An update for 2016.
I had the car out at Willow Springs yesterday, and overall had a very good day. The brake issues I was having are now resolved, so I can get back to where I wanted to be 3-4 months ago and make the car faster. I had ran my personal best at Willow almost exactly year ago, and that day was nearly ideal conditions. If you have been following along, there have been some changes since then, mostly around spring rates and tires and I have been hoping to see what kind of improvement I could get out of myself and the car. Aside from 20-30 MPH constant winds, conditions were again ideal. It was about 60 degrees, sunny, but mild.
I did lower my personal best time to a 1:33.9 with a mistake coming out of turn 3. My rolling lap time from turn 3 to turn 3 was 1:33.4, which is right where I caught the s2000 in the end of the video below. I think the slide may have cost me closer to a full second in total had that s2000 not been there and I got through turn 4 cleanly. Plus the headwind shaved off about 6 MPH on the long front straight. Considering all of that I am very happy.
In looking at the data, I am getting out of every corner faster, and getting back to the gas sooner than i was previously. Yesterday I was more conservative under braking and corner entry than usual than due to the wind, and that showed in the lap data. I have a pretty good handle on the new setup and the pressures the Maxxis tires like to be run at now. As Joel will tell you and you can see on the previous videos, the car was a lot of work to drive fast, and I spent a lot of time waiting on the car before getting on the throttle. Now there is some more consistency and the times are even better, so I know there are some gains yet to be realized as I push harder.
http://youtu.be/Vn0Ii_nX1qQAnd a couple pictures of the car as it sits in its multicolored state. I will be working on getting the hood and fenders painted pretty soon. I really don't like how crappy the car looks, but people take the car even less serious now than when it was all red. After every session several people come over to see WTF is going on. Lots of amazement that an old POS looking car is that fast and/or passed them. I met a couple guys that followed the build here or have seen me post on the club who were pretty cool as well.
Issue report:
My Accusump seems to be working intermittently. I think it is a known issue with the coil on the valve, I will call Canton tomorrow, and it should be an easy fix to swap the coil on the valve.]
My ignition switch is going south and running the starter when it is not supposed to. This looks like another pretty easy fix to swap the switch electronics.
Passenger outer CV is still venting grease when it gets hot. I have no idea why, I will have to pull the rear hub and check it all out back there.
