Made the tow to southern california for the 3rd and final leg of the Cal Divisionals series this past July 18-20. This would the the 2nd time Ive actually competed with the DSP car since the 1st leg of the series in
april.
In any case, I had a blast...didnt do too well, but had a great time.
Never been to El Toro and it was......BIG as its an ex-Marine airbase. Course was huge with lots of technical and high speed elements. It was interesting since the course was so long that it seemed(to me at least) there were plenty of places to make mistakes in the technical sections and in the high speed areas there were plenty of spots to chicken out on. It made for a course where it wasnt unusual to pick up(or lose) buckets if time. Finding 1sec per run wasnt a strange thing.
Saturdays course was longer and more problematic for me and I was out in the weeds timewise. Sunday I regrouped and my times got better and better. Im a bit concerned though about what it took to get those faster times. I would have figured 3rd gear with a lot of left foot braking would be faster (which is what I did on saturday)especially with the short gearing on my car, but the longer I held the car in 2nd and revved the piss out of it, the faster my times. Sure, you say "well duh, longer you hold a gear the better", but the thing is, generally speaking, the F2t doesnt like to rev. I think I subconsciously held back a lot for fear of parts-a-flyin.
Congrats to Gilbert De Los Reyes for winning DSP overall int he series. After being off the pace at Qualcomm (2nd round of the series) he figured out El Toro in short order and cleaned up. Team Arizona (Doug Rouse/Elliot Spiedell sp?) Were also flying in the E46 330is winning the class in DSP at El Toro.
Which reminds me, I need to drive my car more often to eliminate teh suck. Once since the GGF divisionals isnt enough at all. um....whens the next local event again?
Food...great
surface....grippy
announcing...great
sponsors....awesome
timing/scoring....er, issues(but hey, stuff happens)
The organizers had a great idea to split the award ceremony between the mornining and afternoon run groups. That way the earlier groups could be on their way earlier if they had a long tow. Too bad I messed it up for DSP.
I picked up a mystery cone on my first run on saturday. Master audit sheet said it was there, but the individual logs said no cone. I successfully challenged that and got it fixed. The next day when the combined results showed the mystery cone reappeared. (there were quite a few computer goofs..heck saturdays results had me leading DSP by 2 sec!...I took a picture
). I had to protest the final results again and that delayed the trophy presentations for DSP.
PS. Much thanks to Mari Clements(sp?) who not only helped me with my issues, but also was having an
epic battle with the computers after one disaster after another kept happening.
In the end the cal-club guys(and gals) kept the show moving as best as possible and put on a great event.
I had to spend an extra day in LA because the tow vehicle(99 F150 4x4 with the 5.4l) picked up a major misfire under load on the way to the event. Tried pulling the plugs and found that the #3 plug couldnt be removed. At the time we thought the hex on the plug was stripped, but it turned out to be rubber from the boot of the old coil pack that was previously replaced. It was lodged in the spark plug hole and prevented the plug remover from seating on the hex. Luckily MazdaMx6Turbo lives in the area and worked as a Ford tech. With tools at his house I spent the time trying to fix the tow rig. Has anyone tried to replace the plugs on a 99 F150 with the 5.4l engine? This is a
hellish job. Thank goodness for friends with tools.
Im doing this again next year(er...minus the working on the tow vehicle thing.....and the suck, less of the suck).
Heres a coupe pictures of some of the hardware that was at the event..enjoy.
SS grid
DSP grid
Noble M400
This is Randy Chase's new car. He got it in CT and drove it across country. His previous car was one of the first Lotus Elises in the country. Since Lotus was delivering to the east coast first...he flew out there, picked up his car and drove that across the country as well. Pretty cool.
XP widebody Lotus Elise
E-Prepared RX3
Once upon a time this car was in D-Street prepared(DSP)...where it was a national champion...then it got moved to CSP where it won a couple more championships and then got made into a prepared car where its the 2 time defending champ.
E-Modified 2 rotor turbo bugeye sprite
This car used to have a 450hp N/A 3 rotor 20B in it. Problem was it was absurdly loud. The owner normally attends a site that has the most stringent noise rule in the country (I think) 93@50ft. Even with 3(!!) mufflers the size of the one on its side (they had to be routed upwards like a chimney and over the drivers head) it still wasnt quiet enough. So the owner swapped the engine for a turbo 2-rotor to get under the sound meter. Still the same HP, just a lot quieter (for a rotary), belches more flames.
CSP miata with 275/35/15s all around.
A-Mod Tui super-vee
C-prepared Camaro
Prepared says that you have to have some of the stock frame on the car or else you get a weight penalty. This car is a full tube frame trans-am chassis so it gets the weight penalty...BUT you get a weight break if you run a V6 instead of the V8, so it has an "old" Busch grand national engine in it making 450hp and spins at @ 10,000rpm(rev limit is set at 8500 though)
BSP honda S-2000
Er...yeah. Thats wrong. Nice to see my name at the top of the charts, but I actually finished 5th. All of DSP contested the results and then we got things sorted...well almost (the above mention of the "mystery" penalty cone that I picked up)
One day that sheet will be correct though. Im working on it
Gavin
98 626 sway bar Altima rear sway bar links.
