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So anyway, on to Gridlife. My first ever competition track weekend.
After finishing wrapping up the car at around 11:30PM on Wednesday night, most of Thursday was spent driving all over the Denver Metro gathering all the things I needed.
I did a brief supply run, having never camped at the track before (and not camped at all in over a decade). I will skip all the back and forth but I picked up some camping supplies in one town, some custom cut very late notice vinyl decals in another town, a tow truck in another town, and my trailer in another town. I got the car all washed up for the first time in a while and looking good. Also note the borrowed hardtop. I still have not yet received my OE top from Prestige Spares that I bought in January and was originally told would arrive in late March, which was soon pushed back to late June, which became late August, which became late September, and now ?????.
After a lesson in how to load/unload a race car, how to tow with a trailer (never towed before), I embarked for the ~90 minute journey down to Pikes Peak International Raceway.
Fun fact: towing a 2600lb car with a ton of tools and a generator in a 3600lb trailer with a 4.7L gas 2003 Ram 1500 is not fast, nor efficient.
I arrived and was parked in my camp spot at around 11:30PM. The infield was nearly full, they had one spot left that would fit my rig without unhooking the trailer.
By the time I unloaded the car and had my trailer situated for sleeping, it was around 1AM. If you ignore the 2-3AM wind storm that swept through the paddock and sent tents and canopies flying, I woke up around 6AM on Friday after about 3 hours of sleep. But what a glorious morning it was.
A quick tech inspection and sticker application session later, I was ready to rip.
I went out for heat 1 around 10AM, having never driven the track before, not at all understanding the capabilities of my car, and with a lot of rust to shake off. For those who are unaware, PPIR is a fairly sketchy and aggressive track. High speed banking, with a giant dip in the pavement at the apex of the banked turn where the entire car bottoms out on the exhaust HARD starting at about 80 mph. The fastest guys in my class were hitting the dip at 105-110. The infield section is like a high speed autocross with giant aggressive curbs.
Astute viewers might note that I am in Falken ClubTR, and my car is wearing Hankooks. I actually bought a set of GLTC takeoff 245 RT660s from Adam Jabaay (Gridlife co-founder). I didn't have time to get them mounted until just before my second session.
I had the Falkens mounted onsite to the tune of about $120, which I felt was fair. They actually did a better job balancing the wheels than my local tire shop, which only uses weights in one location.
Unfortunately, in the unexpected frenzy of trying to make sure the car is OK mechanically between sessions, entertaining guests, trying to remember to eat, and interacting with other community members, I completely forgot to drop the tire pressures the entire day, and ended up running the RT660s at 30-32 cold. It was warm (80s) and sunny, which explains why the grip from the tires felt subpar. Nobody went particularly fast on Friday.
At the tail end of my last session on Friday, I was coming through the banking and was basically done passing the numerous cars who started in front of me when I went for the throttle and found nothing. I could hear that the engine was trying to rev up so I knew the throttle cable and body was working, but it sounded like it was fuel cutting. I was able to limp it back to the pits, but it wouldn't rev over 2k.
Rapid investigation found that the screw which holds the B to K series TPS adapter had backed off, and the TPS wasn't turning. I tightened the screw, recalibrated the TPS, and all was good, but by the time I fixed it the session was over.
During the evening, a kind gentleman approached me and offered to do some light painting shots of my car, which I obviously agreed to. He handed me a business card after, Mech N Moore photography
I know gridlife is supposed to be a party, and there was VERY loud live music just a short walk away from my trailer (seriously, wear ear plugs, the bass a 1/4 mile away at my trailer was chest thumping), but I ended up doing a quick supply run to pick up some more water and blankets to prepare for the approaching weather, and I passed out in my trailer before midnight.
I woke up bright and early to weather in the high 40s, and a nice coat of water all over everything.
The morning session was so wet that rather than doing run groups, it was open running for time attack for the entire hour. I've never driven in the wet before, but I am not one to throw away free track time so early in the weekend.
Track conditions weren't awful, most of the track was fairly damp, some spots were dry such as the braking zone coming off the banking. The normally abused curbs were obviously super slippery, so I kept off them. It was fun having the fast guys fly by me every few laps. I couldn't keep up with AdamLZ in his 550whp Evo unfortunately. I didn't find any dry vs. wet line, it either wasn't wet enough or the drifting rubbers in the track weirdly. My best time was about 5-6 seconds slower than my best from Friday. I was P20 of 34 people who ran in the wet.
The rain eased up and by the time the second Saturday session rolled around, the track was mostly dry. I was excited as it was still cloudy and cool out, and the track looked to be real fast. People started to set some record setting times.
As I rolled up to grid, a worker pointed out that my driver's rear tire was entirely flat. A quick inspection found a hole in the tread, but no nail. Must have picked something up during my hour in the wet. The onsite repair guys were unable to plug it, so I had to drive 20 minutes up to Les Schwab, wait about 45 minutes for them to fix it, and by the time I got back to the track, I had obviously missed the session.
By the time the 3PM session rolled around, the rain had picked back up again. Still, I ran with my run group for the full 20 minutes, but still at the absolute back of my class with a 1:09 having missed that dry session where everyone improved.
Later in the afternoon, they reached the point in the schedule called "Drift/Gryp Taxi". Nobody seemed to know what this meant. Eventually, after some gawking and asking around, it turns out they just let drift cars and HPDE/Time attack cars on track at the same time, allowing everyone to take passengers. I thought that they'd let a group of drift cars out, wait a second, and then let a group of grip cars out, etc.
Nope! They literally just let everyone out together, it was absolutely chaos, one of the most ridiculously fun things I have ever been a part of. Here is a video of me acting as the filming car for Larry Chen, who is acting as the filming car for a pair of drift cars.
Later in the evening after the drip/grift taxi sessions were over, I ended up spending about an hour at one of the concerts that night with some friends I hadn't seen in almost a year (kids these days are certainly into some interesting tunes). I was planning on staying out for the big Saturday Gridlife party night despite the 45 degree weather and rain that had been falling for hours. I walked back to my trailer around 10:30PM to shut off the generator I left running and decided to lay down and close my eyes for just a second. I woke up at midnight and was too tired to do anything but shut off the lights and pass back out.
Sunday morning arrived and I was delighted to find that the sun was coming out and the track was being dried. I hopped in my car around 10AM for the final session of the weekend. I quickly passed the two cars who started in front of me, and felt like with the cool dry track, I was finally starting to shake the rust off. Every lap felt like I was shaving off another few tenths. This is the first time since I have swapped the car that I began to understand what it was capable of now. Coming off the banking, I knew I was overslowing for turn 3, so I decided next lap to brake a few feet later. Sadly, as I rounded the last corner, the checkered flag came out.
My fastest lap of the whole weekend, coming from one of the last laps of the last session, ended up being a 1:06.9. The fastest time in my class was a 1:02.2 from a K24 FRS. While the best I could do was 11th of 15 cars, I was honestly satisfied to walk away from the weekend with a lot of fantastic memories, an intact car, and a better understanding of what I have built and the speed it is capable of once I am able to improve myself. I feel happy with my performance given the fresh build, new to me scary-track, and a lot of rust to shake off. I definitely took it easy, especially on the banking, where the fastest I felt comfortable was about 90-92 mph over the dip. I knew I had nothing to win and everything to lose if I cocked up the car there. It's a little frustrating to think that I could have easily wiped a second off my lap time if I had that extra dry session, which would have moved me up to 7th, but there's always next time!
I actually heard from a buddy with a class leading ClubTR EK9 civic that I had caused a little bit of chatter amongst the ClubTR folk. Apparently nobody has brought a "proper" KMiata to this class yet, and in theory it's a perfect recipe as I have to ballast up to hit the minimum weight, while the top 3 cars at this event were all 200-400lbs over the minimum weight due to the nature of them being larger and newer chassis. While I don't think I ruffled any feathers with my performance, I do look forward to continuing this build, throwing some better suspension and aero at it, maybe a little Teves MK60 ABS action, and god help my back a nicer seat.
I had a friend ask me when I was going to take the stickers off. The answer is never. Here is my "street car" sitting pretty in the suburbs of Boulder the day after Gridlife. A friend requested I pick him up from the airport in it and drive him 60+ minutes through traffic to his destination.
For now, I am going to change my oil, throw some coolant in the car to prepare it for the approaching cold winter in my uninsulated garage, and see what events I can hit up to gain some more track time.
Nothing is set in stone yet, but over the winter I would like to throw some better suspension in the car, corner balance it, probably service the endlinks with ones that aren't 10 years old, and if there's room in the budget, replace the god damn Sparco Sprint with something bolted to the floor that doesn't hurt my spine so much.
Anyway y'all, thanks for listening to my rambling.
P.S. All the on track photos of my car were taken by the lovely Rob Wilkinson. I think the other photographers didn't like taking pictures of me because I put my own photography business sticker on my rear fenders.
I finally put non-garbage-tier coilovers on the car, so you can all stop judging me now.
Spherical top mounts and all.
Featuring my new 2lb motorcycle battery (it's mounted more securely after this photo)
It's one porky pig with me in the car.
Also note: do not mount your sticky wheel weights on the part of your freeform that gets really close to the caliper.
I got bronze freeforms to compliment my silver freeforms.
I did one racing event, and despite driving one of the worst performances of my entire career (3+ seconds off my best lap which I set on BCs), I still made the podium somehow because SCCA pax or whatever?
I finally fixed the annoying pedal vibration that I took forever to solve, ended up being a beefy front rotor that must have been warped out of the box. Sounds dumb but I didn't think a beefy *** front rotor would already be warped, I was convinced it was some kind of motor harmonics or a rear rotor because of how inconsistent it was. Glad it stops smooth now.
Not too many other issues. I am curious if the near constant steering wheel vibration is just solid motor mount life or if the steering rack is touching the motor. It's hard to see but it looks like it clears with a fraction of an inch from poking around with an inspection mirror + light. I bought a pair of the $5 rubber motor mounts that this thing takes in the event I want to replace the solid mounts with rubber (something Chris at KPower advised), but my dumb *** lost motivation when I went to do it and realized that because I put the passenger side long motor mount bolt in from rear to front, the header is in the way of removing it, so replacing the motor mount would also involve a header removal which is like 30 minutes of extra effort I didn't want to deal with.
A new issue I noticed is that it's pushing a little oil out of the fill cap between track sessions and nothing out of the PCV, so I think the PCV valve that I have in it might be a dud.
Car good otherwise. I don't drive it much, summers in CO are sunny and hot, I honestly prefer a 40 degree winter lapping day to a 80 degree one. I can get my oil to 250F in a 15 minute session in the summer, so I'm wondering if I should step up to a 5w40 or add an oil cooler.
Sometimes hard to find the motivation to do track stuff. I feel like I've lost the confidence I had back when the car was slow and stock, and as a result I run weak laps where I'm braking a hundred feet before I should be and then over slow and don't really push it through the corners because I am afraid of another off that is gonna break ****. Hard to tell where the balance is, at lower speeds there is a comfortable level of oversteer that I can manage, but high speed corners I am noticing the front washing out really hard, which I think may be due to the lack of undertray at the front causing lift. Doesn't help with the confidence when it's not entirely predictable.
Admittedly I am under cambered due to something on the front left corner being bent (likely a result of my off last year) and limiting camber. At some point I will find the time to tear down that corner and swap out the LCA + Alignment bolts and re-align but right now I want to keep the car in a drivable state.
Oh also I bought a smurf colored appliance as a daily driver and have been enjoying the luxury comfort and power of a car that isn't a rattly old POS. Admittedly it was unwise financially as it detracts from Miata funds but man is it nice having a car with a warranty. Here it is in front of Mount Ranier. I have put over 12,000 miles on it since buying it in early January.
09-20-2022, 12:13 AM
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