you a new one—revalving and custom needs to come from Japan.

Very best you'll do on club sport level JRZ or Moton (or Penske) is about $4k w/out springs/extras.

Fritz let me drive his car w/ Tein SuperRacings, and they seemed nice as well. I WAS considering the JRZ, but with needing a new trans, and pending new home and tow vehicle purchases, that probably won't happen.

Yellow car is a guy named Gordon. Ray Wilson built the car and it is very clean/well sorted. He was also at the Chin event at VIR in Nov. Just got back from TGPR. I'll post some more pictures from this past weekend and today in the next couple of days. Good day today with PLEEEEENTY of track time. I left at 1:30 today and had already gotten 6 full 30 minutes sessions in. Not bad for a $150 track day :D

Sounds like an expensive year Pete! You still leaning toward the V8 4runner and moving to Silver Spring?

The Stance will be a huge improvement over the tired GAB setup :) You better get a log book with those triple adjustable dampers. They take a bunch to get dialed in perfectly, but you'll see a huge improvement in lap times. If you need some help let me know. I'm still fighting/tweeking my setup.

Alright, finally have a little time to throw a little bit together. Well, on Thursday evening I finally have my new engine fully broken in, everything on the car is buttoned, and I go to test out the car under boost and make sure nothing comes undone. I pull out of my driveway, warm the car up, and hit the gas…. The car starts stumbling and falling on it’s face when it hit’s 2-3 psi. It was just dumping fuel in when the secondaries were coming online and killing it. I thought I might have an injector stuck open. I check and they are all good. I go back and double check everything, verify all my vacuum hoses… nothing. Long story short, I ended up staying up until 2am going through the fuel and ignition system and not finding anything. After talking with David Jerome, he thought it was my “new” used harness we put in the car during the reinstall. So Friday morning, after trying a few other things, I pull the main engine harness out of the car and put my old one back in. In the process I broke the coolant level sensor connector and knock sensor connector on my old harness I was having to put back in. Luckily I have a really good condition RHD harness that I use for connectors. So minor hiccup there. I’m extremely frustrated when all of this is going on. I was wanting to leave at 10am for VIR on Friday morning. At this point, it’s around 2pm. I get it all back together and am thinking to myself, “if this doesn’t work” I’m going to tear this car apart and sell everything” haha… I think we have all been to that point at one time or another working on these cars. Well, I pull out of the driveway, get the car warmed up again, turn around and hit the gas and… brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapppppppppp!!!! I was screaming and yelling as I was at WOT with joy! As soon as that happen though, I blew the main coolant line off the side of the block(the one with the plastic quick disconnect nipple). I am right in front of my house just in case something like this happened so I immediately cut the car off. It spewed coolant everywhere but it never even got above 85C. Pull the plastic nipple off and double clamp the hose to the block and go and do it again. Everything is working great now :D Load the car on the trailer. Pack the rest of my stuff, shower, and hit the road around 4:30-5pm. We arrived in Virginia at the hotel around 1am. Get up at 4:15am my time, get ready, head to the track, and had one of the best weekends at the track to date. Car did absolutely amazing!! Really enjoyed the grand east course. Here are some more pictures from VIR:
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...9/Track536.jpg
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...9/Track538.jpg
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...9/Track534.jpg
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...9/Track503.jpg
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...9/Track459.jpg
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...9/Track475.jpg
I drove up to pick up a Carbon Fiber Hatch and RE-A wing from Fritz for my yellow car and some other parts after I finished at the track Saturday. I figured it was only 4 bolts to bolt it in, might as well try it out at VIR :D I was very surprised at how much more stable the car felt over around 80mph.
So I had an issue free weekend with great track time and continuing to progress my driving. VIR is still my favorite track… just wish it wasn’t 8 hours away.

So we headed back home, arrived home around 2am in the morning. Woke up early Monday morning and did a once over on the car and started trying to play catch up on everything else. I end up leaving for TGPR around 7-8pm that night. Arrived around midnight and got a pretty good nights sleep. It turned out there were only 5 cars running!! So I was running a session, taking 1-2 sessions off to cool the car down, driving another one, and then repeat :D All kinds of track time!! On my last session I came into the double apex turn that is before the sweeper turn that leads to the back straight. I turn the wheel and try to turn the wheel to start to track out at around 50-55mph. The wheel is stuck turning right. I push it a little farther to the right and whatever is lodged in it comes free and hits the ground and is dragging before it finally lets go. I pull in thinking that something messed up in my suspension/steering. What actually happened was my HKS Twin Power wires some how broke or burned through the zip ties that moved the wires out of the way of the steering column. When I turned the wheel it caught the wires and ripped the twin power(which was bolted to the metal sidewall of the engine bay) out of the hole and lodged it between the steering and wheel. The only wire it tore was the ground wire. It eventually let go at the harness connector and dropped it on the track. We go back out there and pick it up. It’s beat up pretty bad. I just want to see if it still works. So I reground it and plug it back in… sure enough it still works… ha! I took it back out as I still want to check it out some more but I thought that was pretty neat. Didn’t really get many pictures from TGPR, but here is what I have:
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...9/Track524.jpg
Here is a video from TGPR trying out my Aiptek A-HD+. I can’t seem to get it to move back far enough so I can actually get the entire front windshield.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44agg-djMeQ

I'll have my video's of VIR up in a little while most likely. I'll be at Nashville Super Speedway on Saturday and then I'm going on vacation. This will be my last track day for a while. It's been fun, 9 track days in a month!

Another video from VIR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgUyU...e=channel_page

Not bad, 9 track days in a month. Did my last one yesterday at NSS and had a blast. It's just too hot and humid out. I'm going on vacation tomorrow as well. I might do a couple events in July, but I'm going to back off until it cools down some.

Lookin' good! That's more days than I've done all year :(

It looks like you're recording in standard def in the video 2 posts up. There's no option on the page to turn on HD, just HQ. Also, i use a wideangle lens (.45x) on my Aiptek in order to get a wider field of view without mounting my camera so far back. Something like this:

http://www.adorama.com/SUCAM2110.htm...24567877920729

trying to make summit point on the 19th of sept.
with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikbp7xDqHeg

Another VIR video... go easy on me Fritz but I always appreciate the feedback! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOv0F...e=channel_page

Ok... upcoming track days(so much for taking some time off... haha):
NASA Mid Ohio July 11-12(pending... haven't made up my mind on this yet)
Zoomfest/ATL SCCA PDX July 19
Redline Nashville SuperSpeedway July 25-26
NASA Road Atlanta Aug 7-9


Thanks Matthew, I was wondering how you were getting that wide of an angle. I'm prob. going to get a suction cup mount to stick to the front windshield on the inside as well. The quality sucks because I have no programs to convert or edit the video's on my laptop :(. I haven't had a chance to pull my desktop out of storage yet, but once I do I should be back to using the full version of Vegas... which I'm sure is outdated by now.

Video from NSS with my Aiptek A-HD+ and a slipping camera mount. I have a wide lense and a suction cup mount on the way so my video's are better from here on out. I'm also finally pulling all of my stuff out of storage(I've only been living out of a suitcase for 1.5 months now :)) so I'll have Vegas to edit with instead of this windows movie maker stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vW2kB6W6P4

A few more from the MazdaDriver's event:
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...e09/VIR034.jpg
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...e09/VIR008.jpg
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...e09/VIR024.jpg
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...e09/VIR044.jpg

Have you made up your mind yet for Mid-ohio for this weekend? I'll be up there testing out a new set of Hoosier Koni Challenge series tires, hope the rain stays away.

I'm going to have to do some car and trailer maintenance this weekend unfortunately. I'm planning on hitting it every weekend for a while after this weekend so I'm trying to make sure I'm good to go now :D Wish I could of made it.

some video's from Road Atlanta this weekend at the SCCA PDX:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP5iJVsFEo4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRgmwiPPRG0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIEyeWNS_M4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaDBeTBR4Xg

Hi Brent,
Nice vids from Road Atlanta :icon_tup:

You plan on running w/ PCA in Sept. Great price and two fun tracks. Info here:
http://fst.pca.org/events/2009/DE%20May%2009%20POST.htm

Are you going to be instructing? If so, i'm there.

Nice :bigthumb:

YEP, I'm already signed up :icon_tup:

NASA, Mid-Ohio Aug14th-16th, Are you in? If so, let me know I'll save you a place in the paddock.

dan

I really wish I could make it, but I believe that is the Carlisle BBQ weekend. I will be at the NASA event at Road Atlanta Aug 8-9. There is also a possibility that I'll be at Putnam Park Aug 29-30th.

I'll be there. This looks like one of the best bang for the buck events this year.