Hit 36,000 miles yesterday.
Archive for the ‘cars’ Category
Bye Bye Warranty
Monday, April 21st, 2008
GT5 Vs RL
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008Jalopnik just posted this incredible screenshot of a Ferrari F40 from Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.
Compare that with this photo I took at Canepa Design using my 5MP Nokia N95.
Not only does the GT5 shot have much better colours, the details (check out the wheels) are truly spectacular. With the recent Blue Ray win I think I might just have to buy a PS3 after all 
Head over to Jalopnik for more GT5 info.
Lotus Elise Supercharged
Friday, February 29th, 2008Chris Harris review the new Supercharged Lotus Elise – me wants to upgrade
Harris is one of the best automotive reporters out there – he strikes an excellent balance between the humour of Jeremy Clarkson and the driving ability of Tiff Needell. If you liked that review I highly recommend the Chris on Camera series where he reviews a different car every week.
Driving in the dark
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008A few people have asked me what it was like to drive Thunderhill at night and I figured the best way to explain would be to show you what its like. This is a quick lap with no traffic from the 24 Hours of Lemons race in December. Its pretty hard to see the course so I have labeled the corners to give you a better idea of the course.
Driving in the dark from rnair on Vimeo.
As you can see, the visibility is not the greatest which makes driving quite an interesting experience. While the lights do give you some idea of where the apex is, the real problem is in finding your track out point. Turns 1, 2 and 4 were especially difficult since the optimum racing line has a very wide track out point where you run over the outside kerbing on the exit. This is all well and good in the sunshine since you know exactly where you are going and you know that its safe. In the dark however, you simply cannot see the track out point when you turn in and you basically have to hope that the exit is clean and that no one has dumped mud or oil on the kerb. The other problem is that its really quite hard to see the track surface and/or its boundaries, especially when people drag mud onto the track. In many cases, the white line marking the track is completely obscured and you just have to guess at what your turn-in point is and hope that you wont put a wheel off on the inside. Some of this might be improved by using better lights: we used the stock E30 headlights and tried spreading the beam sideways to try and light up the apex but since it is a road car the amount of adjustment allowed was just too limited. The next time we will use more powerful, fully adjustable dune buggy lights instead. My solution to the visibility issues was to take it slow and always leave myself a margin for error, it may not have resulted in ultimate lap times but it meant that I always had enough “in hand” to be able to adapt to the any unexpected changes in the racing surface. Our goal was to just stay out of trouble and rack up the laps at a steady pace – since we were in 6th place after 10 hours I guess it did work .
The next video is an example of what happens in low visibility, the cars are just entering turn two after someone had an agricultural moment and dragged a massive amount of mud right onto the racing line. None of us can see the mud on the line and come into the corner at race speed only to lose all grip mid corner. One car spins out completely while dPunks and I have some interesting sideways moments. While I got through it ok, it did give me quite a scare and I ended up taking turn 2 quite slow for the next 3-4 laps. Endurance racers who race at 10/10ths all night must be either incredibly brave or incredibly dumb
Muddy moment from rnair on Vimeo.
The next video is of a couple of laps in traffic. As you can see it is actually easiers to drive in traffic since there are a lot more headlights lighting up the track . Also the headlights make it impossible for someone to sneak up on you which means that you always have a good idea of the cars around you and what they are going to do. This leads to much better manners on the track and less problems off the track. Compared to the October race at Altamont the traffic here was incredibly well behaved and there was hardly any contact.
Driving in the dark (in traffic) from rnair on Vimeo.
This final video is a highlights package attempting to show some of the interesting from my 4 hour stint in the dark, I apologize for the crappy editing. All the video in this post was recorded using the PDR100 Racer kit from our sponsors at ChaseCam – I highly recommend it for your own racing/track video.
Thunderhill Lemons highlights 2007 from rnair on Vimeo.
Another year in pictures
Thursday, December 6th, 2007Since my car just turned two years old I figured it was time to write a follow-up to the original year in pictures post.
30 Dec 06: Another trip to LA down Highway 1. Tons of pics here.
17 Feb 07: Visited the Tesla factory and saw the latest roadster to be built at Hethel.
24 Feb 07: Start the track season at Thunderhill with TEAM
1 Apr 07: East Bay Etalk Brunch
24 Apr 07: Met Crudson and JnC on their cross country trip
12 May 07: Had a 95 mph spin at Reno-Fernley Raceway
15 June 07: A photo of my car (post spin) is used by the SCCA for an ad in Sportscar magazine
16-27 June 07: 2500 mile roadtrip to Vancouver
12 Aug 07: Broke down on Highway 1 with no cell service. Had to hitch a ride to town to call the tow truck.
18 Aug 07: Saw a bunch of classic Lotus at the Monterey Historics.
1 Sept 07: Elisetalk photoshoot in Alameda
22 Sept 07: Finally convince Nithya to drive in the GGLC autocross – was in the GTI rather than the Elise but she still had fun
Nithya @ the GGLC AutoX from rnair on Vimeo.
20-12 Oct 07: 24 Hours of Lemons with Team SFF1. More details here.
2 Dec 07: 2 years and 33,500 miles later my luck finally runs out and I get rear ended
Days 4 and 5 – Its all about the cage
Tuesday, October 9th, 2007One of the most important pieces of safety equipment for any racecar is the roll cage. Having seen one car flip in July event, we knew that this one part we we had to take very seriously. The official rules for the race only require a 4 point roll bar and a door bar, but we decided to go all the way and get a full roll cage instead. In fact, one of the reasons we went with the E30 was availability of several bolt-in roll cages for the spec E30 market. After looking around for a bit and contacting several companies, we decided that an Autopower roll cage was the way to go. Their cages are legal for both SCCA and NASA and they are universally regarded as one of the best cage builders in the business. Additionally since they are one of the largest manufacturers of bolt-in cages, we knew that they cage would be well designed and would bolt in with a minimum of fuss.
The next step was actually buy the cage, Autopower does not sell to directly to clients so we had to find a distributor. When I looked up the list I was happy to see that Livermore Performance was one of their distributors. I have been buying brake pads from Monty and Stephen ever since I moved to California, and its always been a pleasure to work with them. When I spoke to them about our Lemons team they were very interested and signed on to become a sponsor. At this point the race was just a month away, and the regular 4 week lead time for a cage would have been too slow, luckily Livermore Performance and Autopower worked some magic and were able to rush us a cage in just 10 days.
The cage arrived as a set of shaped and welded steel tubes which we painted and left to dry overnight. After that we put the car on the lift at Dietch Werks and got to work fitting in the cage. The back section with the actual roll hoop went in fairly smoothly as did the front windshield bars. The door bars did however cause some interesting issues due to the placement and width of the B-pillar post. The roll cage was designed to fit an E30 coupe since that is the car most commonly used in the Spec E30 class. On a 4 door E30 like ours, the b pillar post is about 8 inches further forward than in the coupe which meant that the main cage roll hoop would not line up with the B pillar. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue (you cant use the back door but that not really a concern in a race car), but since the door bars curve outwards from the roll hoop they were hitting the B-pillar and would not fit in place. The solution was to use a sledgehammer and bend the inner sheetmetal of B-pillar about half an inch outwards. This does affect the structural integrity of the pillar, but since we are doing it to put a full roll cage, the car is going to be considerably stronger than stock.
Once the full cage was in place, we drilled holes in the sheet metal and bolted the cage to the car with the included high grade bolts and mounting plates. The final step was to tie the various pieces of the cage using the supplied sleeves which would be bolted across the joints in the cage. This required us to drill a 3/8th inch holes through the sleeve and the cage so we could pass a bolt through. Now this may sound simple but it was actually by far the slowest job. The cage steel is so hard that it takes 10-15 minutes to drill just a single hole and we needed 16 holes in all which meant that it took us a full day just to fit the sleeves. On the plus side though I will feel extremely safe sitting in a car with such a strong cage
All in all the cage install was a fairly simple process and needed only the most basic tools. It may add weight to the car but in terms of improved safety and chassis rigidity it is one mod that was well worth time, money and effort. If you ever need a roll cage, I strongly recommend buying the Autopower cage from Livermore Performance.
Car Prep Day 3 – Its alive
Sunday, October 7th, 2007Day three of car prep was all about getting the engine running. At this point we had had the car with us for several months but we hadn’t yet heard the damn thing run.
We started up by tightening up the head bolts and putting in a new timing belt. After that we adjusted the valve spacing (space between camshaft and valve stem) and began reconnecting that various fuel hoses and wires. We decided not to put the cooling system in until the engine was in running condition to give ourselves some work room in case we needed to replace any additional parts. After everything was connected back up we added some more oil to the engine and started it for the first time.
It’s Alive from rnair on Vimeo.
After sorting out some initial issues with some blown fuses, the car started on just the second attempt. The cloud of smoke on the side was a combination of an untightened exhaust manifold and some oil burning off. After this major success we decided to wrap up the day and were actually able to drive the car outside to park it. It still doesn’t have a cooling system so we havent run it for any length of time but the fact that it moves under its own power and doesn’t make any weird noises is a great sign.
Baby steps from rnair on Vimeo.
3 wheeling GTI
Saturday, September 29th, 2007Last weekend Nithya and I took our GTI to the GGLC Autocross at the Marina airport. The performance far exceeded my expectations and at 61.7 seconds I was actually the 3rd fastest driver in very wet morning session (the fastest Elise did a 64.x). Much of this was due to the fact that it had proper wet weather tires on, but the handling was pretty amazing – very predictable with some understeer at the limit. It did of course feel quite a bit heavier than the Elise but the direction changes were quick and chassis was very forgiving. As the track dried out I lost my performance advantage over the elises but as you can see in the photo I did manage to get a wheel off the ground 
Photo by norcalturbo
This was also the first Autcross for Nithya as a driver. She started out very slowly with a 130 second lap but by the end of the day she was down 66 seconds – by far the greatest improvement of any driver at the event ans just 6 seconds off my best lap. She had so much fun that she’d decided to attend all future events, we’ve already signed up for the November event. The following video is of her last run – notice the tire squeal in the turns and the cones she destroys near the end
Nithya @ the GGLC AutoX from rnair on Vimeo.
Car Preparation – Day 2
Saturday, September 29th, 2007Day 2 of preparation was all about fixing up the head. As you can see below the valves were in really bad shape and all of them had to be replaced. We cleaned the head and the block before putting on a new head gasket kit.
The manifolds were bolted back onto the head and we put the head back onto the car. At this point we were feeling quite optimistic about getting the car done when we realized that we didn’t have the right tool to tighten the head bolts – seeing that it was already late we called it quits for day 2 with the head just sitting on the block.
More photos on Flickr.
Car Preparation – Day 1
Friday, September 28th, 2007Now that we had the car at Dietsch Werks, we had to figure out what was wrong with. Day 1 would be all about stripping the car under Robs guidance. We started out by jacking it up and draining the coolant.
The next step was to remove the cylinder head. This was needed because the 325 is an interference engine and the broken timing belt guarantees that we have belt some valves. We disconnected all the hoses + wiring and used a forklift to lift the head out of the engine bay.
Once we pulled the head off we made a surprising discovery – all the pistons had valve marks on them. This confused us for a bit until we looked at the timing belt and found that it was not only broken but was also missing several teeth. In a regular timing belt break you usually damage the valves in only one or two cylinders before the engine stops turning and prevents further damage. In this particular instance the engine had kept on running with bad timing (due to the missing belt teeth) and ALL the valves had made at least some contact with the pistons.
While all this work was being done on the engine we got to work stripping the interior of the car and by the end of the day it was looking much more like a racecar.
After this we called it quits for the day and felt quite pleased at having accomplished quite a lot on our first work day.
More photos in my Flickr set.