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I still need to do a 24hr race update, but I got some new (used) parts in for the miata. Tilton OT-II that I picked up used. Plates are all still well in spec and it was a quarter of the cost of new. I also went and snagged this 8.8 out of a Mark VIII at a local junkyard. It's actually a bit lighter than expected at 56lb. But it's also an open diff, so we'll see how it is once it's got the lsd in it. I'm all out of used stuff to buy which is a bummer cause I've had fun trying to get deals on stuff. Really not looking forward to dealing with DSS and buying axles, equal parts due to price and their customer service. Might try to buy the flywheel this month though.
Will do. I'm not a fan of how people have done the underfoot styles, so I think I can get better results with these. It'll likely be a couple of months before I fully dig into mounting them, but my current plan is to make mounts that come down off the dash bar.
Yeah I was planning on just adding some tubes coming off the front cage bar for mine. I can't do underfoot, raising my feet at all with my seating position would be a no go. Plus this allows me to keep the engine bay super clean, delete the booster, have all the ABS components and brake hard lines inside the cockpit instead of on the engine facing side of the firewall etc.
Looks like about a 25-26lb weight loss out of the new clutch/fw combo. Is much smaller, very much looking forward to it. I'm really just trying to duplicate the revviness of a b6, hopefully this does it.
So I wrote this post like....a month ago. The race was like two months ago (July 25-26th). But then I wanted to get a picture of all of us from Geoff. And then I forgot to text him until today. And I haven't gotten it yet, but whatever here goes.
Alright, 24hr update.
We had a bit of work to do to get ready for this race. Our original plan was to race in May, not June, that way we'd have more than a month to get ready for it, but COVID pushed our first race back, so whatever, gotta roll with the punches. My teammate was very wary about trying to do the 24h since he had a mandatory vacation at work and him/his girlfriend were going out of town for a couple of weeks which meant the majority of prep fell squarely on my shoulders.
Our suspension failure trashed a bit of stuff on the right side of the car between the tire, shock rubbers, tophat, and bearing. So it was decided we would do a bit of a refresh on everything. Tophats got replaced on both sides, new hubs, all the rubber bits got replaced as well, and a new tire.
Next up was lighting. Since I work at ARB and I can get scratch and dents for cheap, the only logical solution was to run overly expensive lights that I could buy at the same price as we'd spend if we bought shittier lights. I ended up picking up two AR21 spots and an AR40 combo. I also wanted to make it a bolt-on bar that would get thrown on at night instead of running the lights the entire time. I went back and forth a lot but finally ended up with something I was relatively happy with and easy to install. One 6 pin dt connector and 3 M8 bolts per side. I was also worried about the lights being too bright, so I rigged up some PWM motor controllers to turn them down. As it turned out, we just aimed them low and ran them at max I don't think they were too bright (sorry if they were people).
Then I made some angles that held led strips to light up the numbers. Wasn't really all that happy with these, I felt like the lights could have been lit up a lot better, but they passed tech. I'll likely change this next year.
We had 2 drivers renting seats (Geoff and Albert) but unfortunately, Albert had some problems with a neighbor going crazy and they had to turn around to drop Albert back off. That left us with three drivers for the 24 hours which was the minimum allowed. Christian couldn't get Friday off for practice despite asking over a month in advance (seriously, **** his boss) so Geoff and I ran practice. ORP is a really cool track, lots of elevation change, and blind turns. We each got a bit of time in the car. Eric, who I had never met before but was a mutual friend volunteered to come crew for us and was an absolute lifesaver.
Friday night we spent aiming headlights, getting gas and food, and then trying to install the cool shirt system Albert sent with Geoff for us to borrow. We stopped at midnight when everyone was frustrated and tired. Saturday came and we got the system installed but neither Geoff or I had the correct fittings without adapters so we had to run without it for the first part of the day. I thought they were a nice thing to have, turned out it was 100% needed.
The start of the race went well until Christian started feeling sick and came in after an hour and a half. I went out and lasted about the same. At the time where I felt like I couldn't take any more, a car stalled at pit lane and the entrance was blocked so I couldn't come back in. Fighting nausea I kept going until they moved. Unfortunately, it was a bit too long and I ended up throwing up as I came into pit lane. Thankfully I was able to catch most everything. Turns out heat is no joke. Geoff is an animal, the heat seemed to affect him less and he did a full 2-hour stint.
By my next stint, we got the cool shirt set up running and it was a massive difference. I honestly don't really remember much about my stints. I think my second stint I started to run low on gas and I wasn't able to stay out the whole time. We're still getting burn rates figured out, but I felt like we had a good handle on it by the end of the race.
As we were coming up on the night section of the race, Martin from AR caught our tire was wearing out bad due to lack of camber and a massive amount of right turns on the course. During our pit stop, we swapped RR to LF.
My next stint was from 10-midnight. Really really cool racing in the night. The body roll would point the lights more towards the apex and corner exit which made for a really awesome effect. The course also changed to the short course at night which was super fun and super quick laps. Light output was good and the blind turns were very interesting. I caught a couple of hours of sleep after that stint.
I was up again at 4 am. This was my last (planned) stint and running with the sunrise was absolutely amazing. It started out just as dark as my last stint. Then after a little bit, there was a touch of red on the horizon. It slowly got higher and changed to a combination of red, orange, and yellow. It was absolutely beautiful.
Before Geoff's next stint we swapped RF to LF tires since once again, we were running the LF tire down. During Geoff's stint, Christian expressed doubts about being able to do a full 2hr without the coolshirt. I offered him mine, but in the end, I felt more confident about being able to finish the race, so I got ready for another 2 hours in the car. My last stint was going well and we were in 5th in class, then the 4th place car went off about 15-20 minutes from the end. We ended the race 4th in class and 11th overall!
It was an absolutely crazy experience and with 9h in the car, I was absolutely exhausted but so happy with our results. The car held together the entire time and did amazing.
On the drive home, it was very hot going through Portland (100*), and without AC in the truck, I got really hot. I drank over a gallon of water and Gatorade on the drive back, but it wasn't enough cause I guess I got real dehydrated. Ended up seeing flashing neon lights and fighting crazy nausea that night. It was a hell of a weekend.
Here's a bunch of pictures from the weekend and hopefully @gesso can chime in with the picture of all of us!
It was really really pretty. I wish that I had a video of my sunrise stint, it was unlike anything I've ever done, I suspect it wouldn't have done it justice though. Watching the sunrise over the course of 2 hours while racing was just....amazing.
08-10-2020, 06:31 PM
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