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For Autocross fans. Show your stuff!

Looks like fun! I am looking into Delrin bushings for the Vette, it doesn't seem too terribly difficult to pop off the 8 A-arms and press out old then press in new. I will see if it's still difficult to shift 1st to 2nd and look into engine/tranny/diff mounts at that point.
 
You should bring it out to one of the upcoming events. Either SCCA Oregon Region or when WMC runs at the Evergreen Space Museum. It will give you a chance to drive it like it was intended to be driven without getting arrested.
 
I was invited back to drive my buddies 1970 911 RS clone for the 2021 PCA season. We took it to a shake down event over the weekend and boy was it a kick in the pants. I hadn't driven the car since 2019 and I forgot how brutally quick the car is and being analog everything it is quite involving to operate. He has the car setup beautifully though, it's one of the easiest cars I've driven at speed, it does everything you want it to do. For those interested it's a 3.2 twin plug, 11 to 1, roughly 300hp to the wheels and tips the scales just under 2100lbs. We were running on DOT 200 treadwear tires for the shake down and I walked away from the field of 60+ cars including some great drivers I know in newer cars with stickier rubber! Taking TTOD was a pretty sweet result to say the least!

The course workers loved watching the car! I would go from slip angle counter steer to lift oversteer and then the car had so much grip when it would hook up at corner exit it would lift the front outside tire a few inches off the ground! Such a blast and an intoxicating intake/exhaust note!

 
https://youtu.be/jS6SarW07u8

Went last weekend. Was wet for the first half of the day and I did well. Ended up some 26th of 47 before it dried up, then fell about 10 spots in the dry. I suspect my car is set up better for bad weather than a typical autocross car as I saw many spins and didn't seem to have much issue controlling slides/determining when I was going to lose the front or rear.

In the dry weather the usual lack of roll stiffness and easily overwhelmed front tires returned. The car was still easy to drive but I had to remind myself to be patient and only do one thing at a time.
 
I forgot to post this in here, maybe I only posted it in my build thread but I did take out my Amazon out last year for just fun runs. I have since added a limited slip to the rear end so I'm looking forward to taking it out for fun again at some point this year when I'm not driving the Porsche 911.

https://youtu.be/Laa6aBF4hLw
 
I forgot to post this in here, maybe I only posted it in my build thread but I did take out my Amazon out last year for just fun runs. I have since added a limited slip to the rear end so I'm looking forward to taking it out for fun again at some point this year when I'm not driving the Porsche 911.

https://youtu.be/Laa6aBF4hLw

People love seeing vintage iron out racing. That's cool. We used to have a club member that ran a 122 and his friend ran a 444. The 444 had a suicide knob on the steering wheel so he could attempt to turn it fast enough to keep up with the course.
 
https://youtu.be/jS6SarW07u8

Went last weekend. Was wet for the first half of the day and I did well. Ended up some 26th of 47 before it dried up, then fell about 10 spots in the dry. I suspect my car is set up better for bad weather than a typical autocross car as I saw many spins and didn't seem to have much issue controlling slides/determining when I was going to lose the front or rear.

In the dry weather the usual lack of roll stiffness and easily overwhelmed front tires returned. The car was still easy to drive but I had to remind myself to be patient and only do one thing at a time.

You have the correct pedal down. Wait until you get some real tires. Then, things will change dramatically.
 
Another weekend, another "Autocross". A friend of mine coined the event the Trackcross. Our club came up with an idea of combining a road race course with an Autocross. The first one was last year. I didn't go because the date was moved so many times due to Covid restrictions and it ended up on the same weekend as a points event for another club I race with. I registered for both days. It was a combined event with the club I am a member of running clockwise on Saturday and another club I race with running counterclockwise on Sunday. Normally, that would make no difference. At ORP, it is night and day. This track is 2.3 miles long and deliberately has major elevation changes and countless blind corners. It also was designed with very well thought out run off areas to keep damage minimized if and when a driver makes a mistake. I have run one track day there and have the counterclockwise direction pretty well memorized. I got there Friday night and stayed in my camper so I would be all rested and on site for the 7:00 AM start of activities. It's over 4 hours from my home to ORP. I woke up Saturday with a heck of a head cold. Headache, running nose, aches and pains and no memory. I had a heck of a time trying to memorize the track. My 6th run I was finally confident enough to push the car a bit and dropped 7 seconds. My 7th and final run I dropped another 2 thousandths of a second. I placed OK overall, yet, was way off my game. It was cold, rainy and very windy Saturday. By 10:00 that evening I came to the conclusion I would not be a good idea to run Sunday. Driving on the edge at this track is begging for an off if you aren't thinking clearly. At least 10 cars each day went off the track into the weeds. Some sustained minor damage. Nobody was hurt. I didn't want to be the guy that ran at his limit and rolled my car because I was driving impaired. I also didn't want to have to work the course in 36 degree weather with high winds and possible rain. I let the club president know I was wanting to give up my space for Sunday so someone on the wait list could run. It was a good choice. My car is still in one piece and I'm feeling quite a bit better today. I stuck around for part of Sunday so I could take pictures of all the club members making their runs. We even had a guy with a S60 R wagon running with us. Anyway, here is one of my fastest runs from Saturday. And, the top PAX run of a friend of mine that runs a 2015 Mustang GT in CAM C and is one of the top drivers in the NW. He has been a National Champion Solo driver and it shows. He is almost always top time of day and if not, top PAX of the day. On a good day at a typical Autocross, I can usually get within 1-2 seconds of his time. At ORP, he is right at home, I don't have an ice cube's chance in hell of coming close to his time. The other video is another friend of mine that runs another 2015 Mustang and won top honors last year in the Optima Battery Street car challenge. His GT makes something like 650 HP and is a hoot to watch run. The only problem is it is a money pit to maintain. I like running my F-Street Mustang because it costs me about $2000 per season to keep it in top shape.

My best run Saturday.

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Steve Wynn's top PAX run. He had just been to an all day track day at ORP the previous weekend. He usually instructs at those events.

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Dennis Healy at the Optima Battery street car challenge last month. This is Autocross on steroids.

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Run 1 today
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My fastest time:
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Last run, loosey goosev around Gilligan's Island:
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Run 1 was Gymkhana, right? You were supposed to back into that element. :-P It sounds like your tires are rock hard now. Not a lot of grip.

They are, I was playing around with tire pressures, it seemed so crisp on the road at 40psi, I started there and dropped them every run. Fastest time was 35psi, I used to start at 26.
 
It has been 4 events since my last post. The new set up is working well and I'm finally comfortable with how the car behaves. It is quick to step out in the back end. It turns in much quicker than before. I have to be right on top of it at all times. On tight courses it does much better than it did before. At the Evergreen Air and Space Museum event I PAXed 5th. I was the fastest car in my session running against much smaller cars, some of them on race only tires. The last Hoodoo event was the last hurrah for my RE71 tires. They are no longer made and I made the switch to the Yokohama Advan A052. Those were just installed Tuesday. I've driven the car a couple of times on the street to heat cycle the tires before running this weekend again at Hoodoo. Everyone that runs these tires describes them as vague or numb. Very little feed back to the driver. That includes my friend Steve that runs a 2015 GT in CAM C. The counterpoint is they grip like crazy, both wet and dry. It will be an interesting learning curve all over again with this car. I have the event this weekend and one more at Evergreen on the 27th to learn how these behave before the Champion Tour Event in Packwood, WA in July. Hopefully, I like these. They aren't cheap. I wish one could test drive a set of tires before buying just like we do with a pair of shoes or a car.

At the last Hoodoo event a friend of mine got a video of my GT using his drone. It is an interesting perspective of an Autocross run. You can really grasp how quick the GT accelerates, even at 6,000 ft altitude where it is down almost 80 hp. This was an "interesting" event in another sense. Although it is rare, there was a serious accident at Hoodoo that weekend. Watching it happen really drives home how things can go horribly wrong in an instant. I've always been concerned about the access road we race up and back down at Hoodoo because it is quite narrow. No room for mistakes. The WRX was screaming up the hill and started to slide out in the rear when going through the slalom. He went all the way around backwards and slid all the way to the edge of the road and over the bank at about 35 mph cutting two trees in half and rolling 2-3 times. I lost count. It was actually horrifying to watch. There are very large boulders and stumps on that hill side. I think it was a stump that crushed the rood in about a foot right in front of where the driver was sitting. Miraculously, the driver was fine. His car is/was toast. That happened in the first run group. We took a few minutes to secure the wreckage and racing continued. I really had to mentally block out what I saw in order to take the hill the way I normally do. You can see the wreckage in the drone video. At the end of the day the WRX was extracted by a large wrecker.

EESCC event 2, Roseburg Speedway. The banked track makes this an "interesting" place to Autocross.

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WMC event 2 Evergreen Aviation Museum. Racing around concrete islands, rockets and airplanes.

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ACCO Event 2, Hoodoo Ski Area. Racing at 6,000 ft out in the forest.

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EESCC Event 3, racing in the rain, splashing through standing puddles. There wasn't enough tread depth left on the front tires to channel the water. Normally, RE71s dominate in the wet.

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EESCC Event 4 Hoodoo Ski Area. I'm having to baby the GT at this event. That's actually taking it easy compared to what it will do on a fresh set of tires. The RE71s were done at this event. They had 157 runs on the front tires, 121 runs on the rear tires. There is still quite a bit of tread, yet, they do not grip well anymore compared to how they performed last season. This run is the same run captured by the drone.

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And the drone video.

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My fellow club member's WRX. Yes, that is a tree branch that impaled the door.

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Last weekend was the SCCA Champion National Tour in Packwood, WA. I was hoping for one more event before running at Packwood in order to learn how the new to me Yokohama Advan A052 tires behave. Everyone that runs them describes them as numb. That is accurate. They feel somewhat dead and don't give driver feed back like most of their competitor's tires do. That said, they really are the fastest tires out there right now in Street tire 200TW class. Saturday I was learning how they drive while driving at/near their limit. Sunday was slightly better. I had 3 clean runs Saturday and 2 out of 3 clean runs Sunday. Both days I ran within 1.5 seconds of the CAM C class drivers which made me extremely happy. CAM C is my car with almost no restrictions whatsoever. The only restrictions I know of is they can't be under a certain weight and they have to run on 200TW tires. Most of the CAM C cars at the event were running 1-2 degrees more negative camber, much wider tires and had anywhere from 100-200 more horsepower than my car. I ran unopposed in F-Street, thus, the comparison to the CAM cars. IOW, I had a good weekend. It should get better as I learn how these tires really behave. We had fabulous weather and a great course both days. 234 competitors showed up and everything ran like a Swiss watch. With Covid more under control we even had a catered dinner social event for everyone Saturday night. The best part of running one of these tour events is you are competing with a large group of National Champion drivers in the sport.

Here is my fastest run from Saturday.

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My fastest run Sunday.

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My last run Sunday shot from the roof so the course can be seen much better in the video. I overthought it this run and lost 0.2 seconds trying to smooth out my approach through a tricky section of the course. Oh well.

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Oct 22-24 wrapped up another great season of Autocross for me. I ran with many clubs this year all over the north west. I also bought another Autocross toy in hopes my SO would take up Autocross again. I bought a 2002 Audi TT Quattro. I put a set of Falken RT660 tires on it, changed the oil to synthetic and took it racing to 4 events. It's a lot of fun driving a momentum car for a change. The Mustang may be big, and fat, however, it is quick on even the tightest Autocross courses. This Audi is 2-3 seconds slower on the same course no matter how hard I drive it. It just doesn't have the power to weight ration these modern cars have. It is also quite heavy for its size. Audi TT, 3,400 pound curb weight, 225 hp. 2017 Mustang GT, 3,625 lb curb weight, 435 hp.

The Audi TT at PIR South lot running at the last SCCA Autocross event of the year.

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The TT running at Volcanoes Stadium in Salem, OR at the last WMC event of this season. I had already bagged F Street class, so, I took the Audi to this event to get more seat time.

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I also ran with Oregon Region Porsche Club of America for their last event. That was a lot of fun. They put on a good event. I was fast enough there that their top time driver of the day stopped by my truck/trailer rig on his way out wanting to meet me and find out more about where I'm from and which clubs I race with. I think beat over half the Porsches there that day in raw time with my fat ass GT. They gave us all 10 runs that day. I hit one cone and when the pavement finally dried out enough to really put the power down I flew right past a gate. This video is my fastest clean run of the day with PCA.

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And the final event of this season was the Fall Enduro put on by Siskiyou Sports Car Club on the scale road race course at Jackson County Sports Park in Medford, OR. The was the 47th running of the Fall Enduro. The Enduro is one attempt at 5 laps around the outside of the track. The club has scheduled practice sessions on Friday and Saturday so entrants can get ready for their one shot at it Sunday. The last time I ran there was 2002 in my Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. This year I was going back with a car that actually has some power. I was hoping for conditions that would allow me to run hard enough to possibly nab a track record. Of course, they ran the event almost 3 weeks later than it is normally held and we got rainy weather for the entire weekend. I went anyway. Saturday was a mix of weather. It rained almost the entire morning and around noon it quit. The morning practice session got to run on a mix of damp and dry pavement before their session ended. Then, it was the afternoon groups turn on the track. Each driver got to run 2 full laps and then exited the course and got back in line. A driver got as many turns as time allowed from 1:00-4:30. There was probably 25-30 cars in my practice session. It took me a couple of runs to memorize the course well enough to start driving aggressively. My first run was something like 53-54 seconds per lap. I got my times down to a 51.5 seconds per lap on a semi-dry track which would have been good enough to run a new track record in both F Street and CAM C if I had run those times on the actual race day. In the video you can see that I'm still dodging puddles and slick sections of the track. Those record were set on dry days with the temps more in the upper 80's to low 90's. It was ~55 degrees out when I was practicing. Then, it started to rain again. That was a good thing since it gave me a chance to drive on the track when it is slick as a greased frying pan. That way, I was ready for whatever happened Sunday.

Luck of the draw, it didn't rain Sunday morning as forecast. The morning groups all got to run on a dry track. It was only 55 degrees out, so, no new track records were set, however, some fast time were put down. Then, around 11:45 AM it started raining and didn't quit until after I made my run at ~ 2:15 PM. The track was literally flooded in a few places. My goal was to keep my GT on the track and complete a run. Many people did not achieve that feat. I was fast enough I beat every car in raw time that ran in those conditions except for a 2015 Corvette Grand Sport running on rain race tires. I didn't realize SSCC gave out trophies for the Enduro until after the day of racing was over and my main competition in FS congratulated me on my win and said, "Don't forget to pick up your trophy". He holds 3 track records there and was driving a much faster 2013 M3. It felt good to come out on top in my GT. I'm looking forward to trying the event again next season, hopefully, with much better weather. The trick to winning this event was super smooth inputs on everything. Steering, brakes, throttle. It's hard to hold back when the car has so much to give.

One of Saturday's practice sessions. I ran 52.1 second laps during this session.

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Sunday's timed 5 lap run.

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The 242 was down for the TR3650 swap so I brought the '91 240SE wagon out. It has an A cam, adjustable cam gear and IPD sway bars. I wasn't the slowest car that day but only by 1 place.

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This is at our big venue, it was sucking the intake pipe shut I think but still a lot of fun.

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My girlfriend took this from the top of the VMSC grand stands
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This past weekend, new left motor mount completely changed the handling for the better. I beat some cars that I've never beaten before.

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The 240Z in front of me is on slicks and only beat my raw time by less than a second.
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Nice. It's good to drive a gutless car occasionally to get back to carrying momentum. By your 5th run you were pushing it. That big venue is awesome. That would allow for much higher course speeds. What do you think top speed was with your car at VMSC?
 
The 2022 race season has begun and I have a different car that looks just like the last one with the exception of a rear spoiler. This year I will be mainly running a 2019 Mustang GT PP1 with the 10R80 10 speed automatic transmission. I got to run it Sunday, 3-6 on dry pavement. This thing is like a rocket. It will be another week or two before I have everything switched over from my 2017 GT. It should be an interesting season with all the changes SCCA made to some of the Solo classes, including F Street, which is what I have been running in for many years with all my V8 RWD cars.

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You can take a virtual ride along and see why I'm switching cars.

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