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. After everything was connected back up we added some more oil to the engine and started it for the first time.
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.
Colin McRae was killed in a helicopter crash yesterday. I never had the pleasure of seeing him race in real life but I did follow it on TV. He truly embodied the never say die spirit and will be missed by million of fans.
Check out this clip from the 2006 X Games – he rolls his car(2:10) and still continues on to finish second.
[tags]Colin McRae, RIP, x games, roll, death, sad, rally, driver[/tags]
I’ve been very interested in the 24 Hours of Lemons since I first heard about it last year and when I found out that the first race of the year was this past weekend I just had to go check it out. The Altamont Motorsports Park in Tracy, CA is the home of the race and features two ovals which are interconnected to create a road-course for the Lemons race. The cars all had to be bought and race prepped for under $500 (excluding safety gear) with a team of 4-6 drivers. Despite the name the actual racing would only go on for about 14 hours with a 10 hour break at night to let people recuperate as well as repair their cars.
I got there just as the drivers meeting got underway and found that it was pretty well organized. The organizers were very strict about a no bumping/no blocking rule and had come up with a set of humourous punishments for the drivers that broke the rules. The competitors would spin the “Wheel of Misfortune” and have to serve whatever penalty that came up. Some of the penalties included:
The Al Gore Carbon Replacement penalty: The competitor would have to wear a tie-die shirt and then plant a rather large sapling in the ground before they could continue.
The Colonel Sanders where the participant would be doused in soapy water and then feathered using large pillows.
The Legion of Odour involved hanging a half pound of smelly blue cheese around the drivers neck as well as placing another pound of it on the hot intake manifold – should make for a truly odourous experience.
The Egg Man winner (or loser) would have an open bucket of eggs welded to the hood of their cars – the idea being that as they drove the eggs would fall out of the bucket and smear the car.
My favourite was the Highway 17 penalty where the driver would have to follow a VW microbus around the track for 10 laps.
Anyone who bumped other cars on the track would initially have a set of training wheels welded to the sides of their cars
Repeat “bumpers” would get the Sword of Damocles penalty where a plate with sharpened spikes would be welded to their radiator with the spikes pointing inwards. At this point they were let out on track knowing that their next bump would be their last.
The organizers required that the drivers have some sort of competition license and the racetrack was more than happy to sell you a NASCAR license at the gate for just $75 dollars. The fact that people could buy licenses at the door was the main factor that dissuaded me from running the Lemons race last year – after all who want to be side by side with a novice driver in a $500 car. However it looked like the penalties did a good job of keeping the track action pretty clean – the serious racer didn’t want to lose the time while the joyriders didn’t want the embarrassment. The speeds are low as well which keeps the event pretty safe. One of the teams was racing an 80′s Golf which went into the tirewall and flipped onto its roof. The track was immediately red flagged and the safety vehicles were at the car in under 5 minutes. The driver was completely unhurt and with the help of the marshal he roled the car back onto its wheels before continuing with the race .
All in all it was a great event and I am seriously trying to get an official SFF1 entry together for the October race (UPDATE: We just got accepted into the October event) – wish me luck. In the meantime you can look at a video I shot as well as some photos of my favourite cars. I have posted the full collection of photos on Flickr though you will probably be better off looking at the excellent photoset that Nithya just posted.
This photo was taken by an SFF1 member moments after Robert Kubica’ high speed accident during todays Canadian Grand Prix – you can actually see his race boots sticking out of the remains of his BMW F107. It appears that Kubica hit the rear wheel of Jarno Trulli’ Toyota and was launched into the air before going headfirst into a wall. The car then bounced across the circuit flipping several times before hitting the opposite wall. Though no official figures have been released I would expect that he must have been doing at least 150 mph at the time of impact. Amazingly, despite the absolute destruction of the car, Kubica only suffered a mild concussion and a sprained ankle – it is a great testament to the safety of modern F1.
I finally got around to editing and uploading some of the video* I recorded during my last trackday. This was the first time I was using the Nokia N95 and I had high expectations from the high-rez camera. As you can see over here the video quality is dramatically better than my past recordings from the N73. I have been planning on getting a ChaseCam PDR setup for a while but now that I can get such excellent video from the phone I think I will stick to my homebrew cellphone setup. There are still some issues with vibration on the high speed straights but I am confident that I can fix that adding a layer of padding (tissue/cloth) to the phone before taping it to the car.
*This video is only to show quality of the recording – the driving still needs some work
The following is a post I wrote for the YRB blog. My readers get the bonus YouTube footage directly embedded on the page
A few weeks ago when the research community was looking at CHI, Formula 1 racing fans were looking at Germany to watch a very different event. Nick Heidfeld was driving a F1 car around the famed Nürburgring-Nordschleife circuit in Germany. “The Green Hell” as it is popularly known is one of the toughest race tracks on the planet and last hosted an F1 race back in 1976 when Niki Lauda’ near fatal crash put an end to F1 at the track. It has since been used only for sports car racing and also as a public access race track. On April 28, BMW organized a special event where several of their racing cars would be driven around the ring including 3 laps in their 2006 BMW F1 car. The event had F1 fans all over the world speculating about possible laptimes and thousands showed up to watch the event live.
At this point you are probably wondering what this has to do with YRB. The answer is media: the very first images and videos of the event came from Flickr and YouTube. This is not new to the world of journalism, public citizens have been scoopingthe pressfor years. With the rise of the Internet, bloggers have started breaking stories and are often authorities on specific topics. However this event was a bit different because it was specifically conceived of as a public relations opportunity. The BMW PR machine had been hyping the event for weeks and had a full team there to capture the event in its full glory. Within 24 hours of the event they released a slickly edited video showing the highlights around the lap. It included onboard footage, helicopter shots and even video from chase cars. Despite all the effort and the fairly quick turnaround time, the corporate PR machine was beaten by a handful of people with cheap camcorders and Internet access. Not only was the fan media the first to be available, it also showed many things that the official video did not. You could see things like the size of the crowd, the sound of a distant F1 engine, the wait for the car to go past, there were even a few shots of the camera car.
This kind of situation leaves the consumer with an interesting choice: On one hand you have the quick and dirty fan media which is immediately available and on the other hand there is the better edited professional media which is available with some delay but usually more comprehensive. The consumer now have to decide which source they want their information from and that will depend on the topic and its time sensitivity. This choice is going to become even harder in the future as fans start editing their media more and the professionals speed up their editing process. I believe that in the end trust and authority will become the deciding factor – all else being equal users will choose the source that they trust the most.
At YRB we are very interested in both sources of media and are studying how people collect, consume, share and remix media. We don’t know what media sources will “win” but we do know that this is a very interesting time for research.
Doug just put up a video of Jared and his trip across the US in their Elises. They drove 8000+ miles in 25 days and met many other Lotus owners across the country, I met them for dinner when they stopped of in the Bay area. The camaraderie within the Lotus community is amazing, I cant think of another marque that has such a welcoming network of enthusiasts around the world – the legendary Lotus unreliability and the Travelers assistance network definitely helped create it .
I am planning on driving to Vancouver and back in June, I hope I have as much fun – just need to convince Nithya that I need a ChaseCam to record the trip . You can read more about Dougs trip on his blog or on the original EliseTalk thread.
Autoweek is saying that the TVR Sagaris will be imported to the US in 2008. At an estimated $120k I will have to sell a kidney to buy one – will be worth it though.
Those of you who haven’t heard of TVR or the Sagaris should check out the Top Gear review
<--Click on the icon to watch with a friend.
And as a bonus check out the following video made by Racing Green TVR who is the main TVR dealer in the UK. I wish more ads were like this.
The Audi R8 is a mid-engined supercar named after a 5 time winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. You’d think that it would pretty easy to made a stirring advertisement for a car like that, what you do get is the most soul-less sports car advert I have ever seen in my life. You hear the cars engine for precisely two seconds and see a few shots of the car on a road. There is a long voice-over listing the past technical achievements of Audi and there is no mention made of the performance of the car itself. Makes you wonder if the R8 is really a sports car – the marketing certainly seems directed more towards people who buy cars as status symbols rather that true enthusiasts.
After suffering through this ad you should go to my previous post to see how to make a real sports car ad.
<–Click on the icon to watch with a friend.
[tags]Audi, R8, ad, advertisement[/tags]
Shell has just released ‘The Circuit’, a new advertisement to celebrate 60 years of its partnership with Ferrari. It features several historic Ferrari F1 cars driving through the streets of cities like New York, Monaco, Rio de Janerio. The ad took over a month to film and at a reported $2 million it is the most expensive commercial ever made.
Just sit back and enjoy hearing some of the most glorious sounding engines ever made.
RT @cjmartin: Fun to see one of @rnair's photos (http://flic.kr/p/aPeaf) featured in this video created using CC Flickr photos: http://b ... 2010/08/18
Just got Sir Stirling Moss to sign my Lotus F1 heritage poster 2010/08/14
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. You can read more about Dougs trip on