SCCA National Tour - Houston, TX 5/18 - 5/20

[POS Racing]

Man that was one fun weekend!
I missed out on the fun Friday night since I pulled the card rather than going out with the kids, but Saturday afternoon with the cool kids from North Texas (and some of the RX8 kids) was a blast! Well the service was “Meh” but the food was good and the beer was cold!


The folks in Houston and the SCCA Traveling crew sure put on one great event everything seemed to go smoothly even with me working computer first heat.

Sadly the POS Racer was one spot out of the trophies in fourth place, but there is always next year! Great driving in CS by Chris W!

BTW. Which one was the Kenny ??

[Solo RX-7]

Small story from the E Stock camp...

After bragging to a bunch of non-autocrossers last week about the durability of the Old Bull MR2, the curse of bragging caused the mount for the sway bar end link to be ripped from it's moorings on the left front strut. This happened on the first or second practice run Friday afternoon, and caused us to scramble like crazy to get it repaired before Saturday morning. Luckily we found a shop not far from the site (thanks to Tony Espinoza and the other CP guys) that made the necessary weld repair and straightened the pretzel-shaped end link for us. A quick reassemble in the parking lot and we thought we were good to go.

1st and 2nd runs on Saturday morning went well, but by the third run the car was oversteering much more than usual. By the time the Old Bull made his last run he looked like Sammy Swindell out there dirt-tracking his way through every corner. Seems the straightened end link was weakened significantly, and it assumed it's previous pretzel shape sometime during our runs. This left the front bar completely disabled, explaining the sudden urge to drive sideways.

A run to a couple of local Toyota dealers lightened our wallets by a bunch, but produced a new end link that was at least twice the thickness of the one we bent. Seems we're not the first ones to twist an MR2 end link into a new shape. Sunday's runs went off without a hitch.

We're not sure why it chose that moment to let go, but it may have had something to do with the brand new front tires combined with old tires on the rear putting larger than normal forces on the front bar. It ripped the bracket on the strut into 3 seperate pieces. Jimmie tells me this is not an uncommon thing for MR2's, so maybe the tires had nothing to do with it...

It was rewarding to solve the problems thrown at us and still drive pretty well, but it would've been much more fun to be able to spend some time cheering other folks on instead of scrambling around trying to get the car fixed.

[altiain]

Saturday afternoon with the cool kids from North Texas (and some of the RX8 kids) was a blast! Well the service was “Meh” but the food was good and the beer was cold!

You got food? I looked over right after the first round of food showed up, and all you had was an empty plate.

BTW. Which one was the Kenny ??

The last one in the outside wall of the left-hander that led onto the 3 cone slalom (the start slalom from Day 1). Andy Hollis kept calling it the Kenny cone because of how often it got killed on Sunday.

BTW, congrats to Solo RX-7 for the E Stock win, even with a mangled car!

[POS Racing]

You got food? I looked over right after the first round of food showed up, and all you had was an empty plate.

Like I tried to tell the waitress I think a seagull swiped it!

[Solo RX-7]

I'd like to send in a write up of the Tour to Sydney Davis so we can get some TX Region press in Sports Car. Sydney took over OzCop's column a few months back reporting on all things from the SW Division.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to do much story digging because of the car troubles, so send 'em my way and I'll compile them into one summary for Sydney to use.

I can go over the results and pick out all our participants, but I need the stories behind the results to make it interesting.

email to solorx7 at netzero dot com

[Solo RX-7]

BTW, congrats to Solo RX-7 for the E Stock win, even with a mangled car!

Thanks! I was pretty happy with the way I drove except for that *&$%# cone on my last run. It really bugs me because there was no reason to hit it... I wasn't out of sorts, car was in complete control and I still hit it. Just one of those dumb things. Would've been a smokin' run.

[general default]

2007 Houston Tour, Sunday Run#2 5.5megs+

2007 Houston Tour, Saturday Run#2 5.5megs+

They were not my fastest runs but they were clean.

Houston Region put on a great event. Think all the B-stockers could have driven better but we did what we did.

Please post if you find the movie does not pay back smoothly. The Mac computer played the video just fine but the old Windows machine was not smooth.

[jrj512]

That looked like a fun course (thanks for the vids, general) and it sounds like it was a good time as usual. I really need to make it out to these national events.

[SixAce]

Plays fine for me. Nice and smooth, like the driving.

I like the virtual seat time. It's all I get lately.

Congrats to the local team. Ya'll represent well.

Sorry I missed it. Sounds like good times!

SA

[Miatamoto]

Congrats to everyone! Wish I could have been there.

General, thanks for sharing the videos. Good stuff.

[Machismo]

Yeah, thanks for the vids. Will start planning for next year. As for your dilemma Matt and Jimmie, sorry to hear it but glad everything came together. You know you are a true racer when something falls off the car and you only care about about the weight savings.

[Clovis]

Great videos General Default. Smooth and right on all the important cones...very nice.

Overall it was a great weekend. Happy with my driving and being able to pull a 3rd place trophy finish in that SS field. The moral victory from being a 1/10th and 2/10ths from Strelnieks in the GT3 was pretty good.

You guys in BS were all looking great out there. Isley was just so fast. He was on the throttle everywhere. And talk about a car that corners flat, wow!

One question for you guys. Are you getting a lot of tire clag build up? We are getting it at almost every event. Once it gets on the tire I'd say the grip demishes by about 20%. It takes ~10 minutes of figure 8's at the end of the day to wear it off. Anyone know how to remove it (in the pits) between runs?

One last thing, big apologies for heading out Sat night before giving Altiain a hug and a kiss good-bye. I won't make that mistake agian. We did setup a ride with Henry before we left...

[altiain]

You guys in BS were all looking great out there. Isley was just so fast. He was on the throttle everywhere. And talk about a car that corners flat, wow!

I noticed that as well. I think my front bar may be going in a drill press this weekend.

[Machismo]

As far as your tire slag, I've seen some guys use those horse groomer things. Big metal johnny with scapers and they clean their tires between runs with this.

[Miatamoto]

I noticed that as well. I think my front bar may be going in a drill press this weekend.

So he's running a stock front bar with extra holes? Interesting.

Does this introduce understeer to the car?

[altiain]

He is actually running a Mazdacomp front bar. However, he mentioned that if he had it to do again, he'd just drill holes in the stock bar (which others have done), since the Mazdacomp car is a bit pricey. I'm going to do the math this week and decide exactly where to drill the holes, then give it a try. If we don't like it, we can always go back to where we are now.

[ratt_finkel]

So he's running a stock front bar with extra holes? Interesting.

Does this introduce understeer to the car?

The majority of time a stiffer front swaybar will actually help reduce understeer by keeping the front tire contact patch stiffer under cornercing. YRMV