Well, I went to the Halloweenie out at Arrowhead, but it was plagued with timing issues and wind.  I also kind of sucked that day, so I’ll just pretend it didn’t happen and move on to yesterday’s event!  The Kansas Region of the SCCA put on a fundraiser autocross for the Jayhawk Motorsports FSAE team, and held it at the Park and Ride lot on campus here.  That’s a three minute drive from my house (I was joking that my car hadn’t even warmed up enough to stop burning oil when I got to the lot), so of course I had to run.  Good thing, too: I turned in my best performance of the season. Read more

I’d been holding off on writing this post on account of wanting to see if anbody’d snapped pictures of me on course, and general laziness, but I did make it out to both days of the KC Championsips this month.  It was, err… interesting.  I guess that’s one way to put it. Read more

With the Kansas City Championships coming up this weekend, i was anxious to get some half-decent rubber on my car to justify competing.  I’d poked around a bit around town getting quotes and comparing tires, but hadn’t really committed until Sunday, when I buckled down and bought a set of General Altimax RTs from Tire Rack.  They’re no Potenza RE-01s, I know, but they’re the best all-season tires available in sizes fit my puny 13-inch steelies, and I need something I can use in the winter.  They arrived yesterday and I got them mounted this afternoon.

I knew that the no-name budget tires that used to be on the car were bad, but I didn’t know they were THIS bad!  Read more

Was poking around under the rear bumper cover this morning and my rust problem is a bit more pronounced than I orininally thought.  Hopefully I’ll be able to tret it without needing new metal, but I’ll have to jump on it quick to stop it.  Goodbye, tire money. Dammit.

Well, between the last SCCA event and now, I’ve thrown a whole $76 at my new hobby.  I bought my own helmet out at the KC National Tour (it matches the car — thank you HJC for your fortuitous choice of paint color!) and spent 5 bucks on magnetic stock to make my own numbers.  I assume, that like stickers, actual magnetic numbers add 5 horsepower per character, thus my choice to run in H Stock Street Tire class.  At six characters per side, I’ve increased my car’s oomph by 60hp!  So equipped, I headed out to the Kansas Motorspeedway to test out my improved ride. Read more

Moved (partway) into my rental house over weekend. My two housemates are in, but I’ll be staying at home until I finish work. Things weren’t quite how I remembered them from when Jon and I first looked at the house; it now pretty clearly has water issues in the basement, and some pretty nasty mold as a complication. The landlord is going to be doing a health evaluation(!) after we pointed it out to the guy doing the check-in walkthrough. That’s pretty much shot our plans for a woodshop in the basement, and introduces some potential problems. We’ve got a nice deep garage, though, and I plan to make good use of it. Speaking of the car, the transmission is doing much better now that the Pennzoil Synchromesh I put in a couple of weeks ago has broken in, and the buzz I thought was coming from the shifter turned out to be the previous owner’s ghetto stereo mount. Little things, but I feel better. I’m going to tackle rust repair sometime soon.

I’m becoming increasingly paranoid about my transmission. That, or it really is developing more interesting noises.

I’ve been noticing more noise trying to engage second lately (not grinding, though, thankfully), and an obnoxious shifter rattle at certain RPMs. All of it is quiet enough to masked by the radio, or even by wind noise, so it’s a distinct possibility it’s always been there and I’m just now noticing. I already knew it needed to be rebuilt at some point, but it’s not something that can be done cheaply, so the longer I can stretch this one the better.

I’ve also been pondering an STS2 build-up to do in phases on the car. Read more

Last Sunday I went out to the stadiums to see what this autocross thing was all about. I’ve been driving in racing sims (well, Need For Speed anyway, all the way back to the first one that they did with Road & Track consulting) since I was twelve and enjoy a bit of twisty road more than is probably normal, but I’ve never actually done any performance or competitive driving. With a car of my own and a local club or three running fairly low-risk events like Solo II, it was time to change that. Read more