New seat is lovely and touches me in all the right places.
Now to get a proper harness.
Ran my best time of 1:33.2 which is finally below the sm record (~1:33.5 or so I hear) haha. My goal with this car is to get below 1:30. I think I can do another 3 seconds...
Fastest lap on this track is a 1:25 something; done by a nascar licensed young dude in an acr viper...
I was running some FM recommended alignment with camber -1F/-1.5R.... don't do that. The -2.5F/-2R 949racing alignment is the path to enlightenment. I can actually correct for oversteer now....

 

Your hands are improving a lot and I like your lines a lot more. Is the video you going for your fastest time or are you out there experimenting? You seem to be a bit inconsistent in how you attack some corners.

 

Thanks! I've been trying to get better... I'm definitely all over the place trying things... I haven't really "pushed" things much since going into the tires a year ago. I need to learn to drive before I get on it; I'm certain that pushing the limits will result in slower laps and broken things...

After 2 years of questionable safety equipment I decided to at least make a half hearted attempt towards a track safe car.
Harness/hnrs/helmet are on their way.

I've just finished the harness bar.
You'll notice I didn't incorporate the bar into my roll bar. This way I get to keep my glass soft top and I have a clean shot to mount the shoulder harnesses.
The bar is 1.5" 0.126" wall DOM and the plates are 3/16 cold rolled bar.
I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, there are 2x7/16" bolts and one 3/8" bolt per side. It is however only setup to handle shear force, probably not that effective in a broadside hit.

 

Hmm these Schroth harnesses are pretty nice... The 6 pt is still up on my business, but I guess that's the name of the game.
I did attach the sub belts to the seat frame. This is a use at your own risk kind of thing. The seat rails did handle the 1/3 of seat belt load on the na8, but... ymmv.

I also decided to try out the Zamp HNRS.
It has a good deal of adjustment range and seems to be comfortable while making race car sounds and pretending to drive in my garage.

I think I've spent more on this interior/safety stuff than my turbo setup... haha

 

Safety is good!

 

I do tend to lurk around a bit on this forum and noticed that it has been a while since I've had any updates in my own thread.
The car has been problem free for the past year, but since going from 0 to 3 children in 22 months and remodeling my rental house, I haven't had too much track time in a while. The last time I was out the driver rear brake was locking up and my overall confidence in the system was down.
I'll need to address that before I do any more hdpe.

On the build front, I've finally started framing my sanctuary. Downstairs will have a lift, one side devoted to car/metal work, the other wood. Upstairs will have a man cave on one side and my composites shop on the other. I hope to have a cnc router upstairs and a cnc mill downstairs one day...
Overall it's 20x40 with two 12x20 dormers upstairs.

 

Very nice!

 

Thanks!
Forgot to post a picture of the overall model. I've got some work to do!

 

Ah, that makes way more sense now. When you were referring to levels I didn't know if that meant multistoried or different garages uphill or downhill of each other lol. That's gonna be a tall garage!

 

Love it man. Keep up the good work.

 

I actually did something productive on my car last month.
These projector headlight turn signal things worked out waaaaaaay better than I thought they would. Much thanks to Stealth97/aidandj/etc for looking into this.

My only input are these brackets to hold the headlight covers. Honestly these were supposed to just be templates, but they were much more solid than I expected so I just ran them.
My hood is the only clean panel on my car so I really wasn't too keen on riveting the headlight covers.






I intended to add another brace piece to triangulate, hmmm.






The shop is coming along, hopefully I'll have a floor in a few weeks!
This has been a really big project, but I'm not moving too slow considering I'm working solo and most of this was done while my kids were napping during the weekend.

 

Wow, what a great 'sanctuary'

Did you do the roof framing, that looks mega impressive! Some hefty timber in there!!

 

Haha indeed, I have a more detailed thread on garagejournal.
Thanks for the compliment!

I hauled almost all of those up by hand by myself... the big lvl beams that span the dormers are 2 ply with each ply weighing around 150lbs. I used a drywall hoist to lift those in place and had a buddy to help stabilize and move them. No pictures of that process Haha.
Luckily the largest single piece was a 2"x12"x20' ~(40mmx300mmx6m)

My brother and dad helped with the dormer rafters and the complicated valley rafters.
I channeled my inner mt.net and used a sawzall of all things to make the compound angle cuts.

 

Hey man, hope all is well. I'm working on building a garage this year as well, though mines a much simpler metal building. Super jealous of your setup though!

I just saw the videos here of you running 1:33s at Sandia, that's ******' quick! I was able to turn some 1:36's consistently last time I was there, lots of time left on the table, just need some more seat time on that track. It would be a great time to meet up for some track action one day. Hopefully the track re-opens soon.

 

Dude I think I will seriously try to sneak away for a session. I have 3 year old rs3v2's on the car that are completely bald, but probably have one last gift to give.
When I watch those videos it occurs to me that I drive like I used to ski... as fast as possible without much in the way of skill... I've since had a 2000 SE (purple power) fall into my lap and plan to turn it into a car I can learn to drive with. The reality is that my kiddos need another year or two until I can start having fun at the track again.

As for the shop, its getting close! Its funny to think that I'm still spending every free minute working on it almost 3 years after starting. I've done everything after the framing while my kids were sleeping.
I'm just about done setting up my electrical service. This thing is on its own lot, so it needs its own meter. At least in bernalillo county we can do our own electrical work after passing a (somewhat difficult) test. That service mast was... SKETCHY to install...
Hope you're doing good too man!
































This trench is just for the grounding electrode system... New Mexico has some weird rules....

 

The shop looks fantastic!

 

Hey man, how's the shop looking now days? Do you still have the miata(s)? You should come race!

 

Hey Man!
Well I've got some updates, but really life has been a handful lately. My twins ended up having special needs and my entire existence will likely be spent meeting those needs for some time.
I have no reason to sell my car so I will have it once things get better in the next decade or so.

Back in October I went back to my first employer who was recently purchased by AMD. So I guess I work for AMD? Anyway that came with the hard concept of working from home. Working in my actual house is not possible, so I spent the next few months getting the upstairs of the shop heated and insulated. The heat pump is a 24k unit and powered through our coldish winter. It held 65 on a -2 day and only the upstairs of the shop is insulated. Pretty impressive for a $1700 unit.

Somehow I got the idea that a tractor would solve some of my problems related to having 20-30 hours of freetime per year... It ended up needing a new drivetrain in the front axle... Check out the 9" gear! There's one of those in each hub. Lol tractors...