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Fun at Thunderhill April 5-6

To: mgs@autox.team.net
Subject: Fun at Thunderhill April 5-6
From: Larry Colen <lrcar@red4est.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 11:21:31 -0700
I had a good time at Thunderhill this weekend. My hotlap was acting
flaky (flakily?) all weekend, so I don't have a lot of laptimes. The
negative camber bushings I installed seemed to help, I want to put the
lower ones in. I'd also like to get the next size larger sway
bar. While I don't seem to have knocked as much off my best time as I
ahd hoped, my last group 4 (open passing) session, after my third lap,
all of my times were within a second of my best lap ever.

Both of my students drove Suburu WRX's. Only my student from Saturday
hangs out on i-club, and that is mostly on the tire/wheel forums. If
you want to make a WRX work on the track, you need to learn
trailbraking.

Scott Neville posted a lap of his following me around the track. Apart
from my blowing my line in turns 3 and 4, my line doesn't look too
bad:
http://home.infostations.net/sneville/incarvideos.html (all his
videos)
http://home.infostations.net/sneville/thunderhill_apr_2003.asf (him
following me, 10 Meg file)

I just had a chance to check the video tape for my lap times in the
last fast session. My passenger was a slender woman, so it was less of
a weight penalty than with some of the huskier guys I've had a
passngers. At Sears Point and Laguna, a 200 pound passenger costs
about 2 seconds a lap. I didn't have a chance to carefully check stop
the tape at exactly the same spot on the track so I only have the
times to seconds, not hundredths, for most of the laps but passing the
start of the pitwall on the tape, the time counter read:

I also looked at the last couple of laps as I passed S/F:

Pitwall      S/F

ctr    lap  counter     lap

31:38
34:08  2:30
36:33  2:25
38:56  2:23
41:19  2:23  41:28.13
43:40  2:21  43:50.08  2:22.05
46:03  2:23  46:12.29  2:22.21

So, even with an extra 120 pounds in a car, I was still pretty close
to my previous best ever time of 2:22.56 (and that was only one lap
out of the whole session (the other laps that session were all about
2:24). While there are still several places I'm not doing it quite
right (9, 10, 11, 1 and 6 are my worst), I am pleased to see that once
I got up to speed in that session, all my laps were within about a
second of each other, so I'm starting to be reasonably consistent
again. So it looks like I've got the worst of the rust knocked off my
driving,

I don't know if/when I'll be able to get any of my own video footage
on the web but I hope to transfer to VHS soon.

I only had time to install the top decambering bushings that I got
from Prather racing last week, but they did seem to really help the
front tires stick. I want to install the lower bushings this week. I'd
also like to try putting in a stiffer front swaybar. I just realized
that a couple times when my front traction suddenly went "nonlinear"
was probably me hitting the bumpstops. I currently have a 7/8" front
bar. I believe the next "size" up would be a 1" (or would it be
15/16?). Anyways, does anyone have a front swaybar for an MGB in
either of those sizes that they are looking for a new home for?

   Larry 

-- 
         Dancing is life. Everything else is just a set break.
lrc@red4est.com                                    http://www.red4est.com/lrc

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