[JimMueller]

http://www.holley.com/lsfest/

[JimMueller]

Thanks to Sean and his wife for their southern hospitality! Got to his place around 4:45PM to checkout my UETA preload, and left at 10PM. Arrived at the hotel at 12:15, and woke up at 5:30AM (which is 6:30 Eastern, when I normally wake up). It's raining outside and that puts a damper on my spirits for the weekend. News channel indicates Fri/Sat will have lots of rain from TS Hermine remnants but Sunday should be dry. Eat a nasty continental breakfast and head to Beech Bend.

Registered, had the tires checked (they put a 'C' for competition or 'S' for street on the outer sidewall), then went through 'Tech' . The car was still loaded with the comp tires and support equipment, but tech was pretty much a joke so far as a safety inspection. Setup near the Wiseco tent because I knew some fellas there from previous tradeshows.

The event staff originally told me they would only be running street tires on the autocross course Saturday because of the standing puddles in the interior oval of the circle track. They advised the course will remain the same for the entire event, and you get to make as many passes on it as possible within the time allotted to get your best time.

While I had autocrossed almost monthly the last maybe 8 years, I hadn't been to an event since last November, and the new motor went in this past summer. I didn't get to walk the course and will try to do so this morning. I had a local SCCA instructor ride with me once, who also designed the course. He said my throttle and hand motions were smooth but needed work on my line. I bought my tires used from Jon Berget last year, used them for maybe two events, then they stayed in storage until August, when I put them on for a local get together only. Then they sat again until yesterday. They are A6's and seem pretty hard even though one pair has plenty of tread depth, and the weather station said the temps only got into the 70's yesterday.

I got really lost on my first run, and just a little OC the second run. The third run I asked the local SCCA instructor to ride along. He designed the course and said it was designed to keep it slow. He advised my throttle and hand motions were fine but needed work on my line. I suspect that was because I didn't get to walk the course and I had a dirty 1:15 that run. The 4th run I had a 1:11 clean. The 5th run I had a 1:08 clean. There was a Vega there with a LS* engine running 1:06's on competition tires, and I heard that there was a red F-body running 1:04's.

Course starts with a very short straight followed by a very hard left, then a set of slalom/lane changes going up the side of the track. Sweeper on back corner into back straight with a mild slalom, then a u-turn in a chicago box, then into the roundabout, then you go back the way you came to a mid point on the front straight, then splits right and you go through a not-too-tight U-turn then an immediate sharper U-turn for the dash to the finish.

I was trying to shift to 2nd immediately after the intial left turn and the first two times I took the slow-in, fast-out on the roundabout. The instructor suggested because of the decreasing radius design to go wide to the left of the pivot cone, brake hard, then slow around and loop back left. Because of the exceedingly short straight after the start, not much room to test the UETA acceleration there. The last run I was irritated at the slow 2nd gear coming out of the final pivot and down shifted to first and from what I recall I didn't get any wheel spin. My club would consider this a S2000 course :-)

The cruise was very cool! It was about a 90 minute round trip which included an electronic scavenger hunt. They gave you a list of maybe 50-60 things to take pictures of, and the person who found the most wins a $500 Holley gift certificate. I left the autocross pad at 4:11, and they left at 4:30 so I had light a fire under my ass to get the street tires back on in time. A lot of narrow highway cutting through the wooded areas, some very cool switch back passes in the woods outside. I found a few items but real hard trying to keep pace with the rest of the cars, stay on the usual narrow curving roads, hunt for items, and also take photos.

Ate dinner at Rafferty's, then to bed by 10:30. Up at 5:30 again today. More rain today, hopefully not as much yesterday. Brake stop challenge begins today, good test for the UETA preload.

This post has been edited by JimMueller: Sep 11 2010, 12:53 PM