Chris 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. … Read the rest
A 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.… Read the rest
Since 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.… Read the rest
One 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.… Read the rest
Day 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.… Read the rest