PCA Mav at Mineral Wells 10/16

[Billy Blaze]

(This is their last one of the season)
Maverick Region PCA event at Mineral Wells 10/16.
Registration and Tech Opens: 7:30-8:00am
Drivers Meeting: 9am
First car out: 9:20am
Get there early so you have time to clean out and prep your car, register, get your car inspected and walk the course. If you miss the drivers meeting you forfeit your first set of runs.



I will be going who else?

[altiain]

I might go. I haven't decided yet if I want to go to this event or to the SCCA event at TMS.

[joe.MIATA]

There's a good chance I will be there.

EDIT- I have registered.

[Darron65]

I registered last week.

[Billy Blaze]

Hey just wanted to say I had a great time chatting with you guys at the event.
I got a cool pic of Duane and Joe, I will get it up sometime today.

The track was pretty long and interesting, had a lot of fun...now if I can just figure out the right shock / tire pressure combination I think I can get a little faster.
It would be kewl to be able to stop and make adjustments to the car, between the early runs.

[channelmaniac]

Billy,

Are you referring to a dial adjustment on the shocks themselves like KYB AGXs have or are you referring to adjustable coilovers?

If you are referring to adjustable coilovers there is a great article over on specmiata.com on how to set those up for even corner weights.

RJ

[altiain]

now if I can just figure out the right shock / tire pressure combination I think I can get a little faster.
It would be kewl to be able to stop and make adjustments to the car, between the early runs.

Until someone shows up in a bone stock car with no adjustments at all and hands you your ass.

I'm glad to see that you're getting into autocross, Billy. I'd offer you the same advice that I offer all of my novice students - if you've got adjustable parts on the car, find a relatively neutral baseline setting (3/3 or 3/2 front/rear is a good start for the KYBs), and then leave the car alone.

Don't tinker between runs. Don't constantly change your shock settings or your tire pressures or your bar settings or your seat position or whatever. At this point in the game, just concentrate on learning to drive the car and looking ahead. The car is not what's holding you back at this point.

I've seen more novices make more mistakes by thinking that bling-bling parts and oodles of adjustability make a difference. At the beginning, they don't... because you're nowhere near being able to drive the car at 100%. In fact, you're more likely to go slower than faster by tinkering at this point.

Pick a good driver with a similar car as a baseline - once you can consistently get within a couple of tenths of their time, then you can start to think about tinkering with car setup. Until that point, it's just wasted effort.

[joe.MIATA]

Results are in!

http://mav.pca.org/Autocross/2005_results/20051016.htm

The PCA course layout was interesting...a couple of optional slaloms, (2) 360 deg. loops- an oval connected to a circle (could be performed in any manner resulting in a 360 loop around each one), a giant pivot cone and sort of an offset Chicago Box setup.
The course was about 120 seconds long and high speed in areas- a big course for the money. Its good to get other course layouts. This one being completely different from the other groups. Fun, fun.
It was good see BB, Darron65, and TD.

[Billy Blaze]

Altain, though you make some good points and give advice I have heard a lot and listened to.
The pressure in my tires was to high on my first runs and very slippery, after letting some air out I had much better control over the car and was able to push it harder, that is part of what I was talking about.
I left the Shocks alone (KYB AGX's)

I am not a real competitive person, I am doing this for fun....so I really don't care if someone is faster than me.
I would however like to be as fast as I can be for myself, and the fun of it.

I plan on taking in some schooling next season or before if it is offered to help me out some.
One thing I didn't expect was that the car had a hard time going into 3rd when I was at the rev limiter,....that has not happened before but has happened every time since that day.
I will try and get that pic up of you guys today.

[altiain]

Gotcha. By all means, find a good baseline tire pressure and shock setting - these can usually be determined pretty quickly from asking around here from people running a similar setup.

I just don't want to see you fall into the same trap I've seen a lot of novices fall into over the years, thinking they can "cure" bad driving through another shock adjustment, or tire pressure tweak, or another unobtanium part, etc. Typically this just leads to frustration (and often the poor house), as they spend more and more time and money on tweaking this and adjusting that, when what they should be focusing on is their driving ability.

A wise old autocrosser once told me that this sport is 5% car prep, 5% sheer dumb luck, and 90% driver. In other words, all the car prep in the world won't help you if you don't focus on the nut behind the wheel.

I strongly encourage you to go to the Maverick Region PCA's Beginner and Intermediate autocrossing schools next spring. Also, don't be afraid to ask other driver's to ride along with you and give you some pointers at events, or ask to ride along with others and watch them drive.

And once you feel you've gotten everything you can from the car and you're thinking about adding parts to it to make it faster, give the keys to a really good driver like lugnutjon. If he beats your on his first run in your car, you don't need to buy any more parts just yet.

[Billy Blaze]

Kewl, I will do that for sure.
I had the shocks set at 2 all around, I will try the 3 front 2 rear setting next time and leave it there.
Should I also run the rear tires a couple of psi lower than the fronts?
That was recomended to me, I ran at 34 psi all around and had much better traction.
I put 36psi in before I left for Mineral Wells and after the first runs they were at almost 40psi....loosey goosey.
Learned my lesson from that.
Thanks for the help!

[joe.MIATA]

The PCA AutoX school is a great bang for the buck. I highly recommend it. They only allow you to take each class twice. Lots of good instruction/ info/ practice for $35-45 (I forget how much).

Linkie-- http://mav.pca.org/mav/Events/Schools.asp

[altiain]

Kewl, I will do that for sure.
I had the shocks set at 2 all around, I will try the 3 front 2 rear setting next time and leave it there.
Should I also run the rear tires a couple of psi lower than the fronts?
That was recomended to me, I ran at 34 psi all around and had much better traction.
I put 36psi in before I left for Mineral Wells and after the first runs they were at almost 40psi....loosey goosey.
Learned my lesson from that.
Thanks for the help!

What type of tires are you running? Typically, somewhere between 35-40 psi is a good starting place for the fronts, with the rears typically 2-3 psi lower.

[Billy Blaze]

Thanks Joe, I am going to check that out.

I got slippery ES 100's.

I think I am going to try Khumo's next time, I liked the ones Tailchaser has.