At about 5pm we packed up and headed out to drive by Speed Element to pick up the new Inlet and then we all gathered in Gilroy for dinner and installing the Inlet. After a good hr, 1 bottle of Sam's lube ( lotion FTW! ), 1 broken beer bottle and a few cuts, we managed to get her together. We headed out finally and we cruised our way just north of Bakersfield and at 2:45am we stopped at a rest stop and decided to sleep for 2.5 hrs and go straight to the track in the morning.
Saturday we arrived at about 8:30, we unloaded everything and setup our pit towards the beginning of the front straight. We dbl checked everything, then Ed and Cory went out to finally tune the car. We tuned it fairly conservative and headed back to let Sam get some track time.
The first session went ok. When Sam pulled into the hot pits we noticed she had started overheating on track and so we had to call it a little short. We removed the OEM grills and discussed our options for fixing the cooling issue. We decided the quick fix to finish the day would be to just keep the grills off then at night we'd replace the 75/25/water wetter mix with 90/10/water wetter and also remove the AC condenser.
The second session went a little faster, had a lap drop into the 1:46's and we were around midpack in our class so it seemed. Our cooling issue was still present and Sam was good to keep an eye on the gauge and alternating hot/cool laps.
Our first job of the evening was to secure a set of sticky tires for sunday as our scavenge on thursday and friday had yet to turn anything up that would be competitive and in stock in the bay area. Thanks JC Meynet of Harman Motive for the tires!
In the evening the second priority was the tune so that Ed could go get his beauty rest. We filled up with 110 and Ed, Adam and Corey headed out into the sunset to get some more power to perhaps push us into the top 5 in class. After about a little over an hour on random desolate roads we pulled back to the pits and made use of the garages that were now vacated and up for grabs. Ed did his usual checking in the engine bay and came up with conclusion we most likely had a blown motor. Ed, Adam and Charles headed out for dinner as Reyes and Cory went to town on the STI. The car had lost signifigant compression...
Wednesday: 135/135/135/135
Saturday night: 130/120/NA/60
It was a bummer and as Sam was at the hotel sleeping we decided that we'd keep running it, no sense in backing down now.
In the morning the tires were mounted and Cory went out on the roads and scrubbed them down a little bit with a friends car. We then went to a 90/10/water wetter coolant mixture and replaced the brake fluid with Motul RBF600. The tires went on and Sam went out on the track.
First heat was a headache, they gave a few people the wrong color wrist bands so Sam had to wait for 10 minutes to get on track as Cory ran down Aaron to have him radio the starter that the situation is ok. Sam was out having fun, though not improving over Saturday's times due to brand new non shaved tires and only being able to run 4 or 5 laps on track, alternating hot/cool laps. The good news from this session is that the Cooling issue was now solved and the brakes were a hell of a lot firmer than before. We ended this session in 5th and decided we needed to do something drastic as most likely someone would be able to bump us off the bubble. We were fairly bummed as we didn't want to run the second heat so we could conserve the motor for the final.
The Second heat was off to a frustrating start as well. After two laps they showed Sam the meatball flag as the car was using up some oil though it only showed up during shifts. We dbl checked a few things in hot pits, sent him back out and he was in the middle of a hot lap when he got the meatball flag again as the car clearly wasnt blowing smoke while going down the track, only when shifting. We went and had a short talk with the officials and explained the situation. We added a qt of oil (thanks JC) and sent him out on track with explicit instructions from SpeedVentures that we had 1 out lap and 1 hot lap and the session would be called after that.
This put some serious pressure on Sam and he knew he had to drop some time quickly but couldn't bobble on one turn. Luckily he nailed the final turn great and had a good run down the front straight to begin his hotlap. the first split he was .5 up on his personal best and at the finish line he ended up about .7 under his previous best for the weekend. He pulled it in and we had a mad dash to do an oil change as we waited for the results. Finally they annouced we had made the final by .1 seconds on Sam's only hot lap of the second heat. We were fairly estatic and began wondering why we were so far behind some of the other cars in our class other than the fact at this point we probably had no compression at all in the 4th cylinder...(insert tech inspection notes here)
We had a few seconds to knock off to be competitive with anyone else in the field. We relaxed for a few minutes and ate some food then it was time for the final. Sam got into the car and started the session off with some Deftones while in the pits. He headed out and we told him to just give it hell and break it. He did exactly what we told him to do, minus the breaking part. He consistently set personal bests and we could see him pushing harder and harder on every single turn on the track. In the end he set a best time of 1.43XX on our stopwatches and we thought it was an improvement but not by enough to podium.
We relaxed in the garage and bs'd while we waited for the other classes to run before they would announce the results. We also decided then it would be best to run the car in Redline next year in the street class and prep it once they set up the official rules/regs of 09.
The awards ceremony was good as we didnt know how we had done compared to others, though we knew we didnt have the top two spots. We ended up in 4th, only by half a second to third and 3-4 seconds to first. We were all extremely happy though missing podium hurt as it pretty much came down to a blown 4th cyl and a camber bolt on the left front that gave Sam +2 degrees camber in the begging of the final session. If these issues were ok we would have been first in my opinion.
We could talk about how the STI drove home and the stock EVO X support car went on the trailer, but that's a completely different story. Don't get me started on that one lol
and now for personal notes.....
- Method 4 was the ONLY shop representing the Bay Area, and we did our best to do that fully. We expected Mike and the GST Motorsports crew to be there as well.
- Over the weekend, there was more blue smoke than anything. 1,000 ft up in the high desert and 104* track temps with thin air and no new tunes for it will do that.
- The Snail Performance WRX had to be the MOST consistent car on Saturday. I saw no offs, and no bobbles.
- Crawford Performace broke the hatch. AGAIN.
- When you are sixteen, you have no business showing up to a "rave" at a racetrack. We know that you did more than drink, you got what you deserved. Neither do 90lb import models.
- Two swapped widebody RS Coupes were two garages away from us. One got disqualified from Street Stock and put into Pro because of the swap.
- JC Meynet in the 07 Harman Motive STi had to be the fastest overall car there. He is the MOST humble guy I have ever met. And he is crazy behind the wheel, using every inch of tack he could. Crawford may have gave him a run for his money in the hatch, but it broke again. Figures.
- Dan Harman was just as crazy as JC in the Harman Motive STi hatch, but not as fast.
- The ES-X guys ran loud and slow. Saw that coming.
- The RS-L-RA ( some JDM swapped L sedan from Flat4LV ) was the only car that caught fire on Sunday.
- Ferdie Ang dropped a piston, breaking the South Coast Performance STi hatch on Saturday.
- The infamous 49er STi hatch had a nasty off on Saturday, and ended up with a whole desert's worth of rocks between the rim lip and the tire bead on both passenger side rims. Not pebbles, but rocks. Good Job driving 500 miles to a track and then taking the same car onto the track itself. Next time rent a truck/trailer. And I hope you made it home driving on two donut spares.
- I feel bad for the privateer that was out i the gold Forester XT. He was really fast, but broke. Poor guy
- The COBB GT-R is fast as **** and loud as hell in person.
- The COBB WRX hatch isn't
- The Robispec guys were running really consistently.The UGM (????) hatch could only reach 120mph between Turn 5 and the baking zone for Turn 9.
- The EDO Performance guys had problems in the white/orange 07 STi, and the blue STi was louder than it was fast.
- The WRX Track Attack was pretty fun for only having one neutered lap per person. On Saturday I hit 105mph in fourth on the back straight in the WRX sedan, and on Sunday, I topped out 4th gear in the back straight in the hatch. I gotta get an 09 And I'm now hooked on Time Attack as well.
- Ken Block was there in his 07 STi gymkhana car doing hot laps, whie the Track Attack was going on. Good job Block.
- The YumiSports LGT Spec. B was a hell of a lot faster than he should have been, especially with a complete interior. When he started shifting into sixth on the front straight and not banging off the limiter in fifth all the way, he got a little faster.
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