It's been probably 10 years since I last ran with the South Jersey SCCA. I think the last event I did with the club was back at an event at Atco raceway in 2006! I've got nothing against the club but the events are usually a bit too far for me. With perfect weather in the forecast and so few events more local to me, I figured it would be worth a trip down to Bader Field in Atlantic City to get some valuable seat time anyway.
SJR SCCA - Bader Field, Atlantic City, NJ - 7-30-2017
This was my first event at this site and it was quite nice. There was ample paddock space and being right across the water from downtown Atlantic City was both strange and interesting. The venue, being a former airfield, had very abrasive surface with decent grip once the sand had been cleared off by the 1st heat drivers. I'd compare the grip level to Poconos Raceway but it is pretty brutal on tires so I'm glad to do this event on street tires and not more expensive Hoosiers. There's a fair bit of runoff if you spin but you will end up in the grass and travel a pretty far distance if you do. This scared me a bit despite the grass being dry since at least on the fast section, the other side of the grass was the Atlantic Ocean so I wasn't about to test the limits of my car and my skill over there.
Being used to the highly efficient northeast clubs of NNJR, Philly, DC and NER, the more lax feel of SJR takes a bit of getting used to. Things take a bit longer than usual; first car off wasn't until around 10:20am, we had lots of timing issues resulting in extremely long heats (3 hours...yep) and so many reruns but overall I still enjoyed driving there. Adopting a 3 heat system would help immensely but being that the course is what you expect from a runway venue featuring lots of slaloms and transitions, you need a lot of workers to cover the cones so that may not be feasible unless a lot more people show up. The half-height cones don't help either.
Lupa takes the STR win - 7-30-2017
My first run was strange. Despite fixing the alignment at SJF a few weeks ago, she was still feeling really loose. The rear would spring up too quickly during transitions. I increased rear rebound and that made a world of difference and now she would properly slide, squat then pull out of the corner. The front felt unpredictable though in a way that I couldn't describe. I decided to check the front rebound and was surprised that the left side was at the correct setting (nearly full stiff) but the right side was set to full soft. This explained the imbalance. I don't know how this happened. It's been a long time since I changed the settings. I don't know if someone turned the knob while my hood was up at some previous event as a joke but I'll definitely need to double check the settings going forward. I made them both equal again and finally Lupa was feeling like she should. I was able to push a bit harder and trust that the front would bite. I put down a good enough clean run to get the STR win and beating Hez for the first time (he ran his own car) but that's really just because he kept hitting cones and I was in a better prepped car so I definitely didn't outdrive him.
James was the real winner here taking FTD and top PAX in his STX BRZ so big kudos to him. While I did lose some time from backing off a bit in the sketchier parts of the course, most of the time lost was definitely from not taking smooth arcs and pinching myself too much in key corners. I'll need to work on this before Nats so I don't bleed off too much speed in these critical areas. This course really helped highlight that issue so that was a big lesson learned!
SJR SCCA Autox - 7-30-2017
The drive home was an insane 5 hours including a short stop for dinner thanks to summer beach traffic so I was exhausted but 5 hours enjoying some top down awesomeness in an S2000 and listening to music isn't too horrible in my book. It could definitely have been worse. I'm taking a pause with the next event not coming up for me for me until 3 weeks from now where I'll be doing some final testing of Bumblestook before heading out to Nationals. Really happy with how Lupa is feeling in general though. Hopefully I won't have to fiddle with the knobs much more at future events and I can just focus on improving my driving once more.
I finally got a chance to go to SJF Performance after installing my Alcantara wrapped OEM steering wheel last month. Despite several attempts I never was able to get the wheel perfectly centered so I wanted an alignment to re-center it. I also wanted to see if something had slipped in the alignment causing the strange oversteering issues at the last event.
Up on the alignment rack - SJF Performance- 6/25/2017
Turns out that the rear toe seems to have slipped and I had a bit of toe out in the driver side rear. The camber hadn't changed much though which is good. I suspect I can thank NYC streets for the slippage. SJF quickly put it back to what I wanted but this time I opted to try a bit of toe out up front to help with turn in. Nothing big, but something similar to what we did with Bumblestook earlier in the week.
Alignment complete - SJF Performance - 6/25/2017
The new alignment numbers are:
Front:
-3.3 camber
5.5 caster
0.02in total toe out
Rear:
-2.3 camber
0.12in total toe in (1/8")
I then took her for a nice drive through some twisty roads in Northern NJ and she felt amazing again. Hopefully I'll get to take her to an autox soon despite our limited schedule.
I was planning on taking Bumblestook out to today's NNJR SCCA/PCA joint autocross at the Meadowlands but the potentially bad weather forecast made me less inclined to get up at 4:30am just to deal with trailering in the rain so I took Lupa instead. The morning turned out to be great weather and we got to run first heat so all our runs were in the dry.
NNJR SCCA/PCA Joint Autocross - 6/4/2017
For some odd reason, the setup I ran quite well in Warminster was undrivable today. Lupa felt extremely loose and not very confidence inspiring. I lowered rear compression a click and front rebound a click to help soften her up as well as run a 3psi difference from to rear (I usually just run 2psi) and that helped tame her a little but it was still hard to get on the throttle early without the rear kicking out. Her new header is arriving soon so I'll get her alignment checked after we install it since the steering wheel is also a bit crooked after replacing it a few week ago.
NNJR SCCA/PCA Autocross - 6/4/2017
I also got to try the new mount for Solostorm and was happy that it worked well and didn't get in the way of my field of vision. It's basically the same mount I run on Bumblestook but with a suction cup instead of being bolted onto the body. I also figured out what was going on with the shift beeper I installed yesterday. Turns out one of the spade connectors I received wasn't crimped properly. I redid the wiring and voila, nice loud beeps again as we approach redline...such a comforting sound.
To match the rest of the little interior mods I've been doing recently, I also picked up an ebrake cover made with perforated leather with red stitching from redlinegoods.com. I think that completes the "show" mods for the car.
Redlinegoods ebrake cover - 6/3/2017
I also attempted to install the Modifry shift beeper but it doesn't seem to work. I suspect I got one of the wires wrong. I'll troubleshoot it some other time.
Probably one of my favorite things with Bumblestook is the Alcantara Mugen steering wheel. It gives excellent feel and grip and just looks great but it's not legal in STR (well not easily made legal at least). What is legal though is replacing your steering wheel as long as the total weight is no lighter than stock. To get the best of both worlds, I went ahead and ordered an Alcantara wrap with red stitching for the S2000 OEM steering wheel from redlinegoods.com and used their professional installation option. Rather than sending my original wheel in, I opted to just buy a used steering wheel and send that instead so I can keep the original one unmolested.
Alcantara wrapped S2000 OEM steering wheel
with red stitching - 5/10/2017
Alcantara wrapped S2000 OEM steering wheel with red stitching - 5/10/2017
The ordering process was very smooth. The wrap itself is made in Europe (Poland I believe) and sent to you via regular mail. If you choose to use their professional installation service, you then send the wrap along with the steering wheel to their professional installer in North Carolina where it gets put together and sent back to you. In addition to the Alcantara wrap I also added the option to thicken the steering wheel slightly. The material they use is nice and dense and feel incredible, not spongy at all.
Airbag disconnected, steering wheel ready to be removed
5/14/2017
To swap steering wheels, you disconnect the battery so the airbags don't go off. Remove the covers on each side of the steering wheel. Using a Torx T30 bit, remove the bolts holding the airbag in place and pull it away from the wheel and then disconnect the cables connecting the airbag and the cruise control switch. Using a 14mm socket, loosen the center bolt but don't remove it all the way. Tug on the wheel firmly towards you free the wheel from the hub then remove the bolt all the way. Reverse this process to install the new wheel.
Since I had to disconnect the battery to install the steering wheel, I figured now would also be a good time to replace the OEM sized battery with a lightweight one. I opted to get a Deka ext14 which is a 12lb battery. This is a solid 14lb reduction in weight from the OEM sized 26lb battery. In order to install it, I got 8" J-hooks since the battery is smaller and replaced the steel OEM battery tie down with an aluminum one for extra weight savings and a cleaner install. Also, since you have to install automotive battery terminals on the Deka in order to use it in a car, I hardwired the battery tender quick connect so it'll be much easier for me to hook Lupa up to the battery tender without using alligator clips.
Deka ext14 battery installed - 5/14/2017
Deka ext14 battery installed - 5/14/2017
Lupa is mostly done with her 2017 modifications. I'm just waiting on one more part that's currently on it's way from Japan :D
Last week I got the opportunity to codrive Rad's STR S2000 because I somehow misplaced my trailer lock keys and wasn't able to bring Bumblestook to the NNJR SCCA event. I always like to find the silver lining in bad situations and driving Rad's car woke me up. For starters, I had a lot of fun which is probably the most important thing but it also made me rethink Lupa's setup.
Philly SCCA Autocross - Warminster, PA
5/6/2017
I really liked the way Rad's car handled and put power down. On balance it was on par with Bumblestook but with less grip all around of course but the balance was comparable. Lupa's slightly down on power but I'm addressing that shortly with some parts from Japan. When we ran last week, Rad remembered that during the Test-n-Tune event on the BFG Rival S 1.5 they found running lower tire pressures to work best and only after we lowered it to that level did the car feel on point. I still run Bridgestone RE-71Rs but because I haven't really been running Lupa much, I hadn't been doing any tire pressure testing. I wanted to see what the sweet spot would be for Lupa. With the itch to try a few things, I made the trek out to Warminster today to do some testing. The day started out with some potential with the sun breaking through the clouds but before my heat started, it started raining making the surface really slick.
Of course it had to rain - 5/6/2017
On my first run, I started with my usual pressures of 29/27 but with the wet conditions, testing was really moot. I was sliding all over the place and even some throttle with the wheel cranked would cause the rear to kick out. By the third run, the rain had stopped and we were in drying conditions. I found by my fourth run that running 27/25 worked really well. Lupa was rotating really well and I was able to get on the power earlier. This would've been a good day to have a codriver as the cool temps made it hard to keep the heat in the tires but Warminster has always scared me a bit especially in bad weather conditions. I've definitely seen my fair share of unwanted excursions into the grass there so I opted to run solo for this event.
I got one run in the dry. It was my last run and Feinberg, who ran in the first heat, mostly in the dry, was in the lead. Looking at the data, I was able to identify corners where I suspected that in the now dry conditions, I'd be able to just lift instead of brake. This mostly worked except towards the finish where I overshot one of the corners making me late for the last set of offsets. Even with mistakes and some fairly conservative driving in areas by the grass, I was able to drop a good chunk of time to take the lead. There was definitely a lot more pace that could've been extracted under more stable conditions but overall, I'm just happy things are coming together nicely and the nut behind the wheel is starting to find some improvement again.
A few weeks ago I noticed King Motorsports listing up a new Mugen shift knob. They finally released a leather wrapped knob with red stitching which is exactly what I've been waiting for so I got on the order list and sure enough after making its trek across the ocean, it's finally here.
Mugen leather wrapped shift knob with red stitching - 4/29/2017
It's lighter than the metal 6-speed one I had before but it's still got a good weight. It's a bit bigger than the CR shift knob and has a great tactile feel (like you're holding a baseball but not that big). I really like it and after driving with it for a few hours today I'm definitely keeping this.
The other thing that's been annoying me lately is the fact that my seat belt keeps getting lost behind the seat because there's nothing to keep it where it's supposed to be. I found someone on S2ki selling some Recaro seats that had these Jade Recaro leather with red stitching seat belt guides and realized that Evasive Motorsports was selling them so I picked that up too. It's a small detail but makes quite a difference.
Jade Recaro leather with red stitching seat belt guide - 4/29/2017
Jade Recaro leather with red stitching seat belt guide - 4/29/2017
