2013 GT STX-ESP autocross build

[BMR Tech]

Good info in here.

 

[modernbeat]

...but ultimately, rear shocks would be just another wear item to add to my semi-annual list that already includes the diff clutchpack, strut bolts, RSB bushings, etc etc.

Glad you're taking it in stride. And yep, sounds like you barely have room to store tires, much less a trailer.

 

[boardkat]

Glad you're taking it in stride. And yep, sounds like you barely have room to store tires, much less a trailer.

indeed. if not for the four tirerack tire racks (heh) mounted on the walls, there's no way i'd be able to pull this grassroots motorsports endeavor thing off without a hitch (heh heh)

 

[2008 V6]

Here's another observation about racing and its costs...

People who LIKE cars drive all sorts of cool cars - sports cars, muscle cars, luxury cars, off-road trucks, vintage cars. The real enthusiasts do car related activities - cruise nights, show-n-shines, club runs through the mountains, off-road driving, touring drives, road trips, track days, etc.

People who REALLY LIKE cars drive cool cars and do car-related competitions with them - autocrosses, Solo I track events, time/speed/distance rallies, run-what-you-brung night at the drag strip, car shows with concours d'elegance, etc.

But people who LOVE cars don't drive cool cars - they drive trucks. They OWN cool cars, but the cool cars are race cars that live in a shop and ride to the track in an enclosed trailer. The truck's job is to serve the race car. The truck is often kind of junky, but as long as it runs, it lets the owner spend money on the only important kind of car - the race car.

My vintage racing friend used to love muscle cars. Since he started racing, he has begun to view street cars as a waste of perfectly good money that could've been spent on racing. His philosophy about nice street cars is as follows: "Is it a race car? Will it at least tow a race car to the race track? Does it have anything at all to do with racing? No? Then f--- it."





***** This is one of the best quotes I've seen in the last 10 years ********

 

[sholzer]

All four race wheels and your tools will fit inside the car without taking up the passenger seat. Just fold the rear seats flat, stack two flat on one side, one up right in the space next to the stack, and one in the trunk where the spare goes. Plenty of room left for helmet, jack and tools, and a passenger if you're not using a super tall race tire that stuffs against the roof and keeps the passenger seat from reclining back. I use those tire totes from tirerack to semi-keep the inside clean from those dirty wheels/tires. I'll take a picture of how I load them when I go to the next event but here's one from my old autocross car, same idea though:

How hard to you shove the wheels in there? I couldn't get the 295/40/18 to fit standing in the back with the rear seat folded down?

 

[chilema]

How hard to you shove the wheels in there? I couldn't get the 295/40/18 to fit standing in the back with the rear seat folded down?

Here's a couple of pictures of how I did it. Pretty much just have to give the vertical tire a firm shove to wedge it against the ceiling. I can see this being a bit harder to do if you have leather seats though...

PS. Got an update thread in the works, just need time to write it up. Maybe I'll get it done tomorrow!

 

[sholzer]

Ahh ok, I was wondering and trying really hard to get it to stand in there without having to shove it in like that. I need to get some of those tire totes in case I need to do that at some point. Thanks!

 

[Norm Peterson]

Here's a couple of pictures of how I did it. Pretty much just have to give the vertical tire a firm shove to wedge it against the ceiling. I can see this being a bit harder to do if you have leather seats though...

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I think I'd rather run a tire tail for just that one tire standing up like that. Run it crosswise a la 1960's customizing "Continental kits". About two bikes worth, about the same amount cantilevered . . .

That I have leather seating has less to do with it than outward visibility and the ability to carry a passenger without risking a little civil war of my own about 1861 feet down the road.


Norm

 

[chilema]

Alright, so I got lazy and ended up waiting too long to do an update on the past month of autocross. Since I got an AAS double-header coming up this weekend I'll just do one big update after these two events, which makes 6 events to cover in total. Lot's of exciting stuff happening these days!

PS. Terry or Jason if you guys read this...just put in the 550/250 spring setup and the new rear AST 4100s, if you HAD to daily drive the car, what would you set the rear rebound to?

 

[modernbeat]

With the 250 in the rear, about 4-5 clicks from full soft.

 

[chilema]

6/5 Update:

My apologies for waiting so long to do a massive post on the last 5 or 6 autocross events all at once, I think it was a combination of laziness and not having much to report about until maybe the last two events.

The short version of the story: Everything's going well at local events, stiffer spring rates and a shorter rear shock came in courtesy of Vorshlag and AST, and I'm going to the SoPac Super Regional in El Toro, CA on 6/21 to see where stack up against the Bergstrom/Dollmeyer S197 that placed 2nd at Nationals!

The long version...

5/4 SCCA Sacramento Chapter Round 3

The event took place on a relatively small asphalt lot in the middle of town in Stockton. I'm not usually very fond of running here because the lot is very bumpy, but the core organizers are a group of old-timers with Corvettes and they usually run pretty fast courses and a relatively laid-back event so I do have a good time every time I decide to come.

The car felt pretty good in the (very few) transitions but the rear end was bouncing around once again in the low speed turn-around elements. I ended up dropping the rear rebound to 1/24 from full soft to stop the car from feeling like launching my head against the roof. The course was very power-centric as expected from the Corvette crowd, basically NASCAR loop/drag strip linked together by hairpins. Still, it was pretty good fun and I was able to get some good speed out of the car in a lot as small as this one.

Here's the video:



Raw time and pax rankings for the event here:
http://www.sfrscca.org/solo2/Sacramento/Results/2013/Cup/round3_lists.html#oa

A very weird thing happened with my results...I was sure that I got a clean 45.8 on my 3rd run because I have a timeslip saying so, but for some reason I ended up with a 44.9 + 1 cone on that run and ended up falling back to my throw-away 4th run of 46.6 clean. Oh well, I either had a legit 12th raw/ 6th PAX or coned away an 8th raw / 3rd PAX, can't complain either way haha.

5/5 Norcal UFO Round 3

Once again we've made our way back to the Marina Airport! This time the event was held by Norcal UFO, which usually meant I was going to see an ocean of cones and a super-tight course. Nevertheless, I wasn't going to pass up any opportunity to get more seat time.

Not much to say about the car setup as I just stuck with the usual concrete setting of 9/12 clicks front and 7/24 clicks rear. With the course being as tight and awkward as it was I just couldn't get myself into a good rhythm to be on the full limits of the car, and you can see my frustration at the end of the video haha!

Best run:



And the results - Nothing exciting here, just 21st raw / 13 PAX out of about 100 points-entries. I did win what ever semblance of an ESP class that showed up that day but I wasn't too happy with the results overall. Of course, I wasn't really expecting to beat the dune buggies and mod cars on a course like this .
http://www.norcalufo.org/main/attachments/210_ufo3_results.pdf

5/18 - 5/19 AAS Round 3 & 4 at Marina Airport

This was one of the two AAS double headers that I attended in the past month. It's always exciting to come to AAS events because of all the well-known Prepared cars and abundance of past national champions in attendance. I'm always humbled when I attend these events as the good drivers are pretty darn quick!

Day 1 went pretty well as far as winning ESP goes. It wasn't much of a fight, but at least everyone had prepped cars, all using 315 width A6's, V710s, or BFG R1-S's except for my relatively skinny 295 A6's. Brian Jacobson's Camaro (seen in an earlier update post) has developed a lot of issues with wheelhop on braking and corner entry so he couldn't really compete on level ground.

No video for Day 1, it turned out I brought a corrupted SD card for my GoPro so I couldn't record anything.

Here's the results - 35th raw / 32nd PAX out of 80 points-entries, not great but not too bad either considering the competition:
http://www.americanauto-x.com/results/pdf/2013/2013Round03.pdf

Day 2 was more of the same. Won 1st place again in ESP but the battle was a bit "closer" this time between Brian and I . Brian's ESP Camaro was giving him a lot of trouble, we saw all manner's of weird behavior with the car on course - amongst its many issues were front control arm bushings that were so shot he had what looked to be positive camber on the passenger side front wheel!

About 3 runs into the run group, Brian got so fed up with the car that he parked it and asked for a co-drive in my car. I must admit he did an impressive job to pull a 42.8 to my 42.5 in only 2 runs in my car. He absolutely loved driving the Mustang and thought it was better in every respect compared to the F-body with the exception of transitions, where it seems to heave a bit before taking a set, whereas the Camaro would outright carve through a slalom with a lot of speed. Good thing I had a remedy for this already in the works in the form of higher spring rates!

Video of my best run - toward the end of the run, at the right hander before the finish, you can hear the tire rubbing against something and making a whirring sound before a loud screech. It turned out that the tall 295/40/18 A6 was coming in contact with the frame when the car sees steering lock and some suspension compression from body roll! I will elaborate on this issue a bit more in a later post:



Results below - 37th raw / 24th PAX out of 97 points-entries, getting a bit better! The car is pretty much in league with "decent" drivers in semi-prepped SP cars or SS Corvettes, all on R-comps where applicable, but I was still a tad behind compared to the best drivers/National Champs.

http://www.americanauto-x.com/results/pdf/2013/2013Round04.pdf

I thought I was gonna be able to make the entire update on one sitting but I'm starting to run a bit out of breath hahaha...I will continue the update post on the latest AAS weekend and some stuff on new suspension bits and my SoPac divisional entry in tomorrow's post.

Cheers!

 

[white86hatch]

Am I the only one who can't get the videos to work?

 

[Norm Peterson]

Get them to work? I don't even see them to even try.

All I see are blank squares and an indication on the tab that the S197Forum page is still loading . . . and still loading . . . and . . .


Norm

 

[chilema]

Hmm...this seems to work okay but if I refresh the page the videos will go blank for a while. Not sure if this has anything to do with the new tagging stuff youtube is adding.

 

[chilema]

Darn! I've been so busy with work that I've been too lazy to make the updates about the past couple of autocross weekends like I wanted. Even though this is about as last second as it gets, I'm just gonna throw it out there as a quick update.

I've made some spring rate and rear shock changes with much help from the awesome folks at Vorshlag and AST Suspension. Now the car runs 550/250lb F/R springs with rear height adjusters and a shortened variant of the inverted rear AST 4100 shocks. I've only had limited run time on the new setup but in the three events that I've done on them they have been absolutely awesome! By the way, Terry or Jason if you read this, hope the take-off shocks got back to you guys nice and safe!

In other news...

I'm going to the OS Giken Southern Pacific Super Regional at El Toro Airfield in Irvine, CA on June 21st - 23rd! This is one of the largest annual events in Southern California outside of the National Tours and Prosolo events so I'm quite excited to race there. The MOST exciting part about it is that the Bergstrom/Dollmeyer S197 will be there along with Greg McCance and Brad Owen in their WRX's, all four of the drivers were at Nationals last year with Dollmeyer grabbing second place in the yellow GT.

These cars:

This is a rare opportunity to see how I stack up against true National level competition and while I'm not expecting to win the class, I do expect the car itself to be within earshot the other cars. I will be co-driving my car with Brian Jacobson, driver of the ESP Camaro in an earlier post who did run against the Bergstrom/Dollmeyer car at the San Diego Tour and believes my car is faster than his own car by enough of a margin to catch the yellow S197, with a very tight nut behind the wheel no doubt . Yes I know my car isn't nearly prepped to the adequate level in ESP, but one can always bench race a little right? If I had to hedge my bets a little I'd point to the fact that my car is just about full stock weight with essentially a bone stock motor, but hey there are no other Coyote/Road Runner powered cars there this weekend so I still can't complain about losing on power

Brian was kind enough to offer to haul my race tires down to Irvine while I drove the car down on its street tires. It's about a 400 mile drive down and I'm leaving in about...6 hours. I better get some sleep! Updates upon my return fellas!

 

[white86hatch]

Good luck!

 

[sholzer]

Good luck! Sounds like it will be a blast!

 

[Whiskey11]

Good luck and let us know the details!