Sounds like a bit of a disappointing weekend, but any time you (and your car) leave the track in one piece it's a good result. Replace those bushings and get back out there!

 

Ah shoot, sorry man. Do you already have the black bushings on hand?

Glad nothing else bad happened.

 

Doh! Glad you figured it out. When my orange bushings went bad it was in the rear and I couldn't dial out the oversteer no matter what I did. I just kept driving through it and eventually led to a pretty bad off. Only when I got the car home and on the lift to fix the cosmetic damage caused by said off did I find the issue (dynamic toe in the rear).

This isn't to throw shade on SM. To me it was a valuable lesson to know your car and not try to "drive through" suspected issues and call it a day/weekend even if that track time is already paid for. I replaced those orange bushings with the black ones and they are going strong 2 full seasons later.

I also learned to check my suspension better before going out. Anyways my point is, like others said. If you and the car are in 1 pc that's a successful weekend!

 

To me, this is absolutely how I feel about this situation. The only thing I will add is that despite having found the loose alignment nut, I should have kept checking that corner of the car. Had I done that, I might have found the upper arm issue. A friend told me on Sunday morning that he had a spare arm I could swap in (stock bushings), but at that point I had made the decision to call it. Had I found the upper arm issue at the same time as the loose nut, that would have been a different decision.

For this event, I created a checklist of items to check/do before going out on track. I also have a checklist of things to check between sessions. I need to create a list for things to check between events. And another for tools to have in the trailer (I forgot my cordless impact, which probably caused me to not pull the wheel when I was checking the suspension).

Anyhow. I had a fun event, I'll be back out there in early May.

Lessons learned, cheaply.

 

Sorry you had the failure, but glad you caught it before it caused something nasty! As you observed, if your steering wheel isn't pointed the same way going straight as it was the previous session, that's something you want to investigate ASAP.

As for the not-Miata, Saturday morning was working very well, I really like the new Track Attack Pro tires. Saturday afternoon... well, I showed you the video at the track but I'll link it here as well.


Fortunately I escaped with nothing more than dirt and grass in the car. Alas, my driving on Sunday wasn't as good as Saturday. It rarely is -- some combination of being tired from the weekend, usually not doing Sunday warmup, and tire degradation usually means my results aren't as good the second day. Still a ton of fun though!

I'll see you in May!

--Ian

 

What the **** did I just watch. Was there oil? Or did ~6 cars go off due to 1 spin.

 

Someone laid oil from turns 9 through 10 on the out lap and nobody noticed until the first wave got there on lap one. Sorry, it's in the video description on YouTube but that doesn't come through on embeds.

--Ian

 

Bonkers. since nobody got hurt it's kinda funny to watch...

 

Ian can offer a better estimate than I can, but I’d guess at least $150k of race car value evaporates in that video.

What’s bonkers to me is that Tony (blue car) picks right back up and heads back into the race, and Ian just follows like “I’m not letting you open a gap on me”.

It takes me quite a bit longer to reset my “oh ****” meter than that.

 

I'm imagining that was also at least slightly motivated by "better GTFO so I don't get hit"

 

If you haven't done wheel-2-wheel racing, I'd highly suggest you rent a seat. Getting away from the HPDE folks is liberating. No longer are you worried about pitting for going 4 off. As long as no one shows you a black flag, you're racing from green to checkered. I learned more in my first few enduro race weekends than I did in ~10 years of HPDEs.

 

Some of both. Clearing the impact area so that the next wave of cars doesn't pile into me is definitely important, but once I'm back on the pavement, the car is driving OK, and the flaggers aren't showing a red or double yellow -- we're green, time to race!

As for damage, all three of them are pro shop-built cars. I'd be surprised if any of them is fixed for less than $20K out of pocket by the owner and the worst one could easily be double that.

--Ian

 

I got a knock on my door at 10am from FedEx dropping off my new bushings. Thanks @turbofan! I count that as almost exactly 24 hours from when I spoke with Ed to when the package arrived.

Would anyone like a repeat of my lecture on why I buy so much from SuperMiata and why I hope to never buy stuff from KPower again?

I'm putting together an order from Mazda for suspension bolts. At first I was going to replace a whole bunch of bolts, but to be honest the ones I have are in good condition and showing no signs of self-loosening. I'll order a few spares to have on hand.

I'm also going to order a handbrake replacement cable, I think. The end of one of my cables got screwed up years ago and it can't be tightened correctly, resulting in poor action and extreme handle angle. I find it useful, sometimes, to have the handbrake available, but it's also something that I could remove as a simplification.

Questions for the Hive Mind:
* What suspension bolt spares do you keep on hand?
* Do you keep the handbrake on a track-only vehicle?

 

off the top of my head..

NA/NB
Rear lower outer bolt, the big one. That one seems to be sacrificial when you whump that corner.
Alignment bolts.
Alternator bolt. We took to putting in a longer one that poked through the alternator and putting a nut on it
M10 12.9 crank pulley bolts (if using OPEM pulley)
Valve cover bolts

 

Wow, that number seems low to me. I figured that Larry's car was a total write-off at this point and that the other Magic car was as well. Shows how little I know about these pricey objects.

An anecdote worth sharing - safety found a wheel out in the grass, complete with the rotor, caliper, and some strut. They were befuddled when they looked around and couldn't find a car it might have come off. Turns out the car was already in the paddock: the driver knew he'd sustained damage in that corner but the car was drivable so he just drove it in, not realizing he'd lost the wheel. It came through the paddock making only the occasional scraping sound (far less noise than the decimated vehicles), impressing everyone who saw it parade by.

The wheel assembly is a work of destructive art that will be preserved as-is. The wheel itself is destroyed in several ways, the rotor is fractured into four pieces, the strut has been ripped apart. About the only possibly reusable component would be the caliper, but it's more interesting as art than it would be useful as a component. Shattering a cast iron rotor is impressive.

 

Hot damn that was a quick reply! Thank you @emilio700 !

I actually had the RLO bolt on my list already.

I've a spare front "long bolt" out of an abundance of caution since it's an unusual and long bolt, so I don't need to order another of those. I've got a container divided into M6-M12 compartments of spare bolts and nuts of various lengths and types. It helps my sanity to know that I don't have to go pawing through buckets of mixed-up take-off bolts to find something I might need trackside. BTDT.

 

Glad they showed up quick. Heads up: these are harder to install - much firmer, and tighter fit.

RE: handbrake, yes. handbrake still works if hydro brakes fail, and some brake is better than no brake.

 

I looked into renting a Spec Miata last year when my car was in the midst of an engine replacement. Maybe renting a seat in an enduro car is more cost effective, but even a SM rental was too rich for my blood. And I don't have my comp license yet.

I'm pretty critical of my driving skills and have a high bar for where I want to be before I apply for my TT or Comp license. There's also the gotcha that as a volunteer/official, I'm responsible for damage to any car I hit, regardless of fault. I already spend too much of my money on racing, I don't want to take on the burden of buying parts for other drivers.

I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that you're probably right, but I'm too cash-conscious to do this at this time. If you look at the money I've spent on this project, it's kinda ridiculous to say that, but to me the build is as interesting as the actual driving. If I were a smart guy who only wanted to go racing, I would have turned this car into a Spec Miata long ago, finished the build, gone racing, and prospered. Sadly, I'm only selectively intelligent and am turned off by the restrictive nature of Spec Miata.

 

I noticed the difference immediately - where the orange ones felt pliable, these feel very solid, with only a hint of compliance once I start paying attention.

If I need it, I've got a 2-3 ton arbor press (hand powered) I can use to install these. I doubt it'll come to that, but it's a convenient tool to have on-hand. It's great for installing things sympathetically, while the hydraulic press is better at uninstalling things, forcefully.

ETA - good point about the redundant brakes, especially considering how much of the hydro system is of my own (potentially flawed) manufacture.

 

I heard guesses of 30-40 for the two Magic cars, and my impression is that the Edge car wasn't as badly damaged, despite having left a wheel out on the racing surface. I'm hardly qualified to give estimates on repair costs for them, though.


If it were me, I'd buy new ones, install them, and put the looks-good-but-potentially-suspect ones in a box in the trailer as emergency spares.

As far as what spares to carry, it really depends a huge amount on what you're doing, how far you're going, and how willing you are to work on the car at the track. Initially I didn't carry much -- brake parts, lug nuts, wheel studs, some engine sensors, that was about it. At the time I was mostly doing single-day HPDE events that were close to home, and anything more than an hours' work I was more likely to just go home than try to fix it. As I moved into racing, enduros, and going further from home (750 miles to NASA champs, for example), the number of spares grew a whole bunch. Now I have control arms, tie rods, hubs, alternator, starter, PS pump) a steering rack, belts, radiator, hoses, a diff, a transmission (this one lives at home and only goes into the trailer for enduros), etc.

TCD deleted the handbrake in my M3 when doing the initial conversion on it, but that's a lot more weight in a BMW than a Miata. I have only rarely missed it.

--Ian