Planting taters in 16!

I see they finished rebuilding the turn 6 bridge. Looks really nice.

Did you driver her back on?

Legend has it that he was flat through T17 the very next lap.

I heard he took it off the long beach pier.

Did the Chin event this weekend at RA. This car was a Ferrari 488 before it hit the wall at 100mph+ in turn 1. Apparently he lost the brakes.


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f9a21ecd5.jpeg

I did my best to contribute to the black flag shitshow when I took an excursion into the gravel pit at 10a. Steering U-joint popped off the rack as I turned in, and I lost steering. Apparently I reinstalled this joint the same way as the guy before me, instead of the correct way. Went that way for 20+ sessions until it became an issue. Stupid mistake, but the car is fine and I’m lucky it wasn’t in a worse part of the track.

!!!!!!

I've seen this twice now.. can you elaborate on the issue/incorrect way, so i can make sure I'm not doing that :eek3:

I'm going to take some pictures and make a whole new post about it to hopefully prevent others from making the same mistake. In retrospect I was really stupid by trusting the previous owner's work, and re-doing in the same way.

I bought the car (a Spec Miata that was a little rough) a few months ago. The previous owner had "de-powered" the steering rack by looping the lines, and it felt heavy/bad, so I took out the steering rack and did a proper de-power. When I put the rack back in, the distal part of the U-joint slid nicely down onto the spline of the steering rack and felt like it mated properly. I then tightened the nut, which also felt like it clamped securely. It looked exactly the same as it did when I took the rack out and after working on the project for 4-5 hours I was ready to be done.

What I didn't realize is that the spline on the steering rack has a cutout groove midway down the shaft. You can see it here:


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...6a37e45ab.jpeg


This is a smart security feature that Mazda built in, but it's not intuitive. This groove captures the clamping bolt to make a positive stop. However, the only way to get the U-joint all the way down the spline and to engage this feature is to remove the distal bolt from the clamp completely, then to reinsert the bolt afterwards. If you loosen the bolt but leave it in place, the U joint will only engage the top half of the spline. It's hard to see this because the rubber boot over the U joint partially blocks your view, and it feels secure enough that you don't notice it's a problem until you hear a loud "bang" mid turn on the track and lose your steering.

1. Yes after driving down the wall about 40 yards just to clear the normal impact area I reentered the track with no traffic and pitted. Checked tire pressures that had cooled down a bit, removed grass and mud from splitter & inspected for damage. Found none except for my nerves.

2. You know better, we had dinner 7 hours later.

3. I'm not allowed in the peoples republic of california.

4. Ironically a buddy of mine wrecked his sweet M3 in 16 one week later, hitting the concrete wall hard 40 yards past the "normal impact zone". Got 4 wheels over curb and joined track at end of outside curb, found big hole, broke cast RF wheel and hooked/ pancaked into outside wall. He's fine, car not so much.

What's more important? The truth or the legend.

Don Jose's is the best! and its only 2 miles from Sebring Inn... best hotel in Sebring.

SCCA TVR is hosting road racing and time trials at Barber on August 29-30th. Time Trials will be running the older SCCA rules for classes and the new TTN classes in separate groups. Pretty cheap at $300 for the weekend at Barber. Transponder rental is available at the track as well.
I'll be running my NB in TTN T5, and a few friends will be running in either T5 or P4. Should be a great weekend, and probably hot.
https://www.motorsportreg.com/events...-valley-918456

Jzilla has Road Atlanta for Sat and Sun, Sept 12 and 13. $300 one day, $500 both days.

October NASA update:

Daytona this weekend. Joint event with NASA-SE & NASA-FL. I'll be driving working. There are some rather large run groups.
Sebring on Halloween weekend with NASA-FL.

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Great weekend at Sebring to wrap up the 2020 NASA FL season. Weather was typically cloudy and in the upper 70s - low 80s. Rain at lunchtime on Sunday did make things a little bit more challenging in the afternoon.

@Blkbrd69 and I were in adjacent garage stalls and there were a few more MT members there too. It was the first time at Sebring this year and dropped by best time from a 2:45.9 to a 2:41.7. Only changes were fresher RS4s and bump in power to the 135-140 range.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...028c77ad9f.jpg