Me killing tires around a hairpin. Thanks Jenn for the pictures!
Haven’t updated this in a while, huh? The previous semester in school was my own personal Hell On Earth, and since school got out I’ve spent enough time under the car to make me a little bit tired of talking about it. However, I’ve found some motivation: one of the local autocrossers has fulfilled that secret desire of mine (no, the other one). She’s taken pictures of the CRX in action!
They see me roolin', they hatin'
Things started to pick up steam on the car in April, when I picked up a used set of Kosei K1 Racing wheels from Brian Harmer, the Solo Technical Assistant over at the SCCA national offices. They came with decent, but not world-beating, Goodyear summer tires. At the same time I bought those, I put in an order for new Koni Sports and a custom-rate Ground Control springs and perches. If I was really hardcore, I would have gone with 450/500 spring rates, but I’m a girly-man who has to drive his only car to work across some of the worst pavement in the industrialized world, so after consulting with Chris Shenefield at RedShift Motorsports, I ended up with 350 lbs/in all around. It’s a pretty good compromise, on the whole; with the Konis soft in the rear, it’s tolerable over rough roads, and stiffening the rear shocks gives me a reasonably level and well-damped vehicle while autocrossing.
Event #1 was very wet.
The suspension parts didn’t make it in before the first local event, though, so I was just running on the bigger, stickier tires. They had excellent tread on them, though, which was good, because it was pretty rainy that weekend. The combination of high grip, soft front springs, and a stiff rear bar made for some… err… exciting rear-end-off-the-ground-and-passing-the-front moments. In two days of runs, I spun at least three times. I wasn’t particularly fast, either. I only just barely beat an FC RX-7 that had an even lighter prep level. Obviously I had some work to do.
the Solo School and Event #2 was preceded by a lot of frantic wrenching. The first thing I did, on the Thursday before the school, was tear out my heavy, broken air conditioning. That took about 50 pounds out of the front of the car. Then I followed that up with a day of suspension work. My friend Matt Schott came over to help, lured in by the promise of a co-drive (he actually ended up driving his own Matrix, but hey, I offered). The GC/Koni setup was finally on the car at 2:30am on the day of the school, and I had only time for a very rough finger-gap adjustment of ride height before I collapsed into bed for four hours of sleep. My instructor for the school was Andrwe Clark, a very nice guy who also is on track to at least trophy this year at nationals, if he can maintain his current pace compared to the class front-runners. The school was great and I was running some very fast times by the end of day.
It's like they designed it for this sort of thing
The car loves the courses that tight lots lend themselves to, and it showed at the next day’s event. I was only a few seconds off my instructor’s times, and gained ground on pretty much everybody compared to the last event. I absolutely loved the way the car felt on the new suspension, and was looking forward to the event onthe following week… except my car wasn’t going to cooperate. The check valve on one of the wheels decided it had just about had it with me and my over-pressuring ways, and decided to not hold air on the morning of the Event #3. To add insult to injury, my bike-mechanic room-mate woke up three hours later and fixed the damn thing with a pair of pliers. That was a bit of a drag.
FEEL THE POWER OF 92 RAGING KITTENS
Event #4 made up for it, though. My car is pretty well sorted now; I took it over to the dealership where Tim Herron (former National Champion, 3rd place in STS last year) works and had him put the car on the alignment rack a few days before the event, and I’ve got the ride height set just about right. Matt came out again, and brought his whole family along for the ride (Dad Schott got one heck of a Father’s Day out of that!), and I got to ride along with Tim on one of his runs. The highlight of the day, however, was very nearly beating Don Gawf, a local veteran and owner of a very well-prepped Miata. I had him until he pulled off a 1-second improvement on his last run. Next time, Don, next time…
I just spent the last few days doing some overdue maintenance of the car. I changed the oil, replaced some worn-out coolant hoses, flushed the radiator, and fixed a worn-out torque mount. Not that all that will make much of a difference of course, but at least I won’t be worrying about having a hose blow up or the engine falling out of the car. Next event is at the end of July, and I’m itching to go.
Also, just FYI, orange juice goes quite well on ice with a little Tanqueray gin.